Apprenticeships

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

That this House notes National Apprenticeship Week, established by the previous Government, and held from 11 to 15 March 2013, which celebrates the value of apprenticeships, particularly in providing opportunities and developing skills; further notes the need to increase apprenticeship places; and therefore resolves that the Government uses the billions of pounds committed to public procurement to boost apprenticeships by requiring firms winning public contracts worth over £1 million to offer apprenticeship opportunities, implementing the recommendation of the Fifth Report of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, HC 83, on Apprenticeships.

It is a pleasure and honour for me as shadow Minister responsible for apprenticeships to open this debate in national apprenticeship week. Back in 2008, my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham), then the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, launched apprenticeship week as a vehicle to promote the real and valuable opportunities that apprenticeships offer. It is a tribute to him that national apprenticeship week has since become a central part of the employment and skills calendar.

This is a week in which excellence and aspiration in learning, and acquiring skills and trades in areas as diverse as engineering, construction, the hospitality industry, joinery, accountancy, and health and social care, are showcased and celebrated. To see so many MPs from all sides of the House getting involved and celebrating apprenticeship achievements in their constituencies is a great thing. We must remember, however, that apprenticeships did not emerge from a blank canvas in 2010, as some Government Members have occasionally implied.

When Labour came to government in 1997 the apprenticeship programme was floundering. We resurrected that historic badge of excellence and made it fit for purpose in the 21st century. Under the previous Labour Government, the number of apprenticeships more than quadrupled. National apprenticeship week was launched to give expanded life chances and skills a focus for recognition and celebration, and the Labour Government also set up the National Apprenticeship Service to drive the project all year round.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

If it was all going so swimmingly under the previous Government, why in a period of continued economic growth did youth unemployment double and the number of those not in education, employment or training increase year on year?

[Mr Marsden]

The hon. Gentleman was obviously not listening to what I said because the Labour Government quadrupled the number of apprenticeships in that period. Let us be mature and grown-up about this: no Government of any persuasion have an exact monopoly of success or failure in any particular area. What matters are the intentions that are brought to the party, and our intentions were very strong and solid.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we can all learn a lot from companies such as Airbus, which has trained thousands of apprentices over 30 years at both Broughton and Filton? Importantly, it has trained people in bad economic years as well as good. We need a consistent approach to apprenticeships, not the stop-start approach that we have seen over many years.

[Mr Marsden]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, I would go further and say that a number of large companies—BAE Systems, for example, where I was last Thursday—have led the way on this issue including with their supply chain. It remains to be seen whether the Government take that message across a broader palette.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend and I worked together on skills and apprenticeships for many years and, like me, he will know that the tragedy of our economy is that only about 10% of employers take on apprentices. If we could get the other 90% to take on an apprentice, we could really do something for young people in this country.

[Mr Marsden]

I had the enormous pleasure of serving under my hon. Friend when he was the Chair of the Children, Schools and Families Committee, and he has probably taught me as much as anyone in this House on this subject. He is absolutely right and he hits the nail on the head: a step-change in the number of apprenticeships is central. It is the focus of our motion.

We resurrected that historic badge of excellence, but this is not a matter for party politics. When the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) was the Minister with responsibility for apprenticeships, he spoke movingly about what he had learned about the value of the skills of hand and eye from his father. I, too, saw those skills through the working life of my father as an engineer. When he was apprenticed at the age of 14 to the engineering company Crossley Brothers in Manchester just before the second world war, my grandfather told him, “Now Crossleys has taken you on, you will have a job for life.”

