Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill

Nicholas Dakin Excerpts

Friday 1st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown]

I am afraid that my hon. Friend is encouraging me to sit down, but I will continue.

REDS10 is a National Apprenticeship Service-approved apprenticeship training agency—isn’t that a mouthful? It is contracted to work with prime and subcontractors to broker apprenticeships and job opportunities for local people in the Olympic park transformation programme. REDS10 takes on the apprentices, pays their wages, provides their training and then places them with the subcontractors, allowing them to complete their training across different projects and under the guidance of multiple firms. Therefore, we do not need to disadvantage firms in a supply chain that are unable to provide a full-scale apprenticeship. Instead, they can contract their part of an apprenticeship scheme from REDS10 and make a contribution, which is agreed in the contract with LLDC. Smaller firms are then enabled to participate in the supply chain. Is that not a great idea? Yes.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

It is a great idea, and it is being replicated across the country. Humberside Engineering Training Association, which I visited this time last week with my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) to meet apprentices, is doing exactly the same thing in Scunthorpe, in Tata and elsewhere.

[Lyn Brown]

By not excluding small firms from supply chains, we can set up vehicles that enable them to compete in the same way as larger firms. The apprenticeships requirement that the Bill would enable authorities to deliver will not preclude smaller firms from participating.

The ATA model has allowed the creation and delivery of apprenticeship opportunities that would not otherwise have been created. To date, it has seen a peak of 60 apprenticeships on site, the highest number on a single site in London in 2013. I am sure that we all congratulate them. The project has now moved into its follow-on phase, with the LLDC and REDS10 working closely with prime and subcontractors that have recently commenced work on site to secure opportunities for existing apprentices who are completing initial placements with contractors. By September 2013, 15 apprentices had been successfully moved to new placements and five had been moved into permanent employment. That is something we all want to see.

To deliver on its public commitments and support contractors, the LLDC set up a transformation job and apprenticeship brokerage project. The project is overseen by a construction operations group, chaired by the LLDC and with representation from key employment and skills service providers in east London. Since October 2012 the project has supported contractors, who in many cases exceeded their contractual commitments, because they see the benefit of training people not only in the skills they want them to have, but in the company ethos.

Once employers get engaged in such an organisation and become more au fait with having apprentices and the support of bigger organisations to enable the admin and those bits of the apprenticeship programme that they cannot deliver, they see that there is a genuine benefit for themselves. In order to reach that stage, however, employers need to be convinced that this place has legislated to enable the overall authority to provide such a programme. That is why the Bill is so relevant.

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[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend is making a good point. Does she agree that there is greater value for money if funds from the public purse benefit local businesses and young people in the way that she is describing?

[Diana Johnson]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend has been a champion of ensuring that youngsters have those opportunities and that businesses provide the apprenticeships that they should provide.