My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his amendments. I am delighted to see him joining us in the Committee and giving us this opportunity to debate apprenticeships, about which both he and I feel a great passion. I will try not to let that get in the way of objectivity. Apprenticeships are also at the heart of the Government’s drive to equip people with the skills that employers need to grow and compete. It is great to have so much support for apprenticeships in the Committee today. It was interesting to hear about the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Cotter. We need as big a body of support for apprenticeships as we can get, and one needs to encourage people one knows in business and where there are public procurement opportunities to think about apprentices more.
We have already delivered 2 million apprenticeship starts in this Parliament, and there are 20,000 apprentice vacancies around England at any one time. However, I share the noble Lord’s concern about getting enough young apprenticeships. That is one of the reasons why the Government are trialling a new approach to apprenticeships in 2014-15 and 2015-16. He and I have talked about that, and I am involved in work with the electronics industry and the professional services to try to bring forward new thoughts and new numbers. The Government have made the apprenticeship grant available for employers—£1,500 targeted on smaller businesses taking on young apprentices. That ticks two boxes at once.
I also agree with the comments that the noble Lord, Lord Young, made on Crossrail. The work that it has done on apprenticeships has been a model. Like him, I have been under Fenchurch Street station and have seen what it is doing there. It has also been very good about trying to employ smaller suppliers both directly and through subcontractors—and small suppliers outside London.
We want it to become the norm for young people to choose between an apprenticeship and university as alternative routes to a career—an experience that I am familiar with in Germany—and this Government’s reforms lay the groundwork for that. I pay tribute to all that my noble friend Lord Young of Graffham has done.
On Amendment 35L, I have sympathy for the noble Lord’s intentions that a contracting authority should require an appropriate number of apprenticeship opportunities. However, as I am sure he is aware, not every procurement will be an opportunity. Contracting authorities are entitled to deliver legitimate policies through their high-value procurements but, under EU
law, these must be linked to the subject matter of the contract and the procurement must meet principles such as equal treatment, fairness and transparency. It would, therefore, not be possible to require that every procurement delivered an apprenticeship.
There would also be a danger that requiring the provision of apprenticeships by contracting authorities could pass on costs to bidders and actually deter smaller businesses. If so, this would undermine the purpose of Clause 38, which is to open up procurement opportunities to smaller businesses and remove barriers to their participation. If contacting authorities must require an appropriate number of apprenticeships, assuming that that could be determined—it sounds quite difficult—would that stop smaller suppliers bidding, as they might not have resources available to allow them to meet the expectations and duties of the contracting authority in this regard? I know that that is not a perverse effect that anyone wants but it is one reason why the Government are concerned about that amendment.
On Amendment 35M, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, that there is a huge scope for local enterprise partnerships and schools to work with SMEs to deliver more training and apprenticeships when these organisations bid for public contracts. The new Contracts Finder—to look at this amendment in the light of the previous one—will be helpful in spreading knowledge of opportunities, with details of contracts on the website. However, as with Amendment 35L, we must be careful that any provision for delivering apprenticeships through procurement does not have the unintended consequence of adding to the cost of public procurement for contracting authorities and bidders. We encourage schools, LEPs and other public bodies to work with SMEs on apprenticeships, but we are not convinced that they should be under a legal duty to do so.
Finally, Amendments 35N and 35W relate to assessing and reporting on the extent to which apprenticeships form part of public procurement. Again, I have sympathy with the noble Lord’s intention, but I fear that these amendments could again risk passing a burden down the supply chain to smaller businesses. Only by asking them to report on this could we determine the number of apprenticeships and recruitment practices involved. It is precisely that sort of red tape that we seek to cut in this Bill. While I agree that transparency, reporting and reviews are helpful in this sphere of apprenticeships, we need to be careful to balance that with the reporting burdens that it would place on small businesses. Again, I am sure that that is not the noble Lord’s intention, but it could be a perverse effect of legislating in the way proposed.
I hope that the noble Lord feels reassured, understands that we share a similar objective on apprenticeships, and will understand why we feel that we cannot accept the amendments. I ask him to withdraw Amendment 35L.
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