Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1020 - 1039)

MONDAY 10 MAY 2004

MR BRENDAN BARBER, MR IAIN MURRAY AND MS CAROLINE SMITH

  Q1020  Chairman: Can we welcome all three of you to our deliberations? It is very good to have you here. One of the things you may have picked up on in that last session is that we are very interested in looking at the whole skills sector. This Committee has been away from skills for quite some years. With the 14-19 inquiry and the White Paper on skills, this is something that we have really turned our minds to and we are doing a very thorough inquiry starting with 14-19. Brendan, I know of your long interest in skills. When I was a shadow minister in employment and skills many years ago, we worked together on one or two things. That was one of your first jobs in the TUC, I think, on skills. Today's session is to find out about some important questions about where the TUC and the individual trade unions stand on the training needs of our country. Brendan, would you like to say something to get us kicked off?

  Mr Barber: Thank you for the opportunity to come along and give evidence to the Committee. The issue of training policy, learning and skills has very much been high up the TUC's agenda. It was on the agenda of our first congress in 1868 and I think ever since. It is important and has been recognised for two key reasons. One, because of its importance to our economic performance. I was listening with interest to Martin talking there at the end of his session on high performance workplaces. High performance workplaces certainly are those in which there is a high, sustained investment in skills. They are also workplaces, by and large, where the workforce is represented by a union and there is an active dialogue and consultation culture as well. It is   very important in terms of our economic performance and very much recognised as such in the work we did jointly with the CBI a year or two back, looking at our productivity performance against our major competitors. It is also vitally important too because of the impact it has on people's life chances, on their employability, on their opportunities to progress, on the discretions that are available to them in the labour market. Skills empower people and are enormously important for that reason too. It is an area though where our performance has tended to lag behind our major industrial competitors. This has been very well documented. We have a major problem in terms of basic skills. There are around in the workplace 3.5 million people with basic literacy and numeracy problems. We have a major problem too at the level of intermediate skills, with somewhere between seven and eight million people still not trained and competent up to NVQ level two standard. There is a major challenge in terms of the arrangements we make for young people coming into work. There is a long term problem of the difference in esteem that we accord academic routes for learning compared to vocational routes. We welcome the relaunch today of the apprenticeships programme as one element of the strategy to try to begin to turn that around. We have had a lot of debate in recent months over the 50% target of young people we want to see going through higher education. We have to make sure there is not a forgotten 50%, the other 50%. They need investment in their opportunities too. We have supported broadly the new skills strategy that the Government articulated in the White Paper. Important elements of that include the Employer Training pilots, though we would very much like to see those moved to become a fully national programme, with a clear entitlement for individuals to access opportunities to deliver at least up to level two. An important element of the strategy of course is the emphasis on work at sectoral level and the establishment of the new Sector Skills Councils and the intention to establish agreements, sector by sector, to really try to harness employer commitment in that form. This is not the first time that we have looked to win that kind of commitment from the employer community. As you said, I go back quite a way. I worked for an industrial training board before I joined the TUC.

  Q1021  Chairman: Ceramics, was it not?

  Mr Barber: It was indeed. Those were the mechanisms of that time back in the 1970s that were an attempt to bring employers together and really build a commitment. The new Sector Skills Councils are a very important part of the new arrangements. Whether they succeed or fail will be critical to the overall success of the strategy that the White Paper articulated. We looked with interest at the recent, very major survey that was conducted by the Learning and Skills Council, which came up with an estimate of something like £4.5 billion employer spend on direct training costs, but with some very worrying figures too about the extent to which employers simply do not invest. That survey showed something like 40% of employers offering no training of any sort to their workforce and we have long had this problem that training is very unevenly made available. The level of investment in people at the top of organisations in their continued learning is very much greater than the level of investment available for people at the bottom who start with little or no qualifications base. Arguably, the order ought to be precisely the reverse of that. This is an area of work in which the trade union movement in recent years has really begun to develop its own work in rather exciting ways. We very much welcome the support that has been available from the Union Learning Fund, to support union initiatives. There have been something like 400-plus projects now that have been supported by the fund. Those projects have involved activities in over 3,000 workplaces, with almost 40,000 people completing courses of learning as a result just of those specific projects and something like 180 new workplace learning centres being established as a result of those projects. What all that experience has demonstrated very powerfully is that the union role can really make a rather unique contribution in helping to build that bridge between people and the learning system, particularly if you look at that issue of basic skills. Not exclusively, but many of these projects have involved work in the basic skills area. If the invitation is extended for people to come back into learning from their employer or simply from the local learning institution, their response will very often be rather apprehensive. Their experience of education may not have been too positive and it can look pretty daunting. When that invitation comes from a work mate, somebody who they trust in a rather different kind of way, the response can be very much more positive. This is an area of work where I hope, over the next period, to see us really expanding very significantly. There are something like 7,000 people now playing this new role of union learning representative. We expect to see that number increasing rapidly. We are looking very actively at   whether there are some new institutional arrangements that could maximise the impact of the work that is being done right across the trade union movement and could communicate to members and potential members in a more powerful way the routes back into learning that the trade union movement can help to facilitate. It is a very lively, practical agenda for trade union work as well as our engagement in the broader policy aspects to the debate as well.

