My Lords, I am grateful for these amendments and for the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, saying that there is much that is good. Actually, it is not only at the top end—the engineering apprenticeships that she described—but some of the retailers and the hospitality companies produce superb apprenticeships, which take some of the poorest and least well educated people in society and allow them to get on and progress in an awesome way.
We have discussed many of the issues underlying Amendment 49J because it talks about quality as well as quantity and, of course, Amendment 52 mentions funding. The Chancellor announced the Government’s intention to introduce the apprenticeship levy in this summer’s Budget—a surprise announcement, I think. It will be used to fund and improve the quality of apprenticeships. We need a reversal, as we have all been saying, in the trend of employer underinvestment in training, which has seen a decline in the amount and quality of training undertaken by employers over 20 years. This was highlighted in the report by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, published in July this year, which recommended the introduction of a levy to fund the apprenticeship programme.
Past approaches to tackle this decline have relied on voluntarism and a significant government subsidy aimed at encouraging private funding. However time spent by employees in training has continued to decline. The levy is a model that is working successfully in more than 50 countries around the world, which is why we have decided to adopt it here. We will be putting employers directly in control of their apprenticeship training. Employers are currently leading in the development of apprenticeship standards. With the levy, they will be able to decide to which apprenticeship training providers they wish to direct funding.
The Government consulted on the key levy proposals during the summer and we received more than 700 responses. We are currently analysing them and will use what employers and others have told us to try to address concerns and meet employer aspirations for growth and quality. The Chancellor will be announcing further details on the levy as part of the spending review announcement later this month. I believe it is premature to seek to impose a reporting schedule on the impact of the levy. The levy will not be introduced before 2017 and there is further work to be done on the detailed implementation of the policy. At this stage, seeking to impose new reports within a 12-month period would be unlikely to provide robust evidence.
However, I can say today that we will continue to publish comprehensive quarterly data on apprenticeships through the Government’s published statistical first releases, published by the SFA, which include data on learner numbers by age, as well as by region, gender, ethnicity, disability, level and sector. We also publish research into the impact of apprenticeships on employers, including the employers’ survey, which monitors the extent to which apprenticeships are meeting the needs of employers and identifies aspects that are under- performing, with the next survey due in 2016.
When we introduce the apprenticeship levy, we are proposing to put in place a full and structured evaluation programme and publish the results. We expect this to
address the points raised by noble Lords in relation to the impact on employer investment, the mix of programmes being delivered and their quality. I ask for patience, as we intend to publish more details on the levy shortly. Amendment 49J also referred to funding for non-apprenticeship schemes; funding for those will also be a matter for the spending review. The noble Lord’s Amendment 52 relates to apprenticeship schemes in England and Wales. While apprenticeships in England are the responsibility of the Secretary of State, apprenticeships in Wales fall within a devolved area of policy.