Lord Aberdare (CB)

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken to this amendment. I add my good wishes to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for choosing to spend his birthday in support of my amendment, and I hope the rest of it is equally enjoyable. I thank the Minister for his response. I think all the speeches were in favour of the amendment, and the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, made some interesting comments on how it could be further improved. However, to me, one of the most important messages that came across—which many of your Lordships mentioned—was that apprenticeships are different; they are not the same as a standard contract of employment, as many other countries have recognised by having different legal frameworks for apprenticeships. I believe that flexibility is needed. I think it was my noble friend Lord Londesborough who talked about an unduly rigid, one-size-fits-all approach to employment laws. There needs to be some flexibility to cater for the special needs and features of apprenticeships. I am concerned that we are looking at two options. One is apprenticeships with day-one employment rights—jolly good; the other is no apprenticeships at all, because the employers will not offer them on that basis. I hope that, between now and Report, we can do some more thinking. The Government may come up with more thoughts about how we can ensure that we balance the advantages of having full employment rights on the one hand and the necessity of having firms—particularly small ones—offering apprenticeships on the other. Hopefully, we can have further discussion of that on Report, but meanwhile I beg leave to withdraw the amendment in my noble friend’s name.