Neil O'Brien

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1. “Obviously, the Budget saw a £40 billion overall tax increase and the largest part of that is a £25 billion increase in national insurance, which is squarely targeted on part-time and lower-income workers. It hits exactly the tier of the workforce that is typically the apprenticeship kind of tier. Of course, apprenticeships do not require payment of national insurance, but when we see lots of employers, as we do now, shedding jobs in that tier, that is inevitably bad for the number of apprenticeships. That is compounded by what the Government want to do in terms of taking money out of apprenticeships. There has been some confusion about that, because safely before the election, Labour in opposition had the idea that it was going to let employers take 50% of the money from the levy and spend it on things that were not apprenticeships.”

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2. “GC87.] As another Labour peer, Baroness Blower, pointed out, “the appropriate move from where we are would be to a statutory body”. —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 21 November 2024; Vol. 841, c. GC90.] Stephen Evans, chief executive of the Learning and Work Institute, said that giving Skills England legislative backing “would…cement the body’s independence.” In contrast, the Bill originally introduced by the Government did not even include the words “Skills England”. The very act of a further reorganisation, even if one thinks it is a good idea, is likely to further compound the effects of the Budget and the decision to move apprenticeships money to other things. I will just rehearse that for a moment.”

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3. “As numerous people have pointed out, we would not and do not accept that on the academic side, where we have both independent exam boards and Ofqual creating and monitoring specifications and exams. This is yet another example of our treating the academic side—the route that most of us went down—differently from the technical side. As the Labour peer Lord Knight has pointed out: “The problem that some of us have with the Bill is that it feels like the second half is missing. The second half is the establishment of Skills England as a statutory body…Being subsumed within a division of the Department for Education…is problematic. The Minister needs to reflect on it.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 21 November 2024; Vol. 841, c.”

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4. “Lady: there is a lot to do to make it easier for SMEs to participate in the levy-led system. I am just not convinced that any of the concerns she raises will be addressed by shutting down IfATE or setting up Skills England. She might hope that they will be—I hope that they will be—but I do not see anything in this legislation that will fix any of the problems that she complains about. Obviously, we hope that collectively we will solve the problems in the system. There are quite a lot of concerns—including concerns among those on the Labour Benches, which I will come on to—about the transfer of IfATE’s powers to the Secretary of State compromising the independence with which apprenticeships and wider technical qualifications, such as T-levels, are accredited, and diluting the voice of employers.”

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5. “As I said, I am absolutely ready to hear detailed thoughts and to have the detailed discussion about how one improves all these different things, and I am pleased that the hon. Lady’s local college seems to be highly successful in delivering these things. Every year, on average, twice as many people started apprenticeships under the last Government as started them under the previous Labour Government, so we did get a lot more of them, as well as higher quality. I do not know what the 90 bits of paper are, but I am absolutely ready to hear and to talk about ways we could improve those matters. On the point about SMEs that the hon. Lady raised, that is exactly why last March we moved to 100% funding for SMEs—to make things easier for them. I agree with the hon.”

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6. “However, that shift was essential, and I do not think that anyone wants to go back from standards to frameworks. There was a damning 2015 Ofsted report, which the hon. Lady will remember well, that found that quite a lot of people—a lot of learners—had been on an apprenticeship for more than a year and did not even know they were on an apprenticeship.”

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7. “I give the hon. Lady the national-level data—I think I did already—because I do not have in my head the data for every constituency. At the national level, we had twice as many apprenticeship starts every year under the last Conservative Government as we did under the previous Labour Government. The hon. Lady might say, “That’s not enough; it should’ve been even higher,” and I would perhaps even agree with her. I would have liked the number to be even higher as well. The hon. Lady said that numbers fell. What we saw was that, even though the overall number of starts was twice as high under the Conservatives as it had been under Labour, absolutely, the shift from frameworks to standards and to a higher quality of apprenticeships did reduce numbers. It did not take them down to where they had been under Labour, but it did reduce them.”

