Apprenticeships (Small Businesses)

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I begin by congratulating, and not just in the customary way, the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on bringing an extraordinarily important subject to the Chamber today. His speech had depth and breadth; it was extremely expansive and dealt with many of the most important points. It is inevitable that the general approach we take to apprenticeships is concentrated on the challenge we face in dealing with apprenticeships in small and medium-sized businesses. Whether we call them micro-businesses, sole traders or people who are starting out on their own, the issue is magnified in that area. The hon. Gentleman has therefore done the House and the Chamber a service by the breadth of his remarks.

The hon. Gentleman talked about apprenticeships not being to do with manufacturing alone, which is true, and under the previous Government that diversification of apprenticeships, which is continuing, was important. The current Government have inherited that rising curve in apprenticeships, taken by the previous Labour Government from a base of 65,000 in 1997. The occasion is not one for trading loads of statistics or being partisan, but it is incumbent on Members to remember that the abolition of Train to Gain released to the present Government a significant amount of money, some of which they have chosen to use in the expansion of apprenticeships, which we welcome. The challenge for all of us, in whatever position, is to ensure that the expansion of apprenticeships is a success and continues.

It is important to look at the elements of policy continuity and, in particular, I pay tribute to the Minister for how he and his colleagues have continued to support Unionlearn. The routes into apprenticeship are many and varied, and we have heard today about some of those ways and how some can be improved. Undoubtedly, one of the best ways of persuading people into apprenticeships or taking up skills at whatever age is the support, endorsement and encouragement of their peers. In that respect, the work of Unionlearn has a great deal to teach us, whether or not we are talking about unionised environments. In the same way, many of the contributions this afternoon, in particular the last one, have stressed the need for such a process to be understood across the board.

The challenge we face is the one given to us by the Federation of Small Businesses, with figures on numbers and take-up that people have quoted in some detail today. Small businesses are crucial to growth. The hon. Member for Gloucester talked about that, and about the importance of taking on GTAs. He and other Government Members were somewhat sceptical about the former future jobs fund, but although we live in a three-minute universe, they ought to remember that their own Chancellor announced in the Budget earlier this year what some of us might regard as a pale imitation of the future jobs fund. We wait to see how that carries through. The hon. Gentleman made a valuable point at the end of his speech about incentives. I was particularly interested in the idea of the graduation of incentives over a three-year period, which many of us are familiar with from commercial practice, not least in hiring builders, and there is a lot to be said for that.

I congratulate other Members who spoke this afternoon. The hon. Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle) talked about the importance of peer endorsement in apprenticeships and about the problem with skilled manual workers. Again, that is not a new problem but one flagged up by successive Select Committees, and it was a key issue in the Leitch report, to which all parties subscribed.

The hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones) raised issues about the careers service and the exposure of young people to the working environment, which is also important. Again, it is not a new issue. Some years ago, when I was a member of the Education and Skills Committee, we went to two places in the United States to look at training in schools, in Boston and North Carolina, which had good examples of training in units in a secondary school. In such a unit in North Carolina, most of the young people—very much from a blue-collar background—subsequently got jobs with the Bell Telephone Co., which had sponsored the unit. There are some lessons for us in that, with interesting echoes in such ideas of recent years as studio schools or the university technical colleges, of which Lord Baker has been such a strong advocate.

I was delighted to hear the contributions of the hon. Members for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) and for Bradford East (Mr Ward). The hon. Member for Wyre Forest was particularly interesting and illuminating on his experience with the space company, which, in terms of where apprenticeships can take someone, I have found replicated in my own neck of the woods; a large number of people in Blackpool work for British Aerospace in one capacity or another. His reminder that it is a good idea not to make a false comparator—either apprenticeships or universities—was valuable. Whatever the value of higher level apprenticeships in their own right, we ought to be putting far more emphasis on ensuring that universities accept and look at vocational qualifications, and take themselves through to that level.

