I would rather not rely on PwC reports, if the hon. Lady will forgive me. I would rather rely on what I see happening in the country. We have a lot more to do. I gently remind the hon. Lady, who is a new Member, that having been Minister for Skills in the previous Labour Government I am well aware of how Labour lifted apprenticeships from their dismantling under the Tories. We were down to 5,000 apprenticeships across this country, and completion and success rates were on the floor. It was the Labour Government who lifted up apprenticeships, put all the effort in and grew them to a figure by the time we left office. Now, unsurprisingly, this Government are about to dismantle them.
The National Audit Office found that the Department for Education must do more to ensure that all apprenticeships meet basic quality requirements and that the Department had not even set out how an increase in apprenticeship numbers will deliver improvements in productivity. There are real concerns that some employers are hiring staff as apprentices to undercut the minimum wage of £5.55 an hour for 18 to 20-year-olds and pay them the apprentice minimum wage of £3.40 an hour. One in five apprentices reported that they had not received any formal training at all and Ofsted reports found that 49% of apprenticeship
programmes require improvement or are inadequate. The Government’s own “Post-16 Skills Plan”, published in July, states that
“Reforming the skills system is one of the most important challenges we face as a country. Getting it right is crucial to our future prosperity, and to the life chances of millions of people.”
Why is further education and skills training more generally always the poor relation of higher education? Why did it take a huge campaign by the sector and Labour Members even to bring this debate to the House?
Announcements on higher education are pre-briefed to the Sunday papers, together with opinion pieces from the Prime Minister and TV interviews, while apprenticeships funding cuts are snuck out of the back door on a Friday afternoon in the middle of the summer recess in the hope that no one will see them. In a written statement placed before Parliament last Thursday, the Secretary of State committed the Government to a “fundamental mission of social reform to deliver our vision of an education system that works for everyone”
as part of delivering on
“the Government’s vision for an economy that works for all”.—[Official Report, 27 October 2016; Vol. 616, c. 16-17WS.]
I therefore ask the Minister a simple question: can he explain today how cuts in apprenticeships funding of 30%, 40% or even 50% fit into that mission to deliver an education system and an economy that works for all and not just for the privileged few?