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8. “Such was the low level of quality—such was the total absence of any training or meaningful content in the apprenticeship. What we had was an abuse. What we had was employers being able to pay below the national minimum wage—below the rates even for young people—and, at the same time, not providing meaningful training and what all of us want, which is proper, high-quality apprenticeships. I do not think the hon. Lady is really going to argue for a move back to those previous frameworks—”

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9. “We do not have the skills Minister herself with us, because, of course, she is in the other place, but I do just note that the Government have created a situation in which a lot of universities are facing industrial action—because the national insurance increase has wiped out all of the increases in fees, and one broken promise on fees is now being used to pay for another broken promise on tax. The Employment Rights Bill makes it easier to take industrial action. I think that a lot of universities, as employers, are dreading the impact. Having addressed that point, I will get back on topic.”

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10. “Therefore, if a Government do not want to create large rates of youth unemployment—and most systems around the OECD do not—they end up with different minimum wage rates for different ages. That system has been there since the start; it was there when Labour created these things, and it was still there when we turned it into the national living wage, so none of that is novel. I will say one thing about the Employment Rights Bill, since it has been brought up.”

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11. “Just to reassure the lady, the numbers are correct. Although I do not encourage people to use mobile phones in Committee, Sir Christopher, the hon. Lady can google her way to the 2015 Ofsted report. She can read it for herself and be chilled, as I was, by its description of the pre-reform system and the low level of quality that was being provided in it. The hon. Lady tempts us off the topic to talk about wider issues. On those different rates, I would say that most systems around the world, including ours, have different rates of minimum wage by age. That is about making the so-called “bite” of the minimum wage similar for different ages. Different groups of people at different ages have different productivity levels and different typical rates of pay.”

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12. “Sure. A shadow form exists at the moment, but that does not change the longer-term point that if we do not give it its own legislative basis and make it independent of the Department, all the criticisms and concerns about the dilution of the employer voice and so on still stand. I am not having a go at those who are setting up Skills England.”

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13. “The criticisms being made by people in the industry and people with experience in education and skills are serious. I hope that the Government will listen to them, rather than simply overturning what they have done and ignoring them.”

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14. “The DFE has some good NEDs, by the way, but that is not the same as having an independent institution. That is why Lord Blunkett and other Labour peers are warning that the Government are making a mistake. Those are their words, not ours. Lord Blunkett has a lot more experience of those things than me. All I would say to the Minister and to hon. Members on the Government Benches is, instead of overturning what peers have put into the Bill, this might be one of those times when it is more sensible to listen to people on their own side, people with some serious grey hairs and a lot of experience, people in their own party, who are advising them that they are making a mistake here. Instead of overturning what they have done, the Government should allow it to stand.”

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15. “A fantastic person—all good. It is like having NEDs—non-executive directors—in a Department; it is good to have external people. As I noted, however, the CEO of the organisation is literally not a civil servant; it is a job-share civil servant. They are people who currently work in the Department doing post-16 skills, so I am not sure about idea that this is an independent body. Can the hon. Lady tell me where Skills England is based? Physically, where is it located? Perhaps the Minister will tell us. Is it in Sanctuary Buildings, by any chance? Sanctuary Buildings is none other than the headquarters of the DFE. Is this, in fact a desk in an open plan office that is part of the DFE? The Government can bring in good people. It is good to bring in good people.”

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16. “I, too, pay tribute to the work of Lord Sainsbury. Those points, which were inserted into what were then called the Sainsbury routes, drew on the experience of the best technical systems in the world, particularly those in Germany and Switzerland. What characterises those systems is the unbelievable level of employer ownership and the incredible constancy of the organisations, which are external to Government, that run them. The Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung has been around for, I think, 50 or 60 years. Are those not the characteristics of a good system—employer ownership and independence—and the things that Lord Sainsbury was talking about?”

