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11 Apr 2003 : Column 511—continued
Geraint Davies (Croydon, Central): On the education-work interface, would my right hon. Friend be interested in coming to New Addington in Croydon in which the education action zone has pioneered excellent work on seconding people into the workplace on time-based projects? They return from secondment to give presentations showing excellence in teamwork, time management and working in a work environment. The scheme gives a real taste of the value of work and its relationship with education.
Mr. Clarke: I would be happy to accept the invitation and, perhaps, especially happy to travel by tram to New Addington. The range of measures that the Government have introduced, such as education action zones and specialist schools, are designed precisely to build partnerships with employers in the way in which my hon. Friend described. I look forward to seeing how that has developed in Croydon.
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced more support for volunteers in his Budget speech and the development of a programme that will provide a young volunteer challenge to enable young people to take on such activities for up to a year after they finish school.
David Wright (Telford): Will my right hon. Friend consider using national vocational qualifications in the volunteer programme so that people who make progress through the year may gain formal qualifications?
Mr. Clarke: I will consider my hon. Friend's good point. I talked about achieving a unified approach on qualifications for the 14 to 19 age range, and it is constructive to examine the role of NVQs and their relationship with GCSEs and other forms of activity that require accreditation in the way in which my hon. Friend outlined.
The young volunteer challenge was announced in last year's pre-Budget report. It will provide financial support to allow young people from low-income backgrounds to become volunteers. It will benefit 1,200 young people aged 18 to 19, and they will be eligible to participate in the scheme up to a year after they finish school. It will be a full-time initiative that will require young people to commit to working 30 hours a week over a sustained period of nine months. The pilot will start in May and will run in 10 education maintenance allowance areas—both rural and urban. Individuals will receive an allowance of £45 a week while they are on the scheme and a lump sum of £750 after they have completed the nine months, and various other costs will be met.
The Government are strongly committed to supporting volunteering in our communities. It is vital to give young people the opportunity to do voluntary work from a young age because it offers them unique learning experiences that stay with them throughout their lives. We appreciate that some young people may be put off from becoming volunteers due to their
financial circumstances. The young volunteer challenge aims to change that by offering the right support to give more young people the chance to help their communities and to develop their skills through volunteering. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is especially active in the initiative as it forms part of his Department's community responsibilities.
Mr. Phil Willis (Harrogate and Knaresborough): Liberal Democrats support volunteering. Would the Secretary of State consider extending the scheme to undergraduates? We know that the cost of staying at university is great for all undergraduates, although I do not want to debate that today. Extending opportunities for paid volunteering work in schools and other organisations to undergraduates would be an excellent way of getting money into their pockets while doing something incredibly useful for our communities.
Mr. Clarke: That is a constructive suggestion. As I said, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor made his announcement to see how we could make positive development. The hon. Gentleman's suggestion is worth considering.
Let us consider skills generally. We will publish a White Paper in June on the matter. As I said earlier, we are working closely with the Department of Trade and Industry, including on its White Paper on innovation, which it will publish later this year. We view bringing together skills and innovation strategies as exceptionally important to increasing productivity in industry.
The two central themes of our approach are the establishment and development of sector skills councils, which will bring together major employers and educators for each major sector of the economy, and drive the commitment to skills at all levels throughout life. We have accelerated the process because it is so important. Several sector skills councils have been launched and established—for example, the e-skills council was launched earlier this week, with the participation of major companies. We view as essential the development of sector skills councils for all sectors of the economy—working with young people, working in the countryside, specific technologies or the automotive sector.
The potential impact has not been sufficiently widely understood so far: sector skills councils will make a major impact on the country's productivity. Local learning and skills councils, which are responsible for establishing the skills needs and their development in their areas, will effect the national sector skills council's strategic approach. They are therefore vital to our approach.
As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said in his Budget speech, the employer training pilots, which started in September 2002 in six local learning and skills council areas in England, are interesting and worthwhile initiatives to extend. We announced in the Budget that we would extend them to Berkshire, east London, Kent, Leicester, Shropshire and south Yorkshire because they have already been successful. Early results are encouraging. In the first six months, more than 1,500 employers had signed up, and more than 5,500 employees had begun training.
It is vital to get employers to commit to education and training in the way in which the pilots take forward. We must bend educators to look more to employment
needs, and bend employers to look more to the way in which they can work with the education and training service. Both elements are part of the same coherent and strong approach. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor therefore announced them in the Budget as important new developments.The initiative that my right hon. Friend announced between high street banks and the Government to support small business development is related to those that I have described. It includes measures to stimulate training in small and medium-sized enterprises, to establish that SMEs understand the benefits of training and identify solutions that best meet their needs. We are especially positive about the initiative because of the involvement of the high street banks: HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds TSB, Royal Bank of Scotland, Abbey National, Alliance and Leicester, HBOS, Co-operative Bank and the National Australia Group have all agreed to participate in the scheme. Between them, they have access to more than 90 per cent. of the United Kingdom SME market. They are the bankers of the SMEs, and therefore a good source of advice to them about their business strategies. Through the steering group, the banks will help to develop and manage all aspects of the package. Again, the initiative is an extremely positive and constructive development.
The regional development agencies and local learning and skills council pilots, which have already started in the north-east, north-west, south-east and east of England, are trying to pool budgets for regional development agencies and training in those areas. All those initiatives focus on trying to get employers to commit themselves properly to training.
My penultimate point deals with higher education. Yesterday morning, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and I chaired an effective seminar. Digby Jones, the director general of the CBI, presented a survey that he had conducted of the 200 largest CBI members and their attitudes to universities. To be frank, it conveyed some strong messages to universities about the way in which they should operate when relating to business. We had a good discussion, which we have agreed to follow up in a variety of ways. Again, the same theme arises: how can we get universities not to be ivory towers but to work with their local economies and communities to build the strong economy that we need?
Richard Lambert is conducting a review of the work of universities. I have spoken to him about it and his approach is constructive. We announced the foundation degree programme, which brings employers and universities together to provide qualifications at degree level, in our higher education White Paper. That will make a genuine difference and is a central theme of our policy.
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced tax changes that are designed to encourage business to put more resources into research and development. Again, that is part of the coherent, strategic approach that we are trying to encourage.
My right hon. Friend also announced a relaxation of the rules for the existing highly skilled migration programme to create a new entitlement for graduates
and students so that international students of science, engineering and technology subjects will be allowed to work in the UK for one year after graduation before undergoing the usual work permit process. That is intended to help tackle the overall undersupply of science, engineering and technology skills that Sir Gareth Roberts's reports identified last year. We hope that the proposal will help deal with the problem by getting more international students of those disciplines to stay and work in the UK. We are committed to consulting about the best way in which to do that and to address intermediate vocational skills shortages in sectors such as construction. Methods that we are considering include lowering the minimum skills requirements for work permits.
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