Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
MR KEN
LIVINGSTONE, MR
CHRIS BANKS
CBE AND MR
DAVID HUGHES
23 OCTOBER 2006
Q60 Mr Chaytor: This question is
to Ken. In terms of the impact on the individual citizen, how
are the establishment of the London Skills and Employment Board
and the shift of the strategic responsibility to your office going
to change things on the ground?
Mr Livingstone: There will be
two things. One is that in everything else that I have been given
we have been able to find economies and savings which then have
been redirected into improving front-line services. This will
not be an adversarial thing, but the people who have done that
for me in other areas I will want to bring their talents to bear
on where we can do this better, get more for it; no-one is going
to resist that. Then there is the second issue, which I think
is much more significant, what we can lever in from the private
sector, if they see this starting to work; they all know that
if they can make a contribution to this, there is huge kudos that
comes with it. We are in this quite unique position that London
is the only major city in the western world which is growing strongly.
Some are stable, some have small growth; we are growing in population
at the same rate as at the height of the Victorian Empire. That
is because people really want to come here; it is not just the
low-paid worker from Rumania, it is actually across a whole range.
More young people will choose to come to live and work in London
this year than in any other city in the western world, and it
has got a buzz about it at the moment and on the back of this
we can do an incredible amount. If you ask me where we might be
in five or six years' time, what I would judge our success, it
is actually having borne down on that core of people, and we have
got about, once you exclude full-time students, just over a million
people not in work in London. Some of them will never come back
into work, some of them have health problems, but for an awful
lot of women, and particularly single parents, but even where
you have got two parents, it just is not worthwhile financially
coming back, given the cost of childcare and the differential
of housing. We have got a scheme we are running at the moment,
jointly between myself and the Government, to subsidise childcare
provision, and it is coming down from about £250 a week to
£60 or £70; that makes the difference, it starts to
get people back in. Then there is the impact in terms of what
we can do in providing a package which is tailored specifically
to the individuals. When I said, I think it was to Rob Wilson,
that nothing is going to turn around in a year, it would be only
a gimmick, it is a question of fashioning something which deals
with the individual problem. As I said, many of these people,
365,000 have no qualifications and we have got 347,000 who have
never had a job. Those are not going to be easy people to get
back in, or to get in for the first time; it will take time, and
I am certain that, particularly if we can lever in the private
sector, we can do that. On the back of the Olympics you have 70,000
volunteers and these are not volunteers who will be just standing
around in the Olympic Village pointing at the toilets, they are
going to have to be given training in health and safety, training
in languages, and so on, customs skills, all of which could benefit
them before the Olympics and certainly should benefit them after
the Olympics.
Q61 Mr Chaytor: Thank you for that.
Just to give us the structure, the LSC will keep responsibility
for the funding of training but both the LSC and the new Board
will have responsibility for planning. How are you going to mesh
the fact that both organisations have got a planning responsibility,
and what will happen if the Board's plan specifically for London
is in conflict with some of the central government-directed targets
that the LSC is obliged to deliver?
Mr Livingstone: I would pick up
the 'phone to the Secretary of State and say there is a problem
there. If they are constrained by rules laid down by Government
that are working against what is good for London, it is no good
me berating them, I will have to go and talk to Government on
that. I have to say that across a whole range of other areas this
has not been a problem, whether it has been in transport, or whatever.
I have found it can take some time, but once you have made the
case to Government, that if the argument stands up, they are open
to change, not quickly, but they are.
Q62 Mr Chaytor: What is the point
of the LSC having a planning function?
Mr Livingstone: We are starting
from scratch. I assume we will learn a lot from them, there will
be a lot of ideas that I and particularly the business people
on the Board will have which we will be surprised if the Government
have not already looked at, and so on. It will be a dialogue and
a debate. I do not see it as two rival organisations. I think
they will be looking for the extra input and value that we can
bring, with that London dimension. When I became Mayor, the thing
that amazed me the most was the discovery that nowhere in London
was there an organisation abstracting economic data for London;
all that happened was broadly they took the national data and
then made a finger in the wind on that, "What do we think
that is in London?" In GLA economics, actually we created,
I think, the most detailed economic data you have got about the
economy in this city; that will be a valuable resource feeding
into this, serving both of us.
