One in five young people will start an apprenticeship within the next ten years in a bid to improve skills following the new draft apprenticeship bill announced yesterday.

The bill is intended to improve the quality of the training to make apprenticeships a mainstream learning option as well as increasing the number of apprenticeships in the public sector and giving school leavers more information about careers.

Making his announcement yesterday, skills minister David Lammy said: "This bill now ensures that apprenticeships are a badge of quality, without question.

"Apprenticeships have been going from strength to strength, and over the past decade, we have more than doubled the number of young people and adults starting apprenticeships. But we need to go further to ensure both the number and quality of apprenticeships on offer."

Currently only one in 20 companies offer any type of apprenticeship scheme with London in particular faring worst. Recent figures revealed that only 11,090 young people took up apprenticeships in 2006-07, just 6% of the total number of apprenticeships offered, compared to 32,210 in the North-West.

According to David Frost, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, the challenge now is to ensure that firms looking to offer apprenticeship schemes are "engaged and supported," in particular companies who may not have the resources to facilitate this.

The new scheme hopes to be in place by 2013.