Apprenticeships: Government Support

Debate between Katherine Fletcher and Karin Smyth

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Karin Smyth]

I do. The fairs are uplifting experiences, and I am sorry that I missed the hon. Lady’s fair. Young people and businesses are so passionate about them, and I look forward to my seventh next year. It will bring together those businesses, particularly small businesses, that are desperately seeking new workers. In a prosperous city such as Bristol, it should not be so hard to match the desire and needs of businesses with the ambitions of local people. The Government need to get a grip and develop a proper plan to make apprenticeships work.

I know that the Minister has championed apprenticeships from his very first speech in Parliament, and that he is as passionate about the subject as I am. He was kind enough to visit my Bristol South constituency in 2019. I take him at his word that he wants to see more apprenticeships made available to more people, but he is the eighth person to be the responsible Minister in the last 12 years. The brief that has been merged, renamed, repackaged and passed around, I think, 13 times in the same period. His Government simply have not done enough over the last 12 years; the lack of focus has been matched only by the lack of funding. Despite what we in this room think, apprenticeships are the perennial afterthought. They are passed around in ministerial red boxes like a game of educational pass the parcel. I know that the Minister is happy to be left holding the prize, but that cannot of itself make up for the neglect that the sector has suffered under successive Governments for more than a decade. I am glad that he is in his place for the debate, but he knows that the Government need to do more. As he will have heard in his time as Chair of the Education Committee, employers report increasing skills shortages and decreasing numbers of young people leaving education with the skills businesses need. The Government have no plan to address that.

For all the Chancellor’s talk of skills, it is clear that under the Conservative Government there has been a marked decline in apprenticeship starts over the last 10 years. As a result, there will be thousands of young people whose talent has been squandered. I see that in my own constituency: 1,250 people started an apprenticeship in Bristol South in 2011, but by 2019-20, that figure had dropped by 40%. It is not just in south Bristol. Before the pandemic, apprenticeship starts were down 28% across the country for under-19s, and £330 million of unspent levy was sent back to the Treasury. Only one in five of the promised 100,000 new apprenticeships were delivered. According to Department for Education figures for the 2021-22 academic year, apprenticeship starts are down again by 4.8% compared with 2018-19, and the number successfully completing their apprenticeships has plummeted by 31.5%. Something is clearly very wrong.

Answers from the Minister’s own Department show that the number of young people not in education, employment or training is also going up. This is a pattern of failure over a period of time, and after 12 years the Government are clearly to blame. That is not a surprise to the Minister; he is aware of all the problems and challenges from the evidence given to the Select Committee. He has also heard the cries from businesses about the apprenticeship levy. Smaller businesses say that the new system has

“added to the barriers, complexity and cost of recruiting and training staff.”

Larger businesses report that,

“the inflexibility of the system has made it difficult to spend their levy funds…leaving less money available to pay for the training people need.”

As my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) said, that is also writ large in the health service. As well intentioned as the levy is—we are all very keen to support it and make it work—it is clearly now broken. There are too few apprenticeships available and too few small businesses, which are the basis of my constituency, participating. Crucially, there are nowhere near enough level 2 or level 3 apprenticeships on offer.

I appreciate the work that has been done to improve the flexibility of the transfer system, which is a point that I raised with the then Minister in 2021. However, the numbers speak for themselves, and we should be terrified by what they are telling us. Some 12 months before the levy came into operation, 564,800 learners started an apprenticeship. A year later, that number had fallen by over 200,000. In the last academic year, the start rate was even lower. The figures are shameful. Some 200,000 potentially life-changing opportunities for young people—each one a real person with a real contribution to make— no longer exist. They are the people we see at apprenticeship fairs and the families we talk to in our surgeries. The story is even grimmer when we drill down and see 100,000 young people dropping out of courses each year.

The evidence shows that a growing proportion of apprenticeships are now being undertaken by older people, with businesses using their levy funds to train staff who are already qualified or established in their careers. That may be good, but it is not what the levy was designed for and does not help a young person to get that vital first foot on the employment ladder. It is not just young people who face difficulty as a result of the decisions of the Government. When the Minister was Chair of the Education Committee, it pointed out that:

“More needs to be done to support adult learners with special educational needs and disabilities”.

Again, I could not agree more.

The Minister will know that supported internships and apprenticeships are a crucial piece of the puzzle when helping learners with SEND to access work, but, to quote the Education Committee,

“these opportunities are limited, and support funding is insufficient.”

What did the Government plan to do about the crisis affecting apprenticeships? They set a target to have 3 million apprenticeships by 2020 in the 2015 Queen’s Speech—my first Queen’s Speech as a Member of Parliament. However, we know that apprenticeship starts have declined by over 40% since 2010. As with so many of the Government’s targets, I am not sure that that will ever be met.