It is always a great pleasure to hear the hon. Member for Bradford East, who is extremely knowledgeable and passionate in this area. I was glad to hear what he had to say about his experience of the future jobs fund. It is true that in many areas it was not simply public sector-led. The statistics for my area of Blackpool mirrored those given by the hon. Gentleman. I vividly remember visiting Blackpool football club where six young people had been taken on under the future jobs fund, giving a similar success story.

I make one more point lightly and in not too partisan a fashion: I hope that hon. Members will see that the previous Government never made a commitment to or objective of 50% of young people under the age of 30 going into university education. If we look at the detail, we see that it was about some form of training or further or higher education. I make that point and pass on, but I am proud of the work that the previous Labour Government did to bolster apprenticeships and the apprenticeship system, making them an attractive option for businesses of all sizes. As I said, the results speak for themselves.

We set up the National Apprenticeship Service in 2009, as a national body playing a key role in overseeing the apprenticeship programme, providing information to potential apprentices and helping to match them with employers. We also introduced national apprenticeship week. It is a pleasure to hear today from so many Members that they have taken advantage of the hook of that week—throughout the rest of the year as well—to promote apprenticeships in their own constituencies. It is a good opportunity for doing that.

In my constituency, in February this year, my local Blackpool newspaper, The Gazette, sponsored an apprenticeship drive across the Fylde. I spoke at the launch of the drive and supported it, and it reached the sort of target figures of 100 to 150 apprenticeships, to which reference has been made. In my work as a Member of Parliament, I have seen the success of apprenticeships not only for very large companies such as BAE Systems, but also for small and local organisations. The Blackpool Pleasure Beach has taken on a number of apprentices successfully, as have many construction firms, or the dental practice in my constituency that I visited this year, which has just taken on two apprentices.

Sometimes it is not easy for a Government of any hue to persuade small and medium-sized businesses to look at apprenticeships. I know that from my own experience of running a small business with eight employees for 12 years before I came into this place. I know, as no doubt do many hon. Members who have spoken, about the multiplicity of factors and pressures on small businesses when they are trying to decide what to do: cash flow, marketing, promotion, lease arrangements. The list gets longer every year.

Of course there must be a receptive environment for small businesses to take on apprentices, and they must believe that it is worth expending the time, but that raises big issues about the structure of apprenticeships, and whether they are sufficiently structured to be useful to and easily accessible by small and medium-sized businesses. I do not want to be misunderstood. I am not suggesting that we abandon the traditional apprenticeship structures to which the hon. Member for Bradford East rightly referred.

My father undertook a traditional apprenticeship for a large company, Crossley Brothers, which is sadly now less well known than it was. It was a major factor in the engineering world certainly into the 1960s, and to the present day. Such apprenticeships have their value, but we must also consider the new type of apprenticeship. There are big decisions to be made and discussions to have about the value or otherwise of a modular approach, about delivery of apprenticeships on the job rather than outside at a further education college, and so on. Such matters must be taken into account when considering what benefits will encourage small businesses to take on apprentices.

Despite the Government’s announced additional investment in apprenticeships, many businesses still believe that there are major deterrents. A City and Guilds survey—I was at its launch during national apprenticeship week earlier this year—showed that 80% of employers still believe that there are barriers to hiring apprentices, and one in five believe that the current economic climate makes it too risky to take on an apprentice. A couple of other statistics are relevant to what hon. Members have said today. Just under half of employers would be encouraged to have an apprentice if more Government funding were available per apprentice—whether that would be a deciding factor, of course, is always the key question—and 26% wanted the recruitment process to become simpler and less time-consuming.

Those statistics are interesting, and have been supplemented recently by a major survey of 500 employers across the board, not just SMEs, by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Its findings are interesting and specific, and slightly contradict what City and Guilds said, because they showed that two thirds of those not offering apprenticeships reported that it was inappropriate for their organisation. Again, the point about how to market apprenticeships and present them to companies comes to mind. One in six said that they were not offering apprenticeships because of a recruitment freeze, budget restraints or the economic climate. Interestingly—I am not saying that one side or the other has the last word—less than 5% said that they were put off by too much associated bureaucracy or insufficient public funding.

