My Lords, the noble Lord who has just spoken paid tribute to my noble friend Lord Young’s continuing interest in and support for the apprenticeship movement. His words carry much weight in these areas. I have only four small questions for the noble Earl in what I take to be more of an amuse bouche than a first course, because we will be returning to these matters in the Enterprise Bill next Wednesday—if we make a little more progress than we did yesterday.
The first question is on almost the same point that has just been raised, which is that in this statutory instrument we are closer to finding an approved English apprenticeship only to see it removed and replaced by the statutory English apprenticeship in the Enterprise Bill, although obviously the dates will vary. When he comes to respond, perhaps the noble Earl could give us a sense of how this is going to segue from one to the other and what changes there will be in practice in terms of what the Bill says and what is currently meant by this statutory instrument. I suspect that that is a slightly longer piece than will be possible in this discussion, so I am happy for him to write to me.
My second point is that in paragraph 10 of the Explanatory Memorandum on the impact, the statement is made that:
“A separate full regulatory impact assessment has not been prepared for this consequential instrument because no impact on the private, public or voluntary sectors is foreseen separate to that already covered by the substantive provisions in the Act”.
That is fine, but unfortunately I am not very good at keeping my files and I could not find the impact assessment for the original Act, and clearly there is a hint here that there were some costs as a result of this change. Perhaps the noble Earl could dig it out—I see a little bit of panic behind him, so perhaps it will take a few days. However, if at some point I could have some indication of what the costs would be, I would be grateful for that.
My third question reinforces the point about quality that was made by my noble friend Lord Young. The Ofsted report on apprenticeships is extremely damning in many ways. It would be interesting to hear the reflections of the noble Earl on what lies behind the
points made by my noble friend, which is that we can change the title all we want, but if we do not raise standards or change the nature of what is happening, we will be in trouble. I would like some assurances that the simple change in nomenclature, which is what appears to be happening here, is in fact covered by more action on the part of his department in terms of trying to ensure that standards in apprenticeship training rise and will indeed, it is hoped, eventually get to the point where we are talking about parity of esteem between the academic and the non-academic or vocational routes so that we can in truth have a fully integrated system of further education complementing those who choose the academic route, but also open to those who wish to switch between the two strains.
The final point is my familiar trope on implementation dates. I appreciate that we are talking about a minor change that is consequent on a piece of legislation which is soon to be overtaken, but the Government have signed up to common commencement dates for the implementation of activities that will put a burden on business. This statutory instrument appears to come in 21 days after the order is made, which presumably will be tomorrow or the day after, and therefore is in a situation where it will come in in late October, which is not one of the two commencement dates, which are, as I am sure the noble Earl will be aware, 1 October and 6 April. Why was this not brought forward only a matter of days to 1 October? Given its simplicity and apparently innocuousness in terms of changing things, why on earth did the department not get its act together for 1 October? Given that it is inconsequential and will shortly be overtaken by another Act, why did the noble Earl not wait until 6 April?