Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

What the hon. Gentleman needs to understand is that what matters—this is very important—is the number of people who successfully qualify in an apprenticeship. When the hon. Gentleman's party was in power about a quarter of people—if that—ever completed an apprenticeship. The completion rate is now up to two thirds. That is why we are successful. Not only are more people starting apprenticeships, but more people are completing them, and they are completing them at level 2 and level 3. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath said that the Prime Minister had not met his target of 500,000 apprenticeships. Well, that is a bit challenging, because the target is for 2020. The hon. Gentleman knew that when he quoted the figure, but why let a decent fact spoil a good misuse of statistics? The truth is that the Government have rescued apprenticeships and they are now well on their way to their rightful place in the mainstream of our education and training system—[Interruption.] The number of starts has gone up. The hon. Member for Havant cannot say that it has gone down. He does not understand the statistics and he should look at what matters. The number of people starting apprenticeships has gone up. The number of people completing apprenticeships has gone up. Those are the key facts that matter. The measures that we have announced today—an additional 21,000 public sector apprenticeships and, in total, an additional 35,000 extra apprenticeships over this year—will take the total number of people starting apprenticeships this coming year to more than 250,000, and that takes us further forward. So does this Bill. It does what the House of Lords Committee—on which served three former Conservative Chancellors of the Exchequer, as well as my noble Friend Lord Layard—recommended, by establishing a National Apprenticeship Service. That proposal has been treated with derision by the Opposition as an addition to the quangocracy, but the House of Lords was right. If we are to make a real success of driving apprenticeships forward to the next stage, we need a dedicated service, able to support the careers service in schools that so many people have talked about; able to support employers; and able to work on the support for the group training associations that I happily and effusively support, as I was asked to do by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart). The Conservatives reject the advice on apprenticeships given by the House of Lords Committee dominated by members of their own party. It does not do the Opposition much credit to have made the concerted effort that they have, today and on other days, to rubbish the achievements of this Government on apprenticeships. They would do much better to acknowledge what has been achieved. There are debates to be had about how we should proceed, but instead they appear to want only to denigrate everything that we propose. An important part of the Bill for my Department—it has hardly been mentioned this evening—is the introduction of the right to request time to train. That is a new right at work that will cover 22 million people, not only those with lower levels of skills. It will directly address the problem in those workplaces where skills needs and training are not regularly discussed. It does mean that people will have the opportunity to identify their training needs and employers will have to respond to a reasonable request to give that time off.