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Industrial Training Levy (Construction Board) Order 2006

My Lords, I am grateful for the constructive contributions to this short debate on the training boards, which, it is recognised, play an important role in our economy. They could do better—all those who contribute to skills could do better, because we are all aware of the fact that it is an area of British education and training where we need to improve performance year on year. The identification of the issue goes back over decades, but the constructive action to deal with the skills shortages takes time before it makes an impact. I heard the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, when she indicated that it would be remiss of us to stray to wider issues of house-building strategies and demand for housing, which was the fault into which the Committee drifted in the Commons. Members of the Commons are rather more prone than your Lordships to score points off each other from time to time. What was an exercise in innocent fun by my honourable friend the Member for Normanton enlightened the Committee, but far be it from us to get into a major debate about housing policy at this place and time; except to say, as the noble Baroness accurately identified, that proposals for increasing the number of houses to be built make demands on the industry, which is short of skilled persons at present. I share the noble Baroness’s worry about one aspect, which is that the decline of those firms that join the federation could lead us into great difficulty. If the number falls below the critical mass there is no way that we can operate, as we do within the framework of the law, the existing provisions with regard to levies. She is right about that matter but I am not sure if I detected a constructive answer on how it should be tackled. People join federations because they see benefits from the contributions the federation makes to the general work that they do, so we must look at ways in which the federations improve their standing. They have a long history and have been respected in the past, but she is right that an increasing number of companies are not joining, which is an anxiety. Both noble Lords who spoke emphasised the problems with regard to FE colleges and finding places. That is a genuine problem. We have greatly expanded further education opportunities, more young people are staying on in education than ever before and our colleges are expanding, but to do their job as effectively in education and training in key skill areas they need opportunities for young people to obtain direct work experience. That is always a challenge. I recall over all the expansion of vocational courses in this country, whether at further education or higher education level, that the pressure on succeeding in getting good training opportunities outside the education institutions has always been acute. I am confident that the Further Education Minister will respond to the challenge because courses will not succeed in training students otherwise, but it means a growing awareness in wider society that training young people is the seed-corn of the skills of the future and the backbone of the economy for the future. It is good to see that that is recognised on both sides of the House, as it was when the order was debated in the Commons, because we need to make the wider society aware of the necessity of contributions on all sides to improving skill levels and the opportunities for enhancing skills. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, asked whether the Olympic Games could contribute through public sector funding, but the Olympic Games funding is not directly under any government departmental control.