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National Insurance Contributions Bill

My Lords, apprenticeships are certainly important to this Government. Since the noble Lord, Lord Davies, has talked about them at some length, as he may know, it was National Apprenticeship Week three weeks ago. I met electronic engineering apprentices working on the rebuilding of Blackfriars station and its railway bridge. It was enormously encouraging to see the enthusiasm of those apprentices, who fully understood how their apprenticeships could be the start of a very worthwhile and remunerative career path and that they had a very supportive employer—a much bigger employer than in the scheme we are discussing. However, when I asked them whether their south London schools had encouraged them down this path, it was depressing to be told that there had been absolutely no mention of apprenticeships as a route to go down on the part of those schools. Therefore, I can see that there is work to be done on fully encouraging young people to take up apprenticeships, but it will not be for lack of government money. In 2011-12, we will provide £799 million for apprenticeships in the 16 to 19 age range, which is an increase from the £780 million in 2010-11. This money will fund 230,000 apprenticeship places for that age group. Therefore, the importance of apprenticeships is absolutely not lost on me. Apprentices and their national insurance are covered by the Bill in the same way as any other employee. On previous amendments we have talked about the number of employees that small businesses typically take on. That is a critical point. The ceiling that we have left in the Bill of 10 employees provides sufficient headroom to take on apprentices. A feature of apprentices is that there is not normally the turnover that we talked about and it is not a question of part-time work. One or two apprentices being taken on by a business should be accommodated within that headroom limit of 10. We think that is a sufficient and appropriate way to accommodate what I completely agree is a critical part of the thrust needed to rebuild the nation’s workforce with the appropriate skills base for a thriving economy in the 21st century. With that explanation, I again ask that the noble Lords follow the convention of withdrawing their amendment.