Examination of Witnesses (Questions 640
- 643)
WEDNESDAY 28 APRIL 2004
FSB
Q640 Hywel Williams: In your memorandum
you say that the substantial and most critical shortage of skills
is arguably one of the greatest problems affecting manufacturing
in Wales. What types of skills are most underdeveloped? Are they
generic skills or specific skills? I know that Steve Jones referred
earlier on to engineering but is there a division there between
generic and specific and has there been an improvement or a decline
in the last few years?
Mr Cottam: The common complaint
is in areas of basic numeracy and basic literacy. I do not want
to overburden you with statistics, but I should say that our annual
survey has only just been released, which is quite timely for
our purposes, but in the manufacturing sector 43% of manufacturers
in Wales stated that they have difficulty in recruiting skilled
staff and 40% have had difficulty recruiting unskilled staff.
The majority of manufacturers, when asked what are the main problems,
actually pointed to basic numeracy and basic literacy skills.
We are not necessarily talking about issues surrounding management
skills, although that is a problem in terms of getting the grade
of managers that we need in Wales to be productive, but basic
numeracy and basic literacy are the two that come up again and
again and you asked whether that has gone down or up in recent
years. Looking over the statistics, as I have over recent years,
it has largely stayed the same. We do not seem to be tackling
that problem. I am going back possibly 10 years over the statistics
I have looked at. Possibly over 30 years there was not so much
that issue.
Q641 Albert Owen: The Government
has had policy and implementation pushes in this direction. Can
you see any detectable consequences?
Mr Cottam: It is very difficult
to relate that to any consequences that are apparent in the manufacturing
sector, I have to say, certainly from my experience. I do not
know if any of my colleagues would be able to enlighten you further,
but certainly from any statistics that we have it is very difficult
to say.
Mr Jones: I can give you some
real life experiences of that, if you wish. Certainly basic skills
are a key issue in manufacturing right now. I do not know if it
is a Welsh thing or a UK-wide thing. I suspect it is UK-wide,
clearly, but there is an acceptance that basic skills have declined.
Certainly that has been the evidence in recent times. We have
recruited a number of people. We have doubled our workforce in
the last four or five months and trying to find people with basic
skills of literacy, numeracy and also verbal communication skills
is very difficult. I sort of despair at the levels of basic skills
in individuals. Yes, there are clearly policies in place. There
is a basic skills agency and companies are signing up to promote
basic skills, of course, which has to be applauded. It is too
soon to comment on the outcome of that, of course, but certainly
this is not just my view. We have been involved in the Wales manufacturing
steering group in recent times at the Assembly and it is certainly
the published view of that group that basic skills are of key
concern. There are other skills which are of concern as well,
especially in manufacturing where it is also kind of thought by
this group that manufacturing has an image problem. It is thought
to be dirty, in decline and with no future by the best graduates.
Now, we need the best people in manufacturing, the best design
engineers. We do not want them going overseas. We need to keep
them here and we have to get around this image problem as well.
That is clearly an issue for manufacturing companies but it is
also an issue for the groups that represent, let us say, manufacturing
companies and perhaps the Government as well.
Ms Sommer: Going back to the timber
industry again, there were two focus group meetings held in March.
These are manufacturers, very small ones, they are micro-businesses.
The meeting was supposed to be about business support and it completely
and utterly turned into education and skills problems and what
they are saying is that they simply cannot get the skills necessary.
These are craftspeople, tool makers, pattern makers. They cannot
get the people. They cannot find the course to put them on. We
also had representatives from the colleges and the higher education
and they said, "Yes, we do have these courses but nobody
takes it up." There is a clear gap of understanding between
what the private sector wants and what is available in the educational
sector. These people do not talk to each other, they do not understand
each other, and the result is that you do not get the skilled
people in that particular sector. The knock-on effect is that
most of these company owners are in their 50s or 60s. They are
going to shut down fairly soon. They have got no succession, they
have no apprentices, and that has a major knock-on effect on the
entire industry. This is small-scale manufacturing but it is the
backbone of Wales. It is small companies that hold it up.
