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The Department for Education (DfE) has today (21 February 2017) announced that a group of employers have come together to help promote diversity within apprenticeships.

The Apprenticeship Diversity Champions Network (ADCN) is comprised of 23 employers, including Rolls Royce, BBC, BAE Systems and a number of small- and medium-sized employers.

The network has been established to champion apprenticeships and diversity amongst employers and encourage more people from underrepresented groups, including those with disabilities, women and members of the black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities, to consider apprenticeships.

It will support the government’s commitment, as part of its ‘2020 vision’, to increase the proportion of apprenticeship starts by people from BAME backgrounds by 20% by 2020.

Nus Ghani MP has been appointed as chair of the network, and will be responsible for setting and shaping the network’s objectives as well as working alongside the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS), who played a key role in recruiting the 23 employers to the ADCN.

Skills and Apprenticeships Minister Robert Halfon said:

I am passionate about ensuring that everyone, no matter their background or age, can use apprenticeships to get on the ladder of opportunity to a successful career.

Although last year saw record numbers of people with a disability or from disadvantaged backgrounds start on a high-quality apprenticeship, we need to do much more. That is why it is vital that so many diverse employers have come together to pledge to do more to ensure apprenticeships are truly open to everyone.

I am also extremely pleased that we are announcing Nus Ghani as the chair – with her knowledge, commitment and expertise, I am sure she will do a brilliant job in making sure apprenticeships can work for as many people as possible.

Chair of the Apprenticeships Diversity Championships Network, Nus Ghani MP said:

An apprenticeship can be the first step to a life-enhancing career. It can open up opportunities, provide inspiration and allow someone to develop skills which will carry them through life. In a competitive and challenging labour market, apprenticeships can be the way in for many people who might otherwise not have dared to dream that there was a fulfilling career path for them.

I am honoured to have been appointed by the Prime Minister as chair of the government’s Apprenticeships Diversity Champions Network. I am determined that anyone from anywhere, whatever their background and whatever their story, is able to access the life-changing opportunities that apprenticeships can offer.

The benefits of earning whilst you are learning, coupled with professional certification, will help enable apprentices to achieve a competitive edge in the labour market. Our whole society benefits when aspiration and opportunity is extended to all, and those benefits encompass the economy, community cohesiveness and national pride.

I will be ambitious for apprentices and challenge all industries, public and private, to deliver quality apprenticeships across the country. As the economy goes from strength to strength we need to ensure that opportunities are available to all. I will be scrupulous in ensuring that the Apprenticeships Diversity Champions Network opens up career options and delivers much needed skills for our traditional and emerging industries.

Beyond the network, the government is working to ensure social mobility for all with a range of measures including implementing recommendations from a task force, led by Paul Maynard, which has focused on issues faced by people with disabilities.

The network will build on this to ensure more people with disabilities, people from BAME backgrounds and women in sectors where they are under-represented can take up apprenticeships.

Notes to editors

1) Nus Ghani

• was elected to Parliament in 2015 as the MP for Wealden in East Sussex
• chairs two all-party parliamentary groups (APPG): the APPG for Ageing and Older People and for Eye Health and Visual Impairment
• parliamentary representative for the Conservative Rural Affairs Group
• sits on the Home Affairs Select Committee
• Vice Chair of the APPGs on Thalidomide and on Women in Parliament and an Officer of the Domestic Violence and Counter-Extremism Groups
• selected to sit on the Armed Forces Bill Committee
• worked at the BBC World Service and for 2 charities

23 members of the network

• Bristol city council
• DiVA
• United Utilities
• Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
• Enterprise rentals Business Support
• Telematics Business Solutions Ltd
• Minority Business Engagement HUB
• BAE Systems
• Rolls Royce
• Ilyas Patel Accountancy Services
• The Atomic Weapons Establishment
• NG Bailey
• BBC
• Brighton & Hove city council
• Compass Group UK & Ireland Ltd
• Offer Moments
• Sunmark
• Balfour Beatty
• ISG
• Yorkshire Water
• Asda
• Kier Group
• Barclays

2) Figures show that in 2015 to 2016,10.5% of those starting an apprenticeship were from a BAME background, that 52.8% of all apprenticeship starts were females and that 9.9% of the total starts were by people who declared a disability or learning difficulty (LDD).

3) Read the Maynard Review recommendations.

4) The Get In Go Far campaign is designed to inform and inspire young people to consider apprenticeships as valid and credible routes to a rewarding career. It also aims to increase interest and demand from employers in running apprenticeship programmes. For more information visit Get In Go Far.

Case study

Chris Achiampong, apprentice, IBM

Currently based in London, Chris works in the system sales team at IBM.

Chris sits on the board of trustees for the EYFoundation – a charity who inspire and engage young people across the UK who are disadvantaged in the labour market and to support entrepreneurs, from social entrepreneurs to start-ups, to develop and grow their businesses.

He is also one of the faces of the Get In Go Far campaign.

