Apprenticeships
What steps her Department is taking to support apprenticeships for young people.
Under this Government, apprenticeship starts by young people are up. We are going further and investing an additional £1 billion to support 50,000 more young people into apprenticeships with the new foundation apprenticeships, and providing £2,000 for smaller employers when they hire young apprentices.
There is no correlation between what the Minister says and what is happening on the ground. In Broadland and Fakenham, in the last year the number of apprenticeships has dropped by 20%. It has not gone up; it has gone from 150, down to 120. If the Minister thinks that more apprenticeships are a good idea, why does he not sign up for 100,000 new ones, and support the Conservative new deal for young people?
I think we should look at what people do, not what they say. This is a Government who are reversing the decline; apprenticeship starts by young people reduced by 40% under the previous Government. We are taking a range of steps, including supporting small and medium sized enterprises, and giving greater flexibility in the apprenticeship system, all to create an extra 50,000 opportunities for young people.
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am a governor at two educational institutions, and I chair the all party parliamentary group on sixth form education. My question is on access to the apprenticeship register, because in Stoke on Trent, great companies such as the Spark Group are struggling to get the registration they want in order to grow their offer to young people. They are limited by the £100,000 de minimis for subcontracting, but they have young people who want to take on the apprenticeships they are offering. Will the Minister set out what this Government might do to change that, and will he agree to meet me and the Spark Group so that we can look at ways it can give young people the opportunities they want?
My hon. Friend is a fierce champion for apprenticeships and technical education. I am happy to meet him to discuss those matters further. The Minister for Skills, my noble friend Baroness Smith in the other place, has taken a whole series of actions with the Secretary of State to reform our apprenticeship system, opening it up to create tens of thousands of additional opportunities for young people.