I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Young, as I have done on a number of occasions. This subject emphasises where this Government have built on the foundations laid by the previous Government. It is for the next Government to realise that these things take a long time to come
through. There will always be things that we want to improve, one being, of course, that we want greater equality of training and apprenticeships for younger people.
I have had some experience both in the construction industry and in regeneration projects where we have linked contracts to training young people. That has been part of the deal and there have been great benefits as a result. However, the noble Lord, Lord Young, has raised the whole capacity issue. If we are seeking to improve skills in construction, manufacturing and engineering, we can help to do that through public contracts, and there is certainly a huge role in this for local employment partnerships.
However, there are things that the Government need to take into account when looking at these amendments. The first is that these deals must be appropriate and non-bureaucratic. We must keep it simple because as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Young, we will simply put off the smaller local companies—the locally-based contractors—that are probably in the best place to provide some of these openings. We have to keep it simple. We also have to match the commitment to technical education with academic achievement in our education system. That was the point that the noble Lord, Lord Young, was making. Finally, as we are looking to the next five years, we must particularly look at how we can concentrate more of these apprenticeship deals and opportunities on the young.