Deregulation Bill

Perhaps I may respond. A number of people over the age of 25 have indeed been through the apprenticeship scheme that I know best, in Bradford. I met a splendid woman who had been unemployed for 10 years before she came on to the scheme and is now training apprentices. That is worth while. My deep frustration, given that the scheme deals with the building and maintenance trades, is that we are not putting enough people through these schemes, and we know that part of the problem we face in the economy is that we are desperately short of skilled people in the construction industry. We need to expand such apprenticeship schemes still further.