Today’s apprentices often face very different challenges and prospects, because many young people can expect to go through half a dozen job or career changes in their lifetime, some probably not even thought of when they start their apprenticeship. That means it is critical to get the mix of bespoke and portable skills right at the apprenticeship stage; and that the range, content and quality remain relevant to the businesses and local economies in which they are embedded. These are challenging issues that demand a co-ordinated and hands-on approach from government, as well as from businesses and educators.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

On what can be done at a local level to celebrate apprenticeships week, I am having a jobs and apprenticeships fair in Bishop Auckland on Friday. I expect 100 jobs and apprenticeships to be available to young people. Does my hon. Friend agree that the background need is to get the economy moving? Unemployment in my constituency is still rising, and seven people are looking at every vacancy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Marsden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Jobs and skills fairs give a sense of buzz and direction, but we need to look at the position of regional economies. That is a particular problem in the north-east, not least since the excellent lead given by One North East is no longer available.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Marsden]

I will make a bit more progress and then let the hon. Gentleman come in if he wishes.

As MPs, we rightly celebrate the individual successes we observe. I have seen it myself in the development of the 19-year-old women whom I took on in my office as an apprentice. She has come from the excellent Blackpool and Fylde college and is doing an NVQ3. I know that sense of engagement is shared by other parliamentary colleagues who have taken on apprentices, or who are in the process of doing so.

In my work inside and outside Westminster in the past year, I have seen the strength of diversity and quality in apprenticeships in the skillset schemes at the BBC’s MediaCity site and the food and hospitality apprentice achievements that People 1st celebrated here. Last week, I visited Hackney community college to hear about the new apprenticeship opportunities it is creating as a result of the Tech City developments, and in Lancashire, as I said, I talked to apprentices at BAE Systems’s engineering school, and at the defence company MBDA just outside Bolton. This Thursday, I will be handing out apprenticeships awards at—what better place? —Blackpool tower. Those experiences have reinforced—for me and, I think, for all of us—the need for a broad range of apprenticeship pathways that cover not just traditional manufacturing sectors, but professional and service sectors. The common denominator has to be quality.

Despite that good work—and that of other initiatives; we welcome the extra apprenticeships that Barclays has just announced—it cannot be the substitute for systematic broader government action. The take-up of apprenticeships remains challenging and, in some categories, dire. We have already seen the number of 16-to18-year-old apprenticeship starts fall by 9,200 in the first three months between August and October 2012, in comparison with the same period in 2011.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend as shocked as I am to discover that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, with a staff of approximately 2,500, appears to employ only one apprentice under the age of 19? Would today not be a good day for the Minister to make an announcement that he will put that right, put his own house in order and set an example for everybody else?

[Mr Marsden]

We should never tempt providence, but I am sure the Minister has heard my hon. Friend’s remark, which I shall return to later.

The final figures for 2011-12 also show that the number of 16-to-18 apprenticeships has dropped in four of England’s nine regions, including by more than 2,000 in my own north-west region. The growth figures for other age groups—not least 19 to 24-year-olds, which is a crucial age when many, for whatever reason, have missed out first time around—are modest.

[Mr Sheerman]

I take a bipartisan approach to these things, but is not one worry the fact that it is difficult for people promoting apprenticeships to get into schools, many of which resist apprenticeships because they want to keep bums on seats in return for the financial reward? That is very common.

[Mr Marsden]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) is telepathic, because I shall be returning to that point later.

The Government are fond of saying that they have created more than 500,000 apprenticeships, but less fond of saying that in axing Train to Gain they also axed more than 500,000 training places. Many of these additional apprenticeships are merely relabelled and transferred in-work provision from Train to Gain, as Doug Richard, the entrepreneur behind the Government’s commissioned report, confirmed last week and as has been shown by detailed analysis from the sector publication, FE Week, which the Skills Minister and I read with great relish every week.

Government statistics in the Richard review have borne that out. The proportion of apprenticeships that are in-work apprenticeships rose to 70% in 2012 in comparison with 48% in 2007, so the Government’s figure of 500,000 hangs entirely on the huge growth in post-25 apprenticeships. If significant numbers of these fall away as a result of an adverse reaction to the Government’s controversial FE loans system, the fragility of their much-trumpeted figure of 500,000 will be rapidly exposed.

[Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating Willmott Dixon, a developer and construction company in my constituency, on having just invested £1 million in a new apprenticeships college? It has already had the privilege of being visited by the shadow Secretary of State, who has seen the good work it does. Will he support that?

