Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

In speaking to this amendment, I shall speak to all the other amendments in this grouping in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Walmsley. As presently set up, the National Apprenticeship Service is an agency working under the Skills Funding Agency, which, as established in this Bill, is not a non-departmental public body with its own board and its own chair but a next-steps agency and part of the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Liberal Democrats have considerable reservations about replacing the Learning and Skills Council, which is a non-departmental public body, with the YPLA, which again is a non-departmental public body, and the SFA, when the SFA is not set up as a non-departmental public body but is under the thumb of the department and is set to administer so many different sub-agencies. The SFA has four distinct sub-agencies working under it: it will administer the Adult Advancement and Careers Service, the Train to Gain service, the National Employer Service and the National Apprenticeship Service. This is all part of the complex changes to the machinery of government that have been introduced as the successors to the LSC. Now we have yet more such changes. Initially we had the separation of the under-19s into the Department for Children, Families and Schools and the over-19s into DIUS. Now DIUS has disappeared and further and higher education and skills have all moved into the mammoth new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The danger is, of course, that they will get lost and that a next-steps agency within that department, amid masses of agencies that that department runs, will also get lost. We believe that the National Apprenticeship Service is thoroughly important. We were delighted when the Government proposed to set it up and we certainly endorse its broad aims. We believe that it should be a non-departmental public body in its own right, with its own chair. Its aims should be, first, to champion apprenticeships among employers; secondly, to liaise with the sector skills councils; thirdly, to award certificates; fourthly, to operate the Apprenticeship Vacancy Matching Service, which is now beginning to emerge and which was one of the main recommendations in the Select Committee report on apprenticeships from your Lordships’ House; fifthly, to liaise with the DCSF and local authorities to increase demand for employer-based 14 to 19 apprenticeships, including public sector apprenticeships; sixthly, to ensure that proper careers guidance in schools and colleges about apprenticeships is delivered; seventhly, to promote 14 to 15 pre-apprenticeship training, with schools and colleges collaborating with each other; and, lastly, to liaise with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department for Children, Families and Schools, the SFA and HEFCE to promote levels 1, 2, 3 and 4 apprenticeships and progression within those apprenticeships. All these are worthwhile objectives for the National Apprenticeship Service. We feel strongly that the service should be able to stand on its own and promote those objectives. We worry that, as set up as a next-steps agency under the wing of the Secretary of State, it will not have the degree of independence or business leadership that it needs. For example, in Clause 11, it is the Secretary of State who runs the show and chooses who shall be designated to issue the frameworks; in Clause 21, the Secretary of State tells the chief executive of skills funding to prepare the specification; in Clause 80, the Secretary of State tells the chief executive again what he should be doing. Much too much micromanagement is written into the Bill. Our vision is that the Bill should set up the National Apprenticeship Service with its main functions. Clauses 81, 82, and 83 set out the sort of functions that we think should be included. We would hope also to look at apprenticeships for the post-19 group. In this Bill, that is a big black hole at the moment, yet, if you talk to employers, they will tell you that they have more people aged over 19 wanting to take up apprenticeships than they have people under 19. This is the area of big expansion in apprenticeships at the moment, yet this Bill hardly deals with apprenticeships for those post-19. As I say, we would like the National Apprenticeship Service to be set up as what is known as a non-departmental public body, with its own chair, with its own board and with a secure set of objectives. There should have been a fourth subsection to Amendment 2, which has three subsections. We had added a fourth subsection that there should be a schedule that makes further provision for the National Apprenticeship Service and we would have modelled that schedule on Schedule 3, which sets up the YPLA as an NDPB. We could quite easily have gone through it all and changed "YPLA" to "NAS", but we talked to the clerks and they suggested that perhaps it was not sensible to waste all those trees in printing; we, too, felt that it was not sensible to waste the trees on this occasion. Therefore, the Committee has not been presented with a Marshalled List of an extra eight or so pages; I think that noble Lords are probably quite glad of that. However, that is how we would like to set up the service. The substantive amendments are Amendment 2, which would set out the National Apprenticeship Service as a body corporate; the question whether Clause 4 should stand part, as the English certifying body, as far as we are concerned, should be the National Apprenticeship Service and not the chief executive of skills funding; and Amendment 16 to Clause 11, which would designate the National Apprenticeship Service as the body responsible for issuing general guidelines and the general specification in relation to apprenticeship frameworks and for designating other persons. We shall talk about that later, because, as we all know, "person" in parliamentary draftsmanship can mean a body as much as a person—in this case, the sector skills councils. Our vision is that the National Apprenticeship Service should be responsible for the general specifications in relation to apprenticeships, with the sector skills councils responsible in relation to specific sectors. Finally, we question whether Clause 80 should stand part, to prevent the Secretary of State from constantly interfering. This is our vision. This is what we would like to see. There is one question that I should like to put to the Minister. What is the strategic role of the Secretary of State in relation to skills? Section 10 of the Education Act 1996 has a general duty for the Secretary of State: ""The Secretary of State shall promote the education of the people of England and Wales"." Section 11 states, under the heading "Duty in the case of primary, secondary and further education": ""The Secretary of State shall exercise his powers in respect of those bodies in receipt of public funds which—""(a) carry responsibility for securing that the required provision for primary, secondary or further education is made—""(i) in schools, or""(ii) in institutions within the further education sector, in or in any area of England or Wales, or""(b) conduct schools or institutions within the further education sector in England and Wales,""for the purpose of promoting primary, secondary and further education in England and Wales.""(2) The Secretary of State shall, in the case of his powers to regulate the provision made in schools and institutions within the further education sector in England and Wales, exercise his powers with a view to (among other things) improving standards, encouraging diversity and increasing opportunities for choice"." The general duty of the Secretary of State to promote the education of people in England and Wales was written into the Education Act, but what is the general duty of the Secretary of State—we have now two Secretaries of State—in relation to skills? Do we not need a similar commitment from the Secretary of State in relation to skills? Do we not want the Secretary of State to work with local authorities, industry and other bodies to ensure that there is necessary provision to deliver the Government’s commitment? An important part of that commitment is the entitlement given to young people by this Bill: if they wish to be trained through an apprenticeship and have the necessary capabilities to cope with that training, they should be able to do so. We think that it is important that the body charged with delivering that commitment should be given the status and independence that it deserves. We are proposing this series of amendments to set up the National Apprenticeship Service as a service in its own right, with its own board and its own chair. I beg to move.