Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Official Report 417KB pdf

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Youth Employment

Good morning. I welcome you all to the seventh meeting in 2012 of the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee. I welcome the Minister for Youth Employment and Hugh McAloon, and members and guests.

I remind everyone to turn off all mobile phones and electronic devices—he said, while checking that he had turned off his own. We have no apologies. A couple of members are still to arrive, but I assume that they are on their way.

Item 1 is an evidence session with Angela Constance, the Minister for Youth Employment, and Hugh McAloon, head of youth employment and skills in the Scottish Government, on ministerial plans and priorities for youth employment.

Thank you for coming along, minister. Would you like to say something by way of introduction before we go to questions?

Yes, but I will be as brief as possible, which is perhaps uncharacteristic of me.

First, I thank the committee for the opportunity to be here this morning. I am keen to outline my new role and responsibilities as the first dedicated Minister for Youth Employment. Today is an opportunity for me to map out my priorities and the way forward, and to engage in a dialogue with the committee and to listen to members’ views, particularly as we have still to finalise the youth employment strategy that was produced a few weeks ago in draft form. I aim to finalise the strategy by the end of March.

I am sure that I do not need to tell anybody on the committee that the cost of youth unemployment to this country is too high. It is not only a lost opportunity for our economy, but a social problem and a fundamental issue for the fabric of our communities and for individuals and families. Undoubtedly, it is a national challenge and a massive job that will require a national response. I firmly argue that it is everybody’s job to ensure that our young people get the right start, and the best start, to their working lives.

The Scottish Government is determined to do everything that we can within our powers. Despite the scale of the challenge that we face, there are a lot of opportunities to support and nurture conditions for job creation. We need to ensure that our young people have the right skills, and to encourage employers of all sizes in all sectors to recruit young people and create opportunities for them.

In particular, I want to ensure that every part of Government is focused on youth employment and that it is core Government business. I and the Government will work with everybody and anybody who can make a difference, and we want to marshal efforts across the public, private and voluntary sectors.

That is what I had in mind a few weeks ago when I laid out the draft youth employment strategy, which indicates the approach that we will take as we go forward. I will give a brief overview of the strategy. It highlights what we are already doing through post-16 education and training, and how we can build on that and develop some fresh impetus and thinking.

One example of that involves looking at how we can build on the work that we have been doing around positive destinations for school leavers by providing opportunities for all. We want to take an all-Government approach, and I will develop opportunities from across the Government’s entire spend.

The youth employment strategy gives an indication of the flavour of the work that I will do with other ministers—for example, with Richard Lochhead on rural Scotland; with Fergus Ewing on key sectors such as energy and tourism and how we can engage better with employers; with Shona Robison on the opportunities in and around the Commonwealth games; and with Alex Neil on infrastructure, investment and procurement.

We need an all-Scotland response, and I am keen to continue our work with employers, local authorities and the third sector, and of course with the United Kingdom Government.

Apart from young people, the crucial group is employers, both big and small. One opportunity among many in my post is the opportunity for me to be a conduit between the world of work and the world of education.

The strategy articulates the changing nature of youth unemployment since the start of the recession. A significant number of young people still face complex barriers, but other young people would undoubtedly be in work if we were in better economic times. We need a range of targeted interventions, and we must remember that not all young people are the same. We need to support those who are furthest away from the labour market and those who are closer to it as well as young graduates. We need to ensure that youth unemployment does not become long-term unemployment.

I have made some funding announcements to date, which I will summarise just now. Just before Christmas, I announced funding of £1.5 million to support up to a thousand of our most disadvantaged young people—in particular care leavers and young carers—with an employer recruitment incentive. There will also be tailored individualised support from Skills Development Scotland, including aftercare once a young person is in a position.

Before recess I announced to Parliament a further £6 million to continue the community jobs Scotland programme into 2012-13. There is a £2.5 million challenge fund, for which social enterprises in the third sector can bid, to create a space for innovation. I am continuing to discuss the remainder of the funding with local authorities and employers.