  Q1022  Chairman: In terms of where the union participation can really work, when we did our inquiry into individual learning accounts, we did find that where the unions were mediating individual learning accounts there was a very much higher success rate all round because people were confident in the courses they took and were supported. We noted that in that report. When you do it, it seems to me very successful, but there is a bit of a feeling around, is there not, that you are rather late converts? Here are jobs haemorrhaging abroad because people say that other competitive countries are better trained than our workforce so the TUC and trade unions are getting more interested in training. Some people would say perhaps you have not campaigned and put your head above the parapet enough for driving up skills in our country. Has the TUC at any time said it is wrong for a child at 16 to go into the workplace with no education and training? Is that something you would feel passionately about?

  Mr Barber: I think this is an area where our record has been pretty creditable. I would strongly assert that. It is difficult always to get the level of public interest, attention and media interest and so on in some other areas which seem to be more conducive to producing headlines. As ever, there is a grain of truth in your question. Of course there is more potentially that we could do but the work of the last four or five years in particular, the identification of this new, practical role in the workplace of union learning representative, is a very exciting development that has been well recognised right across the trade union movement. One of the positive byproducts of this work is the extent to which it has brought new people into taking on an active workplace role on behalf of their fellow workers. The profile of union learning representatives shows that many more women have come forward to take on that role than take on the traditional workplace shop steward role. There are lots of positive aspects to this work that I think have been strongly recognised round the trade union movement. It is an area that has very, very solid trade union commitment.

  Q1023  Chairman: Does the TUC or you personally have a view on 16-year-olds going into work with no training and education, possibly for the rest of their lives?

  Mr Barber: We do not think they should. We have very strongly campaigned for the idea that everybody ought to have learning opportunities. People should not come into a workplace and be written off before they have even started their working life with no training opportunities available to them.

  Q1024  Chairman: What about modern apprenticeships? I know you welcome the relaunch in a famous departmental store this morning. Are you content with modern apprenticeships which have such a high drop out rate and do not actually give you a qualification along the road, so if you drop out half way you have nothing?

  Mr Barber: We are not uncritical by any means. We have strong concerns about the drop out rate and whether the quality is high enough and consistent enough. We have strong concerns about the failure so far to break out of gender stereotyping, an issue that the EOC highlighted in a report within the last week or two. There are very important aspects of the new apprenticeships that we have concerns over, but they do represent in our judgment a serious attempt to try to tackle this longstanding problem of a lack of regard and esteem being attached to vocational learning routes and they do represent another serious attempt to engage the employer community in developing active learning strategies in their workplaces. The objectives are very much supported. Experience will demonstrate whether or not they deliver as much as we all would like to see.

  Q1025  Chairman: Some people have argued that embedded in OFR—it kicks off in terms of the review in June and then will very much make a most important contribution to the way companies account for themselves and their operations—is a real opportunity for trade unions to stimulate a much higher profile for training and what happens to individuals as they become employees and have a working life. Do you see that as an opportunity and what are you going to do about it?

  Mr Barber: We do see it as an opportunity. We have strongly urged that the new Operating and Financial Reviews ought to automatically include appropriate reference to the employment strategies of organisations and their strategies for investing in skills. This is an issue that we have not found common cause with the Government on who have still left it that it is for directors themselves to determine what are the material factors on which they need to report. We would have thought strategies for people ought to automatically be recognised as issues central to the potential success of the organisation.

  Q1026  Chairman: The Kingsmill bit of accounting for people speaks directly to your—?

  Mr Barber: It does and we welcome the work that was done through the Kingsmill review to put a sharp focus on this area. As you say, it provides new opportunities for the trade union movement to look at companies, to access fuller information about the strategic thinking at the heart of company strategies and new opportunities therefore to try and influence those.

  Q1027  Chairman: I was a bit astonished when we   were pushing the Engineering Employers' Federation about how often they met with the unions at a high level to discuss training needs over time. I do not know if they know but they were reluctant to tell us whether they met regularly at a high enough level. In terms of this new opportunity, will you be meeting employers at the highest level to make common cause?

  Mr Barber: I certainly hope so. As part of the new arrangements since the White Paper was published, there is the new structures at national level that have been established, the Skills Alliance in which I take part. Digby Jones, on behalf of the CBI, takes part. I have hopes that the new sector skills bodies will provide a real a high level dialogue on a sustained basis between the leaders of major players within each sector and the relevant unions, because it is critical that it begins to deliver change at that practical level where strategies for each sector are going to be established.