Q63 Mr Marsden: Ken, I would like
to come back to something that you have just been saying, and
you painted, and reasonably so, a very dynamic view of the London
economy, you talked about the people wanting to come here, and
all the rest of it. What you are also very conscious of, as you
said earlier, is the need to bring back people for five, ten or
15 years, older people, you talked eloquently, and I absolutely
agree with you about the need to reskill 40 and 50 year olds.
There is a problem here though, is there not, and it is the problem
of how you factor the time and the balance between those demands.
If you take something very specific, like the Olympics, like the
needs of the construction industry, perhaps ideally we should
be putting much more focus on getting older workers back in there,
but the fact of the matter is, in the short term, they are going
to go to migrant workers, are they not, they are going to go to
skilled Poles, skilled Czechs, and all the rest of it? That is
just one example. Is not that going to be a real challenge for
you, as you take on these new responsibilities, how you balance
out the strategic need to reskill older workers with the instant
need to respond to demand in the sorts of ways that I have described?
Mr Livingstone: The RDA is working
already with colleges and the Learning and Skills Councils to
increase the capacity of training in London so that, as far as
possible, everybody that we can take out of long-term unemployment
and give them the skills for the jobs that are coming we do that,
and we have time. At the moment we are site-clearing and decontaminating;
that is going to take us through to the end of 2008. The construction
of the Olympic facilities will start, at the very earliest, in
early 2008 and most probably early 2009; so you have got the gap
between now and then to maximise the potential for Londoners to
get those jobs which are coming. The point you make is an absolutely
accurate one. We have been driven by tremendous dynamism, people
coming here, but we have got these people, over half a million
people, that we should be able to give better training to, to
take jobs here in London. Each one of those that takes a job takes
a job which otherwise would go to someone migrating in, and actually
that is a benefit because most likely they have got a home here
already, they are based in the city and it reduces the burden
on social service spending. It is likely to have an impact on
a whole range of other social problems in the area. Yes, it will
substitute, but I think that is my job as Mayor, to keep this
economy open to everybody who can come and add to it, but also
to try really to get everybody who has been excluded and left
behind into employment, even though I know most probably that
will reduce the opportunities for people migrating in.
Mr Hughes: I think construction
is an interesting one because there are some fantastic examples
of where local people are getting the training they need. If you
look at Battersea Power Station, as an example, they have got
Lambeth College in there, they have got the LDA and the LSC funding
training of local people who are unemployed, referred by Jobcentre
Plus, and Bovis Lend Leases employing those people on the site
to build. Construction, in a sense, is not the one that worries
me most, it is other industries, where you have got enormous turnover,
and if you look at hospitality retail, where actually the majority
of that workforce will be migrants, and where there are opportunities
at lower-skill levels, we have got to get into talking to the
employers, I think, in a new way, to talk to them about how they
employ, how they train people, how they retain people.
Q64 Chairman: Are you too obsessed
with a kind of hierarchy of qualifications though, David? I do
not know if Ken Livingstone knows of the East London Business
Association that have piloted a system in Canary Wharf, where
they reach out to the long-term unemployed and do quite simple
things, give them some soft skills background, not a qualification
but some training in soft skills, and they give them a mentor,
and they find that a high number get jobs in the service sector
around servicing the buildings, and so on, in Canary Wharf, which
has been very successful. Perhaps Ken Livingstone can come back
in; they are the very people you are talking about, who are very
often left out?
Mr Livingstone: I agree. Perhaps
it is inevitable, but I have watched, through my lifetime, the
kids who left school with me, with three or four what were then
GCEs and got jobs which today require a degree; there has been
this ratcheting up, and I am not certain it is all absolutely
necessary. I think perhaps a better-crafted set of vocational
skills would have been more useful.
Q65 Mr Marsden: I want to come back,
and actually again Ken has touched on the point, on this issue
of demand and supply, and particularly in relationship to qualifications
and apprenticeships. One of the things that this Committee has
heard on other occasions, in other inquiries, has been concerns
about completion rates on apprenticeships, and one of the problems,
particularly in very dynamic economies, like London and the South
East have been, is that Government and various organisations get
people onto apprenticeship schemes, they go halfway down it and
they get certain qualifications or they get certain experience
and they are snapped up, or they feel up to going to work somewhere
else. Therefore, the actual figures, in terms of apprenticeship
completions, do not look very good; but, more important, we are
putting money and we are putting effort into training people who
are, as it were, snatched away from the completion. David, perhaps
you would like to touch on some of the nuts and bolts. How do
we change that situation so that actually we do have a framework
of qualifications which will enable people to take advantage of
economic opportunities while they are training in an apprenticeship,
but, at the same time, not mean that we are going back to square
one all the time?
