Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

They are not, necessarily, obviously, but there are occasions when those with disabilities—as everyone will know—find it extremely difficult to get jobs because of problems of physical or other access. If you look at the proportion of young people with disabilities of one sort or another who are employed, it is extremely low compared to the general proportion. I declare an interest as a member of the Skills Commission, which is an all-party group. It has done several studies of different areas of skills. When the Bill was introduced in the other place, the commission was looking at this. We looked in particular at what are called programme apprenticeships and of sorts of apprenticeship. By and large, the commission agreed that the sort of training that provided very little in the way of work-based training—in particular by further education colleges—is not acceptable. We have concluded that we have particular sympathy with the principles behind the amendment. In particular, as I mentioned at the beginning, we are very sympathetic to having the definition of an apprenticeship in the Bill, but we believe that there has to be an element of flexibility to allow for the exceptions that I have mentioned. We have drafted a series of amendments that can introduce such flexibility to the Bill without running a coach and horses through its principles. These will shortly be introduced by my noble friend Lady Walmsley. While we have sympathy, we do not wholeheartedly go along with the Opposition in endorsing the whole raft of amendments that they have tabled here.