  Q1028  Jonathan Shaw: You mentioned the Sector Skills Councils. A lot rides on those to ensure that we are successful in delivering a skills programme that is going to equip us to tackle all the issues about productivity etc., as well as provide opportunities for individuals. Do you have any concerns about the format of the Sector Skills Council? What are the Government getting right with the Sector Skills Councils? What have you said to them?

  Mr Barber: It is very, very early days of course. The first four have been charged with looking to establish the first four sector agreements, so these are very much beginning to trial the new arrangements, in a sense. We have looked to ensure that there is an active trade union engagement with the new bodies and that has been coming along as the membership of the governing bodies has been established. Trade union involvement is being secured. We will want to ensure that that is not just token representation but that there is a very active dialogue with the relevant unions on the agreements that are going to be established in each sector.

  Mr Murray: We are undertaking a practical initiative around that at the moment. We are working with the Sector Skills Development Agency on a joint event in June which is going to be for the key trade union members of the four Sector Skills Councils taking forward the agreements with the key employers. The idea of that event is to get the key employers and key trade unionists round the table and to try to facilitate negotiation of the agreements and to try and get both sides engaged in that, away from the Sector Skills Councils themselves. Such an event is trying to promote the partnership between employers and trade unionists on these four key Sector Skills Councils.

  Q1029  Jonathan Shaw: How well does the TUC see the 14-19-year-old agenda that we are talking about here linking with the skills strategy?

  Mr Murray: One of the key issues is about how, for example, modern apprenticeships work. The Sector Skills Councils have been given the remit for developing frameworks and that is going to be a key element on the government strategy for increasing the number of young people. There has to be a close tie in between the Sector Skills Councils and the 14-19 agenda. There are institutional arrangements where people from these different bodies are meeting, for example, on Regional Skills Partnerships. There are members of the Sector Skills Development Agency in these partnerships with people from the local LSCs etc.

  Ms Smith: One of the key issues that the skills strategy was looking at trying to address was gaps in the economy with skills and a couple of things that are seen as big problems are the basic skills gaps and literacy and numeracy; also, intermediate level skills. Looking at literacy, language, numeracy and computer skills, there are issues that need to be addressed for adults and there is a big issue with the existing workforce, but the 14-19 system needs to be set up in a way so that those issues are certainly addressed. The same certainly applies with intermediate skills gaps as well. Apprenticeships are a key vehicle for that. Positive steps are being taken with the 14-19 curriculum reform and also the review of financial support arrangements for young people.

  Q1030  Jonathan Shaw: What do you think about the idea of young people, 14-year-olds, not being at school for a couple of days a week? Do we separate sheep and goats here?

  Ms Smith: The TUC has supported the young apprenticeship model that has been introduced. This particular approach is being taken initially with 1,000 young people in three sectors: engineering, media and creative arts, I think, and these are very well-funded programmes. I hope there will be very careful monitoring of this particular programme. We would also comment that it is very important that these young people continue to get a broad education as well and are particularly able to receive education about their rights as workers.

  Q1031  Jonathan Shaw: And future union members.

  Ms Smith: These are an opportunity to challenge stereotyping on the basis of gender or ethnicity. That is something that ought to be actively built into these particular programmes.

  Q1032  Jonathan Shaw: Do you think the Government should be getting involved in work-based learning? In America, we would not see this occur. Productivity is better in America. In much of the rest of Europe, people may be required to have training levies or to be members of the Chamber of Commerce and we are a hybrid, somewhere in between the two. Do you think that is our problem: that we cannot make up our minds?

  Mr Barber: In some ways it is our problem. Essentially, we have been stuck with a voluntarist approach over a lot of years. We have not established the ready acceptance with the employer community that this is an area where part of the deal ought to be a sustained investment in the skills of their workforce. That is the cultural challenge that we have to try to overcome.

  Q1033  Jonathan Shaw: When you are talking to Patricia Hewitt, do you say, "We ought to have a training levy"?

  Mr Barber: We have argued for a long period that there ought to be clear obligations on employers. At sector level, potentially, a levy system could be the mechanism for looking to bind that in but simply relying on voluntary recognition of their self-interest is not delivering. I remember when the National Education and Training Targets were established in 1991 on the initiative of the CBI. At that time, there was an acceptance on the CBI's part that if those targets were not met by relying on exhortation and people realising the long term, economic case for making a step change in this area, some new mechanism, some new statutory framework, would be needed. We are still a long way from meeting those targets.

  Mr Murray: At the sector level, the TUC's policy is we are very willing to give the new sector skills agreements a good run for their money. We are doing all the work in engaging unions on carrying forward the sector skills agreements, but at the end of the day if in certain sectors they do not establish sector skills agreements of high enough quality or if they do set them up and establish targets that are not subsequently met, we are saying to the Government that if sector skills agreements are not set up in a sector, they should look at some kind of compulsory approach. We have heard the term "last chance saloon" a number of times over the last 20 years. If the sector skills agreements are not made to work, that poses some key questions about how you approach skills at the sector level.

