What steps the Government are taking to encourage participation by young women in science and engineering apprenticeships.

We are challenging the apprenticeships gender divide by legislating to ensure that young people get impartial careers information on apprenticeships alongside other options. We are also taking positive action for learners in non-traditional occupations.

Clearly, the Government have introduced several measures to help encourage young women into apprenticeships, but they still generally go into the lower paid end, and a gender pay problem remains. However, will my right hon. Friend join me in commending Plymouth city college on its "females into engineering" days, which are designed to encourage young women into engineering, and congratulate the three female apprentices whom the Learning and Skills Council has nominated for apprentice of the year?

I congratulate Plymouth city college on all that it is doing in science and engineering and the young apprentices on all that they have achieved. My hon. Friend is right to champion again the same rate of pay for female apprentices as for male apprentices. Some progress has been made in the past few years—we have narrowed the gap from 26 to 21 per cent., but much more remains to be done. I hope that she agrees that having the appropriate information, advice and guidance in schools for the first time, and legislating for that, means that young women can properly appraise the pay that they will get, depending on the apprenticeship that they take up.

One of the most important ways in which to get young people to take on apprenticeships is to interest them in science and engineering. Will the Government accept my congratulations on their announcement earlier this week that they will implement the Conservative Teach First policy? May I urge them to hold fast to those principles and not to be put off by the agitation of teacher trade unions?

The hon. Gentleman is right that this is a time to ensure that those with a background in subjects such as mathematics, who have worked in other sectors of the economy, have the opportunity to come into schools and enthuse young people about science, technology, engineering and mathematics—the STEM subjects. I am sure that he will be pleased about the increases, because of the work and extra money that has been invested, in applications to study those subjects in our universities. We must have that bank of teachers working in those subjects to enthuse our young people.

To encourage more women to participate in engineering and science apprenticeships, we need more opportunities, especially in my area, the north-west. Are not investing in places such as the Daresbury laboratory and expanding and developing the Daresbury business park, which will be one of the biggest science parks in the country, ways of doing that? Will my right hon. Friend give me an assurance that the Government will continue to consider what they can do to help the Daresbury laboratory provide opportunities for jobs and apprenticeships and underline the importance of the Daresbury science park?

We will shortly be publishing the McKillop report on the future at Daresbury, which I am sure my hon. Friend is awaiting.

This week marks international women's day and national science and engineering week. The Government talk a lot about equality and rightly so, but after 11 years of this Labour Government, only 2.6 per cent. of engineering apprentices are women, a figure that is virtually unchanged. It is also sobering to note that 15 per cent. of UK engineering students are women, yet in Chile the figure is 21 per cent. The Minister should not be complacent; he should be embarrassed by our progress. What is Chile doing that we are not doing?

There is certainly no complacency on this issue. That is why it is important to have critical mass pilots and positive action—something opposed by the Opposition—to ensure that women have those opportunities. It is also why we are putting money into women-led projects, such as the women in science, engineering and construction initiative, to ensure that young women in schools have the right resources and that we challenge gender stereotypes and make progress in this respect. However, until the hon. Gentlemen's party recommends positive action—akin to the positive action that has given us women on the Labour Back Benches—I do not need a lecture from him on equality.