Q642 Julie Morgan: Your submission
does not say a lot about sustainable development and I wondered
if you had any comments you would like to make about that and
whether you see any potential business opportunities in that field?
Mr Lawson: As for sustainable
development, obviously it is something which does not tend to
get very high upon a business's agenda. It is just about the business
being financially sustainable. But I notice your comments about
the opportunities that will come along as we become more aware
of sustainability and I think Wales is finding quite a niche which
would perhaps be developed within environmental businesses. But
looking at it as a more general topic, I do not think any business
would really argue with the central idea behind sustainable development,
that we should develop ourselves today, but bearing in mind that
there are going to be children and grandchildren who are going
to come along later. But it does not really help when you bring
in blunt instruments such as the Climate Change Levy, for example.
We did a survey of our members which found that 45% of them did
not even know they were paying the levy, therefore it is not really
going to have an impact on the use of the utilities or whatever.
The levy is there to charge. I think it really does come back
to the point that we can relate it back to manufacturing in the
sense that I do not think manufacturers would not particularly
object to paying more levies like that if they could see direct
benefits, if it is actually going into things like developing
your manufacturing processes which are in fact more environmentally
friendly. It is a bit like taxing people on petrol. You are not
going to get people out of their cars unless there is a viable
alternative for them to go to. So they will just keep going in
their cars and they will just find cost savings elsewhere in order
to do this. So I think I am right in that, am I not, Steve? Unless
you actually see the money going into something which is going
to benefit this issue you would find it very difficult to hand
the money over.
Mr Jones: I think there could
well be a whole industry, let us say, springing up to take advantage
of the legislation that comes in here and maybe that is something
which could be exported. I know that Corus have an idea on filtering
certain emissions in the steel-making process, for example. That
was being developed in Wales. Okay, they had some problems funding
it locally, which is a shame, but that kind of thing perhaps could
become an advantage for us. So it should be looked at in two ways.
In terms of disadvantages then clearly if it is going to be another
on cost on business to do so I think we have to look again at
the level playing field issue. When we are competing with our
products against products from other countries should the whole
burden of complying with this be on business? That is the question
we need to ask.
Ms Sommer: Could I approach this
from a slightly different angle. We are involved in a wood cluster,
which means we have found a site where 25 timber-orientated businesses
can work and live. That means a combination of dwelling and workshop
and the point of that is that is sustainable in many areas because
it takes away the commuting between house and workshop. It makes
sure that the work should be spread to the capacity and the requirements
as it is needed for that particular industry. It creates 25 businesses
who can put together their efforts to re-cycle, to use up energy
in the best way, to reduce traffic and transport cost, provide
local economy jobs and so on. So you can approach sustainable
development from another angle than just taxation. It is just
a change of thinking.
Q643 Julie Morgan: Where is that?
Ms Sommer: It will be in Ynysybwl,
hopefully. We have been working on this for three years. It is
very difficult to get the public sector to think about a change
of attitude towards working and dwelling. I am German, as you
hear from my accent. I have always worked in Germany, where I
live, or I live where I work. I would not dream of commuting.
That is the way it is done. In the UK it is very different. We
have these hordes of people getting into their cars every morning
or onto the Tube and getting to their workplace and back again.
The waste here is tremendous in time, in nerves, in energy and
so on. It takes a sea change of attitude here. I have been trying
to find a house where we can live and work for three years and
I cannot find it because the local authority says, "You cannot
work here because you make a noise and you cannot live there because
that's an industrial estate." There are other ways of doing
it and it is being done in other European countries.
Julie Morgan: Thank you very much.
Chairman: I think those are the questions
we have got for you today. If there is anything else you think
about afterwards, feel free to send us a letter or another submission.
Thank you very much indeed for coming.
|
