Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill

Debate between Nicholas Dakin and Lyn Brown

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.

Foreign Affairs and International Development

Debate between Nicholas Dakin and Lyn Brown

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

This has been a wide-ranging debate touching on all parts of the globe. There have been many brilliant insights into what is going on in the world and the UK’s role in the changing world. My contribution, in contrast, will focus on my constituents’ response to the issues in Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech and will therefore be wide-ranging in a different way.

I have listened carefully to what people in the Scunthorpe area have said in the weeks leading up to the Queen’s Speech and beyond. It is a real shame that the Government have failed to capitalise on the cross-party agreement to legislate to meet the UN’s target of spending 0.7% of gross national income on international aid. That will disappoint Marilyn Woodrow, who e-mailed me recently asking that I urge the Prime Minister to take action to address the terrible problem of world hunger. She pointed out that 300 children die from hunger each and every hour. UNICEF’s figures show that 10.9 million children under five die in developing countries every year, and that malnutrition and hunger-related diseases cause 60% of those deaths. The Prime Minister should show leadership on that issue at the forthcoming G8 summit.

I was extremely pleased to join the children of Scunthorpe Church of England primary school for their “Go for Gold” assembly, in which they drew attention to the 67 million children worldwide who never get the opportunity to go to school and are denied education and opportunity. The Scunthorpe children recognise their privileged position, which is why they are involved in the “Send My Friend to School” campaign. They asked me to call on the Prime Minister to back the campaign.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Has my hon. Friend raised with his local schoolchildren, as I have with mine, the fact that although we are told primary education is free in many developing countries, hidden charges often stop children going to school? They cannot afford to pay for their lunches, extra lessons or uniform, and that precludes their getting a basic education.

[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend is right and makes her point extremely well.

Eliminating world hunger and helping get 67 million children to school can be driven through global leadership, which we could have shown by taking advantage of the cross-party consensus and legislating for 0.7% of gross national income to be spent on international aid from 2013. That would have resonated around the world, to the benefit of us all in the developed and developing worlds.

Let me deal with other matters. I welcome the Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill. I and other hon. Members have urged action on the matter for some time. As Alex Godfrey of the North Lincolnshire branch of the National Farmers Union writes,

“thank you for your help on the groceries code adjudicator. Finally it was in the Queen’s Speech! I was really pleased to hear that complaints from third parties will be allowed.”

Alex puts his finger on a key issue, and I will keep my eye on it as the Bill progresses to the statute book. The Government need to provide the adjudicator with the powers to ensure a fair deal across the supply chain. That means an adjudicator with the power to investigate the claims of trade associations or whistleblowers, and to penalise companies that breach the code.

Sadly, the welcome for the grocery adjudicator is more than outweighed by the disappointment felt by the woman in her 80s who rushed to see me last week because she was so downhearted and dispirited by rumours that the reform of adult care and support was to be delayed. Thirty years ago, her son had an accident that left him severely paralysed. He is strong willed, intelligent and resilient and so, despite his disabilities, he managed to continue to make a contribution to society. However, he needs full-time, round-the-clock care, which his mother provides. She has done that with no support forthcoming from the state. Uncomplaining and determined, she was nevertheless distressed to learn that the Government were putting the reform of adult care and support on the backburner—on the “too difficult” pile.

Another local woman writes movingly of her experience of supporting her mother, who suffers from dementia:

“What I want to know is which agencies are out there for us to call on to support us to care for our Mum. It doesn’t seem right that an adult as vulnerable as my Mum is not under the care of a social care or mental health team or a Memory Clinic. I don’t care whether she has dementia or Alzheimer’s or not. What I do care about is that her needs are not being met.

I have no desire to take any of the individual services to task. I just want to move forward in a positive way with caring for my Mum and know where to turn to receive the necessary support when problems arise. Surely there should be a clear sign-posting to people who like me find themselves in this stressful and difficult position. Where we have Sure Start we should also have Sure End…There is a desperate need for a service like this and this need will become greater.”

Adult care and support is one of biggest challenges for us. We should not play politics with it, but we should all put our shoulder to the wheel and use our united, combined and determined efforts to find real solutions. A draft Bill is disappointing, but it is also an opportunity. The hopes and fears of many people throughout the land, with stories like those of the ageing mother with the paraplegic son, and the caring daughter with the severely ailing mother, are focused on us all. We owe it to them to step up to the plate.

The issues in the Gracious Speech about which people have contacted me are therefore international aid, the grocery adjudicator and adult care and support. However, what most people wanted and talked to me about was absent from it. Where is the plan for jobs and growth? Where is the industrial policy that manufacturing areas such as Scunthorpe badly need? Where are the plans to help energy-intensive industries such as the steel industry? Sadly, the Business Secretary was right that the Government have “no compelling vision” to address those issues.

Like my constituents, I am underwhelmed by the Government’s programme for the forthcoming Session. It is a missed opportunity, a damp squib and a disappointment.