Whatever the case, major challenges must be overcome. It may be relevant to the example about the value of soft skills—I do not like referring to soft skills because that may suggest that they are not important; I prefer to call them enabling skills, but that is a matter of nomenclature—that the CIPD survey showed that apprentices were rated highly for enthusiasm, work ethic and presentation, but that their creativity, innovation, initiative and customer service skills were less impressive. There may be some messages there about the school system.

The statistics from the Federation of Small Businesses, as many hon. Members have said, are worrying for the reasons that have been described. It is particularly valuable that the FSB not only provides such data, but regularly monitors attitudes and feedback from its membership. I understand that the latest report is due out tomorrow, and it will be particularly interesting given the current fluid nature and uncertain prospects for growth. Similar statistics came from the CBI/EDI educational skills survey, which was published last month. It showed that apprenticeship growth is increasingly concentrated in large companies.

That is on a par with the Government’s need urgently to consider tailoring apprenticeships better towards the need of SMEs. It is a two-way process, which the Government must take on board and, with the National Apprenticeship Service, be alert to the changes and modifications that employers report. They must allow employees to complete the course-based elements of their apprenticeships. I do not exempt further education colleges from that process because, certainly in my neck of the woods, it is important, particularly when bringing in people who must do a lot of juggling with their work-life balance, that delivery of off-job apprenticeship course work is as close to their work or living place as possible.

[Laura Sandys]

I was pleased to welcome the Minister to my local further education college, Thanet college, which has been extremely helpful and important to me in the recruitment of an apprentice I have just taken on. FE colleges are embedded in their communities, and play an important role as ambassadors for the apprentice system. They support employers who may not understand the system effectively. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

[Mr Marsden]

I absolutely agree. In my neck of the woods, Blackpool and The Fylde college has done sterling work in that area. There is sometimes an issue about colleges understanding the need to deliver some of their training closer to the workplace if possible and closer to the living space if possible of the people they are trying to reach.

[Mr Hayes]

indicated assent.

[Mr Marsden]

I see the Minister nodding, and I suspect that as he represents a rural constituency he understands such issues.

The process is a two-way one, but the Government must consider the unintended consequences of their decisions elsewhere. In their hasty abolition of the regional development agencies, many of the bodies that oversaw local skills and employment policies were swept away. The new local enterprise partnerships have no powers in those areas, as skills policy remains under central control from Whitehall.

The Federation of Small Businesses and other business organisations have been critical of the Government’s failure to give local enterprise partnerships the tools to do the job. Included in that is the concern of the Federation of Small Businesses that there are not enough representatives from small and medium-sized businesses on local enterprise partnership boards. Allowing them to have a greater voice is important in terms of real input in tailoring and structuring skills policy locally, and that includes apprenticeships. Indeed, by their nature, small businesses understand the life-changing impact of apprenticeships, and how that must be balanced against day-to-day needs. We must remember that although much has been said, rightly, about the challenge of youth unemployment, we also face the challenges of demographic shift in the next 10 to 15 years, the projections in the Leitch report, and the particular needs of work-life trade-off if we are to attract older people to become involved with apprenticeships. That includes women in particular. There are impressive models from organisations such as B&Q and British Gas, but we need to see how those good practices can be replicated to their counterparts in small business.

Finally, I want to look at pre-apprenticeship preparation, which has been mentioned by one or two hon. Members, and in particular by the hon. Member for Bradford East in the context of the first job agreement—the FJA. Information, advice and guidance is crucial to inform people about the opportunities provided by apprenticeships, and if young people do not get such advice, SMEs may be deprived of many suitable candidates. It is vital that the Government have a framework that can deliver quality information, advice and guidance. In truth, however, there are still real problems with the new all-age careers service.

I know that the Minister has done his best to take forward such issues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Nevertheless, to echo earlier remarks, the Department for Education remains singularly unfocused on the need for financial support and for the necessary information, advice and guidance to be provided face to face. I urge the Minister to press his colleagues further on that.