Once again, I thank the committee for the opportunity to be here. I will happily answer any questions and report back on progress as things unfold in the weeks, months and years ahead.

Thank you, minister. I am happy to let in members who want to ask questions. I will start off with a couple of questions to get the ball rolling.

On the youth unemployment rate, we have historically done better in Scotland than the UK has done, but the latest statistics show that youth unemployment in Scotland is now higher than it is in the rest of the UK. According to the Scottish Parliament information centre briefing, the rate in Scotland is now at 24.3 per cent, in comparison with 21.9 per cent in the UK. Does it concern you that the figure in Scotland is higher than that in the UK? Are you aware of any particular reason why there should have been such a change in comparison with the historical position?

Irrespective of whether the figure for Scotland is higher or lower than the UK figure, I reassure the committee that I remain concerned. Whether unemployment for 16 to 24-year-olds is at 24.3 per cent, 19 per cent or 14 per cent, it is too high. We must remind ourselves that when the unemployment rate for 16 to 64-year-olds was at 4 per cent, youth unemployment was at 14 per cent. It is an issue that has been with us for a long time.

Last night, I looked at the figures for between 1999 and 2007, which oscillated between 11 and 14 per cent. Sometimes, when times are hard and in times of recession, we are forced to do things that we should have done better in the first place. Young people are always disadvantaged in the labour market primarily because of their lack of work and life experience. Therefore, we need to be in it for the long haul.

Some of the arguments are well rehearsed. The employment rate is better in Scotland, and we have a higher proportion of young people in full-time education. I say that for context; I do not want to minimise the scale of the problem by any stretch of the imagination. We must simply accept that, whether the figure is 102,000 young people this month or was 105,000 last month or 101,000 the month before, it is too high. The problem is endemic and we simply need to get on and address it as best as we can.

My second question is on the slightly different subject of modern apprenticeships. In Dundee on Friday, a number of other local members and I attended a very helpful briefing by Skills Development Scotland at which we heard interesting presentations on modern apprenticeships and skills. An issue came up that has also come out of my mailbag. I am not sure that employers who want to take on apprentices are necessarily aware of the support that is on offer. We know that many young people are looking for training and apprenticeships, and that packages are available from Skills Development Scotland to support those young people and employers, but in my experience, which was borne out by comments that I heard from members on Friday, many employers are simply not aware of the support that is available. Perhaps that is a barrier to apprenticeships being offered. From your experience, is that a fair point to make? If so, can more steps be taken to try to be more proactive in raising awareness about the support that is available for employers who want to take on young staff?

That is not an unfair comment. Many employers out there are aware of the opportunities that exist, but there is no shadow of a doubt that, although a lot goes on that involves engagement with employers through Government agencies, schools, colleges and universities, we need to be more focused. We need to get a strong and simple message out to employers of all sizes—particularly small to medium-sized employers—about what is on offer.

Part of the aim of the national economic forum was to engage with employers. I will be doing regional events, and I am speaking closely to our partners at the local level to ensure that local employers go to them. We need to manage that effectively.

I am glad that you were at the Skills Development Scotland briefing. I know that it has just started to brief members proactively, and I am glad that the briefing was useful.

Good morning, minister. I will use the SPICe briefing that the committee has received as a starting point to ask a couple of questions.

In your opening remarks, you commented on positive destinations for those in post-16 education. One issue that is highlighted in the SPICe briefing is that we are using a youth unemployment figure that is based on the International Labour Organization’s measure for calculating unemployment, particularly youth unemployment. Full-time and part-time students who are also seeking employment come into those calculations. Is the Government finding that more students in full-time education are seeking part-time or full-time jobs to supplement their income while they study?

09:45

I think that that has been the case for a long time. Although this Government has been making progress on ensuring that there are no upfront or back-door tuition fees in Scotland, I can well understand why either full-time or part-time students would want or need to seek work. Arguably, it is a positive thing that students seek work, given that work experience is vital for their CVs.