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17. “Does my right hon. Friend agree that the context in which this is happening matters? We are talking about getting rid of a prestigious and independent institution, and at the same time, T-levels will not do what Lord Sainsbury hoped they will do. They were supposed to replace the existing standards but, in fact, they will be just another thing in the alphabet soup. We are seeing apprenticeships being made shorter again, and we are going back towards shelf-stacking types of apprenticeships. The mood music is already pretty ominous, and that is against the backdrop of Ministers getting more power by taking this back into the Department and abolishing independence. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is an issue?”

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18. “The Minister says she does not want to set a limit, but there was a commitment from the Secretary of State that employers would be able to spend up to 50% of their funds on non-apprenticeships. That was a Labour commitment. If I understand her, it will no longer be up to 50%; it will be some other number. Or is she saying that it will be up to 100%? Which of those things is she saying?”

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19. “Now we have another position—a fifth—on the spending of this money: “No, that is not the number any more.” Employers will be jaw-to-the-floor agog at what is going on in the DFE. What is the policy? This is billions of pounds of employers’ money, in a difficult economic situation, being spent imminently, and yet the DFE cannot say—the Minister literally would not take a further question on it—what the policy is. What an extraordinary situation. What a shameful situation. Unbelievable. We have been saying that, down the line, there might be some things to worry about in this transfer of power away from an employer-led and independent system towards the tender mercies of the DFE, but employers have got something to worry about right now. The Government do not seem to know what their own policies are.”

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20. “We have mysteries wrapped in mysteries here. As well as the lack of clarity about the future caused by the Bill, even in this debate on one group of clauses, we have had an extraordinary statement by the Minister. Businesses would like to know how, in just a few months’ time—next year—they will be able to spend a couple of billion pounds of their own money. This is employers’ money. Labour have oscillated between, “We will let 50% of this go on other things”, “No, we will not” and, since being in government, “We are reviewing this. This is not our policy any more.” On the Floor of the House, the Secretary of State has been saying, “No, it is absolutely our policy—50%. That is the number.” That is what she has told the House.”

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21. “I am not asking for a target; that is a complete mischaracterisation. I am asking for clarity on the Government’s own policy. The Government said that that they would allow employers to take up to 50% of the money and spend it on things that were not apprenticeships. Either that is still the policy or it is no longer the policy. Which of those two things is the truth?”

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22. “I beg to move amendment 3, in clause 4, page 2, line 6, at end insert— “(3B) A group of persons under subsection (3) must include a representative from an organisation that is the representative body for a sector.””

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23. “It is our way of encouraging the Government to be much clearer than they have been, in the framework document or anywhere else, about how they will maintain IfATE’s focus on involving employers in drawing such things up; that was really its purpose. Our concern is to ensure that politicians who have some foible of their own—some idea or bee in their bonnet—do not impose what they want without listening to industry. That might not be current Ministers; it might be future Ministers. That is why we tabled these amendments. Perhaps the Minister will reassure us on that point, and perhaps she will even accept the amendments.”

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24. “The section on the responsibilities of the chief executive focuses just on their role as the accounting officer, in relation to the board and in relation to their responsibilities to the Department for Education. There is no mention of employers. There is no explicit reference in the section on the purposes of the new agency; there is just the reference that I have mentioned. If I were an employer, I might be concerned by that. We have this strange proposal that the Secretary of State will just be allowed to write everything herself, whenever she believes that it is advantageous to do so. With our amendments, we are not trying to stop that, although we are very sceptical about it. We are just trying to specify the sorts of people who will be involved.”

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25. “That is why you have to make it clear in legislation that, as Skills England goes forward and as, particularly in this context, its apprenticeship functions go forward, it has to involve everybody, even though it takes longer”. —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 21 November 2024; Vol. 841, c. GC104.] All of this matters because the framework document, which has now been published and which I have here, is at best vague and at worst silent on the involvement of employers. There are some vague statements in the section on aims. It says that employers will be engaged in the preparation of standards and so on, but it does not say how. The rest of the document does not refer to this.”