Blossom Hill, apprentice, BAE Systems

Blossom is an apprentice from BAE Systems’ Military Air and Information business at Brough, Humberside.

She recently won the title of BAE Systems’ UK Apprentice of the Year 2016.

She was originally planning to go to university, but changed her mind after she heard about the opportunities available through apprenticeships at BAE.

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First of all I would like to thank Lesley for her kind words and for the invitation to speak here today. This is, I believe, an important opportunity for experts from right across the UK public sector and beyond to share best practice and the latest thinking on strategies to address fraud.

To govern is to serve. Government at its basic principle is at the service of the public. I am committed to making government work better for the public we serve. We are public servants. But there are also public servants – namely civil servants – who quietly serve the public through service to the government. You provide a service to the public. In particular, the service you provide is one which protects their, or more befittingly our, resources from threats.

‘To govern is to serve’ is a principle which my colleague Ben Gummer, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, spoke about during his recent speech to Reform. In his remarks he talked about efficiencies. Efficiencies in the way that we work and the way resources that we use. And above all how taxpayers’ money is spent.

We must ensure that we do everything in our power that we protect every penny of taxpayers’ hard-earned money. And ensure that it delivers the services that we all rely on.

We will do this with a spirit of openness and transparency. We will be open about the challenges: where they lie and how government can help.

It is unjust that public money is lost to fraud. It is unjust that many people who work day in, day out to meet commitments to their families, their employers and their communities – the honest majority – are unfairly affected by a dishonest minority who seek to abuse the money set aside for critical public services.

That is why we have a duty to do all we can to protect this government against anyone looking to abuse public services.

As you will already be aware, fraud is constantly evolving in new and sophisticated ways.

And it has the potential to touch millions of lives. Fraud is now the most prevalent crime across the UK and reaches far beyond those email scams that we’ve all come across. It is evolving in different ways and now encompasses systematic, digital, and automated fraud affecting businesses and industries right up and down the country.

In today’s digital age, the perpetrators may never even know the personal and financial loss they inflict on their victims.

And it is for this reason that we, like other governments and industries across the world, need to redouble our efforts to stay ahead of those looking to abuse our services and resources. This involves ensuring we have the right standards, the right skills and the right culture to detect, report and prevent fraud.

We have made great strides over the last couple years. We have built up our evidence base and increased our understanding of the problem. We now know more than we ever have done about the fraud landscape in the UK.

We have increased fraud awareness across the public sector and found more fraud through centrally coordinated activities like the Random Sampling Programme and deep-dive analytics projects with organisations such as the Student Loans Company.

We have brought people working in a diverse range of roles across government together into the Counter Fraud Champions network. This has allowed individuals in counter fraud across more than 40 public sector bodies to come together to share best practice and solve common challenges for the first time.

Our increased focus on combating fraud across the public sector, most notably in welfare, last year led to realised benefits alone worth £805 million last year. Outside of welfare and tax, in the last few years we have introduced new processes and controls that have led to fraud prevention savings rising from £9 million in 2013 to 14 to £27.5 million in 2014 to 2015.

Departments, and many of you, have led the way on introducing these changes through embracing the fraud agenda and striving to make a difference. The Cabinet Office, through Lesley, has been here to support you, providing ground breaking new programmes such as the Debt Market Integrator and maintaining long running services, such as the National Fraud Initiative.

Finally, we have tested and trialled new technologies and forms of data sharing and analytics, to find and prevent fraud and have taken legislation through Parliament to make data sharing easier across the public sector to find and fight and prevent fraud.

Let me be clear, we are better informed and better equipped to meet the challenges in front of us than we have ever been. But fraud in its various forms does not stand still, and nor can we.

You have already shown that you are capable of responding to the challenge and I commend you for your work to develop innovations which are leading to increased prevention and detection of fraud.

We now need to build on our successes and increase capability and skills so we can go even further still. This means ensuring that people on the ground are properly equipped to tackle the problems that we face.

The Chief Executive of the Civil Service, John Manzoni, has prepared the ground on this important agenda. Through his backing and commitment, the Cabinet Office will launch the Counter Fraud Profession later this year.

Building on the work by John, his team, and the many experts across central government and in other sectors who are working on it, the Counter Fraud Profession will ensure that we continue to have talented and highly skilled professionals working to protect public funds. People who are properly recognised, properly trained and properly accredited. People who are dedicated to protecting taxpayers’ money; and who can support colleagues who are not specialists to fulfil their roles.

Establishing the Counter Fraud Profession will demonstrate our commitment to countering fraud across and within government and I know that many of you here today will be right at the heart of making this happen.

In addition to investing in skilled people I am today launching a new set of Counter Fraud Functional Standards. These standards will outline the minimum measures that organisations should have in place for dealing with fraud.

These standards will empower managers across the Civil Service and the wider public sector to call out fraudsters, cut down on waste and make sure that every penny is accounted for. These standards will help boost our effectiveness at tackling fraud.

Alongside organisation-wide standards we are also launching new professional competencies for those working in counter fraud within government.

