UK Parliament / Open data

Enterprise Bill [HL]

Amendment 52 is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Stoneham. As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said, both these amendments are asking for a review. We have been talking about the quality of apprenticeships. I say in passing that although many of us have been rather negative, there are quite a number of extraordinarily good apprenticeships in operation.

I spoke earlier about what happened at the Olympic Park, and that is an example of how apprenticeships can be created, but one only has to look at companies such as BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce, which offer an absolute gold standard in terms of apprenticeships. Other companies are aspiring to do the same, and those sorts of apprenticeships are extraordinarily good. They offer not only higher-level apprenticeships but a route to progression. Sadly, there have been some bad examples—picked up by, among others, Ofsted—and it is important that in pushing forward the number of apprenticeships, they aspire to best practice rather than picking up worst practice. The idea of producing an annual review and asking the Secretary of State to report on such an annual review is to pick up this whole notion of the quality of apprenticeships and make sure that they are the sorts of apprenticeships that one would like to see.

The other aspect of this is that this part of the Bill is expressly about creating apprenticeships in public sector bodies. Our Amendment 52 asks for a review of how far this is working within the framework of the public sector and what impact it is having in both public and private sectors. However, I think we have had enough discussion of the general issue of equality and the need to promote equality that I do not need to go any further.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

765 c287GC 

Session

2015-16

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords Grand Committee

Subjects

Back to top