What proposals does the Minister have to monitor completion rates more effectively? What conversations are his officials having with organisations responsible for qualifications about the balance between modular and more traditional structures for apprenticeships? Such things will be key in determining the attitudes of small businesses when taking on apprentices. We all agree that apprenticeships have a very real worth for businesses and apprentices, but the Government must recognise that one size does not fit all. If SMEs are to help lead sustainable economic growth and recovery, they must have the tools to achieve it. We must ensure that apprenticeship frameworks and mechanisms are accessible to all the small businesses that hon. Members have quite rightly praised today, and not only to the big companies that have the money and resources to take on apprentices.

[The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)]

It is an immense pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and it is always a pleasure to speak opposite the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden), who presents his case with typical flair and fairness.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on securing this debate. Over the past year, he and I have had a number of discussions about apprenticeships, and whenever we have done so, he has shown a commendable interest in and enthusiasm for the subject. He has also brought to my attention a series of ideas, reflected in his opening remarks today, about how we can further our policy to expand the number of apprenticeships available. I had the pleasure of visiting Gloucester rugby club with him and taking part in an apprenticeship fair that he had helped organise. It was a splendid occasion, and I know that he plans to take that forward with a number of similar events in his constituency that will be targeted at under-represented groups. Such work is highly commendable.

I am grateful to all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. As the hon. Member for Blackpool South said, many interesting points have been raised, and I shall try to address as many of them as I can in the time available—I have rather more time today than Ministers usually have when responding to such debates, which is welcome.

To place my remarks in context, let me stress to hon. Members that—make no mistake—apprenticeships are a flagship policy for the Government. It is true that the previous Government made progress on apprenticeships, and I shall say more about that in a moment. It is equally true, however, that apprenticeships have never been more central to public policy than they are today. The programme to build more apprenticeships in Britain than ever seen before in our history is supported by the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and all Ministers with responsibility in the area. That is not merely rhetoric—though I have nothing against rhetoric—and it is illustrated by the fact that, despite financial constraints that were, it is fair to say, unusual in their severity, over the current spending period the Government have dramatically increased the funding available for apprenticeships.

The hon. Member for Blackpool South was kind enough to acknowledge that one of the first things that I did on entering the Government was to transfer £150 million of deadweight Train to Gain funding into apprenticeships to fund an additional 50,000 places.

[Mr Marsden]

But what happened to the rest of it?

[Mr Hayes]

I will come to that in a few moments. When I announce the details of the statistical first release to the House at the end of the month, I am confident that they will show substantial progress and achievement. As hon. Members will know, provisional data already in the public domain suggest that we have made remarkable progress, despite the difficult economic circumstances in which, as has been said, some firms might not usually be expected to consider training or employing new staff.

The commitment that I have articulated was confirmed in the Budget, when the Chancellor announced a further £180 million of funding for apprenticeships. That will enable us to create 40,000 places for young unemployed people, taking them from disengagement to re-engagement, and an additional 10,000 places for advanced and higher level apprenticeships that are focused on SMEs.

The work that I am doing with the Department for Work and Pensions has been mentioned. To an unprecedented degree, I am working with my colleagues to ensure that the welfare reforms being introduced, and particularly the Work programme, marry with the work we are doing on training, skills and apprenticeships. It is important that the 100,000 additional work placements that have been secured have a close relationship with subsequent training and that the system is progressive. The experiences that people gain as they move from disengagement to re-engagement should lead to further learning and training and ultimately to work.

[Mr Hayes]

Even a Minister as confident as I am would not wish to disagree with my hon. Friend, because he is so highly regarded both in his constituency and in the House. None the less, I must say in fairness that the previous Government made progress on completions—I do not like to say things in the House that I cannot say with candour. Although it is true that completions, both under the previous Government and this Government have posed a challenge—as described by the hon. Member for Blackpool South—considerable progress was made by the previous Government. Furthermore, to be ever more generous and even more self-deprecating, let me say that it will be a challenge for us to maintain completion levels as we expand the programme. One risk of a rapid expansion in apprenticeships is that we will need to be careful about starts and completions. As more people are drawn into the system by the energy that we invest and the resources we provide, unless we are careful, there is a risk that the number of completions will suffer. As has been suggested, I am working closely with my officials and we must monitor the situation through the NAS and look at what measures we can put into place to ensure completions.

