Draft Apprenticeships (Alternative English Completion Conditions and Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendment) (Coronavirus) Regulations 2020

Gillian Keegan Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Apprenticeships (Alternative English Completion Conditions and Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendment) (Coronavirus) Regulations 2020.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott.

Committee members will be aware of the unprecedented action that the Government continue to take to combat the economic impact of the covid-19 pandemic. In March, we swiftly launched the coronavirus job retention scheme to protect jobs and businesses from the worst of the pandemic. We have since seen millions of workers come off furlough and get back to work, and we will pay businesses a job retention bonus of £1,000 for each of those still employed at the end of January next year.

In addition, last week the Chancellor set out a new job support scheme to help affected businesses protect jobs as they seek to return to operations in the coming months. To support apprenticeships to continue during the pandemic, we introduced a range of flexibilities to promote remote learning and assessment, and enabled furloughed apprentices to continue to trade. As we build back stronger from the pandemic, apprenticeships will play a key role in creating jobs and boosting the skills that employers need to increase their productivity. We know that young people starting their careers are disproportionately impacted in economic downturns, so in our plan for jobs we announced payments of £2,000 to employers hiring a new apprentice aged under 25 between 1 August and 31 January 2021. Employers can also claim payments of £1,500 for taking on new apprentices aged 25 or older. For young people seeking the skills to enter the labour market, we are tripling the number of traineeships we make available and rewarding employers for offering work placements, as well as subsidising employers to create new short-term roles as part of the kickstart scheme.

We know that apprentices are not immune from this economic impact. Although employers are doing their best to protect existing apprentices, we know that many businesses are having to make difficult choices that they never wanted to make. Sadly, this will see apprentices being made redundant before they can complete their training. That impacts the apprentice personally and their ability to repay their employer—through increased productivity—the investment made in that apprentice’s future.

To help apprentices through this difficult time, in August this year we launched a new support service for redundant apprentices. It provides individuals who have been made redundant, or who are at risk of redundancy, advice and guidance on the impact of redundancy on their apprenticeship. It also enables them to access wider support services such as careers and financial advice and wellbeing support. Importantly, it helps them find new apprenticeship opportunities with employers. So far, more than 450 employers have registered to share details of their vacancies with redundant apprentices, with each employer often offering multiple opportunities in different roles and in different regions. One example is Troup Bywaters + Anders, an award-winning design SME that has already taken on three apprentices who were made redundant from their previous roles. The company told us:

“Having shared our vacancies through the new Redundancy Support Service for Apprentices, I can confirm that it is an easy way for us to play our part in helping shape people’s futures.”

We hope that any apprentice who is made redundant will be able to secure new employment and continue their apprenticeship with a new employer, but we know that that will not always be possible, so we now require training providers to produce a record of part completion when an apprentice has to stop their apprenticeship as a result of redundancy. It sets out the knowledge, skills and behaviours that the apprentice has already acquired prior to redundancy, providing a record of achievement and helping the apprentice to secure future employment. We already enable apprentices made redundant within six months of the end of their training to continue and complete their apprenticeship whether or not they are successful in finding a new employer.

Where an individual has made a significant commitment to their training and the goal of occupational competence is in sight, it is important that they are not robbed of the opportunity to complete their apprenticeship by the misfortune of redundancy. We now want to go further and give more apprentices who suffer redundancy the opportunity to complete their apprenticeship should they not find new employment immediately.

As we have replaced apprenticeship frameworks with new higher quality employer-designed standards, the average length of an apprenticeship has increased: up from 498 days in 2015-16 to 611 days in 2018-19. In recognition of that, we are now legislating to enable redundant apprentices to complete their apprenticeship if they are more than six months from completion at the time of redundancy and they have completed 75% or more of their training programme. That will mean that, for example, an engineering apprentice who had completed three years of a four-year programme when they were made redundant could now continue and complete the final year of their training, even if they cannot secure new employment during the lifetime of their apprenticeship.

In extending this policy we are acutely sensitive that apprenticeships are jobs, not simply training programmes, and that the unique benefit of an apprenticeship is its combination of off-the-job training and the on-the-job application of those skills. Without an employer for a sustained period of time, it becomes increasingly difficult for an apprentice to develop the on-the-job experience necessary to attain occupational competence and to pass the end-point assessment.

