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Education and Skills Bill

During my hon. Friend's speech, it was chilling to hear him give the time scale according to which the Government's objectives on apprentices must be achieved, as well as the numbers that he gave. If my hon. Friend's scheme gets off the ground, under the responsibility of someone whose only job it is to drive it through—rather than the 10 jobs that a Secretary of State has to do at any one time—we could perhaps start the scheme at 14 for some of those tough young people. That is my plea. I want to finish with an observation made by Paul Sykes, who gave me permission to cite it. He is one of the richest people in the country, and began his route to riches by doing an unskilled job—breaking up Birkenhead municipal buses. He noticed that while his boss was interested in the metal coming off the buses, he was totally uninterested in the engines. Paul Sykes thought, ““Maybe there's some money there.”” From that one thought, he built up an incredibly successful series of businesses and is now one of the most successful and richest businessmen in the country. He was interviewed recently on the television—I shall not say on which channel—by an Oxbridge graduate, who said, ““Mr. Sykes, did you find that leaving school at 16 held you back?”” In his wonderful Yorkshire accent, he said, ““Yes, love, I had a job at 12 and I had to wait four more years 'fore I could start.”” Of course, lots of our constituents will not be Paul Sykeses. However, his example is a way of lighting up the landscape. We will not solve our constituents' problems by pretending that we have it all right in our junior and secondary schools. We will not make things better with a system that engages them on the current terms after the age of 16. A small but significant number of constituents, represented by those on both sides of the House, are failed by our education system. We have to think of something different to offer them.