I do not want to move too far from the main thrust of my argument, but one such measure might be to look at outcome payments for large apprenticeship providers—in other words, to work with those large providers and ensure that payment is made on completion. I am in discussion with a number of major national companies that are extremely interested in engaging in such a system, and we will pilot such a scheme with a number of significant apprenticeship providers. That is one of the things that we can do with regard to completions, but my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton was right to draw that issue to hon. Members’ attention, as was the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Blackpool South.

The difficulty for me in all this is that I have invested a considerable amount of my political reputation on the basis that we will indeed create such numbers of apprenticeships. That might be described as a bold move. The shadow Minister and possibly others would be disappointed if I was not poetic at some time in this speech—I was going to say “performance”, but I do not want to undersell myself—and it was Ezra Pound who said:

“If a man isn’t willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he’s no good.”

The risk that I have taken in respect of my opinions is indeed the risk about our endeavours to grow apprenticeship numbers dramatically, but we have to take such risks if we believe that something is right, as Pound suggested, and I do believe that this is right for reasons that I shall detail as I respond to the debate.

[Mr Marsden]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hayes]

I will happily give way. Is the hon. Gentleman going to quote Pound?

[Mr Marsden]

The Minister will be relieved, possibly, or disappointed to hear that I have no intention of swapping literary quotes with him. Before we lost the thread of the previous useful exchange with the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), I wanted to ask the Minister whether part of the consultations or part of the consideration of how we make progress on completions will cover whether certain structures of apprenticeship cause more problems between start and completion.

[Mr Hayes]

Yes, I think that there will be consideration not only of structures, but of whether there are sector-specific problems, whether there are problems with certain kinds of apprenticeship and frameworks and whether there is an issue about different ages of apprentices. The hon. Gentleman will know—indeed, the whole House knows—that we are focusing, as I described earlier, on apprenticeships as a means of re-engaging people who are disengaged. The hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) described the length—and I might say the difficulty—of the journey that some people make to re-engagement. It is a tough set of challenges for people who were failed by the system first time round. Sometimes, the path to the destination that they seek and we seek for them will be relatively stony. Small bite-sized chunks of learning, delivered in a way that is highly flexible and accessible, are often the way of dealing with that, and we may well need to consider structure in that context.

The hon. Member for Blackpool South will also know that I will announce in the autumn progress on our access to apprenticeships policy. We recognise that many young people in particular do not have the prior attainments necessary to begin even a level 2 apprenticeship. We need to create a ladder for those young people, so that they can acquire the core skills necessary for them to progress subsequently to further training and employment. He is right to say in that context that the form, character and pace of learning need to be appropriate to the circumstances of those learners.

The net effect of the commitments that have been given by the Government is, I believe, that we will create more apprenticeships than ever before in this country. To put that in firmer terms, as the Prime Minister himself has said, we expect to create 250,000 more apprenticeships during the lifetime of the spending period. That will constitute extraordinary growth in the number, compared with what Labour projected. We expect to exceed the previous Government’s target by 250,000. That is extraordinary, unprecedented growth in the number of apprenticeships.

There has never been that kind of growth in this country. However, there are precedents elsewhere. Meeting my French counterpart some time ago, I was interested to learn that the apprenticeship system in France has metamorphosed in the last 20 or so years. The French apprenticeship system was in the doldrums 25 years ago, but the concentration, investment and commitment of successive French Governments have meant that France, like Britain now, sees apprenticeships as critical to delivering the skills necessary to build a competitive economy. Therefore, we know that that can be done with political will and determination, backed by resource.

I have said on many occasions that practical skills and those who learn them remain scandalously undervalued in our society. It has been said in the debate that many people, including some employers, still view apprenticeships as somehow not quite good enough. That is partly about careers advice and guidance and the perception of the routes available, particularly to young people. The matter was raised by the shadow Minister and others, including my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys). By the way, I was delighted to join her in her constituency when I visited Thanet college. I will take this opportunity to say that the work that that college is doing with Canterbury Christ Church university is extraordinarily important in developing a practical route to higher learning for many of the constituents whom my hon. Friend so competently represents.

