Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. The Government of the time must have known about employers' use of YTS trainees as cheap labour in the 1980s. It was a scandal. Not only Labour politicians say that. In 1998—10 years later—the academic Professor Sarah Vickerstaff wrote in the Journal of Vocational Education & Training:"““The legacy of youth training has for many had the combined effect of undermining the image of 'training' for young people and of 'schemes' for employers.””" We may cavil about some of the difficulties and complexities of the current architecture of FE training, but YTS was almost a dirty word in the city in which I grew up. That is such a contrast from the apprentices whom I met recently in Wakefield. I visited TEi, a heavy engineering firm in my constituency, and met Katy Roe, who was a trainee apprentice welder. That brings us back to advice and guidance on trying to get young women into non-traditional employment. Many young women think that the only apprenticeships they can do are in child caring, other caring, teaching and so on. Hairdressing is a classic example of a job for which there are many apprenticeships. That tends to be low-paid work. Katy has now finished her apprenticeship and can look forward to a future of working to build the next generation of power stations in this country and, as a 22-year-old woman, earning herself a salary of £40,000 a year, which is way above the national average. I am delighted to congratulate her on winning Yorkshire apprentice of the year. Indeed, she is going forward to the Learning and Skills Council's national competition, and I wish her well in that, too. Next year, 35,000 extra apprenticeships will be created, working in both the public and private sectors. I welcome the Secretary of State's emphasis on training in awarding private finance initiative schools contracts. That is a great step forward. Another thing that I would mention from the '80s is the end of the council house building programme. Again, we have a lost generation from that period, when construction apprentices could not get good quality public sector apprenticeships building social housing. Next year, 750,000 people will start apprenticeships, compared with just 75,000 in 1997. I want now to deal with the skills needs of older people. Train to Gain, our flagship programme of training in the workplace, has so far helped more than 1 million people get on at work. Some 43 per cent. of those who took up training last year were promoted and a third got a pay rise. I visited Morrison's supermarket and met the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers learning reps over the meat and fish counter. That experience brought home to me the power of peer education in the work force, where the people who work with each other and trust each other—they might have a chat or perhaps go out for a drink together—might say, ““I've noticed that you're not that confident at reading,”” or, ““How's your maths?”” or, ““You've got a real talent for this. Why don't you go further?”” or, ““Why don't you be the health and safety rep, the fire rep or the first-aider?”” Peer education is a non-threatening reintroduction for people who perhaps left school at 16 or had a poor school experience, or who might be lacking in confidence or have been out of the work force for a while. The Bill will give 22 million workers the right to ask for time to train, in the same way that workers are able to ask for flexible working. We need to use that programme to set people's creativity free. Firms need to use it to say, ““We're not just going to train someone to scan products on a till faster; we're going to see what great ideas are there in our work force.”” I ask the Minister to encourage firms to allow people to have time off for training that does not directly affect their jobs. The women whom I spoke to wanted to be able to go home and help their children do research on the internet, but they were not allowed access to internet-based skills training, because it was not directly relevant to their job as cashiers in a supermarket. Wakefield college also has a centre of vocational excellence in enterprise management and will be making good use of the £350 million that the Government have announced for training in small and medium-sized enterprises and for improving productivity quickly. A global recession is the time to increase, not reduce, investment in skills and training. I am afraid that that is a lesson that the Conservative party has not learned from the recessions of the '80s and '90s. Companies that do not invest in training are 2.5 times more likely to fail than those that do. The Government do not believe that top quality education should be the privilege of the few or the young. In contrast to the Tories, we are putting forward the funding that ensures that access to further education is available to everyone—real help now for students, businesses and workers. The Conservatives would cut £610 million from our universities, skills and science budget. I will give way now if any member of their Front-Bench team wishes to put the record straight, perhaps in the same way that we saw the record on funding for Sure Start centres being put straight—or perhaps slightly less wobbly—earlier. I will happily give way, but nobody is standing up to intervene, so I assume that they are happy with our calculations. The Conservatives do not understand Keynes's paradox of thrift. Keynes said that although thrift is to be encouraged in private individuals, it is a public vice. Being thrifty is not an appropriate step for Governments to take in a recession. I am afraid that the Conservative party is isolated in the world in saying that it would cut public spending now. Those cuts would mean that not a single person over the age of 19 would start an apprenticeship next year, compared with the 122,000 who will be supported by Labour. Even after that drastic step, the Tories would still slash £427 million from the universities, skills and science budget to balance the books. That is the equivalent of 100,000 students at university or a third of a million people on college courses. In an interesting exchange with the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), the hon. Member for Surrey Heath said, ““Well, we'd spend it, but we'd spend it better.”” The Conservatives cannot talk about cuts of half a billion pounds having no impact on front-line services. They really lack credibility. To conclude, there are many more things to welcome in the Bill. I particularly welcome the adult advice and careers service. I have faced a particular difficulty in trying to get people who are out of work to access proper careers guidance and the career development loans that we have made available. There is a dearth of information about that. Creating that new agency will make a real difference in helping people pursue their goals of lifelong learning. Creating a single negotiating body for the school support staff, in order to ensure that pay and conditions keep up with those of equivalent workers and to ensure better career progression and training, will be really good. Indeed, we have increased the number of those new workers by 200,000 over the past 10 years. Finally, I am particularly pleased that the Bill will encourage pupil attendance partnerships. I do not understand why certain schools take a hard line on truancy and behaviour and others allow it to continue. Truancy and disruption impact on the silent majority of good, willing pupils who are there to learn. As someone who has a young offenders institution in their constituency, I welcome the steps to ensure that education in prison is as good as it can be. I am not sure that I share the concerns of the hon. Member for Daventry about judicial review concerning access to education. The civil and social rights that we enjoy are conditional upon our behaving according to the rules of society. Any judge sitting on a case brought against a young person would say that if someone has committed a violent offence, they lose the right to access, for example, to their work-based training. I would like also to mention West Yorkshire fire and rescue service's public service programme—this relates to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Alison Seabeck)—which involves taking disaffected 14 and 15-year-olds out of school and working with them. They are put in red uniforms and given all sorts of training in fire safety and health safety. The scheme is fantastic. Young people who are school refusers or just not interested start to carry themselves well and to enjoy being part of a public sector programme. I encourage Ministers to come to Wakefield and see how what the fire service is doing can be applied creatively to other public sector apprenticeship schemes. As a trustee of Rathbone for seven years, I am also passionate about the role that the voluntary sector can play. For young people who may have failed or had nothing else in their lives, an apprenticeship might be the one good thing in their lives. It is important that the Bill should put apprenticeships on an equal footing with other forms of training and education and that it should give every young person the chance to succeed in life.