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Retraining the returners is a very different proposition from training young people. Many returners lack confidence, as they may not have been at work for 15 or 20 years ; the style of training that is adopted for them needs to be different from that applied to 16 to 18-year-olds or people who are on work experience. The first step is to restore their confidence and be sensitive to their anxieties. They may also take a while to start learning, as they may not have been in the classroom for 30 years ; it is inappropriate to expect everyone to respond in exactly the same way. Later, of course, they often prove much better and more committed employees, but the traning systems must recognise their initial needs.The Brook Street study showed that young people were often preferred by employers because
"They are more familiar with modern technology."
That is one of the most unfair comments that could be made by personnel directors about both women and men returners. Frequently, the reason the older workers are less familiar with new technology is that no one has ever given them the opportunity to become familiar with it. What, above all, saps the confidence of a woman returning to work after 20 years is walking into a secretarial office that is full of word processors : she may not even know how to switch them on. We are often training the untrainable, instead of employing the employable who want to work. Often that is due to sheer prejudice. Perhaps some of the vast sums now directed at training should be aimed at the personnel directors who are so short-sighted about what women want, and what they can offer. Many training directors need retraining themselves, and fast.
I commend those thoughts to my hon. Friend the Minister. 6.52 pm
Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South) : I beg to move,
That Class VI, Vote 1 be reduced by £100,000 in respect of Subhead H1 (Skills Training Agency running costs).
The £100,000 is a nominal sum covering payments to consultants, and to three civil servants who were given time during work to prepare a work plan to take over 46 skill centres. The skill centre giveaway is becoming a major scandal. I believe that privatisation is wrong in principle ; but to do it behind closed doors--as it has been done, with the Minister's approval--is doubly wrong.
Since my Adjournment debate on 15 May, information has come to light--not, I need hardly add, from the Minister, who has been reluctant to provide any information, but from other sources. There were at least 61 other bidders, who are listed in early-day motion 1106. Before the Minister says that there is a possible error, let me anticipate him. Mr. C. F. Lakin is listed as a potential bidder. As the motion says that
"the following potential bidders were not informed that £14 million was to be donated by the Government to the purchasers' of skillcentres",
it is clear that Mr. Lakin--who subsequently became a director of TICC Skill Centres and the recipient of £2 million--was one of those who did obtain some information.
The Minister tried, more or less in vain, to defend his position on the BBC television programme "Face the Facts" on 17 May. The programme featured comments from people who were not told that £14 million was available. I will quote some of them--people who
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broadcast publicly, some of them doubtless sympathetic to the political position of the Minister and the Prime Minister. One person said :"It's fairly obvious that if we'd have known that there had been Government money available, our view would have been completely and utterly different. I felt, and feel, that the financial people should have come back to us, and made that simple fact available". Among the other bidders was Geoff Bowers of the Sheffield-based Bowford Engineering Services. His company was keenly interested in obtaining the Ipswich skill centre, because it is one of the few companies that are accepted to train welders to the high standards demanded by the nuclear industry. The centre was also close to the Sizewell B construction project. Mr. Bowers said :
"After due consideration we decided that there was simply too much distance between the losses, that in particular the Ipswich Centre was making, and the viable commercial operation."
Mr. O'Reilly of Wimpey--not an inconsiderable organisation, and one that is probably politically sympathetic to the Government--said : "We were notified that the basis of the bid which had been sort of roughly agreed was no longer valid, that they weren't prepared to accept a bid in that form. Under the circumstances, being very disappointed with all the work we'd put into it and so on, we could do nothing other than actually withdraw from the sales of the skill centres we were interested in. They moved the goal posts at the last minute, and it was impossible for us to put together any sort of bid. I think the joint venture that we were putting forward which had been acceptable a month or six weeks beforehand, was no longer acceptable. I was always aware that there was an in-house bid going on, as everybody I think bidding was, and I really didn't see that much difference between what we actually proposed, and what actually came out at the end of the day."
Why was Wimpey turned down?
My final quote comes from a representative of Essex Training Limited, a company owned by the motor trade in Essex. Mr. David Hale said :
"Prior to making our final offer, we said, tongue in cheek, jokingly, We're taking on all of these responsibilities, what's the chances of any of the so-called sweeteners that we hear about?' And immediately, the atmosphere became very frosty and prickly, and it was made abundantly clear to us that's not the things that you should say, and not the line in which they were going to go down. But subsequently, we found that people have been paid to take skill centres off the Government. If we had known, then of course we could have made it a serious suggestion."
