Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-07-19
Topic: Labor
Alastair Bruce (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I support both amendments in this group. I put my name down mainly to speak on Amendment 76, which has been so powerfully moved by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, and to focus on Section 3, about apprenticeship funding for young people before the age of 25, which is badly needed The question I am asking myself is, how will this affect the overall funding of apprenticeships and how will it help to deliver, as stated by the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, a stronger focus on levels 4 and 5 as well? Where are those apprenticeships going to come from, and what is going to persuade employers to provide those opportunities? Many employers, of course, have limited capacity to take on new staff, particularly young people coming directly from education without previous working experience, however much they might wish to do so if they could. The result has been that those employers tend to use their levy funds to upskill or reskill existing employees—although, as I have mentioned before, even that may use up only a limited proportion of their available levy funds. That creates yet another incentive for them to recast what training they need in the form of apprenticeships where they can So, I strongly support the amendment. My question is, where are those apprenticeships going to come from and what impact are they going to have on the ability of employers to focus on reskilling and upskilling at the same time? I suspect that a significant number of apprenticeships for young people are likely to come from SMEs, yet many are put off from offering apprenticeships because of the bureaucracy involved and a lack of time and resources to manage the process, despite the generous incentives available. I encourage the Government to look at offering specific, more generous incentives to SMEs to take on young people aged 25 or under for level 2 or 3 apprenticeships, including help with their administration and simplified arrangements for fee-paying employers to transfer part of their levy funds to SMEs for this specific purpose. There are such arrangements but they do not seem to be as effective as one might hope I always fail to understand why there cannot be more specific support and encouragement for apprenticeship training agencies to run apprenticeship programmes for SMEs, perhaps as a specific element of the local skills improvement plan for a particular area. That would seem a useful way in which an LSIP could contribute to the take-up of apprenticeships in its area, specifically among SMEs and new entrants to the job market, and maybe with a slight slightly broader applicability of the apprenticeship levy than it currently has. I very much support the provisions in Amendment 80 putting the lifetime skills guarantee on a statutory footing. One of these days, I look forward to hearing an explanation of why the skills guarantee is "lifetime" and the learning entitlement is "lifelong" and what the difference may be; it would make many lives much easier if we just used one term. I hope the Government will accept the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke, in particular and explain how they want to achieve a better balance between younger apprenticeships and level 4 and 5 apprenticeships, for example.