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Skills Base

My Lords, it gives me the greatest pleasure to thank the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, for introducing this crucial debate and to congratulate him on his impressive speech and excellent review. We have had a high-level skills debate and I pay tribute to all noble Lords who have spoken so knowledgeably. The constraints of time will not permit me to give all of them the attention that they deserve, but I would like to mention the noble Lord, Lord Low, who as always has been an articulate champion for the disabled. I agree with him, the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, that we must develop the potential of all our people. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham was also right in what he said about the Careers Service. I wholeheartedly agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, that we must value vocational education. I support the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, and my noble friends Lord Hunt of Wirral and Lord Sheikh when they call for a less complex system and for training and qualifications that are responsive to employers’ needs. In answer to the noble Lords, Lord Haskel and Lord Sawyer, yes, I was hooked on ““The Apprentice””. It is now widely acknowledged that Britain’s future will be as a skills and knowledge-based economy. We have in front of us a massive opportunity, but one that can be grasped only by a step change in the nation’s skills. When his review was published last year, the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, said: "““Without increased skills, we would condemn ourselves to a lingering decline in competitiveness, diminishing economic growth and a bleaker future for all””." He added that the case for action is ““compelling and urgent””. So I am surprised and disappointed that such a serious piece of work has waited seven months for a government response—seven months in which the number of apprenticeship enrolments has fallen, the number of NEETs has risen and we have fallen further behind our international competitors in intermediate and high-level skills. The delay in itself would be bad enough but, simultaneously, the Further Education and Training Bill embeds the Learning and Skills Council in the management of skills, in complete contradiction to the Leitch review’s core message of simplified, employer-driven skills with a streamlined LSC. It is therefore hardly surprising that many of the people to whom we speak are unhappy that there has been such a delay. We on these Benches share their frustration, not for political advantage but for the 1.3 million young people who are falling behind as every week and month passes and for the countless employers and employees who are confused and alienated by the complexity of the current structure. Given that we have just debated a half-hearted Further Education and Training Bill, what we need, if the review of the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, is to be taken seriously, is clarity and boldness from the Government. We need to know how the schools programme will be structured, how it will be funded, what the balance of responsibility will be between employers, the state and individuals, and what the priorities will be. This is where the Government will have to be bold. Are we going to put more into training the existing workforce, or are we focusing on core and life skills? These are tough decisions. In order to deliver a demand-led system, the Government will have to address the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, for a fundamental change in the role of the planning bodies, with less complexity and easier navigation for all involved. So what of the future of the Learning and Skills Council? The Government are currently proposing the fourth reorganisation in five years and, through the FE Bill, the council has been given many more powers, even though it is not given its first mention until page 73 of Leitch. In the recent House of Commons Trade and Industry Committee report, Better Skills for Manufacturing, questions were raised as to whether a region-led system of provision is compatible with the new powers being given to sector-based, employer-led bodies that operate nationally. If the Government are serious about employer and learner demand-led skills, they need to tackle the problems of too much bureaucracy and too many fingers in the pie, which stifle initiative and limit the powers of employers and learners to drive the system. The relationship between the LSC and the sector skills councils must be addressed; otherwise, there is a danger of establishing parallel structures which will fail to make the system more cost-effective and simple and which will lead to further confusion. Our economic competitiveness group, led by my right honourable friend John Redwood, last week outlined a suggestion for a system of allocation of skills funding that would make the LSC redundant. It proposed that taxpayer funds should be allocated in accordance with the choices made by trainees rather than by the training providers. It is envisaged that such a framework will encourage trainers to tailor their course content to better reflect the needs of the market. This submission will be considered along with the work of our policy groups. I hope that this demonstrates our commitment and the thought that we have given to the skills agenda. We welcome the proposal of the Leitch review to give greater responsibility to the sector skills councils while acknowledging that some SSCs are better than others. There is also a contradiction in the remit of the SSCs, which currently have too much to do and are increasingly becoming servants of the Government instead of champions of employers and employees. Under the Leitch proposals, Train to Gain would play a major part in helping people to climb the skills ladder, with the whole adult training budget—with the exception of community learning—being funnelled through it. Yet significant concerns need to be addressed. The Association of Colleges questions whether it is necessary to spend £40 million a year on brokers, and the 157 Group of leading FE colleges can demonstrate that the vast majority of training that it has conducted under the scheme was generated by the colleges themselves, without the support of a skills broker. Edge, the independent foundation that aims to raise the status of practical and vocational learning among 14 to 25 year-olds of all levels of ability, believes that there is a genuine risk that Train to Gain will simply accredit skills that people already have rather than adding to their skills. This fear is shared by many college principals, who say that Train to Gain is more about assessing than teaching. If this is so, we will waste a good deal of taxpayers’ money on simply handing out certificates rather than adding to the skills of the workforce. We believe that this could be overcome if the Government embraced the learner accounts, for which the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, is a powerful advocate. This would give individuals much greater control over training and counterbalance the emphasis on the sometimes narrow objectives of Train to Gain. We need to explore where as a nation we prioritise our skills programme. It is estimated that there will be 600,000 fewer young people aged 15 to 24 entering the UK workforce between 2010 and 2020. The Leitch review’s analysis of demographic trends suggests that, as fewer young people enter the job market, it becomes vital that we retrain and upskill the existing workforce. Currently, much emphasis is placed on core skills and life skills. While I can appreciate the Government wanting to give people who have been failed by the system a second chance, it begs the question: why have they been failed in the first place? At the same time, there has been a marked fall, as the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, said, in adult learning, participation in FE and work-based learning. There has also been a particularly worrying decline in apprenticeship enrolments, which may reflect the fact that many frameworks do not require dedicated workplace training under an experienced mentor. If any noble Lords care to read our further thoughts on apprenticeships, I direct them to the excellent pamphlet written by my honourable friend John Hayes MP and Dr Scott Kelly and published by the Centre for Policy Studies. The Leitch review wishes to ““embed a culture of learning””, and we certainly need a long-term, sustained campaign to change cultural attitudes towards training and skills. Many people are turned off education by bad experiences at school. Edge believes that people need to know that learning by doing is as important as learning by listening. I completely agree with the sentiment that in order to change the culture of a nation we have to start at school. Last Friday, I had the pleasure and the privilege of being the guest of the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, when he received a much deserved honorary doctorate from the University of Bolton. In his speech, the vice-chancellor Dr George Holmes spoke of the university being in the real world and preparing people for the real world. He said that it would respond to Leitch by providing high-level skills for a strong economy in the exciting way that was so vividly described by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria. Universities and colleges have a vital role to play. We, too, want to play our part in the consensus of which the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, spoke passionately, because we care passionately about skills, not only because of the good of the economy but because we care about individual empowerment. When our new Prime Minister spoke in Manchester last week, one of the most moving passages in his speech was about the values that his parents had taught him and that would never leave him. He said that each and every one of us has talent and that every one of us should have the chance to develop that talent. He said: "““Each of us should use whatever talents we have to enable people least able to help themselves””." I, too, grew up with those core values. They are values that the Conservative Party shares. That is why we believe in developing the whole person and esteeming and valuing people in all their diversity and why we support the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, in his ambition to equip people with the skills to be flexible and to take advantage of their opportunities.