Why was that organisation rejected? Was it because the people who rejected it were chums of the three civil servants who were making an insider bid? That is a serious point, and it is no good the Minister shaking his head.
Since my Adjournment debate, 400 people have been made redundant by Astra Training Service. It got the plum that Jack Horner pulled out of the pie : the 46 skill centres and the £11 million. The Metel firm in Liverpool has sacked 27 people. I wonder whether this was not a simple case of the Government's bribing those organisations to carry out Government policy.
The Minister has uttered platitudes about the three civil servants being removed from "sensitive decisions" in April 1989. However, the Crown employee rules produced by the Cabinet Office were simply jettisoned. They should be restored in every detail, and applied on every occasion.
The three civil servants responsible for the skill centres were also responsible for the deficits that the Government complained about. That raises the question of how those deficits occurred. Was there a gleam in the eye of civil servants, who knew that they might be able to pick a plum out of the pie that the Government were about to provide
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for them? There is a rich stench of internal corruption about this. At best, Ministers have been foolish. The stench will remain whatever they say, and one of the problems is that they say very little. No figure has been given for the value of the assets transferred, at no cost to Astra and to TICC Skill Centres Ltd., plus more than £13 million which was transferred to them. The total value of the land and assets given away, with minimal conditions, is at least in excess of £120 million.While that was going on, honest straightforward bidders were excluded. I quote Mr. Bowers again ; describing what happened when they discovered that between £13 million and £14 million was being handed out, he says :
"We were absolutely flabbergasted. It's fairly obvious that if we'd known there'd been Government money available, our view would have been completely and utterly different. I mean as a private company, and we are very much the children of the Thatcher revolution in the fact that we take our own risks, we don't borrow public money, and maybe we should have thought in terms of subsidies. We simply didn't. I felt, and feel, that the financial people should have come back to us, and made that simple fact available to us. I think that we should have been given an opportunity, if that sort of money was on the table, for a re-evaluation of the bid."
Finally, I quote from a person who has written to me from a skill centre which has been privatised. He says :
"I would like to thank you for your stand against the privatisation of the Skill Centre Network. I work at the skill centre"-- I shall not give the name, so that they will not be victimised by the Minister's chums--
"which has become part of the TICC skillcentres Ltd. which acquired 3 other skill centres."
The four are East Lancashire, St. Helen's, Cumbria and Ipswich, thus retaining anonymity
"I would like to bring to your attention the way in which our centres plus £2,000,000 of Tax Payers' Money were acquired. The Centres and all personnel were given to Mr. Howard Lieu, accountant ; Mr. Chris Lakin, university administrator ; and Mr. Clive Ibbison-Steel, general production manager This new company, T.I.C.C. Ltd. which had no past experience of running a training organisation, nor had the Directors, managed to be in a position to receive £2,000,000 plus 4 Skillcentres with all their assets (Cumbria Freehold) the rest leasehold. This seems difficult to believe but it's true. We at Skillcentre would be obliged if you could ask the Minister concerned the following questions".
I am asking the Minister now and I look forward to the answers. "How could 3 individuals with no experience of running a multi-million pound Skillcentre Network, suddenly find that they have hit the jackpot? They now own 4 Skillcentres plus £2,000,000. How much was their personal financial input? Who vetted these people and why were they allowed to proceed with their so called bid? I have enclosed Rantfix and T.I.C.C. company information. Again, I would like to thank you for your efforts on our behalf and I look forward to hearing from you."
I look forward to hearing from the Minister, and I want one final assurance --that no Ministers, when they leave their posts, will join any of these companies to share in the spoils when the Government sell the lot off.
7.2 pm
Mr. Lewis Stevens (Nuneaton) : The report of the Select Committee on Employment contains some disappointments because of the nature of its criticisms. However, no surprises came out of it. The sort of training that we have
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now accepted that the Government and the country need, which requires the association of industry and a wide range of training organisations, is relatively new to this country.The hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Taylor) was quite right when he said that present training difficulties and the lack of training in the past were the fault of the country and not of any Government. In truth it was. Our approach to training was extremely static. For many years,on the industrial scene we accepted apprenticeships, which varied enormously from good to bad, and an academic structure within which the content of many courses changed very little, although they were updated at the higher level. We got into a rut.
