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Skills for Growth

My Lords, from these Benches I also welcome the Statement and I thank the Minister for giving it to us. We share with the Minister the view that the role and importance of vocational skills have been consistently underplayed in this country and that more needs to be done to persuade young people—and older people—of the value of such training, particularly the value of progression within vocational training. We are delighted to see the emphasis on the higher-level technician, from foundation to degree level, emphasised in the Statement. As a member of the Skills Commission, which published earlier this year its inquiry into progression from apprenticeships, I fully endorse and appreciate that. It is vital that these young people are given aspirations to higher levels of training. We also welcome the creation of the 35,000 new apprenticeship places for 19 to 25 year-olds, particularly for the advanced apprenticeships to level 3 and, I hope, level 4. We support the creation of university technical schools that the Government have begun to back through the academy programme, which mirror the German technical high schools. That is an area we need to explore further and we shall look with interest at how those schools progress. In particular, we enthusiastically endorse the re-emergence of individual skills accounts although we have some questions that I will put to the Minister about those. I have a number of questions about the Statement. In the first place, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt mentioned, it comes at the same time as rumours of a substantial cut in skills funding. The rumour is of a cut of £340 million in the skills budget, of which £100 million would be cuts in various quangos, including such bodies as the Learning and Skills Improvement Service. Some £250 million will come from the skills budget itself. Will the Minister tell us a little more about those cuts? In the Statement he said: "““We will not abandon our promise of basic skills for all””," but are the Government cutting the basic skills programme for numeracy and literacy? What about the ring-fenced or safeguarded adult learning budget of £210 million? There are rumours that that will be cut yet it is an essential part of the broader provision of adult education services in this country. It is the remnant of what was a much larger programme at one point and it has been under threat for a long time. His right honourable friend in the other place, Mr Denham, earlier this year granted a reprieve and regarded it as a safeguarded budget, but what has happened to that budget? Am I right in thinking that, as far as the department is concerned, there is a switch of this money from further education to higher education? The projection of funding in the annual report 2008-09 for what was DIUS indicated that, whereas the higher education budget would actually increase by some £300 million, the further education budget would be dropping from £300 million. Is that what we are now seeing? Is that actually because the Government have overshot in terms of projecting university numbers and underestimated numbers in vocational training? The Minister talks about a dramatic reduction in the number of public bodies in this area following the UKCES report. I was delighted to hear that, but we have just passed the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill, which trebles the number of quangos in the apprenticeship area, so it seems odd that the Government are now talking about a reduction. I notice in the UKCES report that among those that were questioned were the RDAs. However, since the Minister is reinforcing the RDAs I take it that they are not going to be culled, so which bodies will be? It has been mentioned that there will be a concentration of the sector skills councils. Is it really sensible for there to be an amalgamation just after those councils have been through a process of reaccreditation and where the industry and employers are happy with the representation that they have? The Minister talked about a more strategic approach to skills in particular areas such as advanced manufacturing, low-carbon technologies, digital technologies and bioscience, but I remind him that cultural and creative skills is the fastest-growing area in this country. It now contributes 11 per cent to GDP and its growth rate is 9 per cent. There are many jobs in this area that cannot be filled by universities such as Bournemouth University, which has specialist programmes in this particular area. Is he considering putting the emphasis on this area as well? It is excellent to hear that skills accounts are going forward, but what form will they take? The Minister spoke of trebling the number of public and private institutions that will accept credits. Which institutions are these, what form will the accounts take and how will they be credited? Finally, the Minister talks in paragraph 20 about the FE sector providing world-class skills. Will he congratulate the team who went to WorldSkills at Calgary this year and came back with eight gold medals, seven silver medals and five bronze medals? WorldSkills is scheduled to take place in the UK in 2011, when we will hope to match our success at the Olympics the following year.