[Mr Marsden]

I will indeed support what my hon. Friend has said, and would add that Willmott Dixon, among other companies, has had some interesting things to say about the role that social value can play in apprenticeships and procurement.

Addressing not just fall-out at post-24, but the ability to fall in at 16 to 18 and 19 to 24 should be a crucial part of any Government apprenticeships strategy. That means exposing them to the world of work and work experience at a much earlier age; giving space and dedicated funding in the curriculum for independent, face-to-face career guidance on apprenticeships; and making space for vital work-related learning skills, as the Federation of Small Businesses said in its publication, “The Apprenticeship Journey”.

The Prime Minister said yesterday in Buckinghamshire that he wanted to make apprenticeships a first-choice career move, so perhaps he could have a word with the Secretary of State for Education, who appropriately is in his place, but who has studiously ignored and devalued the arguments for vocational careers advice made by business groups and, indeed, by his own small and medium-sized enterprises apprenticeships adviser, Jason Holt, in his report last August.

No wonder businesses are dismayed. When the Government removed compulsory work-related learning from the key stage 4 curriculum in 2012, the FSB said:

“We remain deeply concerned that without it many schools may fail to teach these vital skills.”

The Prime Minister also said yesterday rather airily that he wanted Britain to be more like Germany in its attitude to apprenticeships, so perhaps he, too, should listen to Ofsted’s chief inspector, Sir Michael Wilshaw, who has come back from looking at Germany’s apprenticeships system and told FE Week this week that Germany’s “very effective” apprenticeships system is supported

“with a greater focus on vocational training”

in schools “earlier on.” If we want the broadest spectrum of young people, including those not in education, employment or training, to be able to take up apprenticeships, we must give them a fair chance to get there. We and others have been urging for months the need for a proper pre-training route.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making a strong speech. Perhaps the Prime Minister could take some lessons from Wales. I am proud to have ACT Training in my constituency, which is one of Wales’s largest apprenticeship training providers, training 5,000 apprentices last year, with a 90% completion rate. Will he join me in welcoming the announcement this afternoon by the Deputy Minister for Skills in the Welsh Labour Government? He has announced an additional £22 million of support over the next two years for apprenticeships, which is quite a contrast to the approach of the Government in this place.

[Mr Marsden]

That support is entirely welcome. Indeed, there might be more occasions when the current Government should look at examples from the devolved nations.

Ever since the Government admitted the need to guarantee that quality apprenticeships would have to be 12 months or longer, we have been pushing these points. That is the only way to ensure that social mobility and apprenticeship expansion can go hand in hand. However, the Government have dithered and dallied, and precious opportunities have been squandered for many young people. The traineeship consultation, which is welcome, was launched only at the beginning of this year, but now the Government have to spell out in detail how they will avoid it becoming a rerun of the youth training scheme of the 1980s, which merely recycled young people off the jobless figures.

The Labour party recognises, therefore, that we need a step change to expand apprenticeship opportunities for young people and to support smaller businesses to take part. That is why, this time last year in Blackpool, I laid out a series of apprenticeship initiatives from our Front-Bench team to do just that. They include Government expansion and encouragement of group training associations to aid smaller businesses and the promotion of best practice in buddying, with larger companies working with smaller ones in their supply chains to create apprenticeships, as well as a larger direct role for business and industry in creating and setting apprenticeship frameworks and direct involvement in careers advice and guidance.

[Andrew Percy]

I will not plug my jobs fair—which is taking place at 9.30 this Friday at the Vale of Ancholme school in Brigg—but one thing the shadow Minister has not mentioned is the important role of local government in supporting apprenticeships. I wonder whether he has had the opportunity to look at Conservative-run North Lincolnshire council, which created 60 apprenticeships last year and has this year put aside £250,000 to support local businesses in employing 120 apprentices.