Some 10 years ago, we had to consider the whole concept of training. We had little experience of how to proceed. What has happened since? Perhaps the most significant thing that has happened in the past 10 years is that the Government, training organisations and those in education have not remained static in their approach to training. With the employment training scheme, we have made training more flexible.
One part of the report which causes some concern is the way that it refers to drop-outs. Drop-outs have been a problem in almost every voluntary training scheme that I have had experience of in technical colleges, adult education courses and employment training. My hon. Friend the Member for Swindon (Mr. Coombs) stressed the user-friendly aspect of training. I hope that, as a follow-up to the Select Committee's report, there will be an analysis of why people do not attend training courses and why people drop out--apart from those people who drop out because they have moved to a job. There should also be an analysis of those people who finish courses. Only when we have done that will we be able to modify training to provide a better structure in the future.
Most of what we doing now has been learnt over a relatively short time but can be developed through analysis of the results of present schemes. Almost certainly, much of the training which has been carried out in this country has not been structured in such a way that it enabled people to move from stage to another or to pick up a course again if they were made redundant or moved. It has not been possible to move easily back into training. If we were to analyse training methods and the way that people enter further training, we could keep up the momentum in training systems. We need a momentum for change in training, and so do the individuals who use it. We have not been successful in that respect, because that sort of training is relatively new to this country.
Many people do not find training acceptable or easy to take to. My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) commented inadvertently that people may not have been at school for 20 years and are therefore not used to the classroom. We should not consider modern training as merely another classroom exercise of the sort that we did at the age of 12, 13 or 14. Training is a wider concept than having to get used to a classroom atmosphere. That sort of training is fine for academics. Much employment training and youth training is action and job-orientated, although not necessarily for a specific job. I am sure that many people find it difficult to maintain an interest in that type of training. It is difficult to concentrate for long on learning, even if it is practical learning, without motivation.
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Hon. Members have pointed out that many people who go on training schemes are not best fitted to start learning again or perhaps they have just left school and are on such a course for the first time. The group of people which worries me most are those at the bottom of the academic ladder--for example, some young people coming out of what used to be called schools for the educationally subnormal and those young people who are slightly handicapped. It is important to provide the cash and effort needed to provide them with the resources to enable them to make the most of their potential. We are still not coping very well with that.I am not complacent about what the Government have done, although they have done well. Training is dynamic and must keep progressing. There are gaps, especially for disadvantaged people, and they should be addressed now and in the future.
We have not concentrated sufficiently on the continuation of education in business, in the engineering profession and all the other professions. The Engineering Council and other organisations are trying to encourage training, but that has not been welcomed with the enthusiasm for which one might have hoped. Figures show that industry is training more people than ever before and that it is spending more money on training than ever before. Unless, however, people in industry are trained continually, the skills that we need will not be available. We praise Germany and Japan for the training that they provide, but that is an insult to the many fine professional people and technicians who work in British industry. Many of the people who work in the engineering industry are technically as good as any that one will find in Germany or Japan. If opportunities are provided for them, they are enthusiastic about increasing their knowledge and qualifications.
We have been slow to train managers. It must be nearly 30 years since I last went on a management training course. At that time, the Institution of Industrial Managers was just ticking over. However, in those days we looked forward to the time when the majority of industrial managers would have a management qualification. That did not happen, not because the institutes were lax but because of higher management's lack of enthusiasm to train their personnel, or send them for training. If managers are not trained in management skills, and if they do not update them, there is no hope for the future. Nothing changes faster than the need for management to train. Their ideas and their skills must change if they are to manage effectively. The most difficult thing to manage is change. If during the past 10 years we have not learnt that the management of change is the key to the future and that it is a continuing process, we have not learnt very much.
Employment training has been criticised, but its foundations are sound. By means of good analysis, it can be made more user friendly. Through the training and education councils we shall be able to provide the best training for people. The continuation of education and training is vital in almost every aspect of business life. Moreover, if managers are not fully trained and are not enthusiastic about being trained, the prospects for their employees to receive training will be damaged. If we train our managers and their employees, industry will succeed. Employees will then be enthusiastic and will be sufficiently trained to be capable of being employed.