Mr Hughes: It is a big question,
is it not, and in a sense it touches on everything that we want
to talk about, and probably you want to talk about in your skills
inquiry? If it touches on who determines what the qualification
is and how much employers drive the qualifications really to appreciate
what is needed in jobs, it questions the LSC and its role in funding
and funding flexibly for providers to be able to follow people,
if they do move jobs, and really to make sure that the quality
of the delivery is right. It questions whether employers are taking
seriously the skills levels in their businesses and thinking long
term about it. There is no easy answer to that one. I think there
is a big culture shift that is necessary. What I can tell you
is, in London, the success rates, the achievement rates, in workplace
learning in London have increased massively in the last 12 months,
so we are getting part of it right, and part of that must be because
the qualifications and the quality of the training are meeting
the needs of the learners and employers better. It is a big question.
We have only about 7.5% of the adult apprenticeship spend in London
and we have got 15% of the population; we do not deliver apprenticeships
to the same scale as, say, the East Midlands, so there is a big
change that needs to happen.
Mr Banks: I want to come in on
the point about apprenticeships, because it is such an important,
big programme and I just wanted to correct a fact, the provider
fact. The success rates in full completion of apprenticeships,
when I first got involved in this, was 30-something, 31 or 32;
now it is mid 50s and up and heading towards 60.
Q66 Mr Marsden: With respect, Chris,
I am sorry to interrupt you; that may well be the picture nationally,
it is not necessarily the picture in London and the South East,
which is the area where I specifically raised the question?
Mr Banks: I am sorry. I did not
hear you say particularly in relation to London. I do think the
point about apprenticeships is that if the SSCs can define the
qualification as tightly as they really need, because it links
back to what David was saying earlier, SSCs are good at saying
what the relevant qualification is, and then we allow a bite-size,
is the jargon I think that is used, approach to it, which enables
people to do little bits of learning that add up to a recognised
qualification, that will make a big difference, in terms of demand-led.
At the moment, as you will know, apprenticeship is one of the
toughest measures, one of the few, because to get the full qualification
you need to have got really good levels of numeracy and literacy
as well, unlike many others.
Q67 Fiona Mactaggart: Are you changing
the culture of businesses in London, who have got a tradition
of being flexible, by buying workers who have been trained already
and bidding against each other for them, rather than investing
in them? It is one of the ways that London is quick on its feet.
How can you change that?
Mr Livingstone: The business community
is open to change. I was quite struck, in my role at the GLC,
that the business community was broadly hostile to all that we
were doing. Virtually the first people through the door when I
was elected Mayor were the businessmen, saying "We need this,
we want more investment," and I was struck because 25 years
earlier I was being told that public sector investment crowds
out private sector investment. It is not just the Labour Party
that has changed, business has changed, we have worked out what
does and does not work. It will be a slow process and there will
be some firms that do not change their attitudes, but I think
their involvement as a majority of the members of this new Board
will mean they become advocates for business taking a longer-term
view and being prepared to put more resources into training and
apprenticeships as well. I cannot promise it, but I have been
struck by the very positive attitude of a lot of business in the
city.
Q68 Fiona Mactaggart: If the skills
plan is not going according to plan, as it were, if you have developed
this thing, everyone has bought into it, theoretically, and so
on, if actually something completely different happens, enrolments
are much higher in one area and much lower in another, in practice,
what happens then; that is what I have not quite got?
Mr Livingstone: You are asking
me what I do if I fail. There was no Plan B for the congestion
charge either, we set out to make it work and we will set out
to make this work. There will be some things that work better
in some areas than others; it is a question of making sure that
best practice spreads very rapidly through this whole sector.
It is a frame of mind I do not actually have. I always assume
I am going to win. I even thought we might win the 1983 election,
so it can be overoptimistic at times.
Q69 Chairman: Can I push you just
a bit on the apprenticeship, Ken? Here is a clear underachievement
already in London, in terms of apprenticeship, and with the ability
increasingly for older people to get into apprenticeship, surely
that is a campaign worthy of not only your leadership but one
of your advertising campaigns? It just seems to me, if all the
figures that you put in for evidence when you gave us the skills,
the high rate of households with no-one in employment, the lack
of training, there is a real challenge here, in a complex society
where people earn a King's fortune, it used to be called a King's
fortune down in the City, and just down the road, just a couple
of blocks away, there are people who have not worked, who are
living on very low incomes. Surely, it is apprenticeships that
would open up, for many of these people, a real life; is not that
something which should be a priority?
