Mr.
Hayes: Is that
likely?
Mr.
Simon: The assumption is that frameworks will be issued by
sector skills councils for their particular sectors. I think that I
will have a secondary and then a tertiary assumption, which is not
something that I have often had before. The secondary assumption is
that all efforts will be made to achieve coherence and simplicity, and
to fit every framework that can be so fitted into a definable and
discernible sector skills council sector.
The third
assumption is that in the cases that do not easily fit the preference
will be for an existing sector skills council to lean over and extend
itself to try to embrace the anomalous case. Our hope is that those
three different hierarchies of possibility will encompass every
eventuality. We have tabled the clause simply to allow for the
possibility, which we hope will not happen, that the Alliance of Sector
Skills Councils needs to issue frameworks that do not fit any existing
sector.
Mr.
Hayes: Because of the stratified, multi-tiered approach,
it is extremely unlikely that the Bill would be used in that
way.
Mr.
Simon: My judgment is that it is unlikely. Our hope and
our preference is that it does not occur. The power exists in case
matters cannot be resolved according to the hierarchy of the three
different ways that I listed. It makes sense to keep the possibility
that a body such as the Alliance of Sector Skills Councils could issue
frameworks if necessary. However, the Bill makes clear that at any time
only one person may issue frameworks relating to one particular
apprenticeship sector.
I hope that I
have satisfied the hon. Gentleman and given the members of the
Committee the assurances that they require so that they will feel able
to withdraw the amendment, the purpose and intention of which, as I
have said, I understand and
appreciate. I
shall speak to two technical Government amendments, one of which,
amendment 158, is required to enable the Secretary of State to amend or
revoke the designation of a person to issue apprenticeship frameworks.
That is necessary in case of future changes in policy or, for example,
in the composition or coverage of a sector skills council. Without it,
the Secretary of State could not change the designated authority from
time to time, as operational requirements dictate. Amendment 165 gives
analogous powers to Welsh Ministers.
Mr.
Hayes: It was good to have William Cobbett at such an
early hour. The Minister, with his estimable literary grasp, will know
that it was that great Tory, Dr. Johnson, who said that a lack of
manual dexterity constitutes a form of ignorance. The Conservative
Benches are committed to the apprenticeship system—to transmit
manual dexterity or, as I prefer to put it, to elevate the
practical—which is why we want the framework to be as tightly
constructed as
possible. The
Minister gave a well structured argument about how this part of the
Bill might come to effect. He said that there were primary, secondary
and tertiary levels at which frameworks might be defined. The frailty
in what appeared to be a good argument, however, is that the secondary
stage of his chronology—he presented it in a chronological
fashion—contradicts the tertiary stage. Sector skills councils
need to have the flexibility to step outside their existing remit to
embrace new challenges. That is entirely right, because the economy is
dynamic—increasingly so as it becomes more advanced—as
are skills needs. We need to be able to redesign apprenticeship
frameworks and to alter the scope of sector skills councils as
necessary. If that is what sector skills councils will be able to do,
we shall never reach that tertiary stage when the Alliance of Sector
Skills Councils has to step in, because in the Minister’s
secondary stage we are giving sector skills councils the flexibility
necessary to do that job
themselves. The
Alliance of Sector Skills Councils thinks the same. It does not
perceive an occasion on which it would have to override a sector skills
council. It sees itself as an umbrella organisation, of course ensuring
a degree of consistency; certainly articulating the case for the role
of sector skills council; and, yes, communicating the collective voice
of sector skills councils on the Bill and other related matters. I am
not sure that the alliance would necessarily want the frameworks to be
slackened. Indeed, the evidence from Mr. Marshall suggested
the opposite—that it did not want what I describe as generic
apprenticeships. However, that is the possibility—faint though
it might be—that could result from the well intentioned
provision of a well intentioned
Minister.
Mr.
Simon: I want to restate that there is no question of the
unlikely-to-be-used power that we want to give to a body such as the
Alliance of Sector Skills Councils overriding the duty on sector skills
councils to produce frameworks—quite the reverse. We are talking
about a situation in which a particular framework cannot find a home,
the possibility of a framework needing to be picked up. There is no
question of overriding; the hierarchy is the other way
around. There
is no question of loosening, slackening or generalising, and everything
that the hon. Gentleman said about how apprenticeships are by their
very nature sector specific is absolutely right and I agree. However,
yesterday I was talking to a parliamentary colleague who did an
engineering apprenticeship in the 1950s—the golden days of
apprenticeships, as the hon. Gentleman would have it, when an
apprenticeship was a proper apprenticeship—and I asked him what
the difference was. He said that they were a lot more general than they
are now. Given that he defines a good apprenticeship
as—
The
Chairman: Order. I must interrupt the Minister. He is
making an intervention which is becoming a
speech.
Mr.
Hayes: As I said at the outset, Mrs. Humble,
you are firm but fair.