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7.13 pmMr. Ken Eastham (Manchester, Blackley) : I agree with the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Stevens) that the skills of some of our personnel are as good as any in the world. The problem is that we do not have enough of them. The hon. Member for Swindon (Mr. Coombs) said that the Opposition carp about the Government's recommendations. The Opposition's role is to point out to the general public what the issues are and how things ought to be improved. It is important to face the facts. The Government use the word "training" as a buzz word, but when we compare the United Kingdom with other countries we find that the very opposite is the case.
The Select Committee on Employment reported that this year £200 million less will be spent on training than in the previous year. Whenever the Government make a cut, they try to justify it by saying that the numbers have gone down. They play the numbers game. When, however, the Government find that they have an additional £200 million, they ought to try to improve the quality and standard of training, which so often are nowhere near good enough. As we live in a highly competitive world we must improve the quality and the standards of training.
We are faced with a disastrous balance of payments deficit--the highest in our history. The only way to get rid of it is to export. To be successful, we must export excellent products which are better than those of our competitors and they must be competitively priced. The hon. Member for Nuneaton referred to the need to improve management training. We do not concentrate sufficiently on that. Seven out of 10 British managers receive no training. If they are to lead their companies effectively, that is a serious indictment. We made a grave mistake about eight or nine years ago when we abolished most of the industrial training boards. I pay tribute to the man who set them up--Lord Carr. He established the industrial training board in the early 1960s because we were in such a mess ; industry was making no provision for training. Soon after the 1979 election, the Tory party decided to abolish most of the industrial training boards. That was a disaster.
Education is the key to improving ability and potential. The Department of Education and Science, however, has been starved of funds. According to a press release that I received only today from the Department of Education and Science :
"It must be a priority for all those responsible for post-16 education and training that the provision they offer equips young people with the skills and qualities that employers need in their workforce."
But they are fancy words with no substance, as is demonstrated when one examines the provision of education. Earlier in the debate reference was made to the lack of numeracy and literacy. It is obvious that, if people cannot grasp the basics, they will never be technological experts. We seem to be going wrong with the basics, but we cannot have one without the other. It is therefore important that the Department of Employment and the Department of Education and Science should work in tandem.
I represent a Manchester constituency and I have experience in education there. I have always supported the colleges of further education. The further education system used to be far stronger than it is today. One of its great strengths was public accountability. Further education was not organised just by the local politicians
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and educationists. Industry was represented in the colleges of further education and managers took an interest in training. It is often implied that industry never had any input into further education, but that is a complete fallacy that should be refuted today.Despite the success of colleges of further education--and they had considerable success--further education in Manchester has suffered savage cuts. The further education budget for this year is £18 million ; last year it was £24 million. It is no investment in future technology to starve colleges of further education of funds. Last year, there were threee colleges of further education ; this year, because of the financial crisis, there will be only two. Last year, they were allocated only £500,000 for equipment. Anyone who knows anything about technical equipment will understand that £500,000 does not go very far.
The Government have a strong preference for private agencies. There is a great myth that something is better because it is private. But many of those so-called private agents were not qualified as the experts in the further education colleges were. They constantly put profit motives before quality training. Already Manchester has experienced many disastrous schemes which were set up by the Department of Employment. Only a few months ago one organisation collapsed, ditching 1,000 trainees. That is what happens in a privatised education system.
Now the training and education councils have come to Manchester and have been allocated well in excess of £10 million which will be administered by private companies. I keep asking questions, but I never get satisfactory answers about how the costs will be monitored. We get all sorts of promises from civil servants, but as soon as anything goes wrong it is hushed up and covered up. It is all supposed to be a great success, but the private organisations suddenly disappear. Cost monitoring will not be the same as it was when training was publicly organised by the further education colleges. There will be less accountability for decisions about what training should involve and concentrate on.
The engineering industry is one of our most important industries. It is the biggest exporter of British industry and the biggest money spinner, along with the chemical industry. The engineering industry is now talking about the new engineering training agency. According to the Government's diktat, that agency will be funded by subscriptions and fees. That immediately means a reduced budget, which means cuts in training, especially in small firms. Usually, small firms do not have adequate training. They will not be funded and they certainly will not volunteer any money. That was a great problem in the early 1960s, when Lord Carr had to decide to make some proper provision for training. Because the new private training agency has been set up, there will no longer be access to European funding because they are not public bodies. Hundreds of thousands of pounds that would have been available for training in Britain will no longer be available.
