Karen Buck
Main Page: Karen Buck (Labour - Westminster North)Department Debates - View all Karen Buck's debates with the Department for Education
(12 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Matthew Hancock
I am in favour of sandwiches and in favour of people who learn skills in apprenticeships in all sorts of different sectors. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who held a jobs fair last week. I will be copying what he did in my constituency. I hope he, like me, will go to the meeting on Wednesday to discuss what Members on both sides of the House can do to promote apprenticeships in their area.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
I welcome the Minister to his post. He has large shoes to fill because his predecessor was a passionate advocate for the brief, but I am sure he will do splendidly. Unfortunately, however, recent figures show a 2% drop in the number of apprenticeships for 16 to 18-year-olds for 2011-12. Given the concerns that we share about long-term youth unemployment and the number of young people not in employment, education or training, does that figure show that the Government are failing in their own terms?
Matthew Hancock
On the contrary, not only is youth unemployment on the latest figures falling—thankfully—but in the last year, we have moved to make apprenticeships higher quality. For instance, 11,000 apprenticeships had no job attached. Is it not far better to have high-quality apprenticeships and sell them to employers to ensure that as many as possible engage, so that we can get the numbers and the quality going up at the same time?