These professional competencies, created and endorsed by experts in the public sector and academia, will set out a common set of skills and experience that those working in counter fraud should have, and cover the whole of central government. Public servants working in counter fraud across government will be able to use these competencies to develop their skills and have their capability in counter fraud work recognised. Please do speak to the Fraud team here from the Cabinet Office today to learn more about the standards and competencies that have been launched today.

Thanks to the work completed in creating these, we have now brought together a great wealth of information, for the first time, to understand how counter fraud work should be done. This work is not glamorous and is not likely to grab headlines. But it is crucial.

These standards and professional competencies are the new foundation on which the government will build a robust counter fraud response. They demonstrate our commitment to building, step by step, a government that is increasingly able to find and fight fraud, protect the public services we need and to make government work better for everyone.

As I’ve just outlined, there is a great deal that we are doing to combat fraud on all fronts. However I also want to emphasise that the fight against fraud needs all public servants to play their part in its detection and its prevention. To stand up for public services. We need to work together, across government, and with agencies, to ensure that we succeed.

Importantly we also need to initiate a culture shift which recognises that finding fraud is not an organisational failing or a weakness. It is part of a strong public service duty. Finding, reporting and preventing more fraud is a good thing: it means that more money is being invested where it matters. And by calling it out, we are sending a strong message to fraudsters that we will not tolerate abuse.

We need to build the structures that will allow your excellent work protecting the public purse to be seen, understood and adopted. We have to foster and nurture an appetite for change and a spirit of openness and collaboration to new approaches that will allow the best ideas to spread.

That is why today’s conference, which brings you all together to share ideas and approaches, is so important and a real opportunity for all of us.

Fighting the injustice of those who abuse public finances is everyone’s business. We are on a mission to build a country that works for everyone and your work is invaluable to achieving this.

Already the government has been recognised as the most transparent in the world by the UN. We want to continue our drive to ensure that transparency is at the heart of everything we do and it is only through creating that culture of openness and honesty that we will be able to effectively recognise the fraud of the future.

I am committed to ensuring that we, as a government, take a zero tolerance approach to fraud – to defraud the government is to defraud the public; we must root out fraud wherever it lies, if we are to protect taxpayers’ money.

I want us to be the best in the world at detecting and preventing fraud and I think with better collaboration, skills and capability that I’ve talked about, we can be. We have built the foundation for a potential revolution around how the public sector protects public services through dealing with fraud, and I encourage you to seize the opportunity and be part of this.

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Four new appointments to the Homes and Communities Agency’s Board have been confirmed by the Communities Secretary Sajid Javid, as the agency takes a leading role in delivering the new homes the country needs.

Stephen Bell, Richard Blakeway, Councillor Simon Dudley and Councillor Teresa O’Neill OBE have been appointed following a recruitment process in line with the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments.

The HCA is going through a period of change as it helps deliver a significant increase in housing supply and the Board will establish the overall strategic direction of the Agency, ensure it carries out its functions effectively and meets its targets.

The new appointments strengthen the HCA Board following the recent departures of Kevin Parry and Ian Robertson.

Communities Secretary Sajid Javid said:

This is an important period for the Homes and Communities Agency as it plays a key role in delivering the homes this country needs.

The agency will be vital for boosting housebuilding and speeding up the delivery of new homes so that everyone can benefit from having somewhere safe and secure to live.

These appointments will bring new skills, knowledge and considerable experience that will be of real benefit to the HCA’s Board.

Chairman of the Homes and Communities Agency Board, Sir Edward Lister said:

I am delighted to welcome these 4 new board members, who all bring a wealth of experience and expertise that will help our organisation to increase the scale and pace of delivery, and promote new approaches to housebuilding.

I would like to take this opportunity to offer my best wishes to departing board members and offer my sincere thanks for their hard work and support over the past few years.

Their work at the HCA has made a real difference to places across the country and hundreds of thousands of people have benefited from better homes and job opportunities.

• Stephen Bell

  He will be chairing the HCA Audit and Risk Assurance Committee. He has substantial experience of the banking sector having worked as Group Chief Risk Officer and Board Director for Ulster Bank and Wellesley Group.

• Richard Blakeway

  He has 20 years of experience of government. His previous roles include special adviser to the Prime Minister on housing, planning and regeneration and Deputy Mayor for Housing, Land and Property responsible for delivering the Mayor of London’s Housing Strategy.

• Councillor Simon Dudley

  He is currently Leader of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead as well as Lead Member for Housing. He also has a strong commercial background having previously worked as Executive Director of Global Capital Markets at Arcapita Ltd and Managing Director at Citigroup Global Markets Limited.

• Councillor Teresa O’Neill OBE

  She is leader of the London Borough of Bexley where she has been a councillor since 1998. In addition, she is Vice Chair and Conservative Group Leader on London Councils and a member of several London advisory boards. She also has a background in the financial services sector having worked for Merrill Lynch International.

The new board members have been appointed for 3 year terms.

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