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26. “Having seen Governments and civil servants struggling with the implications of new technologies, it might be an example of where there is more cause to work with others who know the industry well rather than go it alone. I am not sure that that is the example that I would pick to show why this is a good idea. The Cross-Bench peer Baroness Wolf noted: “I was staggered when I was working as an expert adviser in government to discover, for example, that most people in the apprenticeship division in the DfE had been in their jobs for only a couple of years. There were some wonderful people, but there was no real collective memory of why things had gone wrong before.”

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27. “Yet, under the Bill, that is exactly what we will be able to do on the technical side. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire pointed out earlier, this is another difference in parity of esteem between the technical and academic sides. The Secretary of State will be able to be judge, jury and executioner in this legislation. When asked for an example of when the Secretary of State’s power to go it alone and write things herself will be used, the skills Minister told peers that it could be used to “update standards for emerging or rapidly developing occupations, such as those in the digital sector.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 21 November 2024; Vol. 841, c. GC108.] Personally, I do not find that very reassuring.”

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28. “It is not at all obvious to me why they would be any problem, but the Minister in the Lords seemed resistant to these ideas, arguing that this would be a “constraint in the system” that would slow down “groups coming together”. It is not at all obvious to me why it would slow things down. The power to make standards and assessment plans alone is not something that we would ever accept for academic qualifications. The Secretary of State would not be allowed to write the national curriculum for, let us say, GCSE Geography and then take on the role of the examining boards—OCR, Cambridge Assessment or whatever—and turn it into a specification. We would not accept it if she took on the role of Ofqual and was in charge of marking her own homework and deciding whether the standards were comparable to similar things.”

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29. “Amendment 3 states: “A group of persons under subsection (3) must include a representative from an organisation that is the representative body for a sector.” Amendment 4 says: “When approving a standard under subsection (3), the Secretary of State must have regard to the reasonable requirements of— (a) industry, commerce, finance, professions and other employers regarding education and training, and (b) persons who may wish to undertake education and training.” I will not read out amendments 5 and 6 because they just repeat the same things in relation to clause 5. One would think that the amendments are pretty uncontentious, and I hope that the Government will be able to accept them.”

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30. “The concept of engaging with employers and other stakeholders in relationship to development of apprenticeship standards and technical qualifications is well founded and valuable.” One of the central pillars of IfATE was its focus on employer and business needs to create and maintain suitable qualifications to equip people for the world of work. As such, we recognise the importance of keeping that focus to ensure that businesses can still trust the qualifications, so that they continue to invest in the future generation of employees. The Bill, however, gives very wide-ranging powers to the Secretary of State without maintaining those clear external links and the accountability that they help to provide. That is potentially damaging to the status of these qualifications.”

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31. “Clauses 4 and 5, to which our amendments apply, allow the Secretary of State to prepare, respectively, either a standard or an apprenticeship assessment plan on her own. She can do that as long as she is satisfied that it would be more appropriate for the standard to be prepared by the Secretary of State rather than a group of persons. The Government say that a group of persons will normally be consulted, but the Bill does not specify who will be consulted when it refers to “a group of persons”. That lack of detail is concerning, and our amendments seek to rectify it. In its written evidence to the Committee, the Royal Society of Chemistry said that it feels that “some of the mechanisms put in place by IfATE should be retained.”

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32. “The Minister is worried about undue delays, but what is the timeframe for an undue delay? Is she worried that something will be held up by a week or a month?”

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33. “There are other examples, including the tech sector, where we hear the comment, “We want to be able to do things really quickly.” I can see the attraction politically of a dynamic young Minister wanting to come up with some new whizzy thing. That is exactly where problems come in. We also heard the example about the nuclear industry, where it was said, “The industry is not able to participate in drawing up the standards for itself. Therefore, we will just crack on with it without them.” What a curious argument, and it is not a reassuring one, particularly for something as serious as the nuclear industry. I am keen to press our amendment 4 to a vote. I hope that Ministers will reflect further on the whole run of what the Government have been doing on apprenticeships.”

