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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I look forward to debating that in Committee and I thank my hon. Friend for making the point. As a trustee of Rathbone for seven years, I saw its creative and innovative methods. I was delighted to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Mrs. Hodgson) mention its great work in Gateshead. Students who go on Rathbone's training programme cannot be placed directly with an employer. They have to do the programme-led apprenticeships to give them the communications skills, teach them punctuality and the ability simply to get there in the morning—the life skills that they need to become proper members of any work force. However, what a change from the youth training schemes of the 1980s. We have almost forgotten those, and I would like to remind hon. Members of what they involved. Young people were herded into unsuitable roles and paid the grand sum of £30 for a 40-hour working week. For those whose maths is a little rusty, that is 75p an hour. Many were sacked at the end of their apprenticeship when the company had to pay them the going rate for the job—£7.80 an hour instead of 75p as fully qualified electricians, carpenters, fitters, welders and so on. They were set free into a newly flexible work market to find their own way, which was a difficult path for many young men in their late teens or early twenties to take. It was the path of constant casualisation, which exists to this day for many of them.