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Skills Base

My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Leitch, both on leading the debate and on his excellent report. I know from our conversations how much time and energy he has put into that work. I know that at times he has even had to sacrifice his hobby of antiquarian book collecting to get on with the report. Given the success and warmth with which his report has been received today, he can probably treat himself this afternoon to an antiquarian book. It is a first-class report. What I like about it is that it is accessible, understandable and comprehensive. You can read it and it does not turn you off. You can go through the statistics and make sense of them. It is a valuable road map for the future. I welcome it and support its conclusions. In particular, I support the emphasis on the demand-led approach. I see the importance of the balance between the state education sector and employers, but I think that we need to recognise the importance of entrepreneurs and employers, who create work, jobs and businesses. They can play a very important role in the skills development agenda. I was sorry to hear the noble Lord, Lord Newby, who is not in his place, sound a little pessimistic about the role of employers. I think that employers have an important role to play and would like to say something about that in the short time available to me. I think that I know something about the world of work. I started work at 15 and I have been trying to avoid it ever since without success. I am also a signed up member of the Apprentice Club, so there are at least two of us in the House today—probably many more on these Benches. I come to the debate from many angles. I still consider myself to be a student and a learner. I think that that is very important for all of us who sit on these Benches and, like all of us, I take on many other roles as employer, chairman, coach—whatever we are called on to do in our capacity as Members of this House. I enjoy thinking about that, coming from the background that I did to become Chancellor of the University of Teesside, because I can see the full range of what can be achieved in skills development. Across that interplay, I see mediocrity but I also see excellence, and we must concentrate on the excellence. I agree with my noble friend Lord Haskel. I am convinced that the most important factor in developing a skilled workforce is the quality of leadership and management. It genuinely starts at the top. I go further and say that it is not just about management innovating and making profit; it is very much about management being able to develop people’s skills, to communicate with vision and to describe with passion what can be achieved by a skilled workforce. Managements who can do that stand the most chance of success. I am equally convinced that the quality of work needs to be discussed, because it is crucial. That is crucial, because for employers to make work challenging, exciting, welcoming and rewarding and to truly value people for performing that work is what makes people want to learn, develop and grow. The quality of work and encouraging employees to do that work and be valued by managers, leaders and employers is for me at the heart of all this. Let people get excited about their job, excited about their work and they will be queuing up to learn and to get new skills. Go to another workplace where that does not happen and people cannot wait to go home, they cannot wait to leave and they are demotivated and disappointed. We have good role models that we should advance. That is what I want to talk about. How do we measure that? It is a hard thing to measure. Investors in People has done a really good job in trying to concentrate on that and get companies to link their business plans with the workforce training and development. The report suggest that we continue to work with Investors in People to take that forward. I have been thinking about how we could measure that more rigorously and comprehensively. I think that it must be based on the appraisal of leaders and managers by the workers. That is fundamental. I know that a lot of big businesses do that, but it is a key index of how well a business is doing if the managers and leaders have been appraised by the employees. That is done by the best; it needs championing and extending. The Sunday Times list of top 100 companies that value employees is a very good index to look at. My noble friend might think about talking to the firm that compiles that index to see how it could link with what we do, how we can get to measure companies that really value their employees. It is about raising aspirations and raising awareness. Show me a company that values its employees and I will show you a company where skills and training are doing well. That is my contribution. Once you stand up, your time goes in no time. We need concentration on leadership and management; we need to make work rewarding and fulfilling; we need to value people; and we need to try to measure performance. I have a complementary slogan to that of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt: ““Who values wins””.