[Mr Marsden]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has made what is not just a detailed point, but an important general point: that these things cannot simply be delivered and micro-managed in Whitehall. They need to be taken forward at the local and sub-regional level. He gave an example, and I welcome apprenticeships coming from councils of whatever political persuasion. I shall have a little more to say about that later.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Sheerman]

rose—

[Mr Marsden]

I will take one more intervention from my hon. Friend and then I must make progress.

[Mr Sheerman]

Again, I am not trying to make party political points, but have we not all found that if we are to have apprenticeship champions, we have to locate them somewhere? Whether they are in local enterprise partnerships, chambers of commerce, local authorities, colleges or anywhere else, we have to have champions if we are to get the number of apprenticeships this country deserves.

[Mr Marsden]

My hon. Friend is quite right. When different places choose different champions in different sectors, the secret is getting them to co-operate with each other.

Last year we laid out all the measures I have set out in this debate, but the centrepiece is something that the Government could move to tomorrow if they wanted to: using the tens or even hundreds of billions of pounds of public procurement that come from Government contracts to create apprenticeships. That is the core of today’s motion. As far back as August 2011, we set out our stall, when the then shadow Business Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen, announced that we would require all companies bidding for Government contracts above £1 million to put in place a scheme to create apprenticeships before they could get them. That is an initiative to do much of the heavy lifting that we need to provide the step change, the exponential shift, in the sheer volume of apprenticeship numbers. Since then, his successor, my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), has taken that proposal forward on every possible occasion, not only on the ground of the economic necessity for growth but as an ethical imperative. That is why, last week at the EEF, he outlined our position, which is that it is simply unacceptable that two thirds of larger employers are still not offering apprenticeships.

It was my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen who laid out the direction of travel for this initiative when we were in government. Along with my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), he launched the official Office of Government Commerce guidance encouraging this approach. That Labour Government then proceeded with major projects such as the Kickstart housing scheme, launched by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), and Building Schools for the Future, as well as working with the contractors on the Olympic park, which resulted in the creation of thousands of new apprenticeship opportunities.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an important point. We have learned this week that young people in areas such as Tameside are now among those with the fewest opportunities to access the jobs market, yet it was Labour-controlled Tameside council, working with a Labour Government, that ensured that the contractors for schemes such as Building Schools for the Future took on apprenticeships as part of the Tameside Works First initiative.

[Mr Marsden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As a native Mancunian, I am well aware that over the past 20 to 25 years, the local councils in the Greater Manchester area have done splendid work in this respect.

I was talking about Building Schools for the Future and the contractors on the Olympic park. It is also sometimes forgotten that it was our party, in government, that ensured that skills and apprenticeships would be an integral part of the Crossrail project that we had announced. It was our party that put in place the tunnelling academy and laid the framework for a procurement strategy based on taking apprentices from the local London boroughs.

That is what we believe, but more than that, it is what a raft of other bodies believe as well. Most recently and significantly, the cross-party Business, Innovation and Skills Committee ended its 11-month inquiry into apprenticeships and, in its recent report, called on the Government to adopt such a scheme. The Committee argued that the Government should aim for the benchmark used by many leading businesses in the construction sector, including Kier, Wilmott Dixon and Laing, whereby for every £1 million spent by Government Departments and their agencies on public procurement, at least one new apprenticeship place should be created.

That sensible approach has already attracted many supporters. The Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, the Association of Colleges, the National Union of Students, the North-East Federation of Small Businesses, the North-East chamber of commerce and many others endorsed the approach when it was set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) in her excellent private Member’s Bill last year. During the Select Committee sessions, organisations such as JTL and unionlearn also backed the procurement concept.

Despite all that, this Government continue to refuse to act. Their response to the Select Committee report cited rather vague unintended negative consequences as their excuse for ducking the issue. They said that they were

“currently working on guidance to encourage best practice amongst local authorities in relation to Apprenticeship conditions in construction contracts”.

Why has it taken them more than two and a half years to get to this point? After all, does not such a starting point already exist in the form of the OGC guidance that I referred to earlier? Why are the Government reinventing the wheel?