The advice and guidance that people receive will shape their choices about the learning and employment routes that they take. One should not underestimate the influence that that advice has, particularly on young people, as I said. The truth is that people such as us are particularly advantaged in those terms, or at least our children are. The familial networks and social contacts that my children enjoy will mean that they get pretty good advice about the options available to them at school, college and university and in work. That is not true of the very large number of people who do not enjoy those familial and social contacts. Professional advice and guidance are very important in rebalancing the quality of the advice that is available to those who are most under-represented in higher education—those who start with the most disadvantages.

On that basis, I am determined to develop an all-ages careers service, as hon. Members know. That service will bring together careers professionals to a degree that has not been known previously, with a common set of professional standards and training and consequent accreditation, to deliver high-quality, independent and empirical advice and guidance, including advice and guidance on vocational learning options and practical and technical jobs.

It has been said in the debate—I think that it was said by the hon. Member for Bradford East, my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet and other hon. Members—that the advice given in schools is often inadequate. It is fair to say that it is patchy. Some schools do this rather well; many do it less well. However, what characterises the advice is that it is usually prejudiced by the academic experience of the person offering it. It is a big ask of teachers to be excellent pedagogues and also experts on every kind of career option. It seems to me to be much better for schools to secure independent advice. That is why the Government are putting a Bill through the House—it is progressing from the Commons to the Lords as we speak—that will put a statutory duty on schools to secure just such advice. There will also be unprecedented professional competence.

I am pleased to say, as I hinted teasingly at Question Time in the House earlier today—actually, it was the Secretary of State who revealed it—that we will be working with the Department for Work and Pensions to co-locate the national careers service in Jobcentre Plus from this autumn. We will pilot that process and then have a speedy roll-out. The national careers service, with separate branding, will be available to people in Jobcentre Plus, offering the very kind of empirical advice that I have described. In addition, I will hold discussions with representatives of colleges to consider co-location in our network of further education colleges.

As well as that, I am considering how funding can be provided in a way that incentivises professionals in the careers industry to be bolder and to reach out with a new commercial zeal—of course, the independent advisers are businesses, too—to provide quality advice. That will make so much difference, particularly for those who do not usually get good advice from elsewhere.

I shall say a little more about the perception of apprenticeships and practical learning. We too often undervalue vocational competence. Practical skills and craftsmanship remain objects of admiration for most Britons, but not so among the chi-chi class, the glitterati and the chatterati, who see practical skills as somehow beyond their scope or their understanding.

The Government’s will reflects the people’s will in this, and I am determined, not merely because it is essential for economic purpose but because it is right socially and culturally, to ignore the overtures and shrill complaints of what I might call the haute bourgeoisie liberal establishment—I do not mean the Liberal Democrats, of course; in this context it is liberal with a small l—and make the case for practical vocation and technical learning and practical vocational and technical competency. We must once again value craft. We must elevate the practical.

Part of this concerns the aesthetics of apprenticeships. During adult learners week, I was able to announce a range of measures designed to raise not only the status of apprentices but their self-esteem and the worth that apprenticeships confer. Those measures include the introduction of graduation ceremonies to give public recognition of apprentices’ successes and the creation of alumni networks to allow former apprentices to stay in contact and continue to exchange ideas and experiences.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) made a convincing case for a society of apprentices, and we shall look closely at that. I very much welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester’s acknowledgement of the importance of celebrating apprentices and their achievements, and that was reflected in the comments of the hon. Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle). Hon. Members will be glad that, later this month, the national apprenticeship awards, which I shall attend, will celebrate the achievements of apprentices and employers from all over the country.

I turn now to some of the specific raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester. He said that small and micro-businesses take on apprentices not only to drive up growth but to drive down youth unemployment. He is right. Apprenticeships are good not only for growth but for re-engagement in the economy and for social mobility, social cohesion and social justice. You know as well as any Member, Mr Davies, that social justice, in the spirit of Disraeli, lies at the very heart of Conservatism.

