Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

We have already had some discussion on Clause 37. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, referred to it right at the beginning of our proceedings and I, for one, am going to read what she said with great care because it seemed to me the best description so far of the way that the first part of the Bill might work. This clause is another example of control by the Secretary of State—something that has also been mentioned today. It seems to me that the first part of the clause is unexceptional. It simply says: ""The Secretary of State must by order specify sectors of skill, trade or occupation for the purposes of this Chapter"." For that, he will, as the Minister has told us, rely very much on the sector skills council. We have had some debate about the number of frameworks that will arise from the system, and I certainly would not want to prolong any kind of discussion as to whether Australia, or indeed Germany, have a better approach than the United Kingdom, although in my own chosen career of engineering the Germans have certainly been much stronger than us. Nevertheless, it behoves the Government, in consultation with the sector skills council, to know something about how many frameworks they expect to arrive at at some point in this process. The Minister has assured us about employers and has several times used the expression "demand-led", and I think that that comes through. That is, of course, a very important part of what we are discussing, but I think that we should also remember that, to some extent, we are supply-driven in what we are doing. In quite a number of trades, quite frankly, there will not be enough apprenticeships, although the skills will be needed. One reason for that is the rise of the self-employed, although I do not think that that has been discussed so far in our proceedings. If, for example, you call on a builder to do quite complicated work, you may well find that the majority of the labour force who turn up are not employed by that builder but are self-employed and on contract to the builder. In all this, we need to ensure that we do not forget that the variables are extraordinary. I was very struck by the amendments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Layard, who, not surprisingly, is not in his place at this late hour. It seemed to me that there would be circumstances in which his prescription for the mix between on-the-job and off-the-job learning was exactly right. Unfortunately, there would be many other circumstances when his prescription would not be right because of the variables. What continues to concern me is that the Government will inevitably have a tendency to think that they are the masters of the variables. Throughout the proceedings on this Bill I want to keep on trying to remind myself, and them, that that will not work. They will never be able to master the variables. The range and the diversity are too great. Any decision that a particular framework should fall into a particular sector is likely to be controversial. There are borderlines between one sector and another and as you get more and more frameworks there will be more and more borderline disputes. It is extremely difficult to get it right. We then come to the subsection (2), which states: ""The sectors specified … must in the opinion of the Secretary of State encompass the full range of skills, trades and occupations"." In no circumstances will any Secretary of State of any party ever know the full range of skills, trades and occupations. It would be completely misleading to make it a duty of a Secretary of State to know that. In fact, I would say it was silly because it is an impossible task in today’s multi-faceted world, in a global economy and with the march of technology. I want to give one or two rather naive examples. First, there is cheese. Noble Lords will remember that in the years after the war, French cheeses had complete dominance, particularly any soft cheese. We were quite good at hard cheeses—we had Cheddar, Stilton, Wensleydale, Lancashire and a few others—but we were not very good at soft cheeses. I also remember that de Gaulle said that it was impossible to govern a country which makes 96 types of cheese. In subsequent years, what has happened? I do not know whether noble Lords eat Somerset goats cheese, but I thoroughly recommend it. I do not know whether they have come across Mrs Bells of Thirsk who makes a soft blue cheese which is sold in Sainsbury’s. That development of cheeses, which has gone on apace, very satisfactorily, is subject to a good deal of secrecy. The formulae are not known by everyone. The commercial considerations under which you brand a cheese—and in the case of Sainsbury’s, accept that Mrs Bells can brand a cheese—are quite complicated. The idea that the Secretary of State would ever know the full range of the needs of cheese apprenticeships is for the birds; it is not something that he could know or even want to know if he were conscious of his position. That does not take us to matters digital, but if noble Lords think for a bit about the way in which matters digital develop and what that might mean for the needs of training and apprenticeships, they will see that it is just not sensible to give the Secretary of State that responsibility. What will happen if we do? He will have to work on the convoy principle: he will have to come down to the speed of the slowest. He would be well advised by his civil servants that that is the only way in which he would be able to cope with that responsibility, so he would stifle innovation. Clause 37(2) should be deleted. I beg to move.