Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Toby Perkins and Sarah Olney

Report stage
Monday 31st March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

During their time in government, the Conservatives broke our apprenticeship system and betrayed young people. The Liberal Democrats are thus calling on the Government, if they are serious about growth, to fix the apprenticeship sector by investing in education and training, including by increasing the availability of apprenticeships and career advice for young people.

I wish to speak in support of new clause 1, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom), which would require the Secretary of State to bring forward proposals for the Executive agency to be known as Skills England. There should be greater emphasis on developing sector-specific skills that support the natural abilities and interests of each student. I believe that we should focus on strengthening careers advice and links with employers in schools and colleges to allow students clear alternative steps into a career that does not require them to go to university if that is not the best option.

Any business will tell us that the apprenticeship levy does not work. Businesses cannot get the funding that they need to train staff, so hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of funding is returned unspent, only to disappear into the Treasury. If that money were ringfenced to boost the further education budget, it would at least benefit the employers that contribute, but it does not.

I am glad that the Government are reforming the current system, but I urge them to accept my hon. Friend’s amendment, which would require a clear plan for their new proposals. We must improve not only the quality of vocational education, including skills for entrepreneurship and self-employment, but pupils’ awareness of such skills as they make initial decisions about their further education and career.

I have spoken to young people in my constituency who are undertaking apprenticeships in the hospitality industry. They have spoken positively about the opportunities to develop their skills while earning a wage. However, I have also heard that many apprenticeship jobs do not pay enough for people to meet their living expenses. It is extremely important that young people are provided with a footing solid enough not to discourage them from pursuing apprenticeships in their field of interest. I believe that the lower minimum wage for apprentices should be scrapped. We should ensure that apprentices are paid at least the same minimum wage as other employees their age.

I constantly hear from small and medium-sized businesses across my constituency who are struggling with workforce shortages. We need to build capacity in the workforce and within the economy to drive growth and ensure that British businesses can hire people with the correct skills to allow industries to thrive. Apprenticeships have a huge role to play in upskilling. Although I am glad that the Government are taking action to reform the current system, I urge them to accept new clause 1, which would give us proper detail on what the new system will look like.

Apprenticeships could play a crucial part in addressing many of the staff shortages that businesses face, by equipping people across the country with the skills that they need to thrive. The Liberal Democrats have called on the Government to truly invest in skills. I urge the Minister to accept the new clause.

[Mr Perkins]

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate. On new clause 1, there is merit in the points that the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) raised. There is a legitimate question about the basis on which Skills England operates. Many people want to see it being taken seriously, but whether it will be taken more seriously as an independent body or as part of the Government is a big question on which there are different opinions.

The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) said that the Government need to get serious, but adopting new clause 1 or not adopting it will not in any serious sense make the difference to whether the Bill is a transformational one. The new clause would make a very small amendment to a Bill that is fairly limited in scope, so we should be realistic about how much of a difference we are debating. There is some merit in the Government’s argument that the drafting of the amendment would cause additional delay and would prevent Skills England, which already exists, from getting on with taking the necessary powers.

The right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) made some interesting points. It is always important to take seriously what he says; he is a former Education Secretary and a serious man. Having listened carefully, I have to say that many of the complaints that he rightly made about our fragmented and complicated skills system and the extent to which many employers have felt distanced from it are entirely legitimate criticisms, but are largely a commentary on the system bequeathed to us by 14 years of the previous Government.

The right hon. Gentleman considers it a criticism of this Government that they have a policy that they think will be popular with business, but I see it as a virtue. As co-chair alongside my excellent hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) of the all-party group on apprenticeships, I have heard from businesses how much they welcome the greater flexibility that the Government propose.

It will be important to understand how Skills England will seek to ensure that greater flexibility. There is real merit in degree apprenticeships, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) raised, but I also hope that Skills England will ensure far greater provision at the bottom end of the scale—not just at levels 2 and 3, where take-up has fallen dramatically since the introduction of the apprenticeship levy, but at level 1. I would like to see the apprenticeship levy being used to support people who have come out of our school system with very few qualifications, possibly having had an education, health and care plan. They are able to access work, but will need longer to get up to speed in jobs. There are tremendous opportunities for level 1 apprenticeships to support people with special needs from traineeships into the world of work, so I hope that the Government will consider them.

The right hon. Member for East Hampshire described the merit of the German skills system, which is admired across the world, but it is important to say that it involves a far greater cultural understanding. One of the ways in which the Germans understand themselves is about their skills system and the value that they put into a craft or trade. Achieving that is not just about the structure of our skills system; it would require a complete reversal of our understanding in this country over the past 30 or 40 years. There is huge merit in much of the German system, but we cannot simply adopt it and imagine that we will somehow achieve a cultural change. It needs to be wrapped up in the industrial strategy that the Government must continue to develop.

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the Government envisage Skills England having a far wider scope than IfATE. I welcome that, because one of the great failures of the system under the previous Government was that there was an array of unconnected bodies and initiatives floating around. He referred to the skills system, but right now I do not believe that this country has a skills system. What we have is an array of initiatives without any coherence.

I very much hope that in Skills England we have a body that will start the task of bringing our very complicated and fragmented system together. I have no idea whether Skills England will be a success, but I am confident that it could be. The direction in which the Government are attempting to go, if they have the courage to follow it all the way, has the potential to bring about the change that we desperately need.

