Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Hammond Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

Well, of course I am sure that the hon. Gentleman meant to congratulate the Government on our fantastic achievement in creating far more apprenticeships. They are real apprenticeships—those that involve a job and last more than 12 months—unlike the ones that his Government produced. He is right that we need many more employers, public and private, to want to create apprenticeships. The way to do that is not to force them to do so, but to make it attractive to them to do so. That is why we are introducing new incentives through the apprenticeship grant, and why we are putting employers in charge of the standard of an apprenticeship so that they know it will be useful to them and not just some bureaucratic tick box.

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

In my constituency of Wimbledon, we have woken up and smelt the coffee. Will the Minister join me in welcoming the Take One initiative under which Merton chamber of commerce, following on from the Government, is brokering relationships between apprenticeships and training providers and firms, with 150 extra people taking an apprenticeship this year as a result of that scheme?

[Nick Boles]

I strongly welcome that scheme and any other scheme that tries to make it easier—particularly for small employers, who sometimes face some level of risk—to take on an apprentice. There are all sorts of schemes, and I congratulate the one in my hon. Friend’s constituency.