In our judgment, and based on discussions with employers and providers and on advice from the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, which oversees the development of apprenticeship standards, the completion of at least three quarters of an apprenticeship is necessary for an apprentice to have a realistic prospect of achieving occupational competence without the support and guidance of an employer. For that reason we have defined the policy in the way that we have. It means that up to an additional 8,000 apprentices currently undertaking apprenticeships of longer than two years could complete their programmes in the event of redundancy.

Having taken steps to encourage employers to offer new apprenticeship opportunities, we are now taking steps to extend support to existing apprentices seeking to complete their apprenticeship in the face of redundancy. This legislation strikes the right balance between supporting apprentices and protecting the quality of the apprenticeship experience they receive and the endorsement it provides to employers of those apprentices’s knowledge, skills and behaviours. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

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[Gillian Keegan]

I thank the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston for her comments. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North, who is as passionate as I am about apprenticeships. They are a brilliant way for young people to get the skills that are relevant to the workplace.

Those 570 apprentices in Stoke-on-Trent have made a good decision and we will be there to make sure that it pays off for them. The increasing focus on small and medium-sized companies is vital, because areas such as Stoke have a lot of employers in that bracket, which is why we need to make sure that the apprenticeship system works well for them and for all young people in Stoke-on-Trent so they get that opportunity.

In relation to my hon. Friend’s comments on kickstart and the apprenticeship scheme, they are designed to work together. We expect young people who benefit from kickstart to be taken on and employed full time or to go into the apprenticeship system, learn new skills and progress in the workplace.

[Kate Green]

I, too, was interested in what the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North said about the kickstart scheme, because obviously, ideally, there would be a continuum from kickstart to apprenticeship. Will the Minister commit to publishing indications of the journeys that those who begin on kickstart make so that we can see if they do indeed transition into apprenticeships? There is a real concern that the financial incentive for some employers is simply to do the kickstart element at the expense of offering a much richer and more valuable career through an apprenticeship. Obviously that would be of concern to the Minister, as it is to us.

[Gillian Keegan]

I know that there has been a question about the eligibility for kickstart and apprenticeships and how those two schemes work together, but they do work together because they have different eligibility criteria. For example, to take part in the kickstart scheme, someone would usually be unemployed already and receiving universal credit, as well as meeting other criteria.

It is important to make sure that those opportunities work well together, which is why we are very much focused on the quality of apprenticeships as well. We look at and publish the destination data, certainly for apprenticeships. The kickstart scheme is run by the Department for Work and Pensions, but I am sure that it will look at destination data, because it is a huge investment and it is important that we get it right.

I thank Committee members for their contributions to the debate. I am delighted that apprenticeships seem to be hugely popular. People are focused on understanding how we can improve them, how we can improve the system, how we can create more of them and how we can make sure that every young person is aware of them, because we know that some young people do not hear about those fantastic opportunities to train and have career-led study until it is too late.

The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston asked about the length of time that this process has taken. Obviously, the initial focus was on making sure that every apprentice could move their training online. That was really the first focus, because during the lockdown—the first phase of this pandemic—nobody was able to go anywhere, and we did not know how long that lockdown was going to last. So, the initial focus was on making sure that the furlough scheme applied to apprentices, and that they could continue their training and access it at home.

The redundancy support package that we already had was for those apprentices who had less than six months of their apprenticeships to go. During that period of the lockdown, very few apprentices were made redundant, because obviously the furlough scheme was in place, it was very generous and it provided ongoing support. However, the hon. Lady mentioned the British Airways worker. I actually spoke to British Airways about some of their apprentices and some of the apprenticeship changes that they were making, because clearly the business has been absolutely devastated by coronavirus; there is no getting away from that for airports and airlines.

The British Airways scheme really depends on the length of the apprenticeship. Most of the BA apprenticeships were for less than two years; in fact, a lot of them lasted for only one year or less. So, if apprentices still had six months of their apprenticeship to go, they could continue to the end-point assessment. And I believe that BA also decided to transfer some of the apprentices into their cabin crew, to make them full-time, and to bring that scheme forward as well.

The end-point assessment is the most important thing for people on the apprenticeship scheme, so that they can demonstrate the skills, knowledge and behaviour that they have learned, and those skills are transferable, so these apprenticeships still have currency. It is important that we get that balance right.

As for how the service—the job-sharing service—will work, the first aspect is making sure that we write to all employers, ensuring that they know it is available and encouraging them to bring forward any vacancies they have. The next step is to ensure that we also look after the apprentices. So, we are in contact with apprentices. If they make it known that they are redundant, we offer the service to them and we will also keep in contact with them later to check on how they are doing and to find out whether they have got a job. I believe I am right in saying that the service is run by the National Careers Service, and there has been more investment in the National Careers Service overall to ensure that it has the capacity to deal with this.[Official Report, 7 October 2020, Vol. 681 c. 8MC.]

