Anne Main highlights the value of apprenticeships

18th November 2015

Anne Main highlights the value of lower level apprenticeships as they offer opportunities for young people to learn worthwhile work skills regardless of their educational attainment at school.

Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con): It is interesting to follow the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who says we should bring back night school. I would like to know where he would get the funding for it. It has been gone for a long time in a lot of areas.

Mr Deputy Speaker, you missed being lectured for 15 minutes by the Scottish National party spokesperson in a debate that its Members did not even bother to sit around to participate in afterwards. That is a real shame, given that we have an Opposition day debate today. I feel sorry that we were lectured like that when they could not be bothered to stay to listen to the meat of the debate.

I want to focus on apprenticeships, because the motion says that this Government are risking the country’s prosperity, yet it leaves out apprenticeships. The right hon. Gentleman did refer to them, but I was disappointed to hear him say that they are not worth the paper they are written on. I have been working with my local college, Oaklands college, which has apprenticeship week in March; I met many providers who were encouraged to make sure that apprenticeships are worth while. That is why I wanted to speak in this debate. I cringed when I heard the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) sneer—I can use no other word—about an apprenticeship; she seemed to be saying that using the till in a bakery was not worth while.

Catherine West rose

Mrs Main: I am not giving way to the hon. Lady, because she has plenty on her own side who wish to speak. Many young people, my own son included, want to go into an apprenticeship and they will be feeling today, “If I take up an apprenticeship at the lower level and learn some of the skills of interacting with other people, using the till, and learning to get up to get to work on time, to make myself presentable and to make myself work-ready, somehow I am not—

Catherine West: On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it possible to come back on a particular point?

Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle): It is up to each Member to decide whether to give way.

Mrs Main: As I have said, I did try to intervene when this matter was under discussion. I want to speak on this because young people will feel that it is not worth learning some of the softer skills, such as how to deal with customers, how to be pleasant, how to be work ready, and how to turn up on time in the morning. I worry that we are going down a route of saying that being academic—I am sure that you absolutely were, Mr Deputy Speaker—is the only thing that is worth pursuing. I wish to speak up for the work that this Government have done in bringing up the value for everybody regardless of their educational attainment at school. I am talking about bringing up the value for those people who are learning to get into the job of work.

Karin Smyth rose

Mrs Main: No, I will not give way.

Karin Smyth: On that point—

Mrs Main: Okay, I will give way, but the hon. Lady is taking time from her own side.

Karin Smyth: The hon. Lady has misrepresented what was said. There was no attempt to degrade lower skilled jobs or say that they were not important, or that the people going into those jobs were not important, but those jobs are not what we think of as high-skilled apprenticeships. That was the point that my hon. Friend was trying to make, and she has been misrepresented.

Mrs Main: The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) made her point very clearly. Effectively, she was saying, “What was that worth?” I am saying that, for many young people, getting to work on time, being presentable, using soft skills, and learning how to use a till, particularly if they are not mathematically literate, are valuable. I have met young people with disabilities who find those opportunities valuable. We must stop degrading those opportunities by saying that they are not worth the paper they are written on—the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said that. We have to ensure that apprenticeships are worth the paper they are written on. It is a different matter if they are not. I am not aware of any apprenticeships in my constituency that are not worth the paper they are written on, and I am seeing young people benefiting from them.

I pay tribute to the Minister for encouraging people. I wish to remove any sneering about people who do not have high academic attainment and say, “If you are serving me in my local Greggs in St Albans, I value you. I value the fact that you are engaging with me properly and that you are someone who has taken the trouble to skill up.” I would not like to see that young person being put off from taking on any further education.

Let me mention Naomi. She was a young person who had not done well at school, who was not good at attending and who was not good in the world of work. She was picked up by Barclays, and she has become an absolute credit to it. It trained her up, got her work ready, got her studying qualifications alongside being trained up on the job. Now Naomi is a high achiever for Barclays. That first chance to get on the rung of an apprenticeship—our Government should be proud of what it is offering—is not just a throwaway that should not even be considered in the motion. It is something that is hugely valuable and sets many young people like Naomi on the right path into work and gets it into their head that there is something worth studying for. They realise that they can make something of their lives.

I value apprenticeships at all levels. For some young people, they click in a way that school did not. It is not always right to get everybody going into more education. Many can absorb a lot, learn a lot and change their lives by taking up some of those more modest offerings that the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green and others sneer about and refer to as not being worth the paper they are written on.

6.13 pm

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