My Lords, first, I apologise for not being here for the earlier part of this debate but I was detained at another meeting.
I want to focus on what I think your Lordships know is one of my abiding interests: how we can create more and better-quality apprenticeships, and ensure that the demand for them is sustained and encouraged in our educational establishments.
I have raised on numerous occasions the question of ensuring that apprenticeships should be a natural part of the process of procurement in public service contracts. In my brief ministerial career, I remember encountering some suggestion that this could not be done for legal reasons. Nevertheless, we proved that it could. If the Minister has not already been to see Crossrail, I extend an invitation to her to go and have a look at what it is doing. It is a first-class example of a company in that, when we engaged in negotiations at an early stage of that contract, we got a commitment that it would recruit up to 400 apprentices. Actually, it has gone beyond that number. What is as interesting as the numbers involved is how it has gone about it. It has encouraged every company in its supply chain to adopt a very positive and constructive attitude towards the creation of apprenticeships. These are of good quality, they cover a wide range of occupations and the gender balance is pretty good. If noble Lords get the opportunity to attend an apprenticeship graduation ceremony, when the apprentices who have done best in their areas are acknowledged, it is something worth doing. That is an example of best practice.
I have tried to ensure that the amendments I am speaking to, from Amendment 35L to Amendment 35W, are coherent in their approach. I shall focus on local employment partnerships. Many public procurement contracts will derive from local authority activities and, after all, since local employment partnerships are a government creation, they ought to contain within their objectives the development of an apprenticeship strategy with appropriate objectives and a consequent annual review. I am interested to hear the ministerial response to this idea. It seems to me that if local employment partnerships are to continue, and I suspect that they probably will, part of their raison d’être ought to be the creation and sustaining of apprenticeships.
Building links with all the educational establishments, be they schools, colleges, university technical colleges or universities, is fundamentally important. Some of these institutions are already doing this, but the record is still very patchy. What are we trying to achieve? I have debated apprenticeships with the Minister a number of times and although the Government are keen to quote the large figure of 2 million, my response to that is not to criticise their ambitions and the work they have done in this area, which includes such things as Trailblazer apprenticeships, but just to get some perspective on it. My perspective is that if we look at the breakdown, many are in the area of adult apprenticeships: I think it is 50%-plus. Our concern should be that we have seen some decline in apprenticeship numbers in the younger age ranges.
That is one area of concern that we are trying to address. Another is that it is still quite a small number of companies that recruit and employ apprentices. The figures vary a bit depending on where you go, but if it hits one in five we are lucky. If we look at the FTSE 100, it is still only about a third. We are trying
to create a climate in which we encourage more companies to participate. There are opportunities to do that. If we look at best practice, it is interesting that when I went round some universities and talked to them about apprenticeships, the reaction of some was an almost puzzled response. Then you pointed out to them the sorts of occupations concerned and the fact that some significant employers take on apprentices, and the universities realised that they needed to be involved. They also need to be involved, as many of them are, in encouraging entrepreneurship and the creation of small businesses.
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The other thing that concerns us—I have raised this on a number of occasions—is where young people in school sixth forms are being directed to these days. It seems that schools and colleges are still putting vast effort into and concentrating on directing young people towards university. For some, that will be absolutely appropriate, but it is worrying that if you go into schools now and ask students of 16, 17 and 18 whether they have heard any reference to a vocational career or an apprenticeship, you are lucky if you get more than one or two of them with an awareness of that potential. It is not as though the demand is not there. Looking at the predicted number of engineering vacancies or the number of vacancies in the construction industry, there is huge demand there. We have certainly not got very far in encouraging young women into these occupations.
There is an awful lot to be done, and that is why in these amendments I refer to the importance of schools—not just secondary schools but primary schools as well—establishing links with local businesses. Monitoring progress and success at a local level is important. Therefore, Amendment 35N talks about,
“duties relating to the assessment and publication of the extent to which apprenticeships and training opportunities were provided as a result of procurement of contracting authorities”.
I intend to listen intently to the ministerial response on that.
Last but by no means least, Amendment 35W would require that:
“The Minister shall publish an annual report on the apprenticeship recruitment practices of prospective contractors”.
Having both transparency and accountability would be no bad thing. It is the sort of thing that ought to be taken into consideration when the Government are looking at bids for any public contract. They should ask, “What is the track record of this company in relation to training and apprenticeships?”. That is the thinking behind what we see as an important part of encouraging small and medium-sized enterprises not only to participate in contracts but to ensure that they play their part in providing quality training and apprenticeships. I beg to move.