We already have serious skill shortages, but we only face them when it is too late. I agree that Britain's skill force has the highest technical skills, but it is the smallest in Europe. I can illustrate that. A publication that I picked up the other day referred to a recent survey published by the European Commission which contained a pecking
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order of the proportion of skills in European industrial work forces. According to the survey, France had 80 per cent. skilled workers, Italy 79 per cent., Holland 76 per cent., Germany 67 per cent., Belgium 62 per cent., Denmark 62 per cent., Ireland 59 per cent., Spain 56 per cent. and Portugal 50 per cent. The United Kingdom was bottom of the pile with 38 per cent. skilled workers. That is where we stand in the provision of skills. Everything has to be privatised. We have private agents with fancy titles, but they are meaningless and they do not come up with the goods.Today I received a letter from the British Institute of Management saying :
"The recent European Commission survey indicating that Britain lagged woefully behind other Community countries in the proportion of skilled workers in out workforce shows that much more needs to be done."
That is not a picture of the success that the Minister may attempt to present to the House tonight.
I have just a few questions. Why do our European competitors take such a different view from that of the Conservative Government in Britain? Why do Japanese companies give greater importance to industry and training, and achieve such great success? Why are trade unions not encouraged to become involved? The trade unions represent the producers. Nowadays there is always a confrontation between the Government and the trade unions. I assure the Minister that the trade unions are not Luddites ; their jobs and futures are involved. Some Conservative Members may be involved in the stock exchange, floating money about in companies. The difference for trade unionists is that they devote their whole lives to their industries. That is why they see the matter differently. I get the feeling that the Minister is not serious about this. He is smirking and nodding his head, but I am making a sensible plea for industry to move away from confrontation. There must be a partnership. I come from industry, so I mean what I say and I do not want empty gestures.
There are many subcontractors in the offshore oil industry and there are men working on two-week contracts. I am sure that there is no adequate training and it is possible that some of the disasters on the oil rigs have been the result of inadequate training. There must be changes. We should do away with two-week contracts because the men on the rigs are not properly catered for or protected. We must improve ; if we do not, we shall lose for the rest of the 1990s. 7.30 pm
Mr. James Paice (Cambridgeshire, South-East) : I want to remind my hon. Friend the Minister and other hon. Members of my long interest in training. I thereby declare an interest--albeit faint, but it is right that I should declare it--as I used to run a training company and I remain a director of the parent holding company. I have, therefore, a particular interest in training.
I have been listening to the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Eastham), with whom I served for about two years on the Select Committee on Employment. We cannot let him get away with one or two of his remarks. He referred to education. Most Conservative Members agree--although Opposition Members would not share the view--that many of today's problems stem from the failure of education to keep pace with the ever-increasing demands being put on it. To
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pretend that it is simply a matter of money, as the hon. Gentleman did, is far from the truth. Literacy and numeracy are not expensive skills to teach. They do not require much equipment or fancy buildings. However, we fall down on those skills. We heard from the Chairman of the Select Committee on Employment, the hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton), that many people on employment training are without proper literacy and numeracy skills. The hon. Member for Blackley also referred to colleges of further education. Most of us would say that when further education colleges came into existence they did a good job. The problem was that they did not move with the times and that they became entrenched in the systems they had used in the 1950s and 1960s. Such systems were not up to date for the demands of the 1980s.It was not until we moved into the training programmes which are the basis of this evening's debate--the youth training scheme, employment training and its predecessors--and which involved private contractors that employers started to place demands on further education colleges to which they had to respond. The hon. Member for Blackley referred to the public accountability of such colleges. The most important accountability is to the people who will employ those whom the colleges are training. The change has come about as a result of the introduction of private contractors, whom the hon. Member for Blackley spent some time rubbishing.
It is a matter of great concern to us all that Britain is still so far behind some of our competitors in training. However, we must not pretend that all is gloom and that nothing is getting better. We must not underestimate the fact that expenditure by all sectors of industry has increased dramatically in the past few years to £19 billion per annum. That is a major increase of about £7 billion on the figure shown in a survey carried out only three years ago. It may not be enough, but let us not talk ourselves into believing that nothing is happening.
