Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300
- 312)
MONDAY 23 FEBRUARY 2004
MR TREVOR
WALKER, MR
ANDREW PEGG,
MR CHRIS
JONES, MR
STEPHEN RATCLIFFE,
MR NORMAN
MACKEL AND
STEPHEN ALAMBRITIS
Q300 Jeff Ennis: I know it certainly
struck a chord with local engineering companies in Doncaster who
are normally not too anxious to put their hands in their pockets,
but they came out with quite a substantial amount of money.
Mr Jones: If it could demonstrate
a commitment from the school side, we could match it with a commitment
from our side. For more local companies that would be good. Part
of the problem is where these schools are situated; they would
tend only to be in select locations round the country, but I am
sure they would provide a good model for us to build on.
Mr Mackel: Anything which clarifies
the focus . . . It is rather like the sector skills councils.
If you can clarify your focus and then get some clarity about
your objectives, what you are trying to achieve, etcetera, then
you get more people buying in. If you just have a general thing,
then why as an engineering company should I buy in to the local
school? It does not have that kind of direct relationship with
what we are trying to achieve.
Q301 Jeff Ennis: It has been floated
in the press recently that the Government intends to introduce
a junior apprenticeship scheme for the 14-16-year-olds where a
14-16-year-old will spend two days a week in the workplace, another
day at college and then two in the school environment. Is that
the sort of direction we need to be going in terms of breaking
down the barriers between the academic and the vocational route?
Mr Walker: I should like to say
that the concept is excellent, but I am not sure yet how we could
handle the reality of implementing it. It could lead to great
difficulties. When you think, especially after what you have heard
today about the way we are spread across the United Kingdom and
how we do not stay still in one place like an engineering factory,
for us it is very difficult to mix and match, but the concept
is superb. The other things I should just like to touch on is
that as an industry we are in touch with providers about the formation
of some GCSEs in construction. We found it very encouraging that
we have been able to get in at the grassroots with those providers
and talk quite seriously about course content. We found that a
lot easier to influence at that level and get some practical issues
into it, than we have done with some of the learning and skills
councils, but we have bounced off the pyramid and back out again.
Mr Mackel: Rather like the enterprise
projects we mentioned earlier, this kind of opportunity which
gives young people the opportunity just to taste what the world
of work is about, get some feel for directions, how much it is
for them, the change of disciplines, all these factors while their
hormones are going at five million miles an hour, gives them at
least the opportunity to think about other things and maybe get
some direction about what they are trying to do.
Q302 Mr Turner: I got the same story
as Kerry did, but not from my local college of education but from
my Conservative Club dinner. People are having difficulty placing
plumbing students after their first year at college and on the
Isle of Wight it is not a question of them operating 100 miles
away, it is that they do not feel the investment is going to be
repaid. When Robert asked his question about this, he got two
rather different answers from the larger employers and the smaller
employers, because Stephen suggested that there was no great problem
over this, but you, Norman, did suggest, as has been my experience,
that small businesses really feel they are not getting their investment
repaid. Does the size of the business make a genuine difference?
Is that the reason?
Mr Mackel: Yes. There is not just
a financial burden on small businesses in particular but there
is an administrative burden, there is a bureaucratic burden in
terms of handling the amount of paperwork which is associated
with training people. There is a difficulty and a lot of them
feel that they will be developing people who will then go on to
be competitors, let alone move on to other companies. There is
this defensive feeling on the part of a very small business and
when you take it that the typical small business may be earning
£12 an hour and the net profit line is quite small, to make
that kind of an investment in time, effort and administration
as well as money is asking a lot. Their net profit pays the mortgage
at the end of the month so it is a very immediate question for
a small business. When I was running a big business, we had six,
that kind of equation, whereas for a small business it is a very
significant investment.
Q303 Mr Turner: Do you accept that?
Mr Ratcliffe: First of all, may
I take away the impression that we are representing big businesses.
