Apprenticeships

Lord Lisvane Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

My Lords, I join the chorus of congratulation to the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, for initiating this debate. It is a subject of huge social and economic importance, and the debate is very timely. I start with a declaration of interest, or at least of a connection: my wife was an apprentice with Baker Perkins, a company mainly involved in heavy engineering. In the interests of marital harmony I am not going to be too precise about exactly when that apprenticeship was, but it was at a time when there were very few female apprentices, and even fewer female apprenticeships in heavy engineering.

In the limited time I have, I want to make two points—perhaps parochial in their way, but I hope with a much wider resonance. The importance of apprenticeships is clear and has been emphasised by every speaker in this debate so far. We readily give our political support to proper apprenticeships, widely available to young men and women of all backgrounds, and leading to sustainable long-term skilled jobs.

However, might we not also give our institutional support as a House? In my previous life as Clerk of the House of Commons I started the clerks’ apprenticeship scheme. My aim was not only to create worthwhile apprenticeships for people with few opportunities, but also to reach out to those who would never have thought of working for Parliament and having the privilege of doing so. I had the support of Eddie Stride, the CEO of London Gateway, and a fantastic in-house champion in Joanne Mills of the diversity and inclusion team. There were two cohorts, each of 10 young people, who have now been through their apprenticeships, gaining NVQs in business and administration. From what she said earlier on, I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, would be very pleased to hear that both cohorts had a majority of women and that both cohorts had a substantial majority of those with BME heritage. I am delighted to say, picking up a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Huyton, that the retention rate for both cohorts was 80% who found jobs in the House of Commons services, and of those who left Parliament, all went to good jobs elsewhere. The third cohort started just a few days ago.

A similar scheme in this House would be a vivid demonstration of our support for apprenticeships. At the moment we have just one apprentice, who is in the Parliamentary Archives, but I know that the Clerk of the Parliaments is keen to do something more ambitious: a proper apprenticeship scheme for the House of Lords administration. I warmly encourage him in that endeavour, and I am quite sure that it will have strong support from noble Lords on all sides of the House.

For my second point, I make no apology for returning to something I mentioned in my maiden speech in your Lordships’ House. We will shortly be faced with very difficult decisions on the restoration and renewal of this unique building. We await the advice of the Joint Committee, which has a distinguished membership from your Lordships’ House, including the Leader of the House, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chairman of Committees. Whichever option is finally chosen, I hope that we can support it through a Westminster academy of skills which could nurture the scarce skills needed for heritage restoration and, even more important, could be a dynamo for creating a wide range of craft apprenticeships continuing long after the restoration of the Palace of Westminster is complete. That would be a wonderful legacy for the next 150 years of this amazing building, and it would truly be an earnest of our support for apprenticeships.