Sir John Hayes

I am immensely flattered that the hon. Gentleman has followed my career with such assiduity. He is right: I defended Unionlearn and would continue to do so. Trade unions can play a vital part in ensuring the outcomes that the Government say that they seek and that I certainly believe in. Indeed, I went on a delegation to Germany—this is a minor digression, Madam Deputy Speaker—to look at their apprenticeship system with employers and trade unions, because I know that the combination of trade unions and employers was critical to driving the skills agenda. Again, it would be useful to hear from the Government what they think about that. How will they engage with the trade unions? Because trade unions are not mentioned in the Bill at all, we are left to wonder what will happen, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire said in his excellent speech, when the Secretary of State seizes control of apprenticeships from the current structure. There are a number of other questions to be put. The hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) made a very good point about SMEs. One challenge when I was a Minister, and for subsequent Ministers and this Government, was in engaging more SMEs. I am not sure that we were successful in that. I launched a review of how we might do that; it was typically by making the system regulatory and trying to review some of the paperwork. Again, as the Bill moves forward, what more will we hear about how to engage more SMEs? If we say to someone in my constituency that there are really good engineering apprenticeships in Derby, which I am told is in the same part of the country—or in the same region at least, whatever that means—we might as well be saying that there are apprenticeships on Mars, because they will not be able to get to Derby to study. We really need the spread of apprenticeship accessibility, which SME involvement provides. It is the only way of creating the reach that is necessary to engage more young people and adult learners in acquiring those skills. I have one or two further questions, with which I hope the Minister can deal. I have already spoken about employers. On the status of the new body, is it the Government’s intention, as the Secretary of State implied— but no more than that—for it to become a non-departmental body in the end, or will it always be an in-house body? Anyone who has been close to government will know the significance of those two options. It needs at the very least to be a non-departmental body if it is to have the necessary freedom and independence to respond to employer need and changing economic circumstances. The Secretary of State hinted that that might be the direction of travel, but we do need to know more when the Minister sums up.