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34. “I can hear that there is a case for some of the Minister’s arguments. Where there are only minor or technical changes, I understand the point about not needing a group of people. However, I have not heard anywhere in the Minister’s comments, or in the other place, any sense that there would be some great delay or problem introduced by talking to people in industry. That shred of evidence has never been produced during this process. But it is clear that the Minister’s intent is not just that. This will be not just be about situations where there are minor or technical changes or a very clear third party body, as in the dentistry example.”

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35. “I want to encourage Ministers to think more carefully about how—perhaps in the framework or elsewhere—they might, in response to the Lords amendment, more tightly define the circumstances in which they will, and more importantly will not, use the ability to go it alone. There is definitely a risk of politics getting in the way of good process and of mistakes being made that we will live to regret.”

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36. “That is exactly the point I was making. In some instances, the Government can say, “Look, there is already this formal official third party”—perhaps a royal society or some part of the medical profession—“so we do not need this.” I can see why the Government would write that into legislation, but Ministers’ intent clearly goes beyond minor amendments and beyond instances where there is that other group, to instances where they will proceed without drawing up a group of people, in the interests of time or because it is a new and dynamic field. It is precisely because the Government have not defined the circumstances up front that I am keen to put our amendment 4 to a vote.”

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37. “Sometimes professional bodies overlap, even in the medical profession. When I was a Health Minister, I was acutely aware of that. For example, there are two different ways to become a dentist in this country—there are two different professional bodies that can accredit someone. Were there to be a dispute between them, it might well be sensible to convene a group of persons. I am sympathetic to at least the argument that where we have a big professional body, that is less of a problem, but the problem is that this is not limited to just those instances.”

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38. “Amendment proposed : 4, in clause 4, page 2, line 6, at end insert— “(3B) When approving a standard under subsection (3), the Secretary of State must have regard to the reasonable requirements of— (a) industry, commerce, finance, professions and other employers regarding education and training, and (b) persons who may wish to undertake education and training.”— (Neil O ’ Brien.) Question put, That the amendment be made.”

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39. “It is a very strange argument to make for the open-ended nature of the clause as drafted. We have all made our point. The Minister understands the argument we are making. The Government clearly want the power to be more expansive than we think is sensible. I am keen to press amendment 4 to a vote for that reason, and we will have to agree to disagree. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.”

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40. “This clause could be drafted very differently. It could say that where there are only minor or technical amendments to be made, or where we have a clear judgment from a single professional body about what is needed, the Secretary of State can prepare a standard. But that is not what it says—it just says that they can prepare the standard “if satisfied that it would be more appropriate”. There is no constraint on this other than the Secretary of State’s judgment—not even any lists of instances or types of things that it would apply to. The Minister has just given us another good example of that: she says that the Secretary of State might want to create a standard when there is a new industry. Why on earth would they not want to speak to some people in an emerging sector, be it technology or anything else?”

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41. “By removing a statutory requirement for independent review, we risk reducing the rigour that that brings, as learned bodies such as the Royal Society of Chemistry have pointed out. I just do not understand what problem Ministers are trying to solve by getting rid of a simple and basic requirement to review things regularly.”

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42. “I do not understand why the clause is necessary. I understand that in some areas, the review might be very light touch—there might be a review and the decision is not to do anything. On Second Reading, the Minister committed to publishing information about the intervals for review. What will they be? What is the plan? If we are getting rid of the requirement for regular reviews, how often will they be? What is the process of review going to look like? Independent reviews can provide very valuable feedback to policymakers and training providers, which may not necessarily be obvious to Ministers who do not follow the ins and outs of an industry every single day. Clause 6 risks eroding the quality of and confidence in technical education qualifications.”