My hon. Friend asked for recognition of the fact that, for many reasons, including business confidence, recruiting apprentices is a challenge for small businesses. I recognise that, and I assure him that I am in no way complacent about the work that must be done to meet that challenge. That is why I have asked the NAS to report to me regularly on the progress that it is making, particularly in that field. We are constantly pushing to do more.

My hon. Friend sought a commitment that we would consider ways to increase small business take-up, possibly through group training associations and apprenticeships training agencies. The Growth and Innovation Fund will allow the development of more GTAs and ATAs. I cannot say too much about that, because the bids have not been considered yet and the results have not been announced. However, my hon. Friend will be pleased to know that a large number of applications relate to the areas that he has mentioned. I am a keen supporter of the GTA model, and I am carefully considering how, and in what circumstances, we might see further role-outs of that model to reduce the burden on small employers of taking on an apprentice.

My hon. Friend spoke about providing some form of incentive to small employers to take on an apprentice that have not done so before. He will be aware that he echoes the observations that Alison Wolf made in her report to the Department for Education on vocational education. She recommended that targeted subsidies should be issued to some employers in some circumstances. Although I cannot confirm any details today, I am not unsympathetic to that view. That will not come as a surprise given that it was in the Conservative manifesto, which I wrote before the election—I must say that I wrote that part, not the whole of it.

Had economic circumstances been different, and given that the coalition partners share a view on the matter, we might well have put measures of that sort into place, but we live in tough times, and it is not possible to do all that we might have done or might have wanted to do. Nevertheless, Alison Wolf’s proposals shed fresh light, and we will be considering them in detail, mindful of the deadweight costs that are always associated with financial support for employers.

My hon. Friend mentioned bureaucracy, transparency and flexibility in the system, and he asked for my assurances on those matters. My officials are working on plans greatly to simplify the apprenticeships system, and to make it as easy as possible for employers of all shapes and sizes to take on an apprentice. Indeed, a taskforce led by major employers has just reported to my officials on the subject. It will use the recommendations of real employers with relevant experience to make such changes a reality. As I have said, we are piloting outcome payments for large employers and developing a toolkit for smaller employers to guide them through the process. Smaller employers often say, as my hon. Friend will acknowledge, that the process is confusing; they are not sure where to turn, or which steps they need to take and when. Bringing the information together in a highly accessible form will counter some of those doubts and answer some of those questions.

My hon. Friend knows that I wrote to all Members during national apprenticeship week in February, urging as many as possible to take on apprentice in their offices. An apprentice works alongside me in my ministerial office—I was with him today—and my Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), has just taken on an apprentice—he is a model of all that is best about the 2010 intake of Members, and I urge all hon. Members to do the same. I would, of course, be delighted to host a reception for Members from across the House with their apprentices not only to celebrate their commitment to the programme but, more importantly, to advertise the apprenticeship brand. If we take steps forward in that regard, we can reasonably ask others to do the same.

As for funding, I will refer that matter to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer who will no doubt respond to my hon. Friend personally. [Laughter.] I jest, Mr Davies. I will of course look at whether my Department can fund such a reception, but the hon. Gentleman cannot expect me to give a detailed commitment at this stage. Certainly, in November, we will be hosting a parliamentary reception in partnership with the NAS for exemplar apprentices, apprenticeship employers, a number of other key partners and a selection of employers who wish to recruit apprentices.

An important factor in raising the status of and demand for apprenticeships is the perception among prospective apprentices and their employers of where an apprenticeship can lead and what an apprentice can become by engaging in an apprenticeship. That is about not only advice, guidance and the aesthetics around apprenticeships, but the promotion of apprenticeships. The kind of fair that my hon. Friend ran in Gloucester and that other hon. Members are now running in their constituencies are immensely important in raising the profile of the brand and in countering some of the mis-assumptions about apprenticeships that might prevail among employers or learners.

