My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her response and I look forward to the letter that she is going to send me. I hope that she will update us on precisely what is happening in relation to the Little report. My information is that not enough has been done already and it would be very nice to see a spur applied to some of the implementation.
Again, I am a little disappointed by the Government’s response. They do not hesitate to set targets not only for local government but for all kinds of public bodies, yet they are not prepared to write into those targets a
much lesser target in terms of taking on young people who we all know need to be offered these opportunities. Access is a recurring theme whenever we talk about apprenticeships and, for that matter, education and training provision for younger people. There is no doubt that access is difficult for them. Opening the doors by means of something relatively gentle in terms of a target for these bodies to aim for need not be as prescriptive as the Minister suggests; it could just nudge them in the right direction.
I look forward to the Minister’s letter and may return to this issue once I have read it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.