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43. “Are the Government not placing an undue burden on those who are directly involved in the design and delivery of standards to act as their own assessors? That lack of external scrutiny could lead to a decline of trust among stakeholders, both learner and employer. I do not understand, from what the Minister has said, why the Government think that this level of scrutiny is too much. The requirement is to update things “at regular intervals”—it does not say “every two weeks” or “every six months”. It says regularly. This is not a wild bureaucratic requirement to keep things up to date. I do not understand why this is a thing that must be zapped. As far as I can see, the only golden thread running through DFE legislation at the moment is a sort of maximisation of the power of officials and the minimisation of any constraints on them.”

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44. “Not reviewing the necessary skills that apprentices need to carry out roles will be detrimental to the workforce and certainly narrow the opportunities for those apprentices in the long term.” We also have concerns about the clause, which deletes the requirement that things are updated “at regular intervals”. It is not the most arduous requirement of all time on Government, but regular reviews are not just a bureaucratic exercise. They guard against complacency and stagnation, and ensure that technical qualification standards stay fit for purpose. Without that, there is a risk that they become less and less relevant to the needs of employers and learners. This also sets up a slightly strange conflict.”

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45. “This is one of the strangest bits of the Bill. It is pretty baffling why the Government do not want to regularly review the approval of technical educational qualifications. Without rigorous independent oversight, there is obviously a risk that standards for technical qualifications could be lowered or might not stay as relevant as possible. In its written evidence, the Royal Society of Chemistry stated: “We have concerns about the removal of structured reviews of standards. The very nature of sectors such as science mean the skills required evolve quickly.”

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46. “The Minister says that this is an excessively onerous requirement. Could she give us some sense of the volume of work required as a result of this section in the 2009 Act? What does “onerous” mean? How many are having to devote how many man hours to doing what? How many people are employed purely to do what? What is the evidence that this is “onerous”?”

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47. “The Government’s argument is that the requirement to review—they do not have to rewrite, just review—qualifications every three years is excessive. I wonder whether that is really excessive in the eyes of most of the users and employers involved in these schemes. Elsewhere we have seen bureaucratic collapse, with the Office for Students halting the accreditation of new higher education institutions. That is not a good thing. It is a problem that needs to be fixed, rather than an excuse to get rid of that requirement. It is the same with clause 6. The Government are making a mistake on this, but we will not vote against it. Question put and agreed to. Clause 6 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 7 Examinations by independent third parties Question proposed , That the clause stand part of the Bill.”

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48. “It seems to me, although they do not say this, that the qualification that Ministers have in mind is probably T-levels, and I do not know quite why they are not spitting that out. Peers did not, I am afraid, get to the bottom of this question, but I hope we can today. What type of qualifications are Ministers really thinking of using for this? Why we would suddenly need this now, once we move from IfATE to Skills England, in a way that we did not before? Will we not end up creating two tiers of technical qualifications, where some are Ofqual-approved and others are not? Will there not be a perverse consequence from that?”

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49. “At present, we have a guarantee of quality through a legally independent institute with a very high level of employer ownership. If we are worried that, under this new system, users will require additional reassurance, that begs the question of why we are making this change. More practically, if some, but not all, technical qualifications will be accredited by Ofqual, and so will have that status, what impact will that have on perceptions of all the others that do not have that status? The Skills Minister in the Lords talked about this provision being needed to show that high-quality technical education qualifications are equivalent to academic ones. There will now be this third category of technical qualifications, which are the really good ones that are Ofqual-accredited, so what are the other ones?”

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50. “In the other place, the Minister gave the example that: “the Secretary of State may deem it appropriate to ask Ofqual to consider whether imposing an accreditation requirement on the qualifications in question could help maintain their quality and signal to the wider system that they are broadly commensurate with other accredited qualifications in terms of rigour. For example, the Secretary of State could use this power in instances where it is important to ensure that students who opt into and successfully complete high-quality technical education qualifications are in no way disadvantaged as compared to their peers who pursue academic qualifications.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 21 November 2024; Vol. 841, c. GC122.] That raises a number of questions.”

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