Apprenticeships (Small Businesses)

Mark Garnier Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on securing this important and useful debate. We have already heard a great deal about the issue, and I thank him for the huge amount of detail he has given on the statistics associated with this important topic. I will not try to reinforce any of those points.

I agree with everyone else present that apprenticeships are important, and I want to look at three particular reasons why they are important. First, they provide an opportunity for school leavers to get into the jobs market. As we have heard, the Government—the Chancellor announced this in the Budget—have presented an opportunity for 250,000 more apprentices to gain relevant specific training over the next four years. That applies to youngsters who might otherwise struggle or be tempted to go to university. This point was developed earlier, and I think that it is the case that the random target of getting 50% of school leavers to go to university is based on no fact whatsoever. It has led to the emergence of a market among universities, whereby they sell degree courses for things that, frankly, might be better served by apprenticeships. To a certain extent, it is our job in Parliament to highlight the fact that, if someone wants to be a photographer, there is no point taking a degree in photography when more photography graduates leave university each year than there are jobs for photographers in the whole of the European Union. It would be better to get an apprenticeship as a photographer’s assistant and learn the trade on the job.

Secondly, apprenticeships are also an important opportunity for local businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises, as we have heard. There is no doubt that small businesses that are looking to further expand or to ensure their employee succession process will benefit from apprentices who come in at the bottom end of their businesses. Apprentices can work from the bottom and grow to understand the business so that, as they develop into managers of that business, they know it from a shop-floor level.

It is also important that a district can generate a local skills set that meets the expectations of future employers. I am delighted that Wyre Forest—specifically southern Kidderminster—has been selected by the Worcestershire local enterprise partnership as the preferred bid for the LEP business expansion zone. That is incredibly important for my constituency. My constituency once had 20,000 people working in the carpet industry, which brought on many apprentices but now employs about 1,700 or 1,800 people—it is a much diminished area. In the district, 4.6% of local people are on jobseeker’s allowance, which is higher than in Worcestershire, and the area will benefit from having a business expansion zone. Although it is important that, if we are to attract businesses to Wyre Forest, we do so partly through the business expansion zone, it is just as important that we have a local skills set that meets the expectations of incoming businesses. It is incumbent on us locally to deliver those workers and apprentices, in order to meet the expectations of those incoming businesses.

I was recently asked to open a new apprentice training academy in Bewdley, one of my local towns. The TDM Wyre training academy offers a range of information and communication technology training for apprentices in the local community, either by taking on apprentices from local businesses that already employ apprentices but want to give them more specific training, or by taking on students and finding them apprenticeship places. My hon. Friend will be delighted to hear that I am already talking to the academy to find out how my office can best take advantage of that opportunity and employ an ICT apprentice who, even though he is an apprentice, will no doubt be able to teach me a few things about information technology, which I am a bit of a muggins at. This is an organisation that recognises the Government’s ambition and has reacted, as so many do, to market demand. It and others have not only identified the need for training, but, as I have said, are increasing the local skills set in my constituency, which is absolutely vital if we are to attract new businesses.

The Government-run NAS has recently started the 100 in 100 campaign, which, as we have heard, aims to generate 100 apprenticeship placements in local businesses within 100 days. The NAS is looking for business leaders, training providers and local media to work in partnership to influence the local business community to drive up the number of apprenticeship opportunities locally.

I am delighted that the Wyre Forest community housing group has become an ambassador for the campaign in Wyre Forest. The group has 35 placements for youngsters and claims a high number of apprentices who achieve nationally recognised qualifications and who stay on in permanent employment in the group after their apprenticeships have ended. Indeed, to demonstrate its commitment, the group is using apprentice bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers and electricians alongside qualified teams on all its new builds in Kidderminster. The community housing group scheme is important, because it draws its apprentices from a particularly challenging area in southern Kidderminster. The area has about double the district average for jobseeker’s allowance claimants and about 40% of residents are economically inactive. I hope that the Minister will take back to his Department that further reason for looking favourably at the application for the Kidderminster business enterprise zone.

Thirdly, it is important to remember that businesses are also at the forefront of new technology. We have talked about small and medium-sized businesses, but I now turn to big business in order to illustrate the importance of this issue. In my capacity as the vice-chairman of the all-party group on space, I visited Astrium at the company’s factory in Stevenage. Astrium is a global leader in the manufacture of satellites, and in addition to a tour of its Stevenage assembly plant, we were invited to the award ceremony for its apprenticeship scheme. The company is about as high tech as it gets. It manufactures satellites that are at the cutting edge of technology—indeed, one imagines that all space activities are at the cutting edge of technology. At any given time, it employs about 40 apprentices. They are youngsters who are bright kids, but in some cases they may have low aspirations. In a few instances, the company finds its candidate apprentices working in less than exciting jobs, with, frankly, limited prospects of career progression. Astrium takes them on, trains them up, gives them higher education if they want it and gives them a career path and a future. Some 50% of their apprentices go to university and half of those get first-class degrees. Many end up with high office within the company and typically they stay for an average of 25 years with this one company.

Astrium and other high-tech companies take on apprentices for a couple of key reasons. First, companies at the cutting edge of high technology have a unique and focused skills requirement that they simply cannot fill with resources off the shelf. They have to train their staff in specific ways. Secondly, they draw their apprentices locally, which provides not only a benefit to the local community, but a labour source that is loyal to the local area. That reinforces the reason why they are so keen to stay with the same company for such a long time. That is important for career progression and for resource progression, so that we know where the managers of the future are coming from. With 95% of apprentices staying on for a significant time, that is a very important point.

I shall end on a slightly more sober note. I was recently at a meeting of the Worcestershire Association of Secondary Heads with, among others, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker). Of course, we talked a great deal about education and what the Government are doing on that and, obviously, we presented a very good argument for the Government’s sterling work, as I am sure hon. Members can imagine. However, at the end of the meeting, one of the heads asked the following sobering question: how can the Government demonstrate that this generation of school leavers will not become a lost generation. My reply to him—this has been reinforced in my regular column in The Kidderminster Shuttle—is that, far from being a lost generation, this generation of schools leavers are at the cornerstone of our country’s future. Their success will determine our success as a country and as an economy.

Apprenticeships and the Government’s apprenticeship programme are a good example of how this Government are delivering on that message. The Government recognise the importance of our future generation of skilled workers, and they are absolutely committed to supporting them, because, at the end of the day, business and skills are at the heart of the economic recovery.