Examination of Witness(Questions 100-107)
MR IVAN
LEWIS, MP
MONDAY 25 NOVEMBER 2002
100. Minister, I understand what you are saying.
You cannot blame your critics (who certainly on this Committee
are positive critics) who are a little disillusioned with government
timetables right across the board. The reason we hurried our inquiry
into higher education finance was because we were told that the
report was imminent. We would have liked to have done a much more
thorough inquiry into things like graduate tax and the innovation
bonds and many other things. We stripped it down to the bare essentials
in that inquiry because we were told that was going to happen
very fast indeed, indeed this coming January will be the anniversary
of when it was supposed to come out of when we expected it to
come. We have had the 14-19 that we had been promised and there
has been this lag. It is across the piece that your Department
does not seem to be able to come through with reports when they
are due and that is the only worry that we have. When you do say
to us, and I would like it if you could write to the Committee
about this, you started the idea of this at the back end of June/July
and you have only had two meetings, if you work that out, two
meetings in six months, another two, what the hell is going to
come out of this strategy with so few meetings? It seems to some
of us on this Committee that you need pretty intensive work to
come up with something new in the National Skills Strategy. We
are really worried that you are not going to do it with the number
of meetings that you have got. We would like to know the number
of meetings planned through until June and we would like to know
who are the non-governmental members and ministers who are on
your advisory committee.
(Mr Lewis) Can I respond by saying that first of all
I reiterate that this will be produced in June 2003. When the
Chairman says how many meetings, first of all I would have to
be very honest and say—and you would expect this—of
course there is a lot of activity going on between meetings, particularly
across Government, which is something we welcome, officials working
together from different government departments. In six to eight
weeks I have just been to every single English region. I do not
make that point because I want some sympathy because I am absolutely
exhausted, I make the point because that actually is a very important
way of consulting and getting in your own mind, as I hope I have
demonstrated to some extent today, some clarity about what a National
Skills Strategy should seek to do which is different from what
exists at the moment. I think it is unfair to simply look at whether
we are going to get there based on the formal meetings that are
planned. Of course I will provide the Chairman with the information
that he asks for. I think if you look at the delays you are referring
to, there have been unusual circumstances in terms of a new Secretary
of State, and none of us would have imagined that several months
ago, and you would probably have more respect for a Secretary
of State who said "I need a little bit more time to consider
these issues" than somebody who would just come in and say—
101. That is true, Minister. Everything you
have said is absolutely true.
(Mr Lewis) On Tomlinson, would it have been credible
to have published our vision for 14-19 while still waiting for
Tomlinson II to report?
102. I have to say that you have given Mike
Tomlinson some pretty strict deadlines for pretty complex pieces
of work and he has produced on time and very quickly indeed. The
worry that we have is there have been politicians in the past,
and we shall only mention one, the former Prime Minister who came
from Huddersfield, in my constituency, who when it seemed to me
there was a doubt over some very complex issue would announce
a Royal Commission. Almost as a result of that Royal Commissions
have gone out of favour and out of fashion because everyone knows
why they are announced. It seems sometimes from the Department
you announce one of these grand consultations or strategies when
you are trying to think of something to say. Is that a fair comment?
(Mr Lewis) No. It would be in some circumstances.
When I was made the Minister for Adult Learning and Skills in
June I was faced with a number of policy decisions, as you would
expect, in a matter of weeks and after about six weeks I concluded
that it was very, very important to address some of the issues
in terms of having a coherent Strategy and a Delivery Plan. That
was the judgment that I made. In that context it was then right
to sit down with officials and say "what is the kind of work
we are going to be required to do to get a Strategy and a Delivery
Plan that achieves the step change and is meaningful?" We
agreed that it would take approximately a year to achieve that.
The review of the funding of adult learning, by the way, was always
timetabled to finish during the early part of next year, in fact
towards the middle of next year. I could not credibly produce
a Skills Strategy in advance of the review about funding of adult
learning being completed. The reason the officials said to me
that they need this amount of time was because they said "we
have to do it properly, we cannot do a superficial job on the
balance between individual, state and employer's contribution".