The Government’s decision to put aside apprenticeships in the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 suggests that they have all but given up on apprenticeships, and it tells me that the Government have a woeful lack of ambition for our children and young people. It was a missed opportunity for a Government who have consistently failed to match the rhetoric with action. I know that the Minister is an advocate of degree apprenticeships, which combine paid work with part-time study—we also heard about that from the hon. Member for Havant (Alan Mak)—and I was proud to talk to students in Exeter recently. I was deeply impressed by their tenacity and ambition. The Education Committee highlighted that degree apprenticeships are crucial for boosting productivity and widening access for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

I am listening intently to the hon. Lady’s structured analysis of the current situation, although I do not agree with all of it. I want to highlight the example of EnergyAce, a business in my constituency. It is a family firm that designs and manufactures innovative products that help firms use smaller amounts of electricity. Young people in that business are going to the University of Central Lancashire to do degree apprenticeships, to increase the productivity of the business and to upskill small and medium-sized enterprises, which we know are vital for growth in the economy. They were particularly grateful for the opening up of opportunities to upskill their workforce. They are still relatively young—you and I, Mr Hollobone, would probably think they are quite young people. Does the hon. Lady agree that it is really important that, while we make sure there are quality places in apprenticeships, we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater on degree apprenticeships and the contribution they have to make to growth in the SME sector?

[Karin Smyth]

I agree that degree apprenticeships have their place, but that is not what the levy was for. As I have heard regularly in the debates I have attended in the seven years for which I have been in this place, our concern is for the small and medium-sized enterprises in our constituencies that are finding the subject really difficult to navigate. My constituents, who are among the least likely in the country to go to university, need level 2 and level 3 apprenticeships to help them up the ladder—I am particularly keen on the ladder. I do not want to throw any babies out with any bathwater—I am not sure where the bathwater and the baby come into the debate—but we cannot lose one for the sight of another, and a Government who were ambitious for apprenticeships would be able to do both. The implementation of lower-level apprenticeships has just been too slow. In my constituency, they are often for people who have been let down by the education system and who need to reach the first rung on the ladder.

We have had some other things that I have tried to support, such as the kickstart campaign—I do not know what has happened to that—and I am looking forward to seeing the results of the fire it up campaign. The Minister will know that I try to support all schemes, regardless of party politics. I want whatever works, and I will try to make anything work. We need to turn the tide on the catalogue of failures that have become so synonymous with the Government’s strategies for apprenticeships. I am not overly confident, but I am hopeful that we can do something better. I am obviously more hopeful about the next Labour Government, and I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield will outline our approach.

We cannot level up without skilling up. Transforming the failed apprenticeship levy and creating what we have called a growth and skills levy will give businesses the flexibility they need to train their workforce and create opportunities that will drive growth across every region of our country and in every sector of our economy. I am sure my hon. Friend would not mind if the Government stole that idea—they can crack on with that if they would like to. We want to unlock Britain’s potential, and people need a solid foundation in education and a chance to succeed to do that.

Having security at work and investing in apprenticeships and training opportunities enables people who want the chance to reskill, all of which will help people into high-quality jobs. What we talk about as a green prosperity plan—again, pinch it—will create a million good jobs in industries and businesses in all parts of the country, underpinned by new apprenticeships in the technology sector that will be vital in meeting our net zero commitments. That is the new building in my constituency that the Minister came to see. That is what we want to be looking at: the jobs of the future.

It is clear that the potential for improving our apprenticeship system in the UK is huge. I continue to hope that is the case. I hope that through the debate, apprenticeships are given the prominence they deserve and the help they need, and I hope the Minister will use his time to confirm that even as the eighth Minister at the tail end of a Government fast running out of ideas and time, he will ensure a proper focus on skills and apprenticeships within the Government to ensure our country and our economy have the skills for the future.

Can the Minister outline the immediate actions he and his officials will take to drastically improve the quality of apprenticeships and curb that terrible drop-out rate? I sincerely wish to hear how the long-awaited review of the levy is going and what actions the Government will take. I am sure he will agree, as the former Chair of the Select Committee, that more funding is needed for supported apprenticeships and special educational needs and disabilities. Perhaps he can use his appearance today to surprise us all. Given his personal support for degree apprenticeships, can he outline what the Government will do to ensure faster implementation of the programme? Finally, it would make me very happy if the Minister were to announce, here and now, the use of apprenticeships to increase the NHS workforce.

The legacy of the Government is not good. Amidst the wreckage, good ideas remain and with good people like the Minister, who have a genuine belief in the transformative nature of apprenticeships, I hope we can move forward so that no other young person has their future scuppered for, frankly, no good reason.