Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, in his usual erudite way. These are the kind of issues on which the Public Bill Committee can get assurances from the Minister when it examines the Bill in detail. This is why the Committee needs sufficient time to do that, and I am sure that the Minister will be only too delighted to give such assurances. I want to turn to the quality of apprenticeships. When the Select Committee was examining the draft Bill, we noticed that no reference had been made to the quality of apprenticeships. We concluded that"““the consequences of the substantial expansion of the numbers need to be carefully monitored””." Clauses 80 and 92 of the finalised Bill require the chief executive of the Skills Funding Agency to have regard to the ““quality of the training”” in respect of the duties to secure apprenticeship places. That needs a lot of flushing out, at the end of the day. In addition, the annual report from the chief executive of the National Apprenticeship Service to Ministers will have to include a report on the overall quality of apprenticeship training. That sounds great, but the Government believe that the"““main measure of success for apprenticeships is the proportion of apprentices who successfully complete their apprenticeship frameworks.””" The two things are quite different. Completing a process that fulfils the requirements of a framework does not necessarily mean that the required quality has been achieved. I hope that the question of quality will be addressed. Who is to inspect all this? We are coming back to the issue of Ofqual, in some ways. Who is to establish the quality of apprenticeship schemes? That is a crucial question. It is fundamental to the whole issue, as I think hon. Members accept. I believe that Ofsted is not the right organisation to do that. We now know that Ofsted's role, which has changed dramatically since the 1980s and early 1990s, has become more light touch. In many ways, it has been counting and it has been ticking the boxes in our schools and colleges, but that, frankly, is not what is wanted. How can Ofsted, without any track record of working with employers, actually go effectively into exchanges with them when we need investment in apprenticeships and quality assurance delivery? I hope that the Minister will look further into that.