It has also been suggested that civil servants fear that they could fall foul of EU procurement rules. The Minister’s illustrious predecessor, the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, ruefully admitted to the Select Committee last May that he felt that the Government could be more creative in their use of procurement. That position has also been confirmed by the House of Commons Library, which points out that the European Commission has a guidance note entitled “Buying Social: a Guide to Taking Account of Social Considerations in Public Procurement.” That guidance suggests that promoting “employment opportunities”, “decent work” and access to training can be taken into account. Those guidelines are surely compatible with promoting apprenticeships.

[Rehman Chishti]

Will the shadow Minister join me in paying tribute to Medway council, which has managed to obtain money from Europe to fund up to 500 apprenticeships under the success scheme?

[Mr Marsden]

I am delighted to do so. That is another indication that Conservatives down in Kent seem to do things rather differently from Conservatives in Government.

As I was saying, could it be—perish the thought—that some Ministers are simply using European Union law as a convenient smokescreen to disguise their reluctance to support this kind of active, intelligent Government initiative? If that is the case, what do they think that our French or German counterparts would do? Do they think that they would allow arcane, untested notions of EU law to prevent them from expanding apprenticeships, given the dire unemployment rates among young people that exist under this Government? Why, if that is the case, does one of the Government’s own Departments claim to be following an approach much like ours?

Since July 2011, the Department for Work and Pensions has been operating its apprenticeships and skills requirement contract schedule, which requires:

“The Contractor shall and shall procure that its Sub-contractors shall take all reasonable steps to ensure that 5% of their employees are on a formal apprenticeship programme.”

The apprenticeships Minister himself praised the DWP initiative in a recent House of Commons response. That is all well and good, but if the initiative is such a good idea, why have the Government not extended it to other Departments? Why has the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, as the lead Department for apprenticeships, not taken matters any further in the 20 months since the launch of that initiative? Why have the Cabinet Office, the Deputy Prime Minister, and even the occupants of No. 10—who waxed eloquent yesterday about the value of apprenticeships being the new norm—done nothing? That is not exactly the equivalent of Churchill’s “action this day”. Are this Government so supine, so conflicted and so hung up that they prefer taking away people’s employment rights to creating career opportunities for them? Does it not boil down to the resistance of many, if not all, in the Tory-led coalition to any active, intelligent role for Government which would require them to strain every sinew to promote economic growth and expand young people’s life chances?

The Government cannot and should not micro-manage, but they must expand apprenticeship places more vigorously and systematically than they are at present. That is central to what we need to achieve as a country so that we can compete and thrive in the 21st-century world. It is no wonder that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition made the expansion of apprenticeships with employers and other stakeholders, and the introduction of the “tech bacc”, the central focus in his speech to the Labour party conference last year. He has also spelt out the way in which a future Labour Government could apply the same criterion to major infrastructure projects such as High Speed 2, with the objective of creating at least 33,000 additional apprenticeships.

We can see how the same formula could be applied directly elsewhere, and in other Departments beside the DWP. For example, there are four existing road projects announced by the Department for Transport—work on the A160 and A180 in Immingham, on the M6 in the west midlands, on the M3 in Surrey, and on the M275 in Portsmouth—with a combined contract value of more than £400 million, from which hundreds of apprenticeship places could be created. If the Government really want to expand apprenticeships, why will they not practise what they preach and implement these sensible proposals? After all, what better spur can there be for the two thirds of businesses that still do not offer apprenticeships than the knowledge that they are crucial to the Government, and also crucial to their working with the Government?

As Members have said, we need to see Government Departments themselves opening up and offering more apprenticeships. The most recent data available to us on BIS are those mentioned earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak. Spurred by the cogent arguments advanced repeatedly over the past year by my colleague in the other place, Lord Adonis, the Government should be introducing an apprenticeship fast stream for the civil service. Ministers have now announced belatedly that they will be running such a scheme, but we are still waiting to hear—and it would be interesting if we could hear today—just how committed to it individual Departments will be. The Cabinet Office, for example, was far from forthcoming when I asked parliamentary questions about this earlier this year. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition summed the position up perfectly in an article at the end of January in which he said:

“Whitehall takes 500 of the brightest graduates from our top universities every year and fast-tracks their careers on good salaries. Let’s give the same opportunities to youngsters who are ready to knuckle down and learn on the job, in tough apprenticeship schemes. It should start in the offices of ministers in the Government.”

