My Lords, I have nothing to complain about in the substance of what the Minister has just indicated. Raising the participation age makes sense. However, I have recently expressed my concern in at least one debate about the recent Ofsted report which said that a number of apprenticeships were failing to meet standards. That should be of real concern to a Government who I know are committed to apprenticeships and to raising their quality. The problem is that this is the old story about checking against delivery. There has never been a perfect situation where all apprenticeships were right, but the report from Ofsted is worrying. It distinguished between the kind of apprenticeships that you get in retail and social care, as opposed to those in engineering and other types of apprenticeships. It said that most problems were in those to which I referred first—in retail and social care.
I was discussing this issue recently with someone who has experience in this field. They told me that, for instance, in some cases the amount of time that training providers have for each apprenticeship is pitifully low. I cannot remember whether they were saying that it was an hour a week or an hour a month, but it was very low. If we are serious about improving the standards of apprenticeships and the perception that people have of them—that they are just as good a route as an academic one—we really cannot afford to be complacent.
I also raised on a previous occasion what was perhaps an even more worrying occurrence, where an apprentice was sent out one day to work in a factory and never returned home, as a result of an appalling industrial accident. I had an exchange of correspondence with the Minister but I cannot say that it made me feel any more sanguine about the treatment of young apprentices. He said that there is a duty on the employer: well, we know that. But surely there is also a duty on us all, and on the training provider, to ensure that if they send a young person to a particular location, they will have checked out whether the employer is reliable and responsible. I do not expect the Minister to give me all the answers today because this is not an easy problem to solve.
To sum up, we must ensure the quality of apprenticeships; not just talking about it, but ensuring that we have a system and a process in place so that we can say with confidence to young people and their parents that when they embark on an apprenticeship, not only will the quality of the training be first class, but also the safety of the young person will be assured. I think that we have a lot to do in this area. If we are serious about pushing the target up to 3 million—I assume that the Government are serious—which is very ambitious, we should note that a number of people have expressed their concerns by saying: never mind the quantity, it is the quality that we have to ensure. I am just as keen as the Government to increase
the number of apprenticeships, but I would like an assurance that the Minister will check that we have put the right procedures in place to ensure both the quality and the safety of apprenticeships.