We have a basic understanding of level 2 and 3 apprenticeships in this country, but we need much more coherent pathways through levels 4 and 5. The previous Government did a tremendous amount to promote level 6 apprenticeships, which are popular in some trades, but they mean getting a degree six or seven years down the line, which is a hell of a long time. Many things could go wrong in someone’s employment in that time—they might lose their job, or the company might cease to exist—and in any case they might not want to commit to six or seven years. Having stop-off points at levels 4 and 5, so businesses understand that there is something beyond level 3 that does not necessarily look like a degree, would be tremendously valuable. I hope that the Government will look to do that.

Of course it is fundamental that we listen to employers, whether they be businesses or public sector employers, and that all of them feel that they have a stake in the skills system. I do not for a minute believe that the Government or Skills England will not want to listen to employers, who are entirely the arbiters of whether we have a successful skills system, but I do not think that a body has to be independent to listen to employers. There is a potential argument that a body within government would be better placed to take a much more strategic approach than the independent IfATE ever could. It will be useful to hear how the Minister anticipates Skills England reaching out and listening to employers and businesses, particularly about which courses will be appropriate for the growth and skills levy. They might not look like apprenticeships, but they will be crucial qualifications that people will be able to work towards.

I welcome the Government’s decision to take forward many of the construction skills bootcamps. The Government quite understandably have question about the value of bootcamps; a huge amount of the previous Government’s adult education budget went in that direction. Within the construction sector, there was real value to them, and I am pleased to hear from training providers in my constituency that they have been told that the construction bootcamps will carry on.

We often speak about the skills environment as though it were purely outside of here, but we Members of Parliament are all employers, and we are all involved in skilling up our staff. I am very pleased to say that my apprentice Ellie Chapman recently successfully completed her level 3 apprenticeship. She is not an apprentice MP but an apprentice office support worker, and she has done a tremendous amount in my office over the last 16 months. She was also top in her class at Chesterfield college. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Thank you very much—and well done, Ellie. It is important that we walk the walk as well as talk the talk. I encourage other Members of Parliament to consider whether they have a role for an apprentice in their office.

On that happy note, I encourage the Government to keep going, and to listen to employers. It is really important that we get this right, because there is nothing more important for the success of our economy than having a more coherent skills system that enables us to make the very best of all our people.

Commercial Rent (Coronavirus) Bill

Debate between Toby Perkins and Sarah Olney

2nd reading
Wednesday 24th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats welcome the Bill and we hope it will be passed swiftly in order to protect struggling businesses. I have spoken to many businesses in my community that have really struggled with rent bills over the past 20 months. This is been a significant issue for many. As the Minister said, many landlords and tenants have been able to come to terms and make arrangements for how rent payments will be made, but a number have not been able to do so. I am thinking in particular of Don Fernando’s restaurant in Richmond High Street, a legendary Spanish restaurant right by the railway station that has been there 30 years. It was unable to make such an arrangement and it is still getting rent demands from its landlord, which is registered in Jersey, unfortunately. This is a significant issue for the restaurant. Only the stay of execution allowed by the moratorium on evictions has enabled it to carry on trading. It is still open and I was there a few weeks ago. It is doing well, but it has significant concerns about its rent debts, so on its behalf I very much welcome the steps that the Business Department is taking.

Of course, this affects not only tenants. I have spoken to landlords as well, including small landlords and landlords of single units. In some cases, where they are letting those units out to large multiples, some of those retail chains are just turning round to those landlords and saying, “We are not paying.” Up to now, there has been no mechanism to enter into a negotiation on this. It is very much the weaker party in these transactions that has to suffer the consequences, and on that basis I am really glad that this arbitration mechanism is being brought in. It will give a voice to both sides, particularly where there are no other mechanisms to resolve the issue.

My only slight grumble is that we could perhaps have passed this Bill sooner. The moratorium has been extended several times, which has been welcome, but bringing this Bill to Parliament more promptly would perhaps have allayed some fears and got the process going sooner for certain tenant-landlord relationships. But better late than never, as they say. It is here now and we certainly plan to support it. I hope that we will use this opportunity, even though we want to pass the Bill swiftly, to scrutinise it a bit further. One of the important points we want to raise is how arbitrators can effectively assess whether a business would have been viable. That is an important point, and we need to see more discussion about it. In the context of the pandemic, many businesses had to close because of Government instructions, but consumer behaviour has also changed radically as a result of the pandemic. As we look back over the past 20 months, I do not know how easy it will be to say which businesses would have been viable if their rent arrears had not built up to such an extent.

There are lots of great businesses in my constituency that came through the pandemic because they changed their way of working, including developing their online offering and doing home deliveries. We see right across our business sector, particularly in our small businesses, that entrepreneurs will always respond to challenges. Many businesses now look quite different from how they looked before, which is an example of how it is difficult to say what would or would not have been viable. Many business owners or their family members have suffered coronavirus infections, and they suffered untold disruption in their personal life that will have affected their ability to run their businesses. Again, how can we judge what would have been viable? How would things have been different? That is a difficult question to answer.

I welcome this further support to help businesses through what we might call the after-effects of lockdown.

[Mr Perkins]

The hon. Lady raises an important point. From what the Minister said, it sounds like a business will be eligible if the amount it owes in rent is the difference between going bust or not. Many businesses might have major rent payments that take them right to the brink, going through all their savings; other businesses might have debts that are slightly more than their rent, but the support would make a huge difference. I fear we may end up with a huge number of businesses being shut out of this important redress, so I urge her and other colleagues to scrutinise this point in Committee.

[Sarah Olney]

That is exactly right, and it is the point I am trying to make. Every context and every business is different. The business owners will have faced different challenges, and the environment in which they trade will have faced different challenges. The hon. Gentleman has already spoken about hospitality businesses facing significant challenges, and it is difficult to see how we can have one set of guidance that covers the viability of every kind of business of every size and every sector.