The Minister
switches seamlessly, but that apparent seamlessness does not fool
Opposition Members. He switches from a chronology to a hierarchy. He
started by saying that there was a process which will be exhausted
until the point that this power will be used. We then moved to a
hierarchical argument. I am not sure that this power would ever be used
if the flexibility in his secondary stage—we will use his
structure for the sake of clarity—were there. I think the sector
skills councils should, as he says, expand their scope to take into
account dynamic skills needs and a changing remit. That flexibility, if
sufficient, would avoid the need for his tertiary level. He said
himself that he did not like a three-stage process and that he would
have rather have a simpler one. So why not accept this amendment,
bolster the power of the sector skills councils to expand their range
to respond in the way we both wish they could and introduce a
Government amendment to strengthen that part of the
Bill?
Mr.
Simon: Three points. First, I want to make it clear that
the hierarchies and chronologies that I have described are in no sense
intended to be a formal part of the process. These are constructs that
I have recently invented to try to explain the situation to the
Committee as I understand it. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman’s
dichotomy between a chronology and a hierarchy is entirely false
because it is perfectly possible to have a chronological hierarchy.
Finally, what does he think we should do if a very valuable framework
needs to be made and we cannot find a sector skills council that wants
to take ownership of
it?
Mr.
Hayes: My goodness, we have a range of sector skills
councils which covers an immense number of frameworks and disciplines
and a wide range of skills. I would expect those sector skills councils
to consult on this and certainly to be in discussion with the
Government. Surely they should be able to respond and embrace those
additional challenges in the way that he describes. Adding this extra
element—be it a hierarchy or not, and I see that he is rushing
away from his hierarchical argument, lest anyone feel that they have in
these few moments been demoted in some way—is unnecessary. I
cannot see why we need all of this complexity. The sector skills
councils should be able to do the job. I trust them to do so and I hope
that the Minister does
too.
Mr.
Simon: I will not keep interrupting the hon. Gentleman to
restate the same point in different ways but what he has described is
exactly what we envisage will happen. All that he disputes is a power
that we have put in the Bill just in case it does not happen. It
should, and we think it will, happen as he described. However, he
surely must agree that it is conceivable that it may not happen,
particularly as the sector skills councils have a strict focus on their
own sectors that is so disciplined and sector
specific.
Mr.
Hayes: Let us move up a gear, up the hierarchy and along
the chronology, and explore this a little more fully. The truth is that
we should not be passing anything we do not need to in this place. We
should not add to
Bills things that are never going to happen or for distant eventualities
that are extremely unlikely. The truth is that we are doubtful about
the creation of generic apprenticeships and worry that the
apprenticeship brand will be diluted. As I have said before, we think
that the Government might even, in their less noble moments, be seduced
into doing just that.
9.30
am We
do not want this additional power, which we do not think is useful, and
we think that the concern is more than dealt with by the existing
structure, perhaps with additional flexibility of the kind the Minister
and I both advocate. For that reason, we will press the
amendment.
Question
put, That the amendment be made.
The
Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes
10.
Division
No.
4] Question
accordingly
negatived.
Amendment
proposed: 158, in
clause 11, page 6, line 29, at
end insert— ‘( ) A
designation under this section may be amended or revoked by the
Secretary of State.’—(Mr.
Simon.)
Mr.
Hayes: Government amendments 158 and 165 are minor
amendments that ensure that the Secretary of State can amend or revoke
the designation of a person to issue an apprenticeship framework. That
is intended to make the system work and is justified, as the Minister
said in his brief words, as an operational requirement. It is
operational requirements that often dictate the revocation or amendment
linked to an apprenticeship. The question to be asked is what these
operational requirements actually are, but the Minister did not make
that clear in his opening remarks. What are the circumstances in which
the Government would seek to revoke a designation, and to whom would
they consider redesignating
it?
The
Chairman: Order. I must interrupt the hon. Gentleman
because we debated that earlier when he moved amendment 21. He should
have questioned the Minister when he spoke to Government amendments 158
and 165. At this stage, we are simply formally proposing the
amendment. Amendment
158 agreed
to. Clause
11, as amended, ordered to stand part of the
Bill. Clauses
12 and 13 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
14Submission
of draft apprenticeship framework for issue:
England
Mr.
Hayes: I beg to move amendment 100, in clause 14,
page 7, line 21, after
‘such’, insert
‘reasonable’.
The
Chairman: With this we may discuss the following:
amendment 101, in
clause 14, page 7, line 22, after
‘appropriate’, insert
‘, provided such requirements are
not
burdensome’. Amendment
102, in
clause 14, page 7, line 24, after
‘decision’, insert
‘within two weeks of the making of
the
decision.’.
Mr.
Hayes: 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. Alison
Seabeck (Plymouth, Devonport) (Lab): I know from talking
to small businesses in my own constituency that they share some of his
concerns. However, I am not clear what is intended by the term
“reasonable”. I am sure that this issue will be raised
later in the debate, when the Government defend what
“reasonable” means, but I would be interested to know
what it implies.
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