Clause 14
Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill
9:30 am
John Hayes (Shadow Minister, Innovation, Universities and Skills; South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)
These amendments aim to reduce bureaucracy in the formation of frameworks by ensuring that the information an issuing authority requests from a person developing the draft apprenticeship framework is not too onerous, and that the issuing authority makes the person aware of their decision within two weeks. The hon. Gentleman will know that the priority for many employers—particularly small and medium enterprises, as I know from my experience as a businessman—is the day-to-day running of their business, never more so than in the current economic circumstances. Many SMEs already feel hamstrung by red tape and bureaucracy. I do not need to expand on that at length because Ministers and members of the Committee will be only too aware of the complaints that those businesses and their representative organisations make in that regard. It should therefore be our determined ambition to reduce regulation, except where it is absolutely necessary.
If we are to re-focus apprenticeships to the skills demands that I mentioned in the debate on the earlier amendments and if we are to put apprenticeships at the heart of our response to the skills crisis, it is imperative that employers find the development and deployment of apprenticeships as straightforward as possible. I do not wish to suggest that good apprenticeships are not available now nor that apprentices do not learn important things which add to their employability. There are excellent programmes and frameworks with employers engaged in a full and valuable way. But I am certain that the only way that we can rebuild and rejuvenate the apprenticeship programme more generally is from the bottom up. We must engage SMEs in the necessary spread of apprenticeships. In every village and small town, there are countless businesses that could take on an apprentice, but one barrier to that happening is what they perceive as excessive bureaucracy. It is vitally important that we take that into account and try to improve the Bill by reducing regulation and so add incentive to that bottom-up rejuvenation of the system by SMEs.
The House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs noted that employers find administrative burdens associated with apprenticeships unacceptable and its report, “Apprenticeship: a key route to skills” found that
“Witnesses stressed that procedures for the administration of government funding of apprenticeship had the effect of marginalising employers (Unwin and Fuller Q 77; Ashton p 173).”
The draft Apprenticeships Bill took steps to remedy this. As the Minister will know, the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee found that
“Taking the draft Bill as a whole, we conclude that, for those employers represented by the CBI and the British Chambers of Commerce, the draft Bill has the potential to deliver two of their key requirements: a reduction in unnecessary bureaucracy through greater flexibility and streamlining of the central government agencies supporting apprenticeships.”
The truth is that the merging of the draft Apprenticeships Bill with this Bill means that it now falls a long way short of its potential. We make no bones about it—less administration, less bureaucracy is what employers want. We know that from what they have said themselves. The Federation of Small Businesses described cutting red tape and bureaucracy around apprenticeships as a “carrot” to their development—the incentive that I mentioned a few moments ago. The British Chambers of Commerce has said,
“For years businesses have made it abundantly clear that they find the paperwork associated with taking on apprentices a real barrier.”
The CBI response to world class apprenticeships said that
“the removal of unnecessary red tape and greater simplification must be a key focus”.
The amendments are small steps to remedy the over-regulation and administrative burden that this provision will place on employers. I repeat: it is desirable but not enough to add apprentices to large businesses that have well established and well respected programmes, such as BT, Honda, Rolls-Royce and others. It is not enough, because that is not the way that we will build enough extra apprenticeships to deliver the skills that our economy needs. I hope that the Minister will deal with that point in his response.
I want to see 100,000 more apprenticeships. That is why we have set out our policies on the subject in our skills Green Paper. It is built around incentivising small businesses, partly by providing them with funds, but also by removing the barriers. It is about supply-side reform and the amendments go some way towards improving the Bill in that regard.