70% of our members are actually SMEs and I concur with most of
that. There have been two problems in construction. I know we
have banged on about it, but one is boom and bust and that had
historically been a big factor since the last war. A small company
perhaps takes on one or two apprentices, the bottom falls out
of the market, what happens then? Although we have had seven years
of pretty sustained growth now, getting that message across and
getting more and more small companies involved is quite hard work.
The second point is that some of the forms the Construction Industry
Training Board have used, which you have to fill in for training
provision, are 30 or 40 pages long, which is going to put a small
business off. We have done a lot of work with the CITB to bring
them down into a much more manageable proportion. It is just something
we have to keep working at.
Q304 Mr Turner: Is there another
financial mechanism you could use to repay the business which
invests in anyone?
Mr Mackel: The example of the
employer training pilot, where some have been not just reimbursing
the wage costs but they have been offsetting some of the consequential
costs in terms of lost profit or administration costs, has encouraged,
where it has been run that way—because they tried different
models—a much greater degree of participation. Yes, tying
in. The big thing was that when they asked the question of the
employers, they did not put finance at the top of the list in
terms of cost; it was time, time and diversion away from their
main earning opportunities, their work in the business.
Mr Pegg: I should just like to
add that plumbing is the example people most like to quote as
being the one that is most difficult and the skills shortage.
It is perhaps interesting to note that about nine or ten years
ago plumbers withdrew from the CITB, so they do not get a levy
now. When they stopped getting the levy and the grant was when
lots and lots of training of plumbers stopped being done. Although
the problem is there within the construction industry generally,
with plumbing and electrical trades, neither of those has a levy
grant system, so it is an additional problem in terms of any grant
we might get for brickies, joiners, etcetera.
Q305 Mr Turner: My second area of
questions is that the Careers Service has come in for a bit of
stick. Is this anecdotal or is there some factual evidence to
back up what you are saying about the Careers Service?
Mr Jones: I can back it up with
examples where my own company have been involved and from talking
to careers advisers and their knowledge of the industry has been
pretty low. We have invited them into the company for a day and
shown them just exactly what we do in terms of designing a project,
taking them out on the site and showing them all the different
roles involved in building something and they have come away completely
changed. They actually see the range of careers involved in it
from the craft right through to the management, to planning all
those things. They had no idea before we approached them and invited
them to see that. We have talked to young who have been pointed
in our direction and asked them what they expected to do if they
joined us, "Lay bricks". It is the very basic things.
Q306 Mr Turner: How can someone have
a job as a careers adviser and be so ignorant of a major area
of employment.
Mr Alambritis: We also need to
look at ourselves as an organisation. We have not really had much
communication with the Careers Service and we, as employers' organisation,
I would imagine the CBI, the IoD, the chamber, need to communicate
with and contact the Careers Service although the anecdotal evidence
is that they have not been up to scratch in terms of changing
the world of work. They have taken the easy route in terms of
going to college, university, civil service, being a lawyer, an
accountant. We owe it to ourselves to get in touch with them,
because they are a very important part of the structure of getting
people into the right work.
Mr Jones: It is not a new problem.
The only advice I received when I was at school was about construction,
which was pretty amazing. I am still here.
Q307 Mr Turner: A number of you have
disclosed a touching confidence in the ability of us as politicians
and by implication Government to change public perception. Do
you really believe we are that credible?
Mr Walker: I do not want this
to be flippant, but you might be a whole lot more credible doing
that task than dinosaurs who are stuck with craftsmen instead
of craftspeople. You are the hope we have. This is a bit of a
bargain: we are delivering input into this process and we need
you to help us. That is what we perceive Government as being capable
of. If it is naïve to perceive Government as being capable
of that, then we are a naïve industry.
Mr Mackel: Perceptions are built
on the public stage. It is the big issues which create the perceptions.
The thing which reinforces them is the delivery, which always
comes afterwards. It is what we were saying about Tomlinson. If
it can achieve it, if we can start moving things and changing
them, that will create the lasting perception, but short-term
perceptions are created by the media and everything else. Unfortunately
everyone who struts the stage, whether it is Jordan or MPs, stands
or falls by the media and the image which comes across in the
land.
