Women: Training and Upskilling

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox]

My noble friend Lady Harris is very kind in allowing me to say that I do not have the data with me. I will send a list to her and a copy in the office. I know that 56% of women are now in full-time work, which is useful to know, and the number of women employed rose by 23,000 this quarter. Sadly, I cannot give her the data sets today. We are working hard to make sure that the apprenticeships women take up—and more than half the apprentices in this country are women—are much higher skilled and very often jobs which would have gone to men without even a second thought. So we are on the job.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, as well as this important side of training women for relevant jobs—retraining them in many cases—would the Minister also ensure that adequate attention is given to young girls? They should be made aware of the needs of the nation and the fact that these are often in completely different areas than the ones that are their favourites today.

[Baroness Wilcox]

I am delighted to answer that question. We are starting in schools; we have an all-age careers service, which will come into schools to talk to girls much earlier than we have done in the past, to give them much more idea of what is available. We have more than 200,000 different apprenticeships available now, including in nuclear decommissioning and all sorts of wondrous things that girls can learn. So, yes, it is an excellent idea.