Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

The proposal set out in these clauses to introduce the entitlement to an apprenticeship for every young person qualified for it is one of the most important policies being introduced in this Parliament in terms of raising the productivity of our workforce and equality in our society. It is incredibly important that it should be achieved. The greatest problem will be finding the number of places from employers for all those people who want places and who are qualified for them. We know that there is already an excess demand for places and so this is a massive task. It is clear that we will not achieve this unless some money is given to the employer who provides a place. At present the normal arrangement is for all the money for an apprenticeship to go to the training provider, who then finds the employer; the employer pays the wage but gets none of the money, no financial support, not even for the time that the apprentice is spending away from the workplace. This is very different from the practice in most countries which operate the most successful apprenticeship systems. It is clear that we will not get all the places we need unless we find some way of channelling some money to employers. There are various possibilities. There is the one proposed in our amendment that there should be a fixed sum for every apprentice taken on. One could, alternatively, imagine a limited version of that where money was given only for each extra apprenticeship place provided by an employer; this would minimise the deadweight involved in paying for places that already exist. Or one could imagine a third possibility where any employer who took on an apprentice could ask for and receive the existing money that now goes to the training provider, provided the employer made the necessary arrangements to discharge the responsibilities involved. Even that would be a major step forward towards involving employers more directly than they are currently involved. My colleagues and I strongly urge the Government to pursue one or other of these steps; otherwise it will be impossible to deliver the entitlement. I apologise on behalf of my co-proposers, who wanted to be here but are not able to attend and send their regrets. I should like to comment on what was said by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, because to accept the possibility that we do not discharge this entitlement is just not on; we have to do it. We have to use all the resources at our command, which includes not only the energy of the National Apprenticeship Service and its approach to employers, but it will have to involve local authorities in a profound way in relating more closely to their employers and impressing on them the importance of this entitlement for the local economy. We should not contemplate not achieving this but should have regard to the fact that we will not achieve it unless we involve employers more closely, not only organisationally but financially.