How many people started apprenticeships in each of the last five years.

The numbers of people starting an apprenticeship in England in each of the last five years were: 194,000 in 2003-04; 189,000 in 2004-05; 175,000 in 2005-06; 184,000 in 2006-07; and 225,000 last year. We have rescued apprenticeships, increasing the number from 65,000 in 1997 to 225,000 last year. Completion rates are also at a record high, with 64 per cent. of people successfully completing an apprenticeship, up from 37 per cent. only three years ago. We will be investing more than £1 billion over the next year to ensure that we continue to build and invest in skills and training.

I thank my hon. Friend for his helpful response. I congratulate the Minister and the Labour Government on giving such a high priority to investment in apprenticeship training and on their success in continuing to increase numbers. Apprenticeship training is potentially a soft target in difficult economic times, but if we are to remain competitive and ready for the upturn, it is vital that we continue to invest in skills. Is the pattern of investment in apprenticeships consistent throughout the UK?

May I thank my hon. Friend for that question? He follows in the footsteps of John MacDougall, who was a very special man. In the short time that my hon. Friend has been in the House, he is already filling those boots as a champion of the people of the Glenrothes. In answer to his question about whether the pattern is consistent across the UK, no, I am afraid that it is not. The pattern is one of tremendous investment from this Government—£1 billion in apprenticeships in England—but sadly, under-investment in Scotland, where apprenticeship pay is poor and apprenticeship take-up is pathetic.

May I reiterate to the hon. Gentleman the point that I made on Second Reading of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill on 23 February? At present, the overly prescriptive clause 84 would have the effect of denying the chance to participate in apprenticeships to quite large numbers of children and young people with special educational needs—for example, on the autistic spectrum—who perhaps do not have level 2 or level 3 qualifications, but whose mindset and instinct would be well served by such an apprenticeship. Will he allow himself a degree of flexibility in this matter?

It is a feat of the hon. Gentleman's remarkable and well noted memory that he has managed to recall the title of that Bill, on which we spent an hour and a half in Committee just this morning. I understand the point that he makes and he makes it well, with his usual articulacy and passion. We are going through those matters in Committee. There is absolutely no intention that young people with learning difficulties or disabilities should be anything other than supported, developed and included by the Bill, and I am happy to assure him that they will be.

Had the question from my hon. Friend Lindsay Roy asked for statistics over the last 40 years, I would probably have been included in the answer as I was engineering apprentice then. Will he join me in congratulating Councillor Ron Round, the leader of Knowsley council, who has gone out to promote apprenticeships across all sectors in the area? Last year, he succeeded in getting more than 100 apprentices placed into employment across the borough. Would he care to come and look at what has been done in Knowsley and consider rolling it out as a model across the country?

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who over the years has shared a few stories with me of his days as an apprentice—[Hon. Members: "Tell us."] No, I cannot be tempted to betray those confidences now. I am happy to join my right hon. Friend in congratulating the leader of Knowsley council. I cannot help noting that it is the Labour leader of a Labour council in Knowsley who is driving up the number of apprentices, not just in the public sector where we aim for 21,000 new apprentices, but right across the board. I am very happy to congratulate the council leader and I would be more than delighted to visit my right hon. Friend's constituency.

Lindsay Roy asked about consistency across the country. Will the Minister confirm whether my perception is correct—that there are actually rather fewer places for apprenticeships and certainly a lower uptake of them in rural areas? I suspect that the reason has a lot to do with access problems encountered by individual young people. What is he going to do about that problem?

I do not believe that there is much hard data on this, but I can confirm that there is an issue in more rural areas, where there is likely to be fewer large employers and less heavy industry, so perhaps there is less of a tradition of apprenticeships. To tackle that, we are developing and extending group training associations and what we call apprenticeship training associations, which are different types of confederations and sharing systems for apprenticeships, so that the smaller businesses that are more likely to be found in rural areas are able to provide apprenticeships. When the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill is passed and we have a National Apprenticeship Service, one of the first things it will do is go out into the harder-to-reach parts of the country, to spread the word and the practice of apprenticeships.

I just want to check that I heard what the Minister said a few moments ago correctly. Did he say that while we are charging ahead with increasing apprenticeships in England, the Scottish Nationalist party Government have cut the budget, are paying less money to apprentices and, as I understand it, were going to cut the number of apprenticeships, had it not been for the fact that the Labour group demanded in the last budget that the number be increased? Is that correct?

I understand why my hon. Friend puts those questions in that way, as it does sound extraordinary and almost unbelievable, but yes, I believe that it is like that in Scotland. I cannot remember whether apprentices are paid a minimum £30 or £40 a week in Scotland, but in England it is £80 and rising to £95. He is correct that, apparently, the SNP Government have cut the budget and the number of apprenticeships. I agree with my hon. Friend that that is extraordinary and inexplicable, but it is absolutely not the way that this Government will run apprenticeships in England. I am sad to say, however, that with their £610 million of cuts, that is exactly where Conservative Members would take us back to if they got their way.

Contrary to the Minister's rather intemperate suggestions, he knows that the Conservatives support apprenticeships because we know that growing skills spreads opportunity, feeds social mobility and boosts our economy. That is why we will create 100,000 more apprenticeships, as we outlined in our green paper. Those will be genuinely new places, not the result of

"converting government-supported programmes of work-based learning into apprenticeships", which the House of Lords Select Committee recognised as the principal reason for the growth in the number of apprenticeships that the Minister described. Will he now give the House an absolute assurance that all of the future expansion of public sector apprenticeships that the Government promise will be new training for new staff and not just the result of converting existing training into apprenticeships and existing staff into apprentices?

I can absolutely give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that the investment that we plan—which he plans to cut, but which will rise over the next two years—of an extra £1 billion in apprenticeships will carry on. The 21,000 new apprenticeships in the public sector, each and every one of them, will be new training—of course they will.