Employee Study and Training (Qualifying Period of Employment) Regulations 2010

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing and explaining the regulations. I have just a few questions. During the passage of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill, we debated at length the statutory rights of employees to request time to undertake business-relevant study or training. As he mentioned, we recognised that many employers actively support training. However, according to the National Employers Skills Survey 2007, one-third of employers do not train their staff, and 8 million employees each year do not have any formalised training. As the Minister said, the regulations apply where an employee has been continuously employed for a period of not less than 26 weeks. Until next year, the legislation is intended to apply only to employers of more than 250 people. I note that only 33 small firms responded to the Small Firms Impact Test. That seems a very small sample. We are concerned that for many small businesses, requests for training may be time-consuming to consider, and time out to train would cause significant disruption to business and consequent bad feeling if the request were turned down. What action will the Government take to assist small businesses to implement the legislation next year? In Committee, my noble friend Lady Sharp asked about the training needs of 16 to 18 year-olds. In respect of this regulation, will the 26-week rule apply also to young people? Their training needs might change more rapidly than those of the adult workforce. Will it be assumed that they will already be in a structured training programme? The impact assessment estimates that the overall net benefit to the economy will be around £227 million in the first year and £472 million in the second. It goes on to estimate that for the public sector, the worst case would be a net cost of £37 million in the first year and £78 million in subsequent years. Will the Minister clarify that this is indeed the expectation for the public sector, and that it is envisaged that the sector will always bear these levels of annual cost? We know that the regulations carry the support of the CBI and of the TUC, and that further evaluations will take place before they are extended. With those provisos, we support them. I hope that the Minister will offer reassurances on the points raised, and look forward to his reply.