My Lords, I support the amendments because their aim is the right one in the circumstances. I thank the Minister for our useful meeting with him. He responded promptly, although he did not cover quite all of the issues we raised, and I will come to that in this contribution.
The concerns that have been raised by my noble friend Lord Watson are legitimate because, as we have said on a number of occasions, both at Second Reading and during meetings with the Minister, aiming for a target of 3 million apprenticeships is very ambitious but there must be complete consensus in the Committee that what we want to achieve is quality as well as quantity. If we fail, I think we will do real damage to the apprenticeship brand. Here I must part company with some others because a lot of good, high-quality apprenticeships are out there. Some people know how to run them, although perhaps not as many as we would like. But when we look at the number of applications for apprenticeships at BT, Rolls-Royce and a range of others, we find that they are inundated with applications. There are those who argue that it is harder to get on to some of these schemes than it is to get into Oxford or Cambridge. However, I do not know whether that is an anecdote or statistically correct.
The real point here is that of preserving the quality of the brand and encouraging trust among would-be apprentices and their parents. We have another problem that we will probably address elsewhere, which is getting schools to recognise that the vocational or technical path is just as valid as the academic one, and indeed that one can lead to the other. I hope the Minister will take these amendments as being constructive and designed to ensure that the Government can reassure us that they will be safeguarding the quality of these apprenticeships.
I have had a quick glance at the letter the Minister sent on 22 January, and unless I missed it because it was a bit of a skim read, I do not think he covered a question we put to him. We were told that two groups would be dealing with these issues. As I understand it, one will be the Skills Funding Agency, which will deal with the money side and ensure that they are getting the bang for their buck, and Ofsted, which will look at the quality of the apprenticeships.
At our meeting with the Minister, we said, “Okay, in theory, but given the expansion rate of these apprenticeships, that’s going to put quite a degree of
pressure on Ofsted. Can we be sure that there really are enough resources there, so that they’ll have the means of carrying out the inspection, which is a vital part of them?” Those are my concerns in supporting these amendments. I look forward to the Minister’s response.