I warmly support the 100 apprenticeships in 100 days initiatives that have been run across the country. We will look at other ways in which to promote apprenticeships. We are always keen to be innovative, creative and imaginative, and I assure hon. Members that the NAS is considering a range of ways in which to advertise the virtues of apprenticeships in every way.

Last year, we published in the national press the names of all those people who had achieved higher apprenticeships in the same way in which we publish the names of people who achieve degrees and postgraduate qualifications. That is the kind of thing that I mean when I discuss new ways in which we can celebrate success. Such ambitions have been broadly welcomed by employers as steps in the right direction. In the final analysis, the impact of an expanded and improved apprenticeships system on learners’ lives and on our collective prospects for economic growth depend most of all on employers’ willingness to take on apprentices. Government can only do so much. We celebrate the 85,000 employers who currently take on apprentices, and we should recognise their commitment to those people—their willingness to invest in individual futures.

Many larger employers appreciate just what a boost apprentices can give to a company. During the course of this year, we have seen a welcome number of larger businesses pledging to create or expand apprenticeship programmes. My hon. Friend is right to point out that smaller employers can face particular problems in that regard. It has been said by a number of hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton, that small businesses are critical to the success of this project, and that is because they are critical to the success of our economy more generally. They are the very backbone of the British economy. Working with very small businesses to help them to deal with some of the burdens and hurdles associated with apprenticeships is a priority for the Government.

Research has shown that SMEs tend to be less aware of apprenticeships and their benefits than larger firms. I pay tribute to those SMEs that take on apprentices, which form the majority of apprenticeships. None the less, we must go further. The remedy for some of the difficulties lies with my Department and the NAS, and we are working determinedly together to reduce to a minimum, consistent with quality assurance, the bureaucratic pressures associated with training an apprentice. We have already acted to provide special help for the increasing number of SMEs, such as those in advanced manufacturing and digital industries, which require high-level skills. The 10,000 additional high-level apprenticeships will be focused largely in SMEs. We are also offering new grant funding and will support businesses coming together as consortia to build advanced and higher-level apprenticeship schemes to address skills gaps. That could include setting up new training frameworks and delivering joint apprenticeship training.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) made a bold bid on behalf of the Kidderminster business enterprise zone. Although I cannot comment on the detail of that, I acknowledge his well-known commitment to his constituency.

The shadow Minister spoke about the structure of schemes. There is an argument for a modular approach. We will consider that, because it is particularly relevant to micro-businesses, the virtues of which have been advertised by many Members.

It is important to recognise that employing an apprentice might not always be possible for every small business. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester has pointed out, that is one good reason to look seriously at GTAs and ATAs. Such measures will help to ensure not only that we provide more apprenticeships, but that apprenticeships are available in a wider range of companies and a larger number of specialisms than ever before. That is important for rural communities. My constituents simply cannot travel long distances to large companies to do apprenticeships, which they might be able to do more easily in an urban area. Therefore, the roll-out to more companies, especially small companies, has disproportionate significance in those kinds of constituencies.

The commitment that the Government have made to apprenticeships is unequivocal and unabated. That is good news for the people and businesses of Gloucester and for people up and down the country. Apprenticeships embody everything that this Government and I personally stand for. Politics is about ideas, but ideas stripped of feeling and heartfelt sentiment are cold, arid and sorry things. My heart-felt commitment to apprenticeships is not something for which I apologise. Benjamin Disraeli said:

“Never apologise for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologise for the truth.”

The truth is that apprenticeships deliver both for our economy and for a wider social purpose. By extending apprenticeship opportunities, we will feed social mobility. This ladder of opportunity will enable the most disadvantaged to climb to highly skilled, highly paid and respected employment.

However, in the end, what we earn is less significant than what we do and what we are. The worth and purposeful pride that people gain from an apprenticeship and from acquiring a competence that has economic value are immensely important in building a society that works. Every business can play a vital part in fulfilling this vision, and I will work to ensure that the barriers in their way are pulled down. Together we can create a society where all feel valued because each is valued. I am talking about a bolder, better and bigger nation—a British future as glorious as Britain’s past.