Education Bill

I thank the Minister for his response to those queries. At a time when we are facing the highest recorded level of youth unemployment, with one fifth of young people being out of work nationally, rising to one third in the north-east, should we not be putting every measure in place to ensure that our young people have the opportunities to gain skills and qualifications? It is creditable that the Minister has managed to secure funding for an additional 30,000 apprenticeship places for 16 to 18-year-olds, but does he genuinely believe that those extra places will even come close to meeting demand? Recently published figures show that BT received 24,000 applications for only 400 places on its apprenticeship programme this year. PricewaterhouseCoopers has reported that applications to its school leavers entry scheme doubled to 800 in the past two years, while Network Rail has said that it received 4,000 entries for around 200 apprenticeship places this year. I would be grateful if the Minister took the opportunity provided by this debate and national apprenticeship week to clarify how removing the statutory guarantee will help the Government to increase the number of young people starting apprenticeships and the further measures that his Government intend to take to guarantee the expansion of both youth and adult apprenticeships across the UK.