Q308 Mr Turner: Yes, but you also
stand or fall by whether you are trying to do the impossible.
If you try to do the impossible, on the whole you fail. One saying
I quite like is that there is no problem so great that Government
cannot make it worse. I am really interested to hear that you
believe that Government could change the perception of vocational
as against academic education, or, for that matter, sell Tomlinson
to a highly sceptical world.
Mr Mackel: My view of selling
Tomlinson is not that you sell Tomlinson by marketing. You have
to get the shape of it so you understand what it is trying to
do and what it is achieving in terms of qualifications. It is
the results of Tomlinson, the diploma or baccalaureate or whatever
term you want to use, it is the actual delivery which will in
fact affect long-term perceptions, it is what really happens.
They do have a massive problem; the culture within education has
to undergo a massive change to get the kind of delivery we are
talking about.
Mr Jones: Things like construction
GCSEs, construction specialist schools will help with the recognition
that construction is a subject in its own right, not an amalgamation
of a number of other subjects. It stands on its own. That would
help raise perceptions.
Q309 Helen Jones: I just want to
come back on Mr Walker's remark, if I may. Do you not accept that
the language you use about your industry affects people's perception
of it? If you talk about it as a purely male industry, you cannot
be surprised when women and girls do not think of it as a potential
career.
Mr Walker: You are absolutely
right. I was perhaps suggesting, a little flippantly, that the
Government probably has at this time a better chance of taking
an approach towards changing society's views than senior people
like me, who do perhaps have an inbuilt bias.
Q310 Helen Jones: Do you accept that
there is a role for your industry in how you present yourself
and how you appeal to people who currently do not see it as a
viable career option?
Mr Walker: Yes; that is right
and it is one of the reasons why we put enormous effort into training
graduates to go back into schools to sell the right image, the
right impression of our industry. It is no use somebody like me,
at 58, going into the school trying to talk to youngsters with
my perceptions and my age. They see me as an old has-been. We
have to channel them and the training through the right route.
There is a classic and specific example here of how Government
can actually change something. Government are 40% of the client
base of UK infrastructure workload. They could turn round and
say, that unless we as companies demonstrate that we are committed
to training, developing and working with them in these initiatives
that we talked about here today, we will not get on their tender
lists for the work. You are not making that judgment at the moment
as a Government; it is just not happening, you are running away
from the problem. There is a bit of advice out for government
departments, but nobody is seriously cracking the whip and that
would send an enormous message, both to the industry and to society
in general.
Q311 Jonathan Shaw: I have asked
ministers that question, I have tabled questions and ministers
have sat here and I have made that point about the client and
the powerful role. It comes back as being anti-competitive.
Mr Walker: You can still have
a competition amongst those of us who are embarked on those training
processes. It is not restrictive.
Jonathan Shaw: We will heed your words
and we will take that up with the Minister.
Q312 Mr Turner: It is entirely restrictive,
is it not, if you prevent some people entering the competition?
Mr Walker: It depends. Your competition
is presumably founded on a set of rules which include a specific
specification, which include an end product need, which include
a set of accounting rules and all of those we can comply with,
but as a controller of society and perhaps with an ability to
input and change views, what is wrong with saying "Look,
either you are going to play the game of developing and changing
and educating, or you are not". As a client, do you then
not have a right to channel your work to those who do as opposed
to those who do not?
Chairman: I think that is a very good
note on which to end. May I say that this has been a most interesting
and useful session? It has added great value to our inquiry. Thank
you very much, excellent. I do not see you, Mr Walker, or any
of our witnesses as has-beens: I see you as people right in the
middle and at the top of your profession. Thank you for your work.
As you go home, or tomorrow, if you think of something you should
have said to that darn Committee, write to us, e-mail us or give
us a ring. Thank you.
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