It is even clearer to anybody who studies training over the past three or four decades that an awareness of a skills shortage is no new phenomenon. We have lagged woefully behind in training since the second world war. Why were the training boards set up if we did not have a skills problem? The Government of the time believed that the boards would meet that need. However, the training boards did not achieve their aim.
It has seemed right to Labour and to Conservative Governments to try initiative after initiative to improve the level of skills, but they have failed. When the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) referred earlier to the youth opportunities programme, which the Labour Government introduced in the late 1970s, my heart sank. Of all the initiatives tried by Labour and Conservative Governments, that must be pretty near the bottom of the pile. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is not present to hear what I have to say. He referred to the real value of the wage being paid then, which was £19 a week. That underlines clearly the fundamental difference between the youth opportunities programme, and the youth training scheme--and now youth training. The youth opportunities programme was purely a make-work scheme--an opportunity to get people off the streets for six months and to pay them to do something.
When the youth training scheme was introduced in 1983, it was a major step forward. It was not a make-work scheme. It was not intended simply to provide work, so
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one should not consider the payments to trainees as wages. The young people were receiving training and, in the long term, training is of greater benefit to them than a few pounds a week would be. We seem to have a regular mental block about the concept of integrating training with work experience. I am the first to accept that there have been times when standards in YTS, in YT and in employment training have been woefully bad to an extent that none of us as individuals would be prepared to support. However, we cannot and should not damn the whole scheme simply because standards are wrong.I served on the area manpower board for Norfolk and Suffolk until I was elected to the House. I stressed time and again that we should be far more rigorous in trying to sort out the sheep from the goats among the providers, not by some easy division into public bodies and private bodies, but into those who were providing quality training and those who were not. The Government then introduced the approved training organisation status which was a major step forward, but it was not draconian enough in weeding out many organisations and managing agencies that were failing to produce the required standards.
We have heard much about money this evening. However, we must also remember the effect of the demographic change especially on youth training. In his maiden speech, the hon. Member for Bootle (Mr. Carr) referred to the fact that Bootle is about 18th from the top of the list of places with the highest employment.
Mr. Paice : That may be the case. However, there are many constituencies at the other end. My constituency is fifth from the bottom of the same table with unemployment of 1.2 per cent. That is great good fortune for my constituents and it means that businesses are crying out for people to work for them. Businesses recognise the market demand for them to contribute and to pay well to gain employees. They recognise the need to participate in youth training as the means of training their young people. We cannot glibly say that the allowances are not sufficient. In vast areas of the country, especially in the south-east and London, employers need young people to work for them. They recognise that the market demands that they pay a substantial contribution to employ those young people. I welcome the changeover from YTS to YT. We are now moving away from something that has long been a weakness of the training schemes introduced by Governments of all parties, and emphasising outcome rather than time-serving. It is the outcome of the training that is important, and it does not matter whether it is achieved in a week or in five years. We are trying to enhance people's ability and improve their skills. To insist on a fixed period, as we have in training schemes going right back to the old apprenticeships, is to fail to recognise different learning and skill abilities and the great advances that have been made in training technology and techniques. Many of those points apply equally to ET. What is missing--perhaps particularly from ET but also from YT--is motivation, not through money but through personal stimulus. I believe that part of the problem lies in the low calibre of many of those who run training operations and--I am sorry to say --many of those working in the
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employment agencies. That is part of the reason--only a small part--why 46 per cent. do not progress from their interview at the jobcentre to the first action-plan work in a training agency : they simply do not have the necessary enthusiasm or motivation. We must examine more carefully why that is because we are talking about 46 per cent. of the whole. The Chairman of the Select Committee referred to other percentages, but they were percentages of the 54 per cent. who actually went along. In numerical terms, the biggest chunk consists of drop-outs who never even start on the scheme. We must consider that as a matter of urgency.My hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Stevens), who has left his place--[ Hon. Members :-- "He is here."] He is hiding ; I have to remind the House that, as he is behind the Bar, he is still outside the Chamber. My hon. Friend said that it is those in work who are the most important. The House spends a lot of time debating the 5.7 per cent. of the population who are unemployed. But if we are worried about Britain's economy and the importance of training to it, we should concern ourselves more with training for the 94.3 per cent. who are in jobs because, to a greater or lesser extent, they contribute to the wealth of Britain. For far too long we have failed to recognise that a skill learned at 19, 20 or 21 is not sufficient to last someone for the rest of his life. Updating and refresher courses are most important.