The hon. Lady mentioned Hannah and, yes, I very much enjoyed speaking to Hannah on “Any Questions?” I will just relate this legislation to Hannah’s case. She was at the end of a three-year gas engineering apprenticeship. If she had been, say, two years and three months into that apprenticeship, this legislation would have made the difference for her. Without it and before it, Hannah could have done two years and three months of her apprenticeship and then, although she would have a partial completion record, she would not have been able to complete the apprenticeship. This measure would allow her to complete.

Regarding the end-point assessments, the vast majority of them happened, whether remotely or in some other way. The institute—the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education—and the awarding organisations went through every single apprenticeship standard, and as many end-point assessments as possible took place.

However, there were some apprentices who could not complete their end-point assessments, as I explained to Hannah. She asked why a predicted grade could not be used for her apprenticeship. However, there are certain professions, such as being a gas engineer, where we absolutely need to check the competency of somebody to practise. The end-point assessment is a licence to practise, including dealing with some very dangerous substances and materials, and there are a number of apprenticeships that fit into that category. With those, we regretfully had to delay the end-point assessment because it had to be done in person.

Now that colleges are back and now that independent training providers are back, the hon. Lady is right that it is perfectly viable for those end-point assessments to be made and they are now taking place. We have a team of people in the Department who are in touch with Hannah and her training provider, to make sure that she will get her end-point assessment.

The other thing I would say is that Hannah will be a qualified gas engineer quite soon and there is a great demand for them. The hon. Lady talked about skill shortages and there is a great demand for qualified gas engineers. I believe that somebody phoned into the programme to offer her a job; it was not near where she lives, but that still shows the demand for her skills. So, I am very confident that she will have a lot to offer the workplace. Nevertheless, we really need to ensure that, where someone will be operating dangerous equipment or using other things that can endanger themselves or someone else if they do not have the required competency levels, we do not take any risks with that.

As for skills shortages, we ought to remember that before coronavirus we had 3.8% unemployment in this country and massive skills shortages. In my first six weeks as the Minister with responsibility for apprenticeships and skills, I spent all my time talking to various sectors about the tens of thousands—even hundreds of thousands—of vacancies in their particular sector. That is why yesterday’s announcement was so important, with respect to how we help people affected by coronavirus, where their sector has been badly hit and may take longer to recover—or may, indeed, not recover to the full extent—into areas where there are massive skills shortages. That will still go on.

The hon. Lady mentioned setting up a skills shortage taskforce. We have many initiatives to focus on skills shortages and on trying to match people at risk of redundancy, or who are made redundant, with the relevant areas and with the right training, whether through the apprenticeship system, online, through a full-time course or even, now, a boot camp—or via any of the other schemes that we have put in place.

Those initiatives are run with the mayoral combined authorities, local enterprise partnerships, local authority groups and employer groups. We have them in construction, the creative industries, engineering, shipbuilding and green jobs, to name just a few.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I should like to give an example of that from Stoke-on-Trent. Staffordshire chamber of commerce is acting as the main focal point, working alongside Stoke-on-Trent College to ensure that people who are falling through the gap can get access to businesses, which are recruited by the LEP and Stoke-on-Trent City Council to engage with the chamber of commerce. It is also getting local Jobcentre Plus offices to ensure that anyone who has come on to their books recently or who fits the criteria is sent to engage with the college and start the process that will hopefully find them an apprenticeship. Does the Minister agree that that is the kind of thinking we need, and that it is up to areas where local governing bodies have the data to find such creative solutions?

[Gillian Keegan]

I absolutely agree. We all have to work together. These are extraordinary times and they demand extraordinary action. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning the chamber of commerce, because it is vital in delivering that service across the country.

We all hope that redundancy will be a fate faced by as few apprentices as possible, but businesses face enormous challenges and we need to be prepared to support apprentices as far as we can, while protecting the integrity of apprenticeships and the mark of quality that they now represent to employers. By supporting the regulations today we can increase the number of apprentices who can complete their apprenticeship in the event of redundancy, recognising the sustained commitment that those individuals have made to their training over months and years. That will make a huge difference to them and enable them to make a full contribution to developing the skills that our businesses and country need to recover and thrive in the future.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Apprenticeships (Alternative English Completion Conditions and Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendment) (Coronavirus) Regulations 2020.