We believe that any new apprenticeships created via this procurement route need to be high quality, a point echoed by the Doug Richard review recommendations.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. I am thinking in particular about the 16 to 18-year-olds in Oldham who are not in education, employment or training; the level there is more than 8.6%, which is well above the regional average. We have seen so many Government U-turns in the past few weeks, so is he hoping that they might do a U-turn on this issue, too?

[Mr Marsden]

We wait with bated breath to see what might occur in the Budget, and I hope that the Skills Minister might use his good offices with the Chancellor in that respect.

Labour Members believe that this apprenticeship route has to be a high-quality one. We have to have that because we have had problems in the past with the duration of apprenticeships, and it took some time for the Government to move on that. These issues of quality are being addressed by our Labour skills taskforce. It is taking forward details of our proposals, which the Leader of the Opposition announced last autumn, drawing on the practical experience of business, the further education sector and elsewhere. That is why we are seeking not only to boost the number of apprenticeship places available, but to address the situation pre-18 by introducing a new technical baccalaureate.

While the Government have been dithering nationally about how to expand apprenticeships and ignoring procurement policies, Labour local authorities have been leading the way. A number of Labour-run authorities are going ahead with public procurement to create new apprenticeships for young local people eager for those opportunities. For example, Sheffield city council has identified 233 additional apprenticeships that it can create via public procurement where it has set its requirements at £100,000. Sandwell’s council has done something similar, aiming to create just under 200 apprenticeships through public procurement in the next three years. Other councils, such as my local authority in Blackpool, are boosting numbers in other innovative ways. It already has 48 apprentices on the books, but my local council is working with other local public sector bodies, such as the police force and the NHS, to create shared apprenticeships across those bodies. One could add to that other Labour councils such as those in Reading and Plymouth that are actively engaging with local businesses to boost apprenticeship opportunities across their boroughs, as well as the city skills hubs of Manchester and Leeds.

What is telling about that story of activity in local government is that, as we have heard, even Conservative-run local authorities realise the merits of that approach. For example, Kent county council has put in place criteria whose details closely mirror ours: procurement for all contracts worth more than £1 million should create at least one additional apprenticeship place. Northamptonshire county council has also put in place mandatory requirements on all contracts over the value of £2 million. In addition, there are those in the Prime Minister’s own parliamentary party who have argued that something has to be done, with perhaps the sharpest example being the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). Last year, that redoubtable Member made similar suggestions that government should be using public procurement to boost apprenticeships.

That shows the range of consensus on the need to act now. It is a consensus that has been built by a determination to do something to kick-start us out of a dire, flatlining economic situation, which has the potential to put thousands of young people at risk. The Opposition are advocating a useful change that has the potential to transform the life chances of thousands of young people. It offers them the opportunities they are crying out for, and sends a clear message to business that apprenticeships matter and add real value to a firm. If we will the ends, we must will the means. It is time for the Government to stop tying themselves in tortuous knots when they are put on the spot by the wise words of the Select Committee.

The Skills Minister has repeatedly said that apprenticeships are at the heart of the Government’s skills strategy. As many of his Tory colleagues in local government agree with our approach, why does he not take this modest proposal forward? He has the opportunity. We have a Department for Business, Innovation and Skills that already has a Minister with two brains and a Secretary of State in two minds about ring-fenced funding and economic growth. Now I wait with bated breath to see whether the Under-Secretary of State for Skills will be able to say the right thing for his two Departments this afternoon.

Abraham Lincoln—or perhaps it was Daniel Day-Lewis—famously said that when

“the occasion is piled high with difficulty”

we must rise to it, and

“As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.”

