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Skills Base

My Lords, I am sure that my noble friend Lord Leitch must feel encouraged by the response to his important report this afternoon and by the consensus across the House on all aspects of the problem. I shall focus largely on higher education. Noble Lords may recall that I have a long-standing interest in higher education, which stems from my association with the University of Bradford, where I was chancellor until recently. The noble Lord, Lord Leitch, recommends some very stretching targets for the higher education sector; not least the target of more than 40 per cent of the 2020 workforce qualified to degree level or above. This will be a big leap from today’s position, where some 29 per cent of the population have reached that standard. I agree with the report that, to achieve this ambitious target, we will need to ensure that our universities work as closely as possible with employers and individuals. The University of Bradford does, and continues to do, just that. Next week, for example, it will open its new microtechnology and nanotechnology unit to add to its already worldwide work on polymer technology. The unit is part of a campus that is fast growing because of recruitment and research successes. The University of Bradford is also top of the league in its access programmes, and second from the top for its graduate employment. These are both very important. Access is particularly so, and I will return to it shortly. The higher education sector in Yorkshire and the Humber comprises 14 higher education institutions, and has a combined turnover of more than £1 billion a year. As a percentage of the region’s GDP, it is estimated that, directly and indirectly, the sector generates £3 billion, and that nearly 10,000 new jobs will have been created by 2010. About half those new jobs will be in the universities. Co-operative and collaborative working between Yorkshire universities, in all its guises, has changed enormously. Indeed, there has almost been a revolution. This has made it one of the driving forces in the regeneration of the region. There are several examples of this. First, there is the Graduate Enterprise Scheme, which successfully promotes enterprise and entrepreneurship among the region’s students. Secondly, there is the Knowledge Rich programme, which brings together universities and Yorkshire Forward to facilitate the appropriate expertise for use in business and in developing clusters. Thirdly, there is Yorkshire Forward itself, which was the first RDA to set up the secondment of a senior academic to act as an intermediary between the RDA and higher education institutions and to have regular officer and vice-chancellor meetings. Out of this has come a relationship that has been key to the sector’s economic development and very important for the growing inward investment made by many national and international companies that are now locating their businesses in Yorkshire. Such activities do not simply happen. Increased funding, as well as enlightened initiatives, has facilitated these developments. As many noble Lords have indicated, further investment is still needed for all sorts of reasons, not just because of our low competitive position with other countries, but also because of our need to bring up our standards to those of our competitors. In that sense, widening student participation is essential. The experience of the University of Bradford, as well as that of Yorkshire Forward, which has a big programme to bring level 2 qualifications up to and above national standards, has indicated that formal approaches are not always sufficient in themselves and that there needs to be much more innovative outreach work, often with bite-size parts and small training programmes in order to widen access to learning. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said that the more you learn, the more you learn, which is absolutely true. It is also true that the more you do not know, the less you know, and we have to rectify that problem too.