The fact that we have quite a high number of young unemployed people who are in full-time education probably reflects our overall drive to keep young people in education after the age of 16, as we know that the longer that young people continue education and training, the more their long-term prospects are improved. We know that graduates are still doing better than non-graduates in terms of employment. There is quite a stark difference. The employment rate for graduates is in excess of 80 per cent. The fact that we have a lot of full-time students seeking work reflects our policies to keep young people in learning. It is an issue of context. I do not say that to minimise the issue in any way.

I accept that response. The difficulty is that some of the statistics that we are dealing with are gathered at a UK level, and we are trying to focus on what is causing the underlying problems. Can the Scottish Government identify whether there has been an increase in the number of full-time students who are seeking employment? That might be part of the reason for the figures that I mentioned, and might be something for the minister to reflect on.

Perhaps Hugh McAloon can respond.

We are alert to the issue that you raise. For some reason, more of our youth unemployed cohort in Scotland are engaged in full-time education and seeking work than is the case in other parts of the UK. We have highlighted that in the context of the draft youth employment strategy. The briefing document that is before you shows that there has been an increase in the past year or so.

For good policy reasons—not just for presentational reasons—we have tried to break the cohort down into the three groups that we have identified: those who are in full-time education; those at the far end of the market, who have low numbers of or no qualifications and often have quite significant barriers that put them at a disadvantage in the labour market; and those who might, in better times, have had better employment prospects. The point that you are making is that there is a significant group of people who are engaged in positive activity to improve their long-term prospects.

It would be wrong to focus our interventions on the entire youth unemployed cohort in a way that does not consider the needs of each group in the cohort. Of course, we must bear in mind the point that the minister made, which was that all young people are individuals, that there might be people who are quite far removed from the labour market but who could make rapid progress, and that there could be people in full-time education who need to find work if they are to remain in full-time education.

With regard to the point that you are making, you are right to say that, within the ILO figures, a higher proportion of our youth unemployed cohort is engaged in full-time education than is the case elsewhere in the UK. However, we still have a significant number of young people—around 60,000—who are not engaged in full-time education and are looking for work. It would be wrong to use the figures to try to suggest that the issue is less of a problem than it is. I do not think that we would ever want to do that. I think that that is the point that the minister was making.

I accept that. As I said, I am just trying to dig into the figures so that we are clear that the 102,000 who are registered as unemployed are not all in positive destinations. The minister mentioned positive destinations, and according to Mr McAloon’s figures, almost 50 per cent of the 102,000 who are on the register are in positive destinations—they have taken up full-time or part-time education.

Our figure is about 35 per cent—it is not quite half.

The positive destinations to which I referred in my opening statement were for school leavers. Of school leavers, 88.9 per cent go on to employment, further education or training.

You will be aware that a discussion is to take place today in number 10—I understand that the Prime Minister is pulling in a number of major employers because of the adverse publicity about the work experience scheme, which the Department for Work and Pensions has used to conscript people into what it describes as work experience—short-term work with major employers and some smaller employers.

Do you have views on whether the continued use of the work experience scheme benefits the people whom the DWP is in many respects conscripting into it under the threat of the loss of benefit? Can we find a better solution to encourage employers in Scotland to provide meaningful work experience that could lead to full-time employment?

We have information that says:

“The UK Government states that, 13 weeks after joining the scheme, 51% of participants are no longer claiming benefits.”

Are those people no longer claiming benefits, or are they no longer receiving benefits because they have been taken off the work experience scheme under its criteria, which say that if people do not take part in the scheme, their benefits will be withdrawn?

On the statistics that Mr Wilson quoted, it is for the United Kingdom Government to explain and defend its policy. Notwithstanding that, I hope that the issues that employers have raised will be resolved. The key word that Mr Wilson used was “meaningful”—work experience needs to be meaningful and high quality.

