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Education and Skills Bill

On the question of requiring suppliers to the public sector to take on apprentices, when I have tried that out on industrialists I get quite a good response. As long as the burden is imposed universally, they are prepared to accept it. They all see the need in current circumstances to increase the supply of skilled labour. The first set of employers who ought to take this on board is the public sector. It is quite extraordinary, for instance, that local authorities moan on and on about the lack of planning officers to help them carry out their planning but they do not, as far as I know, train any of them. So the public sector ought to do this first.