  Q1034  Jonathan Shaw: You said at the beginning that it dated back to 1868 when you have been talking about skills. The Chancellor would say that this is the best growth for 200 years. We have had sustained growth in the economy. Perhaps the fact that we are a hybrid means that we are not doing badly.

  Mr Barber: Our productivity performance continues to lag behind our major competitors. One of the Chancellor's other central thrusts in terms of our economic wellbeing is we need to improve our productivity performance. We support that objective. We would suggest very strongly that the evidence is that you deliver the highest performance workplaces where there is sustained investment in   skills. There are other dimensions to high performance workplaces as well but one of them is a clear, sustained commitment to skills.

  Q1035  Jonathan Shaw: Things could be even better?

  Mr Barber: Things could certainly be even better. It sounds like a song.

  Q1036  Chairman: Could I press you a little on 14-19 and Tomlinson? Were you disappointed when Digby Jones and the CBI came out, almost immediately the Tomlinson interim report came out, expressing severe reservations about change? Were you disappointed by the CBI's attitude?

  Mr Barber: Yes. We broadly supported the Tomlinson agenda. You asked a question earlier which I did not directly respond to about the level of contact and debate between the trade union movement and the major employer groups. The CBI recognises the importance of skills but they baulk on this central question that Jonathan was pursuing about the extent to which there ought to be some real levers that require employers to deliver. The CBI find themselves in a position of speaking up on behalf of the people who represent the worst practice, who put in the least investment, rather than positioning themselves in the argument as champions for the organisations that they also represent, some of whom match up to best practice anywhere in the world.

  Q1037  Chairman: Trade associations were ever thus and you were always looking for the lowest common denominator because all their members pay the membership fee. Are we right about this? Is there not a Danish model that we might learn from? When we went to Denmark, we saw a voluntary levy paid by employers. I have heard on the grapevine that one of the new Sector Skills Councils already had over 70% of their members paying a levy. They are now going to Patricia Hewitt saying, "Can you make this mandatory for us?" That is an interesting alternative, is it not? If we can do that through Sector Skills Councils whereby who votes for it wants it and will deliver it, that is a lot healthier than some bureaucrat in Whitehall saying, "Thou shalt do it."

  Mr Barber: It is, but it depends how conditional it is and exactly what level of employer support has to be demonstrated before the Government will be prepared to act. It seems to me that there are some sectors where there clearly is significant employer support for some collective funding mechanism to sustain the training arrangements, but if the Government requires it to be 75 or 80 or 90% speaking up you are not going to get that kind of move. The levy arrangements have continued in construction for all these years, with broad based employer support, notwithstanding the demise of the ITBs generally.

  Q1038  Chairman: You and I go back to the days of ITBs when there were a lot of Industrial Training Boards that saw their job as going round companies, showing them their accounts and how to pay the least amount towards training and to be eligible for the levy. That was the truth, was it not? A lot of ITBs were professional consultants on how to avoid or minimise your responsibilities. We do not want to get back in that ball game, do we?

  Mr Barber: The history of the ITBs has been written by the critics of the ITBs, conspicuously amongst them the Conservative politicians who ultimately gonged out the ITBs. While I do not think they were perfect, they put training on the agenda of a lot of companies who had not taken any serious interest in   the issue. The levy grant mechanism and subsequently exemption mechanisms were rather crude and simple, I would say. I am not sure the ITBs always played their cards as well as they could have done. It could sometimes become a rather crude relationship: this is how you get your money back. I think some of those criticisms are valid, but they did get companies thinking. They did get a lot of small companies together in group training arrangements that, without the spur of an ITB there to gee people up, would never have engaged in any activity. The absence of any financial lever on influencing employer behaviour has resulted in the fact that we have still not made the kind of headway that we need to make.

  Q1039  Valerie Davey: You have reiterated again your general support for the Tomlinson Report and we have been told that this is a really radical change. It is going to provide the diploma encompassing all the qualifications which young people are acquiring at the moment. Do you think, first of all, that these are better skills which the employers will in fact welcome and, secondly, if they are, should we not be going rather faster down this route? It seems to be a radical move that we are evolving, rather than a radical move where there is some revolutionary action going on.

  Ms Smith: One of the key principles about Tomlinson is for there to be inclusive frameworks which will develop the potential of all young people. We have been very supportive of that principle and it can only be a positive thing for all involved. As part of that as well there is a strong shift towards boosting the status of the vocational route. That is a positive thing which will be welcomed. The current system is in many ways very good so it is not necessary that that needs to be thrown out tomorrow.


 
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