We need to be vigilant—in this instance, the United Kingdom Government needs to be vigilant—about displacement. We cannot have employers taking on young people for work experience—whether through the work programme, the work experience scheme or other schemes—at the expense of recruiting young people or of other workers. I would have thought that employers, the DWP and the United Kingdom Government had an opportunity to engage with the trade unions on the work experience scheme’s detail, to ensure that neither young people nor other workers are exploited.

Leaving aside DWP issues, meaningful and high-quality work experience is in principle very important to young people. It helps many young people to get into work. What young people lack—often as a result of their age—is direct and tangible real-life work experience. Irrespective of whether a scheme is run by the DWP or is another initiative, we need to ensure that work experience for young people who have been unemployed in the longer term and for young graduates is meaningful and productive for them. I know that many young people want to do work experience, because they ask employers about that.

Good morning. How helpful would it be if Jobcentre Plus was part of a Scottish operation rather than directed by the DWP down south?

My response to Mr Brodie’s question will not surprise him or other committee members. Politics aside, for pragmatic practical reasons it would make sense for work, skills and employability to sit together and for the whole area to be devolved. Nonetheless, we are where we are just now. I reassure members that Skills Development Scotland works closely with Jobcentre Plus. There is a project called BASES—I am not very good at acronyms, but I think it stands for better alignment of skills and employability in Scotland. Work is going on to try to simplify the landscape, particularly for the user—for both employers and young persons or adults who are seeking work. However, my preference is well known.

I will move on. You mentioned Skills Development Scotland, whose management team I had a productive meeting with. One issue that cropped up was whether there is the infrastructure to support the mobility of young people across the country. As the map attached to the SPICe briefing shows, there are significant areas of unemployment, yet people in other areas of Scotland are bemoaning the fact that they cannot get skilled people or cannot get the requisite people to achieve modern apprenticeship goals.

I do not expect an answer today, but will you work with the Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment to consider what might be done to make young people more mobile and to make the necessary facilities available to ensure that we align the goal of employing young people with our economic development strategy?

Yes. I do not want to be flippant, but skills shortages are an opportunity. Where there are skills shortages we need to look at converting them into opportunities for young people. We have to proceed sensibly and sensitively.

Housing is an issue that prevents young Scots from being mobile, and the new housing benefit rules are another factor. Many young people would want to go elsewhere to seek the appropriate opportunity, but we must remember that communities themselves need to be sustainable. That is why I am in dialogue with Richard Lochhead about the possibility of holding a rural skills summit, because we must ensure that the discourse around youth unemployment is not dominated by urban Scotland.

It is about striking a balance. We must take the opportunities afforded to us by skills shortages in specific sectors—particularly growth sectors—that employ young people, but we must recognise the need for communities to be sustainable.

I will ask another couple of questions, if I may, convener.

Briefly.

10:00  

As well as YouthLink Scotland, there are organisations such as the Boys Brigade, the Girls Brigade and the scouts. Some 110,000 youngsters are involved in such organisations. How joined up is the overall youth network in absorbing the good programme that you project? Is there effective communication with the youth network?

Secondly, how effective are local authorities in picking up and running with the baton with regard to public procurement, ensuring that young people are employed, focusing on unemployment in their areas and generally bringing communication of the challenge that is facing us to a focal point? I know that you are having meetings, but the youth network should be connected to local authorities, which, after all, have dedicated officers, groups and whatever that are really focusing on the issue and working with local employers.

Indeed. Communication, including mine, can always be sharper. Your point about youth working and youth organisations is well made, although I think that Young Scot and the Scottish Parliament bring together many of those voices and that overview.

As for procurement and local authorities, we need to think about the further opportunities that we can squeeze out across the public sector via community benefit clauses in procurement contracts. Good work is being done in that regard. For example, 133 of the 171 Commonwealth games contracts have been awarded to Scottish companies, which can only be a good thing for both young people and adults who are seeking employment. However, in our on-going dialogue and engagement with the public sector, we will seek to ensure that we have a sharper focus on young people. I think that the sustainable procurement bill will present opportunities in that respect.

A number of members wish to ask questions. Bearing in mind the point about sharper focus, I point out that, if we have succinct questions and answers, we will get in everyone in the time available.

