---

Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I confess that I am somewhat surprised to hear that my rather modest amendment, changing the duty to "maximise" and making it a best-endeavours clause rather than a commitment to provide apprenticeships to everybody, would have the effect of abolishing the scheme. However, since I am probably going to withdraw the amendment, I shall not stand guilty of such an outcome. I am grateful to the Minister for his reply and to all those who have taken part. The noble Lord, Lord Rix, seems to be able to get what he wants with commendably few words. We need to keep on listening very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Layard, says. He did not get a great deal of comfort from the Minister, but I suspect that that will not prevent him continuing with his campaign. We all hope to find that things go back to where they were. When I first joined the engineering industry we did not have to be told, persuaded or cajoled into the idea that apprenticeships were a good thing; we automatically took on apprentices because we knew that we had people retiring and we knew we would need to replace them. With the RDAs, I suggest that it might conceivably work, as long as their regional strategy is confined to a fairly general paper of about 10 pages long and nobody is allowed to discuss it in any formal meeting or minute any views on it. The only way in which we will get to where the Government want us to arrive and where we all support them is by working at the grass roots and not top down. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 199 withdrawn.