Of employees.
To respond to the noble Lord, Lord Young, central government departments will be in scope. We agree strongly that the Civil Service should play its part. Indeed, I have an apprentice in the Bill team. I think that that is leading the way.
I turn to Amendment 49DA, which would remove the power of the Secretary of State to make regulations to set targets for public bodies. I do not think that that is the intention of these probing amendments, but I will say that investing in apprenticeships makes economic sense. In June 2015, research on further education in England indicated that adult apprenticeships at level 2 and level 3 deliver £26 and £28 of economic benefits respectively for each pound of government investment,
measured on an NPV basis— the difference between gross benefits and costs. As for the apprentices, to pick up another point, individuals with a level 2 apprenticeship earn on average between £48,000 and £74,000 more over their lifetime than similar individuals with level 1 or 2 qualifications only. Higher apprenticeships could earn £150,000 or more on average over their lifetime, compared with those with equivalent vocational qualifications.
Amendments 49EA, 49EB and 50AB come together. They would extend the scope of Clause 18 to place apprenticeship targets on private sector companies in the UK. They state that the target should be achieved via higher-level apprenticeships. As I have always agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Young, apprenticeships are jobs and depend on employers offering opportunities to young people. Finding the right opportunity is vital for any young person starting out on their chosen career. There will always be competition for the best places, as there is for the best universities. Employers will naturally take the best candidate for the job that they offer. Figures show that, of the 851,000 people participating in apprenticeships in 2013-14, 185,000 were aged under 19.
The positive effects of apprenticeships are clear. They have an economic and social benefit for individuals and society as a whole. The public sector employs fewer apprentices as a proportion of its workforce than the private sector. The Government are therefore keen to place targets on the public sector.
However, we are against red tape and feel we should be careful about imposing new burdens, especially when the desired objective can be achieved in another way. Therefore, 1.3 million private sector organisations that employ people should not suddenly be required overnight to take on apprentices. Instead, via apprenticeship reforms, we are putting employers at the heart of the apprenticeship programme so that they are encouraged and incentivised to employ apprentices. We also judge that it would be administratively impractical for government to monitor whether employers were having “due regard” to the targets and take action where this was not the case. Firms would have to set up a whole compliance system for this, and we believe that their efforts are better used elsewhere.
I shall come to quality on another amendment, but I shall say something about career guidance because I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Young, that it is very important. That is why we have set up the employer-led Careers & Enterprise Company. This area is rightly being actively pursued by DfE, with Ofsted taking a great deal of interest in careers in its inspections. We have discussed before the problem of getting into schools and I will feed back the noble Lord’s observations to my noble friends in the DfE. Like him, I go to schools and, like him, I always mention apprenticeships. As government, we can do a lot, but we can also do a lot individually to help encourage careers in schools.
Noble Lords made a number of observations. We will come on to quality elsewhere. I hope that the readiness to consult and my indications of where we are heading have been helpful and will enable the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.