Following on from John Wilson’s questions, I note that you called the document a draft strategy and said that work is continuing to complete it and sign it off. Towards the back of the document, there is a presumption that the Scottish Government will not duplicate anything that the UK Government is doing. One of the most important things that has changed since the draft was published is that there is growing momentum against the UK Government’s work experience programme, which many people regard as deeply exploitative and demeaning. In effect, it tells young people to commit to full-time work for weeks on end without getting paid for it.

In developing the draft into a final strategy, might the Scottish Government have an opportunity to relax the presumption against duplication and start working with the employers that have expressed concern about—or, indeed, withdrawn from—the UK scheme on an alternative version that might involve some public and private sector investment and which will lead to young people who commit to a full-time working week to get work experience, or whatever it might be called, getting a minimum wage for the hours that they put in?

Although I understand Mr Harvie’s concerns and the point of view and principles that he has articulated, I would be accused of living in la-la land if I thought that I could realistically duplicate what the UK Government has responsibility for and what it has the finances to fund. Those resources are also ours—after all, we pay into the DWP and so on through taxation—but we do not have direct control over them as yet.

I would be concerned if we went down the road of duplicating, whether for good or bad reasons, what the UK Government has responsibility for. Irrespective of whether I like the fact that it has responsibility for certain areas, we have on-going dialogue with the DWP and the key thing is to push for its systems and policies to work effectively for young people in Scotland. Although I would prefer to have all the responsibility for skills and employability, I would just be—

That is a longer term issue on which we might have some common ground, but I am a wee bit unclear whether the minister likes the programme that the UK Government has put in place. Does she think that an employer who gets two months of full-time work out of somebody should pay them a minimum wage?

I do not think that we can categorically say that all unpaid work experience is a bad or negative thing. What I am clear about is that young people should not be exploited. The issue that employers are trying to resolve with UK ministers is what happens after a young person has been with an employer for a week or two and they decide that what they are doing is not for them and does not suit their needs. That seems to be the point at which sanctions or the risk of benefit loss come in.

Work experience must be meaningful for young people so that they want to do it, and they must be able to benefit from it. The Scottish Government has an interest in ensuring that all aspects of the youth contract work well in Scotland. If there are issues that we need to articulate to the United Kingdom Government, whether they are about what young people say to us or what employers say to us, we must represent them and get improvements in the system.

Have you done that?

There is on-going dialogue with our colleagues in the DWP about a range of welfare benefit issues. John Swinney and I met Chris Grayling about six weeks ago, but we need to have on-going dialogue with the United Kingdom Government.

I think that you do.

Yes, indeed.

Good morning, minister.

Good morning, Stuart.

I have just a couple of quick questions. The first relates to John Wilson’s question to you earlier. Approximately 36,000 students are counted in the unemployment figure of 102,000 that was mentioned. The first thing that struck me when I read the SPICe research briefing on the subject was that there seems to be double counting in that someone who is a full-time student is also considered to be unemployed. For how long has that been the practice? The SPICe briefing shows that, in the period January to March 2007, just under 51,000 16 to 24-year-olds were unemployed. How do the current figures compare with that? Has there been an increase in the number of students who are counted as unemployed?

In the interest of brevity, I ask Hugh McAloon to respond to that question. He might be able to give a sharper, more focused answer on the statistics than I can.

The figures that you refer to are based on the ILO definition, which enables comparisons between countries. My understanding is that the figures that you quoted from 2007 would have included students. We use the figures to make comparisons with other countries. They are generally recognised by users out there as definitive figures that are put together on an international basis, which is why we use them.

I am the deputy convener of the Equal Opportunities Committee. Last Tuesday afternoon, during Scottish Trades Union Congress week, that committee had a session in which the point was made that there is no specific mention of women in the youth employment strategy. As a result, I read the document again, as that had not struck me beforehand. I found that, sure enough, the comment is true. Figures that have been provided to us show that there has been an 80.4 per cent increase in female unemployment, but the increase in male unemployment has been higher, at 83.7 per cent. Is it fair to suggest that the youth strategy should have more of a focus on women rather than simply being about youths, irrespective of gender?