That is our proposal today. When our economy and this Government’s strategy are flatlining, we must act anew. A public procurement policy for apprenticeships would start to transform the numbers and the life chances of tens of thousands of young people. It makes economic sense, but it is also the right thing to do. We believe in a one nation Britain with not only social cohesion and fairness but economic cohesion, in which apprenticeships have a firm stake. That is why we have put the proposal centre stage today and that is why I am proud to move the motion.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Hancock]

I cannot, I am afraid; I have virtually no time left.

The hon. Members for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), for Bradford East (Mr Ward), for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) and for Copeland (Mr Reed) talked about the value of apprenticeships. In particular, the hon. Member for Copeland spoke powerfully about how apprenticeships now reflect the modern economy and are spreading into relatively new areas of the economy. All this fits the argument made by the Prime Minister yesterday that there should be a new norm in our country whereby school leavers go to university or into an apprenticeship so that we have a high-skilled economy and a high-skilled work force, not only so that every individual can reach their potential—their personal best—but so that our economy can compete in the global race. I am glad to see cross-party consensus on the importance of the global race.

The hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) mentioned many things; I was intrigued by her speech. I want to pick out her mention of the world skills competition, which is a brilliant, fascinating and exciting competition that everybody should watch; certainly, I thoroughly enjoyed watching it.

Members have mentioned the need to increase the number of apprenticeships and I can announce that, in addition to the three apprentices in my private offices, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will advertise tomorrow for three further apprentices in our communications department. The numbers are going up and up.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle) and the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), have said, while we and many local authorities are broadly supportive of and, indeed, leading on procurement apprenticeships, such as those with Crossrail, I am concerned that the motion is defective, because it appears to call on the Government to exceed their legal powers. Given my assurances, I hope that the Opposition will not push for a vote.

[Mr Marsden]

The motion states that the Government should use

“the billions of pounds committed to public procurement”,

but our interpretation is that that does not automatically mean procurement in local government, although we believe that the Government have an important role to play in promoting that. I do not understand why the Minister thinks that the motion is defective.

[Matthew Hancock]

The phrase “public procurement” could easily be interpreted as including procurement in local government, national Government and agencies. The motion was tabled only late last night and it would not be advisable for the House of Commons to vote for something that might not be legal. I am afraid that we must resist the motion, but I hope that, given our reassurances, we can all agree on the need for procurement where possible and for it to represent good value for money. I hope there will not be a vote.

Finally, many Members, including the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), mentioned the importance of increased quality and employer focus. Members discussed the cross-party desire for parity of esteem among vocational routes, apprenticeships and universities. It is my passionate belief that parity of esteem will come from parity of quality. We need to increase quality throughout the apprenticeship system so that all apprentices can be as good as the very best at MBDA, Morrisons and Rolls-Royce, which have been mentioned by many Members.

We have taken steps to increase quality: we have insisted that people need to continue with English and maths if they do not have a C grade at GCSE, and have said that there needs to be a minimum of a year in almost all circumstances and a job as part of an apprenticeship. The removal of programme-led apprenticeships has taken out 18,000 apprenticeship places, which is a far higher number than that for the decrease in apprenticeships for 16 to 19-year-olds over the past year. Under the previous Government some apprenticeships did not involve a job, so apprentices were training with no prospect of a job, and astonishingly, some apprenticeships involved jobs without training. At their heart, apprenticeships are about earning and learning at the same time. Increasing quality is vital and I will not apologise for that.

We will respond to the Richard review and are in favour of rigorous apprenticeships that are responsive to employers’ needs. We want to ensure a new norm that gives everyone a good opportunity to reach their potential. We should not use a target to push people into university when it may be best for them to go into an apprenticeship. Instead, let us provide the best possible opportunities for young people, through university and apprenticeships, and a ladder of progression from level 2 to levels 3, 4 and beyond to new areas of the economy, including legal services and accountancy, as well as the more traditional areas of engineering and construction. In that way, we can ensure that there is the potential for everybody to succeed.