Apprenticeships

Nigel Huddleston Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

Now that I know what a fellmonger is, I trust that my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak) will be able to procure a sheepskin coat for me when I come to visit his local fellmongers.

On the hon. Lady’s question, we want young people to have the choice of taking a full-time university course, with the understanding that they will have to fund that through student loans, which they have to pay back only if they earn more than £21,000, but they get all the university experience and the enrichment that comes from that. We want to place no cap on the number of people who decide to go down that route, but we also want another route for those people who find that they learn better by combining study and work, who want to earn a wage and who do not want that full-time university experience. This is about not telling people what to do, but offering them a choice.

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

I, too, welcome the great progress that has been made on apprenticeships to date and the overall positive tone from across the parties in support of them. The Minister mentioned broadening out apprenticeships. Can he tell me what progress has been made in encouraging apprenticeships in highly seasonal industries, such as farming and tourism?

[Nick Boles]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question, not least because I have been working with him and others on the possibility of establishing a pilot. Our minimum requirement that an apprenticeship has to last 12 months poses problems for very seasonal businesses, which will employ people for perhaps six or nine months, but not a continuous 12-month period. With the tourism industry, in which he is particularly interested, we are looking at establishing a pilot whereby an apprentice may be employed for 12 months out of a 15-month period. Hopefully, such an approach would encourage more apprenticeships in that and other sectors.