Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Lords Chamber

I look forward to the Minister’s response. I hope she will use this as an opportunity to take away the suggestions that we have proposed in these amendments and have another look at it before she comes back to us at Third Reading, rather than just giving us the arguments that we heard in Committee. On those grounds, I beg to move.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Young. In my heart, I am with him 100%. The opportunity to encourage through public procurement the expansion of apprenticeships and training and development is certainly worth while. The trouble is that these clauses are very much concerned with trying to enable small businesses to have a greater chance for public procurement contracts. Obviously, if we over-complicate the procedure, that is a problem. However, I just wanted to register my hope that the Government are continuing to look at this. It is something that they can encourage in the public sector and, indeed, they are already doing so. We need to do much more and there is a lot of very good casework and examples of where this is being done successfully at all levels of industry. I hope that the Government will continue to give this particular priority.

In addition, the linkages to the work of the LEPs are very important. We also have in schools a big obligation to promote technical apprenticeships and encourage more young people to take part. I am dubious as to whether the Government will be able to accept something at this stage in this Bill but it is something that should be a continuing priority.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young, for his amendments and for allowing us to debate the important subject of apprenticeships, albeit rather late in the evening. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Stoneham for adding his wisdom to the debate, expressing concern about the particular provisions we are looking at but making absolutely the right point about the need to move the apprenticeship agenda forward and do ever more.

Starting with Amendment 29, I should, perhaps, remind the House that there is some outstanding work currently under way in this area. The noble Lord mentioned Crossrail as a trailblazer. It is an amazing project in all respects and has recently hired its 400th apprentice. Obviously, there is a huge opportunity to train apprentices on big construction procurement projects of that kind.

The Government have agreed to support apprenticeships growth in the provisions brought forward by city deal partners, linked to their growth sectors in the local economies. For example, 1,500 new high-value manufacturing apprenticeships have been created in the West Midlands and 420 apprenticeships have been created in Greater Cambridge in different priority sectors, from professional and scientific, through to advanced engineering. We are also encouraging employers to take on apprentices by creating the apprenticeship grant for employers and relaxing national insurance contributions for employers who take on apprentices. However, not every procurement is appropriate for delivering apprenticeships. I think the noble Lord acknowledged that. Trying to deliver a policy where it does not properly fit creates bureaucracy. We do not want a situation where suppliers are forced to meet a requirement to create new apprenticeship opportunities every time a new contract is awarded. This would change the very nature of apprenticeships, meaning that they were not linked to the company’s needs. Young people could be let go before their apprenticeship ended, a concern that I have heard from the Local Government Association. Even more important, it could be damaging to the individual apprentice.

We also have to follow legal requirements. For above-EU threshold contracts, a contracting authority must always be able to show that the requirement to provide an apprenticeship is sufficiently linked to the subject matter of the contract. Some contracts will have no links with apprenticeships, so forcing apprenticeships into all of them could even breach these EU rules.

The noble Lord might say that the amendment refers to requiring an “appropriate number” of apprenticeships so this does not apply to every procurement. But how would a contracting authority or Government know what an appropriate number was? A blanket requirement about apprenticeships as proposed in the amendment would not work. However, the Government support the appropriate inclusion of training and apprenticeship criteria in procurement and we believe that such requirements are most likely to be relevant on major construction and infrastructure projects. We need to adopt a thoughtful and considered approach, working with industry. I assure noble Lords that we are actively working to achieve this.

I turn to Amendment 30. I should like to reassure the noble Lord that we support schools and local enterprise partnerships working together with SMEs to deliver more training and apprenticeship opportunities. There are some highly successful examples of this work taking place. Indeed, following a debate we had on an Oral Question that the noble Lord asked, I shared some of those good examples with him. I will not delay the House by repeating those this evening.

I understand that the noble Lord’s intention is to place general duties on local enterprise partnerships and educational institutions such as schools to encourage, develop and promote these apprenticeships. However, I do not believe that moving away from good practice in this area to regulation is the right way ahead. Local enterprise partnerships are flourishing because we are addressing exactly the barriers identified by employers, getting them involved directly, simplifying the system and giving them a free hand so that they can do the right thing. The Government are working with a number of such partnerships as part of the city and local growth deals to drive up business demand for apprenticeships in their localities. This allows local enterprise partnerships to choose the most effective way to promote apprenticeship development.

I share the noble Lord’s concern about the way apprenticeships declined in the first part of the 2000s. As he knows, we are getting back on track and doing many of the right things. My noble friend Lord Stoneham is right to urge us to do more and to make it a priority—which I can confirm that it is. However, I do not believe that legislation of the kind proposed in the amendments is right or sensible. While the noble Lord, Lord Young, knows I share his wish to increase apprenticeships, it is wrong to introduce new bureaucratic regulatory burdens in a small business Bill. I fear that these amendments could be perverse in their effects and I hope that on reflection he will feel able not to press them.