It is a fair point to say that there needs to be a better focus on gender. We will sharpen up on that when we finalise the strategy so that it speaks more specifically about young men and young women. Excluding full-time students who are unemployed, we find that young employed men outnumber young employed women by two to one. The statistics are that just over 30 per cent of young women are employed, compared with 68 per cent of young men. There have been times when the unemployment rate for young women has risen sharply, for reasons that are not entirely explainable.

As young men and women go through the education system, young men who are likely to experience unemployment because of their considerable disadvantage are clearly visible, whereas young women tend to be more invisible. I have visited get ready for work programmes and seen that young women have distinct needs from those of young men. I do not want to generalise, but sometimes the issue with young women who end up not in education, employment or training is that they can be withdrawn. They do not necessarily cause difficulties at school, but they can drift and become isolated.

There are gender issues in certain sectors. We want to get more young men into childcare and, similarly, we want to get more young women into the STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—and related professions. I take on board the point that gender issues could be better articulated in the strategy and that there could be more focus on the needs of young men and women.

During the recent parliamentary recess, I visited a construction apprenticeship scheme in Bishopbriggs along with a local councillor, Councillor Gillian Renwick. More than 200 young people have started the scheme in the past two to three years. One flexible approach that the scheme adopts is that, if a small business has an influx of work that it is struggling to undertake, it can ask the organisation for apprentices to help. That ensures that apprentices have opportunities to get through their apprenticeship while learning on the job. If the minister has not already done so, I encourage her to visit that scheme to find out what it is doing. It would be interesting and worthwhile for her to meet that group of people and learn from them.

I will take the member up on that invitation. In our past discussions, we have talked about the notion of companies sharing apprenticeships. That seems like a sensible opportunity for me to pursue.

10:15

I will go back to an earlier line of questioning about the number of unemployed students. Given that one of the Scottish Government’s big policies is no tuition fees, it seems to be counterintuitive that Scotland has more full-time students looking for work. I assume that our students are better off and that fewer of them should be looking for work because of the policy. What is not adding up?

The level of debt that young graduates leave with is much lower in Scotland than in England. I am sure that that disparity will continue. The last set of figures that I saw showed that the average debt for young graduates in Scotland is around £5,000 to £6,000, whereas in England it is £14,000. Those figures are averages.

Students have always looked for employment. I do not think that your point suggests that our higher education policy is a bad thing. Many students want and need to work. We just have to accept that, work with it and try to grow the economy to ensure that they get those opportunities.

Why do we have more students looking for work when the policy is, I assume, better and more financially positive for them? Why are a disproportionate number of them looking for work? Is our policy so far wrong?

It is the other way round: it is because of our success at getting more people into higher education. It is a positive indicator on our policy to keep young people in education for a lot longer because that improves their long-term prospects. If that means that we have more full-time students looking for employment, we need to respect that and to try to respond to it. Hugh, do you have anything to add to that?

The issue is complex and there are a couple of things to think about. I cannot be definitive, but I have some ideas. We have to think about the nature of the student labour market and the sort of jobs that students get, which means looking at bits of the service sector. There might be regional disparities across the UK and an issue with how the recession has impacted on the sectors that students will go into. I do not have the figures at my fingertips, but our policies might have impacted differently on the social makeup of the student body in Scotland, compared to what has happened in other parts of the UK. I do not, however, think that such disparities will be massive.

We might think about how the service sector in Scotland and bits of the north of England has been impacted on by the wider aspects of the recession and consumer spending and contrast that with the sector in parts of the south of England, which will have quite a lot of weight in the figures. There might be something in that, but I do not want to be definitive about it.

It would be interesting to get more information on that when it comes to hand.