It is a complex, important area to get right. I therefore do not
apologise for the time-frame that we have set ourselves. I think
it is an ambitious one, it is pushing us, quite rightly, down
the road we want to go down, but I think it is responsible, it
reflects the scale of the policy challenge, and I believe we will
deliver on our commitment.
103. Success for All is quite a complicated
piece of work this has come out now in advance of next June. It
is much more complicated and involves bigger budgets than the
ILA II where there does not seem to be any problem to the Department
in coming out now rather than waiting. The money has been announced
and it has started to flow. The ILA could have come out on its
own and you could still do the National Skills Strategy in June?
(Mr Lewis) I made the judgment that it would not be
responsible nor consistent from a policy point of view to announce
a successor scheme in advance of two things, the review of the
adult learning funding and the introduction of the National Skills
Strategy. That is the judgment I made. I hope the Committee will
see in time that this was the right decision and I will have to
leave it at that, Chairman.
Chairman: I am going to let you out of jail.
Do any Members of the Committee have any more questions?
Mr Chaytor
104. Minister, I am sorry I had to leave the
meeting earlier to go to another long-standing commitment. The
Auditor General's report on the ILA scheme tells us that the final
overspend for the two financial years was £93.6 million.
Is that money now lost to the adult learning and skills budget
or will that overspend be found from contingencies somewhere?
(Mr Lewis) The answer to the question is obviously
we are still trying to recover some of the money that has been
spent on ILAs generally. Secondly, we have had the spending review
allocation for the next three years. The new Secretary of State
is having a look though at those spending allocations and is considering
how that money should be allocated appropriately as we speak.
Some of it is ring-fenced, some of it is not, and some of it is
about judgments made in the Department, so I cannot give a definitive
answer to that but clearly we will provide the Committee with
the relevant information as soon as it is to hand.
105. There is the possibility that over £93
million will be taken out of future investment?
(Mr Lewis) It depends on how you look at resources
because there are two separate issues. One is the amount which
will ultimately be included at this stage over the next few days
by the Secretary of State that will be allocated for a successor
scheme, and then of course at the conclusion of the review of
adult funding we will be making decisions about how we balance
resources that we spend on post-19 adult skills anyway. Whether
Committee Members or anybody else will be able to say that was
the amount of money that was lost, it is difficult to make that
judgement. We will be transparent in the information that we make
available about the investment we put in.
106. I have a follow-on question on this point
and one further question. On this point you have said you are
still trying to recover money from certain learning providers
but does the converse apply? Are there certain learning providers
who still have claims against the Department that have not yet
been paid?
(Mr Lewis) I think most of those have been settled.
Most the provider claims that we accept are legitimate have now
been settled. It is about 95% in total that have been settled.
107. A slightly different question. The history
of adult learning and skills since 1997 has seen a variety of
different budget lines emerge. We have had a budget for UFI, a
budget for learndirect, a budget for Union Learning Funds, a budget
for ILAs, a budget for UK Online. One of the criticisms has been
that the policy has been insufficiently integrated and because
the budgets have been ring-fenced we have had some unnecessary
duplication. First of all, would you accept that as a criticism
and, if so, what are you going to do to bring greater integration
between the different budget lines?
(Mr Lewis) Chairman, I think this was a planted question
because for the last two hours I have been trying to persuade
the Chairman that that was the very reason I was absolutely convinced
of the need for a coherent National Skills Strategy that brought
that together. If you are asking me is there some valid criticism
about lack of coherence? Absolutely. Does that mean that we have
not made significant progress in terms of the skills agenda post
1997, as the Chairman suggested earlier? I do not accept that
at all; I think we have made real progress. My job is to ensure
coherence and consistency, both that we use the new money that
we have been allocated for the next spending review period properly
but also that we get value for money out of the baseline and we
make sure there is a coherence in terms of some of the initiatives
that you have just articulated. It is a valid criticism but it
is the very reason why within a few weeks of taking this particular
job it was my decision that we needed a coherent National Skills
Strategy and Delivery Plan.
Chairman: Thank you for that, Minister. On that
note, we will all go coherently and consistently out into this
winter night. Thank you.
|
