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World Class Skills 2020

Yes, that is true, but I point out again, at the risk of being repetitive—certainly not boring; that would not be possible—that there are 1.3 million NEETs. I noticed the Minister nodding his head when I qualified that number, but I cannot believe that any fewer than 1 million of those could not, in the right circumstances and with the right opportunities and the right help, usefully be employed. The Minister is right that there is a relationship between migration, economic demand and unemployment, as there has always been. I am concerned about the nature of some of that migration. I represent an area in Lincolnshire that has a low-skilled, low-wage economy with high levels of employment. There is a big demand in the food and food-related industries for labour, some of which is seasonal and part-time, and in recent years, large numbers of migrants have been used to fill those gaps. I have repeatedly made the case locally and nationally that we have to be cautious about exploitation, not on the part of the big companies, which do their best to ensure that that does not happen, but by the labour agents, or gangmasters, as they are popularly known. We have to be careful about the other circumstances in which such people find themselves in relation to housing and health, and about the pressure on local infrastructure. We must also be careful that the employment of such workers is not used as a means of holding down wage costs rather than creating strong, secure, long-term jobs with decent wages for Britons of all races, colours and creeds. We have to be a little careful about deeming migration to be a net economic good. Migration Watch recently did a study into the economic effect of migration in which it balanced the growth that it helps to sustain against infrastructural costs for roads, housing, health and education. The picture is not entirely clear. I shall not say too much about this because I do not want to get bogged down, but we must exercise great caution when assuming that migration is necessarily, implicitly always a positive in these kinds of circumstances. The Minister said that by 2020 we will need 5 million more highly skilled workers, but 3 million fewer unskilled workers. That reflects the findings of the Leitch report; indeed, the Secretary of State said the same in the House last year. The Minister also said that 70 per cent. of the 2020 work force will consist of people who are over 16. That means that we have to upskill and reskill the existing work force. It will not be enough simply to provide the right opportunities for school leavers. It will not even be enough to do that and to engage the NEETs gainfully. We must look at how we can improve the opportunities of those who are already in the work force, but that is not always a straightforward job, because people have to adjust their skills to meet changing economic and commercial demands. We have a mountain to climb. More than one third of adults do not have a basic school-leaving qualification—double the proportion in Canada and Germany—and the Government do not have an acceptable record regarding the literacy and numeracy of school leavers. Given the mountain that we have to climb to achieve world-class skills by 2020, one would expect the Government to do everything they can to increase participation in training, but it has fallen in the past couple of years. Participation in further education was down by 13.6 per cent. last year—back to where it was in 1997. Participation in adult and community learning was down by almost 10 per cent. last year to well below its 1998 level. Work-based learning was down by 6.5 per cent. to below what it was in 2000, when figures were first compiled. I want to amplify that last point, because the decline in adult learning is sometimes parodied as merely a decline in recreational opportunities for prosperous middle-aged and older people who tend to live in the leafier parts of constituencies such as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster, and in small pockets of constituencies such as mine. Of course that is not true. Much adult and community learning is an important bridge back into learning and work for people who perhaps did not prosper the first time around. That is why I emphasise that work-based learning has declined, as have adult and community work-related courses. This is not simply about people who would like to study Mandarin or basket weaving. It is about people trying to equip themselves to re-enter the work force. That is particularly important given the profile of the work force now and in the past decade. The Minister is an authority on these matters, so he will know that many of those who enter the work force are from the ranks of the non-employed, such as women who left employment to bring up a family and who seek to re-engage in employment later in life. They have been able to do so in great numbers in the past decade or more. That bolstered our work force at a time when, had they not done so, demographic change would have made life very difficult for British businesses. If we remove the bridges that they need to cross to do that, we will do British business and the British economy no favours at all. Will the Minister give us an absolute assurance, in line with those that have been asked for by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education and others, that he will wage a war on the decline in adult learning? That is an important element in providing the sort of world-class skills that we need for 2020. Both he and I want to achieve that.