Skills and Training

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at 3:51 pm on 12 January 2006.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Phil Gallie Phil Gallie Conservative 3:51, 12 January 2006

I agree. There are also issues around traditional apprenticeships. Not only should we be looking to extend modern apprenticeships to older people; perhaps we should bring the age band back to cover 14-year-olds at school level and involve those who might have the interest but who do not have the potential for academic development that others might have.

I will pick up on a point that Duncan McNeil made about traditional apprenticeships and the individuals who pursued the skills they chose. Those who took up traditional apprenticeships were originally known as journeymen. Duncan will not like this, but his speech perhaps smacked a little bit of Lord Tebbit's remarks about getting on your bike. However, I will not advance that particular argument.

Thinking about my own trade as an electrical fitter in the 1960s, it is perhaps not so necessary now to have apprenticeships in the traditional form for all trades, but it is necessary in the construction trades. By that I include bricklaying, welding—to a degree—and plastering. We are losing skills in those trades. They do not come from academic achievement; they come from practice, grinding away at the work year after year and perfecting the traditions of old.

The minister mentioned deprived areas. Over recent years, many of us have spoken about areas of deprivation. Much has been done for them, such as the creation of priority treatment areas by the previous Government. Many millions of pounds have been put into them, but I wonder what benefits we have got. I suggest to the minister that he might wish to take up Jim Mather's advice on the quality assurance aspects and analyse the results that we have got for the money that we have spent in deprived areas. How many of them have advanced from having a need for priority treatment to being self-sustaining? Only a few. The minister would do well to consider that.