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Apprenticeships (EAC Report)

My Lords, I am happy to give way to the noble Lord, who gave the committee very distinguished evidence. I suspect that he is absolutely right to say that the problem goes back 130 years, but I sought to make the task easier for the Minister by just saying ““over 100 years””. As a result, legions of young people have been condemned to low-paid, low-skilled jobs; disaffection and a string of social problems have inevitably followed. The failure in vocational training has not only wasted the potential of far too many young people, but has left employers having to look overseas to recruit the skills they need. So much so that in the construction sector, one newspaper cartoonist suggested that the slogan for the UK Olympic Games should be: ““London 2012: Make Poland Proud!””. That quip illustrates the serious point that many Britons who could benefit from jobs created by the Olympic Games are unable to do so because of poor vocational training. The committee argued that the solution is a radical overhaul of the system of apprenticeship provision to make it the centrepiece of vocational education in Britain today. The great strength of effective apprenticeship is that it gives young people the skills that employers actually need. This boosts their earnings and gives them firsthand experience of the workplace. However, under the present arrangements, countless young people who could and should benefit from apprenticeships are not doing so. This represents not only a heavy economic cost to the country, but an enormous personal loss to those individuals. This is clearly a problem of numbers. Far too few apprenticeships are being provided. The Government have plans, or at least an idea, to almost double the number of apprenticeships, but as things are now, I am far from being alone in seeing this objective as pure fantasy. The Government have simply not begun to show how, in practical terms, they can achieve that objective. I hope that the Minister will be able to cast some further light on this, and I certainly hope for more specifics in the apprenticeship review when it appears. Alongside the problem with quantity is the equally serious problem with quality. At present, apprenticeships often do not meet basic minimum requirements. They may be too short to provide adequate training, and according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics and the Learning and Skills Council, completion rates are running at a disappointing 50 per cent, and even lower for advanced apprenticeships. Yet in response to our report, the Government have quoted completion rates of over 60 per cent. I shall be interested to learn how the Minister arrived at those figures, or whether he has now reviewed them. Further, there is not enough progression through the different levels of apprenticeship and on to higher education. Unless this is fixed, apprenticeships will continue to be perceived as a dead end. Successive Governments, while full of good intentions, have failed to provide vocational education with the radical shake-up that is clearly needed. The lack of effective leadership, again from successive Governments, has been a big part of the problem. No single body is clearly responsible for apprenticeships, so we urge the Government to set up a powerful unit, directly answerable to a Cabinet Minister, to ““own”” apprenticeship. When the present Government were formed, we did finally get a radical shake-up, but it seems only to have made the situation worse, because we now have not one but two departments heavily involved. Indeed, the Government’s World Class Skills report on vocational training, published in July, was signed off not by one or two but by five Secretaries of State plus the Prime Minister for good measure. No doubt the intention was to show how seriously the Government take the skills crisis, but it revealed instead that the lessons of long-term failure in vocational training have still not been learnt. Too many cooks spoil the broth, and I fear that the new set-up looks like a recipe for more failure. The committee urged the Government to put employers at the centre of apprenticeship provision. Under the current arrangements, employers too often become little more than passive partners and hence do not rush to provide apprenticeship places. Our recommendation was for all government funding for apprenticeships to go directly to employers within five years, in order to encourage them to provide more places. On this issue, the Government have apparently buried their head in the sand, making it clear that they will carry on as before. This is a particularly disappointing response as it is so crucial that more employers are brought on board to provide apprenticeships. It is one of the key points on which I hope the Minister will today be able to give some indication of new thinking within the Government. Much more must also be done in schools. The appallingly high number of teenagers leaving school without the basic skills in reading, writing and arithmetic required to take up apprenticeships must be addressed much more urgently than it has been so far. But schools must also do more to inform teenagers about the opportunities available through apprenticeships. We were given a consistently gloomy picture of the inadequacies of the present arrangements to provide information and advice to school leavers. For instance, on a visit to a training centre in Aylesbury, we heard from apprentices who said that they had been told very little about apprenticeships during their school years. In their response, the Government concede that there is room for improvement, but they need to show more urgency in taking effective action. With that, students who are not suited to going on to university would learn much more about how they can benefit from apprenticeships. It is also important that public policy should encourage a genuinely rigorous commissioning process. This should ensure selection from among the different types—private, voluntary and local authority—of providers of information, advice and guidance on apprenticeship, the very best services for young people. It is not encouraging that over the past year a number of local authorities have decided to take these services in-house without tendering. In the past, when information and guidance on apprenticeship was commissioned by local authorities, it too much tended, I regret to say, to be a Cinderella service. A return to local authority control runs the risk of this area becoming a low priority for local authority funding, with the consequent threat to the quality of the services that has always been the bane of much of the entire apprenticeship system. So it is essential that the Government put in place adequate quality control processes. I hope the Minister will give the House some reassurance on this point. However, I am glad to see that the Government are moving forward on another important point identified in our report and are preparing to start a clearing house for apprenticeships next year to match up young people with available places. If properly done, this should make it considerably easier for young people to find apprenticeship places. I have already referred to the Government’s apprenticeship review. I hope that this will address many of the Committee’s continuing concerns. I trust that the Minister will be able to confirm today when the review will be published and perhaps he will also give us a taste of some of its conclusions. On the assumption that the review will address the key issues a good deal more effectively than the Government’s response to our report, I hope also that it quickly leads on to an apprenticeship Bill that tackles the long-standing problems that bedevil apprenticeships. I want nothing more than for the fears that I have expressed today to be shown to be misplaced, but millions of young people have already missed out and the Government must move beyond good intentions. They must urgently and effectively act to see that today’s youngsters get the skills they need to compete in the modern world. I beg to move. Moved, That this House takes note of the report of the Economic Affairs Committee on Apprenticeship: A Key Route to Skill (Fifth Report, Session 2006-07, HL Paper 138.—(Lord Wakeham.)