Enterprise Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2015-11-25
Topic: Labor
Lucy Neville-Rolfe (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, for her support for the Government’s new procurement rules under which, on big projects—a £10 million project lasting for more than 12 months—an apprenticeship commitment is now required in the contract Amendment 57 seeks to allow for the employment of apprentices by subcontractors of a public body to be included in targets set for the public body, and for a public body to be able to set apprenticeship targets for its subcontractors, as defined in Amendment 59 Amendment 60 removes the enforcement duty on local weights and measures authorities for protecting the term "apprenticeship" from misuse. In order to meet the 3 million starts commitment, I agree that the public sector needs to do its fair share by employing more apprentices. As I said before, my own Bill team is leading by example, with an excellent apprenticeship, and I take the point made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, about levels It is important that the public sector seizes the real value and benefits that apprentices of all levels can bring to their organisations. This modern approach will allow it to develop internal talent, answer ongoing business needs and develop existing staff. However, I fear that Amendment 57 could put this ambition at risk. It would enable public sector bodies that are captured by the duty to meet their targets via persons who supply goods and services to them I reassure noble Lords that the Government recognise that certain public procurement contracts can be a key means of upskilling workforces, but we do not believe that this is the right way to do it. Although the policy is currently mandatory only for central government, its agencies and non-departmental public bodies, all other contracting authorities are strongly encouraged to adopt the new approach. Many public bodies and local government already build skills considerations into their procurement on a voluntary basis. A decision was therefore taken not to introduce this in the wider public sector initially but, in the first instance, to take a voluntary and collaborative approach, learning from the sort of good practice that we discussed in Committee —we talked about Crossrail, and of course other big infrastructure projects are on their way Officials in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Crown Commercial Service will work together with officials in the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Local Government Association and local authorities to identify existing best practice and experience and bring forward further proposals for wider action in local government in 2016 I now turn to Amendment 60. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, for returning, after a bit of a bump, to happy collaboration on this Bill. I would also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, for what he said. I go back with trading standards; as an official, I was responsible for the Food Safety Act, where we also managed to find some money for trading standards. I thank the noble Lord for the great work that he has done and that is done by trading standards right across the country. As he says, they are multitaskers with a vengeance and cover an enormous area. I understand the noble Lord’s point and, as I am sure he knows, government officials have been reviewing the burdens on trading standards. In due course, we will return to that subject In the mean time, I reassure the House, as has been said, that we intend to appoint and fund a lead local authority to carry out the enforcement of the measure on behalf of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. That has been discussed with the Trading Standards Institute, which agrees that this is the most sensible approach. We already know that this model works successfully for some functions, such as the illegal moneylending team which is based in Birmingham City Council I hope that the noble Lords feel that we have made progress in these areas, have found my explanation reassuring and, on this basis, will feel able to withdraw their amendments.