We must also recognise the importance of management training, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton said. Far too many people are promoted because they are the best technicians rather than because they will make the best supervisors or managers. We have gone a long way to improving high -grade management training. We have new MBA courses, and training for top managers is improving dramatically, but training for first and second-tier management often makes or breaks a company and we have a long way to go in that. It is perhaps more important in small and medium-sized companies than in large companies, which tend to have good training operations.
Let us look to the future. I have already referred to the failure of many previous initiatives. Should we now make the political choice to adopt a programme that mirrors more closely those of our major competitors, such as the United States, Germany and even Sweden? Those countries have operations where the employers are in the driving seat. The training and enterprise councils introduced by the Government are based on what is happening in those other countries. It has to be said that many of those countries would not experience the drop-out rate that we have with ET, for the simple reason that one's receipt of unemployment benefit depends on one's attendance of the scheme.
In that respect, our operation is far more lax than those of many other countries. The TECs that are rapidly coming into being will go a long way towards providing employers with the opportunity to get into the driving seat. We need look for no greater justification for the new arrangements than the fact that virtually the whole country is covered by TECs ; the programme is already well ahead of the target set for it by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) when he
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first announced the establishment of TECs only a little over a year ago. We must respect the opportunities that TECs give.There is an alternative, about which we may hear a little more in a few minutes. We could go back to a compulsory levy, as the Labour party proposes. We could impose a 0.5 per cent. payroll tax and appoint more bureaucrats to administer it. That would mirror the failure of the industrial training boards : a bureaucracy was required to administer them and they failed to do what really matters.
I believe that the Government's policy on publicly funded training is absolutely right. We must devolve responsibility for the management of, and expenditure on, the schemes to those who can make real decisions--the businesses--and, through them, to the TECs. If we debate this matter two or three years hence, we shall find that things have improved dramatically. We shall find that, whereas previous initiatives had failed, this initiative has worked. 7.47 pm
Mr. Jack Thompson (Wansbeck) : Like most hon. Members, I have no objection to the allocation of money from the Consolidated Fund to support expenditure on improved training facilities, although, like many of my hon. Friends, I am somewhat concerned that £159 million has been taken out. We should have done training a better service had that sum been kept in, particularly had the money been spent in the interests of better opportunities in engineering and the development of engineering skills.
I make no apology for concentrating on the engineering aspects of training. We have to answer a fundamental question : can we afford training--or, rather, can we afford not to have training? That is the essence of the argument. If there is one thing that frustrates me it is Britain's attitude --this is not necessarily the Government's problem--to those in the engineering profession who are considered to be second-class professionals, whose skills come somewhere below those of lawyers, doctors, dentists, artists and financial manipulators.
"Engineering The Future", a document produced in January this year by the Engineering Council and the Secondary Heads Association, says under the heading "Proposals for action" :
"The Finniston Report made this point in 1981 : Long-term improvements in the supply of engineers will be to no avail--indeed, may not occur--unless the contributions of the current stock of engineers are harnessed to greater effect than hitherto'." What applied in 1981 still applies in 1990. The document continues :
"A young Oxbridge graduate made a similar point this year : At (a household name in British industry) I would have been a junior assistant engineer in ten years' time. At (a London-based business consultancy partnership) I could be advising the Chairman of that company in less than a week'. In this comment, and in the comparative salary figures he quoted, there is a major issue for industry itself to resolve."
In this country the people who are producing the wealth are not recognised as they should be. We have forgotten that the modern economy of this country has been built on the skills and expertise of the legions of engineers who, over the past century in particular, created the wealth of this nation. People such as Stephenson, Parson, Swan and Armstrong, all from my part of the world, and numerous others over the years have given this country a sound industrial base. However, that has now been weakened by the Government's short-sighted policies.
