No. I have given way to the hon. and learned Lady and I do not intend to do so again, because I am getting on to other aspects of the Bill.
Part 4—clauses 20 and 21—deals with apprenticeships. This Government are presiding over what employers have described as a “skills emergency”, and productivity in the economy continues to be revised down year by year. The Bill contains welcome measures that aim to strengthen the quality of apprenticeships and to give statutory protection to the term itself. Labour Members have consistently supported the drive to deliver more high quality apprenticeships, but we worry about imposing an arbitrary numerical target, not least because it could militate against high-value, high-quality provision. We note that the Bill gives Ministers the power to set targets for apprenticeships in the public sector but is silent on how these targets will be met when the round of savage public sector cost-cutting continues unabated and FE provision is being decimated.
Clauses 30 to 32, in part 7, deal with the UK Green Investment Bank. The bank has only just been established and the Government are now seeking to flog it off—or, as I think the Secretary of State said, “set it free”. In the light of the Paris climate conference, where Governments, investors and businesses across the world agreed to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy, it is absolutely extraordinary that he has allowed the Chancellor to sell off the bank, setting back efforts to build a greener low-carbon economy.