Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I contemplated rising to discuss my amendment during the previous debate because the issues that I want to raise are related, although they are somewhat wider. I am always doubtful about a clause that appears to be important but is not discussed in the Explanatory Notes. Clause 14 is not mentioned and I wondered why. It seems widely drawn. It states: ""This section applies if a person …. submits a draft"." I imagine that the person could be your Lordships’ House proposing to set up a framework for some maintenance apprenticeships. Indeed, the Houses of Parliament have, I believe, gone into a programme of apprenticeships. It could be any person, in the private or public sector. The Minister has referred once or twice to there being 180 frameworks. In Australia, there are 500 frameworks. At some point during these debates, it would be interesting to know how many frameworks the Government believe that there might eventually be. One can imagine circumstances in which people want to get on with drafting a framework and under Clause 14(2) they have, ""to provide such information and evidence"," as is required. I have a worry that, under any statutory arrangements, the amount of time taken to consider information and evidence is likely to be a lot longer than two weeks. The determination of the decision and the amount of time that it takes to convey that decision will not be the most serious problem with Clause 14; I should think that it will be much more a question of how long the authorising body takes to consider the draft framework and such information and evidence in connection with it as it thinks appropriate. My amendment would add a further subsection: ""Nothing in this section prevents a person from carrying out training in conformity with a draft submission made under subsection (1)"." I would have preferred to refer to "an apprenticeship or training", but I guessed that, because the apprenticeship system is statutory, the Government would not like that and would say, "I am terribly sorry, you cannot have an apprenticeship unless we agree that it is one". I am completely opposed to that, but never mind; the word "training" will probably do. I am seeking an unequivocal assurance that no one will try to prevent a person who has drafted an apprenticeship framework from getting on with putting that framework into practice, albeit that they cannot call it an apprenticeship in the formal statutory sense. I think that it is a very good idea that persons should be able to put up draft apprenticeship frameworks. First, we have only 180 such frameworks and Australia has 500. The second reason is the pace of change. As I said at Second Reading, I simply do not believe that the Secretary of State will ever keep up with what is happening in business, commerce and manufacturing. He will never be able to know when a framework is appropriate, nor will his authorising authority, over which he has a great measure of control under the Bill. There is a great need, particularly at present, to rebalance our economy as rapidly as we can. In my opinion, we will find it very difficult to get back to the Treasury’s trend rate of growth of about 2 to 2.5 per cent a year. It is much more likely that when we come out of this recession—we may be edging our way out of it now—the trend rate of growth will be 1 to 1.5 per cent or something of that order. We are all agreed that we need to expand the number of skills and the number of options open to us within our economy to rebalance it so that it is not so dependent on financial services and widens its dependence in a satisfactory way. As we have heard, this whole campaign applies very much to the public sector as well as to the private sector. As regards the power to disapprove, the question is: what follows? If there is a wish to control, what is likely to follow is an attempt to prevent people from doing what they want to do because it does not fit. It is very much a feature of the public sector system that it wishes to have this control and does not like eccentricity and difference or people doing things of which it is not itself cognisant. I have an example, although I regret to say that it is a level 3 rather than a level 2 example. In my days at Kew, we had a school and a diploma—the Kew diploma, which I am happy to say still exists. I am now getting to be a piece of history because my time at Kew was from 1983 to 1991. During that time, we were under constant pressure to join the horticultural system. People asked, "What is it about botanic gardening that is so different that you don’t have to conform to the City and Guilds type of courses?". In fact, a senior member of the Kew teaching staff resigned because he believed that we should join the horticultural system and not stay as an exception offering a botanic gardening diploma. But we stuck it out; we said no. We were never within the official system because we kept saying no. This meant that we did not get so much support and public money as we might otherwise have got, but we retained the Kew diploma—and the Kew diploma of botanic gardening is recognised all over the world. I am worried about the statutory apprenticeship system in the Bill because I am reasonably sure that it will not be run with what is called a light touch and will not leave people with the independence to get on with their own thing. Therefore, I would like to see it unequivocally stated in the Bill that everyone who has drawn up a draft framework can say, "I am perfectly entitled under this legislation to get on with the training, in conformity with my draft framework, even though it has not been approved". I beg to move.