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We do not acknowledge those skills as we should. Often the public's perception of engineers is one of greasy overalls and unpleasant working conitions coupled with comparatively low pay at a professional level--that was the impression of the student to whom I referred. That is not an accurate description of an engineer's work. Engineering can be an interesting and rewarding career for a young person. However, unless attitudes change--and the Government can help in changing those attitudes--serious problems will arise as we move towards closer economic links with Europe. In general, engineers in Europe receive proper respect and remuneration, reflecting their position in the professional social structure. Most western European countries understand that their economic future depends to a large degree on professional engineers as wealth creators.Why has the need for the continued development of craft skills suddenly become of interest to the Department of Employment? Why has the Department suddenly woken up from its deep Rip van Winkle sleep during the 1980s, when the limitations of the YOP, YTS and ET became evident, and suddenly introduced the training credit scheme described in a press release on 27 March from the Secretaries of State for Employment and for Education and Science as
"A revolutionary new approach to training in this country"? That is a fine expression. In some parts of the world revolutions cause those responsible for the regime under attack to be shot. I do not advocate that the previous Secretaries of State responsible for inadequate training schemes should be treated in that way because I do not support capital punishment. However, that revolution is being somewhat delayed and the revolutionary torch will not be lit before April next year. Even then it will produce only a glimmer in the dark.
From time to time there will be a number of pilot schemes involving about 10 per cent. of the national total of 16 to 17-year-olds at a time when we lag seriously behind the rest of our western European neighbours. Over a number of years I have had the privilege of being linked through my constituency with a town in Germany on the Rhine called Rhemsied. I have visited that town, which is part of the engineering area of the Rhine valley, on several occasions. It has an engineering training establishment which caters for about 1,000 male and female apprentices--or trainees as we would call them. That engineering training establishment provides a full range of engineering skills from motor mechanics to electronics, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. It covers the whole gambit of engineering skills to a very high standard. Indeed, I saw equipment in that training establishment which we do not have in factories in this country. The most interesting point was that that establishment was custom-built as a training centre in 1982 when unemployment in Germany was as high as it was in this country.
Even then, the Germans were prepared for the changes that would happen in the 1990s. They recognised that their economy was going to improve and they were preparing for it. I believe that that was a typical example of what was happening particularly in the northern parts of western Europe at that time. Such things are happening now as well. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newham,
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North-East (Mr. Leighton) said earlier, that is why most of those countries have a greater number of skilled personnel than we have in Great Britain.Some action has been taken here. I pay tribute to the Engineering Council, which has introduced the neighbourhood engineering scheme, and, in my part of the world, the northern engineering centre. The latter will develop neighbourhood engineering schemes linking three or four engineers with secondary schools in teams with teachers. My next-door neighbour is an engineer who will be involved in the scheme. As I understand it, he sent his application form off, but has not received a reply. If any scheme requires urgency, it is that one.
I hope that the neighbourhood engineering schemes will provide an opportunity to increase the interests of students and pupils in engineering as a career. I recognise that the Department of Trade and Industry has contributed £612,000 to that scheme. That is a fine gesture, but it is not enough. I argue that it is a little too little and a little too late.
The waste of the enormous engineering talent in the northern region following the demise of mining, shipbuilding and heavy engineering in the 1980s threw thousands of skilled personnel on the scrap heap. There should have been opportunities for proper training if those people had been handled properly. Not only did the people with the skills in those industries lose their jobs, but there were fewer opportunities for the apprenticeships that might have followed on in those industries. I saw the decline in my industry, the mining industry, and the lack of opportunity for young people to pick up those skills.
I believe that two generations have lost out in the 1980s. Their chance to pick up those skills will not come again. I believe that another organisation deserves public recognition for its activities in engineering. Through its education and training committee, the Machine Tool Technologies Association has established an educational trust fund with a contribution of more than £400,000. It has encouraged other sponsors for its design and building competition as a flagship scheme. It has accepted a commitment to fund both that and students to take an interest in machine tool manufacturing and to allow employees to continue their studies.
Government encouragement and financial support could assist in the rapid development of such enterprising schemes, but not all trade associations are able or willing to follow the example that I have given. The introduction of training and enterprise councils and the pilot schemes, including one in my county of Northumberland, which I suspect might be hit by the poll tax, and the training credit scheme, if successful, will not be effective until at least 1993 or 1994. Those projects must be seriously affected by the cut of £159 million in Government contributions.
It is already clear that the construction industry training board is prepared to introduce major cuts in its training programme at a time when there is a high demand for skilled workers. A report to that effect appeared in our regional newspapers this week. That cut will penalise the proper development and make vocational training even more industrial based.
That is a national issue. Over the next 10 years it is likely that the economy of this country will suffer severely from the lack of Government initiative in earlier decades. Complacency seems to have been the order of the day in
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