Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate on this Bill and thank my noble friend the Minister for her introductory remarks. I welcome the Bill on a number of grounds. First, as has already been noted, the whole question of the difference between academic and vocational qualities, abilities and training is one that we need to discuss sooner rather than later. We have a long-standing skills shortage within the United Kingdom. While, of course, it was extremely important to keep the emphasis in the early years of the Labour Administration on increasing and improving academic opportunities, to a certain extent that was done at the expense of an emphasis on the vocational. Therefore, I welcome the fact that we are here now. Secondly, I very much welcome the right contained in the Bill to request time off for training. The trade union movement from which I come has a long and honourable history in negotiating for training opportunities in the workplace for workers and their members. Unite, my own union, the Transport and General Workers’ Union as was, has participated over the years in many training committees and joint workers and employers’ bodies, looking to ensure that people within the workplace have the opportunity to reach their potential. However, we must ensure that this is not a right just for those who are deemed to be potential high flyers. If we analyse the expenditure of training budgets over the years, we see that the vast majority of that money goes to the most senior employees, with precious little going to those at the bottom of the ladder. I welcome the remarks made by my noble friend Lord Morris of Handsworth that it would be a very greatly missed opportunity if the right to request were not extended to part-time employees. That would no doubt be indirectly discriminatory, given that the vast majority of part-time workers are women. In my experience, many of those women have enormous potential to improve their skills and move forward. I welcome the Bill because, while we may be in the most dreadful of recessions, it will not last for ever. We will come out of it at some point in future and we need to use these times to rebuild and prepare for that upturn. It is an opportunity to fix the roof even though the sun is not currently shining. Secondly, we need to consider how we can use this opportunity to learn from our mistakes and the general mistakes of the past. We need to use this Bill to look at how the demographics of this country have changed. We have a rich ethnic mix in our population, many more older people who want to continue working and many more women engaged in the labour market. That means that apprenticeships must not be designed or considered just for boys who like Swarfega or girls whose sights go no higher than a course in hair and beauty. Schools and employers must provide a menu of options which will interest, attract and raise the aspirations of our young people. We need to use the opportunity to look at today’s labour market and the employment patterns and see what we think needs fixing. We have the most appalling gender segregation within our labour market, which itself brings about a very bad gender pay gap. We have ethnic groups at the bottom of the employment ladder. Research conducted last year for the Equality and Human Rights Commission—I declare an interest as the deputy chair of that body—and by Longhi and Platt demonstrated that there are great pay gaps and penalties for many members of community from particular religious and ethnic backgrounds, including Pakistani men and women, black African men and Bangladeshi women. They all suffer very serious pay penalties because of their position in the labour market, which is not only a waste of talent but unhelpful when we are looking to ensure that we use these opportunities to build social inclusion. In 2006, the Women and Work Commission, chaired by me, produced its report, Shaping a Fairer Future. We demonstrated in that report that you could trace pay gaps back to choices made at school. We are now revisiting the work that we did then; we are looking to see what progress has been made against those recommendations that the Government accepted and determined to move forward on. There is a recognition that there are certain problems, but there needs to be a sturdy and determined attack on those problems. Information, advice and guidance has been mentioned a number of times this afternoon. We are told that personal advisers who give that advice and guidance have been trained in equalities and to recognise the dangers of stereotyping. But what are the outcomes expected here and how are they going to be monitored if we do not have any outcomes laid down to be measured? To use the management phrase, what gets measured gets done. At the moment, we do not appear to have measures to determine how those personal advisers are actually achieving those aims that have been laid down. Training the trainers is an important aspect here. We are looking to encourage girls and boys into non-traditional areas of training and employment, but college-based training is quite often given by ex-craftsmen who have never worked with or taught young girls. One way in which we can help in that situation is partly by training the trainers, as I say, but partly also by introducing buddy systems so that girls can move into non-traditional areas in twos and threes rather than be expected to shoulder that quite difficult move on their own. Work experience needs to be given greater attention and more resources by the education system. At the moment, it is an add-on to somebody’s responsibility. Employers need to show more willingness, too, to provide work experience and to play their part in a more positive way. Finally, I have three points to make about how we should set an example. My understanding is that in central government there are only seven departments that currently have apprentices. Central and local government and other public bodies need to step up to the plate here and play their part in ensuring that these proposals come to fruition. There is a duty on all public bodies to promote equality on grounds of race, gender and disability; after the Equality Bill is passed in the coming months, as we hope that it will be, that will be a general duty. There is an enormous opportunity here for those bodies to use that to give equal and proper opportunities across the piece. Secondly, as has already been mentioned, we need to stop changing the structures of the provision of education, training and learning. It is costly, wasteful and hugely confusing. If we who are interested in this subject and make it our business to participate in debates on it find it difficult, then how difficult is it for those who would like to access the service? Finally, we must recognise that a great deal of change and advance can be achieved without legislative change. We simply need the will vigorously to implement the policies that we already have.