During the previous recession, we did not skill young people and a lot of those who came out of school then are still unemployed. When we came out of the recession, we ended up needing to import skills because we did not have enough of them to cope with demand. It seems to me that history is repeating itself and that we have learnt nothing, so we will have a lot of young people who will not be equipped when the economy is in upturn.

In addition, there has been a massive cut in funding of further education, which represents a wasted opportunity. We should be skilling young people. I understand the point about there already being a lot of young people in education, but should not this be the time for us to push people into education, so that when the economy starts to follow a positive line again they are ready to take up the jobs that will need to be filled—for example, in construction? How can we do something different?

We need to learn lessons from the past. As well as focusing on the current needs of employers, we need to keep a sharp and acute eye on their future needs. Skills Development Scotland has a crucial role to play in engaging with the sector skills councils and industry leaders groups in all sectors. Skills Development Scotland, in partnership with industry, puts together skills investment plans, the progress of which is reported on. It also works jointly with the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council, and that is very much about ensuring that we have an eye on the future and that we train a workforce not just for today, but for the future. Skills Development Scotland is focused on the key sectors that are outlined in the Government’s economic strategy and we need to apply that focus to all sectors.

I will make a broader point about further education, because many of the arguments are well rehearsed. The reform of post-16 education is about better meeting not only the needs of learners and their journey, but those of employers. We need change in the post-16 education and training system, including in colleges. I still believe that we have a good record on the funding of further education and colleges. By the time we get to the end of the current spending review period, the Government will have spent 40 per cent more on further education than the two previous Administrations. Spending overall is up.

Given inflation and rising costs, the spending is actually less over time when we really need more.

Yes, but the context is that our spending on further education is going up by 40 per cent at a time when our budget is going down. The budgets of the two previous Governments went up by £10 billion, whereas ours is going down by £3 billion. The reality is that we are continuing to prioritise young people in colleges and universities, for whom the number of places is being maintained. I understand people’s anxieties, but as we progress with reform, I think that we will all be in a much better place in a year or two.

That might be too late for this generation.

No—we are not going back to the 1980s, thank you very much.

I do not know.

Good morning, minister. You have mentioned the forthcoming sustainable procurement bill, which I am sure we would all welcome as an opportunity to legislate for better procurement practice. Is there scope, however, for doing more in the interim to encourage public authorities and agencies to adopt better procurement practice right now?

Yes. We must think about continuous improvement and how we focus on young people. As parliamentarians, we all know that legislation is an important and useful vehicle, but there are always things that we can do without legislation. The Government introduced guidelines on community benefit clauses, which has initiated more than 1,500 targeted recruitment and training opportunities. Good things are happening, but we can certainly do more and cement those good things with legislation.

That was a model of a succinct question and answer.

I will try to follow that, convener.

I apologise for my late arrival and for missing your opening remarks, minister. I am sure that you are aware that the public have a traditional perception of apprenticeships: somebody will leave school, go on an apprenticeship and have a qualification—and, we hope, a job—at the end of it. Nevertheless, despite the global figure of 25,000 modern apprenticeships, there is still a huge demand for apprenticeship opportunities among the constituents to whom I speak. How many of the 25,000 modern apprenticeships next year and over the subsequent years—even last year—have been earmarked for the 16 to 24-year-old age group? How many of the places for that age group will be traditional three to four-year apprenticeships?

This is a discourse that John Park and I have with increasing regularity. Our priority is, indeed, 16 to 24-year-olds but we have a particular focus on 16 to 19-year-olds, for whom the majority of MAs are earmarked.

Hot on the heels of that, we need to balance the needs of older young people, if that is not a counterintuitive term—20 to 24-year-olds—because young women, particularly young mothers, and care leavers may be a bit older before they are ready to take up a modern apprenticeship. We need quite a balanced approach.

What was your second question?

It would be helpful if you could get the detailed figures in answer to my first question to us afterwards.

Obviously we will not know this year’s figures until the end of the year.

I mean last year’s figures. It would be useful to have them because that would allow us to see how things stood. I suppose that all the contracts for next year have now been placed, so you will be able to provide those figures.

