Apprenticeships

Lord Watts Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, consultation has been a key feature in all the work that we have been doing on apprenticeships. I certainly take the noble Baroness’s point that we need to ensure that those particular groups are properly consulted and helped with good practice. We will be publishing a lot more material on how the apprenticeship system will work in coming months.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, how many of the apprenticeships that the Minister has just set out would be recognised as real apprenticeships in Germany?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

Not all of them, I suspect. This gives me the opportunity to say that I think we are doing the right thing and that the levy will help to correct two decades of underinvestment in apprenticeships and insufficient attention to quality. Our whole approach is to increase standards, make every apprenticeship last at least a year and generally change the whole basis of training in this country.