Lord Layard:

Moved by Lord Layard

483: After Clause 62, insert the following new Clause—“Apprenticeship provisionThe Secretary of State must promote sufficient provision of apprenticeship places up to level 3 to ensure that every qualified applicant aged 16 to 18 receives an offer of a place.”

My Lords, this Amendment aims to remedy one of the greatest injustices in our whole education system: the acute shortage of apprenticeships for young people not going to university.

If you qualify for university and want it, you can expect to find a place. However, if you qualify for an apprenticeship and want it, you have no such luck. On the Government’s matching scheme for apprenticeships, only one in three people applying finds a place. There is a more shocking fact, from which all thoughts about post-school education should start: by age 18, one in three of all our young people has ceased to receive any education or training. That one in three is of course nearly two in three of the people not going to university. That is how we are treating them—they are either NEET or in a dead-end job without training, heading for low productivity and low pay. The main reason for that is the shortage of apprenticeships.

This situation is a disaster for the economy—it is the major reason for our low economic growth—and it is a disaster for our young people. It is the prime duty of the state to give everybody a proper start in life and we are simply failing: we are not doing it. We have talked about this problem for years, but the scale of apprenticeship opportunities for school leavers today is no better than it was in 2009.

However, in that year, the previous Labour Government took a major step to remedy the situation. They passed the apprenticeships Act 2009, which obliged the Government to ensure that there were enough places for all 16 to 18 year-old qualified applicants for apprenticeships up to level 3. That would have changed everything, but, unfortunately, it was almost immediately repealed by the coalition Government.

Amendment 483 would essentially re-establish that principle. However, is it feasible, and by when? It would obviously take some time to implement—let us say four years. In that final year, it would cost roughly an extra £500 million. This is 11% only of the proceeds of the growth and skills levy, and our underskilled young people surely deserve no less than that. It is they who should have the first call on the levy money. Incidentally, the Government would get all of that money back within 16 years because of the higher taxes and lower benefits the young people would subsequently pay and get through their better skills.

There is, of course, one key question: can employers be induced to supply enough extra places? The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development recently did a survey of employers to seek out answers to that question. In their replies, 86% percent of employers said they favoured the proposal we are discussing and 60% said that, if it were passed, they would provide more places.

Of course, it would require a whole infrastructure to make that happen. Local authorities should be expected to assess the number of places needed for apprenticeships, just as they do for school and FE places, and they should have staff dedicated to promoting the supply of apprenticeships. These are details which were not covered in an Act—they are not suitable—and they need not be in this Bill. However, I can imagine that the Minister would like to discuss with us the question of the feasibility of this proposal. We would very much like to engage in that conversation with the Minister.

Turning to Amendment 483A, I will say that the 2009 Act rightly concentrated on improving the supply of apprenticeships up to level 3 and no higher. So does this amendment; it aims only to reduce major disadvantage. Higher apprenticeships may be a good idea, but they are not what this proposal is about. What it is about is one of the greatest problems facing this country: the desperately low level of skill in our non-graduate workforce. The previous Labour Government had the courage to tackle this through making the clear commitment they made in 2009. We desperately need today’s Labour Government to make a similar commitment, and I believe that, if they did so, they would be cheered by millions of young people and their parents up and down the country. I beg to move.