Yes.

People view apprenticeships as taking three or four years. What percentage of the 25,000 will last that long and what percentage of the 18,000 that we had last year lasted that long?

Do you know that information off the top of your head, Hugh?

I do not.

We can get that information to you, Mr Park.

The other perception about apprenticeships is that people start them when they leave school or have been out of work for a while and that those people are embarking on a career path that we hope will take them into skilled jobs. However, there are also a lot of people in work who are sitting at desks on the Friday and who, on the Monday, start apprenticeship courses that last however long. Are they included in the 25,000? If they are, what percentage of the 25,000 apprentices will be people who were already in work?

We want most of the modern apprentices to be new starts because we want to get people into work and training. However, I do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It is good workforce development for a young person to have an opportunity within their current employment. Although I take the point about the need to ensure that a hefty number are new starts, I do not necessarily want to preclude any young person whose job might provide them with better training opportunities and therefore improve their future prospects. We need to strike a balance.

10:30

I absolutely agree. However, there is a perception that the 25,000 modern apprentices are 25,000 people embarking on a career. If someone works in a job on the Friday and undertakes an apprenticeship on the Monday, that is not an apprenticeship; it is a vocational qualification that they are undertaking as part of their current employment. If that kind of thing has been included in the figures, we need to understand the scale of it and think about the perception that it might be creating outside the Parliament.

Indeed, but more modern apprenticeships mean more opportunities all round.

On the issue that John Park has raised of collecting statistics, when I asked Skills Development Scotland, during its briefing, whether it had any figures on the employment rate for people who have completed modern apprenticeships, I was told that it is difficult to collect that information. Does the Scottish Government have any figures on that? Given that we are—quite rightly—encouraging greater use of apprenticeships, it would be interesting and useful to find out how many people are going into full-time employment at the end of their apprenticeship.

We know that the completion rate for apprenticeships is at a record high of more than 70 per cent; however, it is genuinely difficult to collect the information to which you refer. I do not know whether Hugh McAloon has anything to add.

The issue came up in the “Making Training Work Better” consultation that we carried out at the tail end of last year. Given our interest in the matter, we have asked Skills Development Scotland to research it and it is now considering how to carry out that research despite all the difficulties that exist. Nevertheless, the minister makes the important point that the apprenticeship programme has one of the highest completion rates—if not the highest completion rate—of any part of the post-16 system. You might expect that to be the case, given the fact that an apprenticeship is tied to someone’s job.

Lastly—and, I hope, briefly—we will hear from John Wilson.

First, I should have declared that, many years ago, I went through the apprenticeship scheme and completed a traditional four-year apprenticeship.

I should have declared the same interest.

Anyone else? [Laughter.]

As a result, I have a vested interest in the apprenticeship scheme and know the benefits that apprenticeships can have for individuals with regard to the skills that they can learn and the trades that they can move into.

A couple of years ago, the First Minister introduced the apprenticeship guarantee scheme. How often has the scheme been used and how many young people’s apprenticeships have been safeguarded as a result? A number of young people who started apprenticeships found that they had been misled by their employer and were not actually in a traditional apprenticeship, while others who were going into the fourth year of their traditional apprenticeship discovered that their employer no longer had work for them. Of course, it might have been a coincidence that that was the very point at which they became entitled to the national minimum wage.

I think that Mr Wilson is referring to the adopt an apprentice scheme.

Indeed.

The scheme continues and, to date, has assisted 1,234 young apprentices. The reason why I remember that precise figure—

That was very impressive, minister.

It is quite an easy figure to remember, convener.

As members have no more questions, I thank the minister and Mr McAloon for coming to the meeting and answering our questions. The session has been extremely helpful and it would be useful to continue the dialogue as we move forward. I am sure that members are very interested in following the issue of youth employment and what happens with the strategy.

Thank you for that, convener. I very much welcome the opportunity to come back to the committee. I should also say that my door is always open to members.

10:34 Meeting suspended.

10:36 On resuming—