Apprenticeships

Lord Stoneham of Droxford Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a very good debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, for giving us this opportunity for it, and for her experience in this field.

As the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, there is no point in repeating all the good points that have been made in this debate, so I will just stick to five themes that have come out of it. I think most of us accept that there is a need to monitor what we are doing here, but what we do not want to do is create an overbearing bureaucracy. We need to find out where there are problems. It has been mentioned in the debate that there are some gender problems; there are also, although I do not think this has been mentioned, some regional problems, in that some parts of the country, such as the north-east, are not getting their fair share of apprentices.

One of the things that we ought to be doing is matching what we are achieving with apprenticeships with where prime shortages are. If there is any sector that we ought to pay particular attention to, it is construction. There are extreme shortages there, and some of the delivery on apprenticeships is not as good as it should be. I hope that there will be ongoing work, particularly across industry, using working parties and LEPs, to identify where those shortages are and concentrate work on apprenticeships.

As my noble friend Lord Addington mentioned, we need to monitor where there are particular problems for those with disabilities, particularly those with dyslexia, and we should appreciate the contribution that those with those disabilities can make. A number of our leading entrepreneurs have come through problems with dyslexia to make a very profound contribution, once they got over the struggle that many experienced with our academic system.

I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, that we should measure where apprentices are one year after the completion of their apprenticeships. And just as we regularly get surveys telling us how people get an earnings differential when they go through university, we should be promoting similar publicity about the advantages for people going through apprenticeships as well.

Three million is a tough target; I think that everybody in the debate has mentioned that. It is important that we do not just end up in a numbers game. Quality must be a preoccupation. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, mentioned that two-thirds of apprenticeships are not actually completed. We should be vigilant in looking at why that is, what the problems are and how we can improve those figures.

There are problems at both the lower end and the top end of skill profiles. We are clearly not getting enough 16 to 20 year-olds. We may want to consider that colleges do more to develop free apprenticeship courses to encourage people to go on to apprenticeships and to provide a source of supply for companies that are prepared to take them on in an apprenticeship at a later age.

My noble friends Lady Garden and Lady Humphreys, and the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, all mentioned especially the importance of career advice in our schools. I think that everybody accepts that a cultural change has to be undertaken in local communities and schools to encourage more people through vocational and technical education. I would be interested to hear how the Minister thinks that the Government should be giving this a priority. At the higher level of skills, higher-quality apprenticeships should increasingly be seen as an alternative to university courses, providing a direct benefit to industry as well as being attractive as people will not be dependent on student loans.

The levy has been mentioned in the debate. Clearly there are lots of problems with the levy; in fact, the country has been struggling with a levy for training for the past 40 years, so we are going around in a circle here. That will not be helped by the unfortunate fact that, at the same time as we are expecting employers to make greater contributions on pensions and there are going to be pressures from the living wage, we will then expect them to have a levy for training. That is going to be difficult so, whatever we do, the Government must phase this in and concentrate particularly on the sectors with the most training needs. The key is to somehow incentivise small businesses to participate more but also compensate those companies that are doing their fair share of training but fear at the moment that they should not do more because their skills will simply be poached. I hope that the Minister will give some details of the timing and the progress that the Government are making in the consultation on the levy.

On the role of colleges, there has been a lot of discussion that colleges are critical to supporting training requirements, particularly for small businesses, and that they provide the vital source of support that small businesses need. It is an interesting fact, which has not been mentioned in the debate, that colleges educate and train nearly twice as many 16 to 18 year-olds as maintained schools and academy sixth forms. Some 70,000 16 to 18 year-olds undertake apprenticeships through local colleges. We have to ensure, as has been mentioned in the debate, that those colleges with good links to local firms and sectors that are dominant in their areas, and which are setting up training programmes associated with those firms, are the most successful. Obviously, we seek assurance from the Minister that the contribution of the colleges will not be restricted by a lack of funding.

Supply chains have been mentioned, mainly in relation to the public sector, which I fully support. I certainly support the good work that was done on the Olympics and is now being done on Crossrail. However, let us not forget the potential in the private sector for the supply chains and the procurement policies to deliver on this as well. The most successful sectors and larger firms can contribute to encouraging their suppliers to improve the skills base in their sectors. We have seen the great success over the last 15 years in the motor industry in getting assembly back into this country, but there is still a big job to be done in improving some of the supply firms to the motor industry in this country, and often it is restraints on skills that are stopping us developing those firms.

So apprenticeships are critical to raising the productivity and global competitiveness in this country. The issue deserves the strong attention that debates like this are giving it. It requires a strong partnership with industry and deserves continuity from Ministers in its delivery, as well as cross-departmental co-operation. The need for an ongoing commitment to quality in this area is overriding.