Mr Livingstone: I could not agree
more. I am struck by the contrast between Canary Wharf and just
a mile down the road you have Brick Lane, a hive of entrepreneurial
enthusiasm in the Bangladeshi community, and yet very, very few
Bangladeshis are employed in all those great office blocks in
the centre. The LDA is running a strategy to bring people into
work from communities that have been excluded. I think there are
added problems. Shell came to see me a few months ago about environmental
and other matters, but at the end they touched on the fact of
something they had established, which was a Muslim workers group,
because a lot of firms had got their head round the fact, how
do you reach out to women, how do you reach out to black and ethnic
minorities. There is a particular dimension about religion, and
in this city 7, 8% of the population are Muslim. They have particular
views about, first, how you welcome them, then how you make provision
for them to be able to practise their religion, and so on. Shell
had come up with this Muslim workers group actually to analyse
that, because they recognise, if they are going to do business
in the city, you cannot really write off the best part of 10%
of the population and their skills. I think that is important.
Really it will come down to, as you were saying, advertising,
cajoling, banging the drum for this; the alternative will be to
go back to the old days. I recall, when I was a schoolboy, I read
H G Wells's History of Mr Polly, who described his own
apprenticeship where he had to sign a legally-binding agreement
to complete the seven years, and during that period of time he
would neither drink nor have sex. I do not have those powers.
I am sure it would deliver a big increase in apprenticeships and
a decline in population.
Q70 Chairman: You do have other powers,
not those, but those of us who use London taxis, for example,
would look at that, which is a wonderful apprenticeship really,
although it is not a formal apprenticeship. As someone who has
just been on a visit to look at environmental innovation near
Paris and yet again seen the dreadful taxi system that Paris has
compared with that of London, what would worry someone in London
is that you see, I do not know if you have the figures, a very
small number of ethnic minorities, or specific ethnic minorities,
actually driving London taxis?
Mr Livingstone: We are very disturbed
about that. The figures for ethnic minorities are pathetically
small and yet, of course, the moment you get a minicab you will
find that the balance is the other way around. I think there may
have been, I cannot prove it, two Lodges operating in the old
Public Carriage Office and there were ways things were done which
would not conform to much of what we understand currently as acceptable
practice. We have made substantial management changes. We have
just brought in somebody else to turn this round, because we are
not going to continue to accept it, and we have appointed a black
woman to head the Public Carriage Office. I am sure this was well
received by all my cab-driving friends, but we are going to have
to change. We plan to have taxi schools in east London and we
are going out to do that, because it is very odd, compared with,
say, the situation in New York, where the Yellow Cabs are quite
well reflective if not more of New York's ethnic minorities seem
to be driving Yellow Cabs.
Q71 Chairman: I did not want to undermine
the fact that most of us have got into New York cabs and Paris
cabs with people who do not know where on earth you are asking
to go to, and the training system of London is rather different.
Mr Livingstone: Occasionally,
who do not speak English, which also causes a problem; English
is their second language.
Q72 Stephen Williams: I assure you,
Chairman, if you come to Bristol, that taxi-drivers are very likely
to be of Somali and Bangladeshi origin, so do come to Bristol.
A question for the Mayor on who has the final say on some issues.
I am just trying to find out where the power actually lies under
this new structure. We have heard some quite interesting statistics
about the share of funding across England for LLFE, I think, if
I heard correctly, a quarter of the funding is in London, despite
the fact that the demographics do not suggest that. We also heard
later that the apprentice share for London is actually quite low,
when compared with the rest of England. In terms of where the
funding goes, who makes the decision, is it the Mayor's office
or is it the LSC?
Mr Livingstone: We will devise
a strategy and the Learning and Skills Councils will then implement
that strategy. If I had thought, when Ruth Kelly made this proposal,
that this was simply a sop, I had some platform to drone on about
skills whilst nothing changed, I would have said "No,"
but both in my dealings with her and with the two gentlemen to
my right I do not have the slightest doubt that there is a desire
to make this work without breaking apart the national structure.
I can understand. It would have been very nice for me. If I am
just given the whole thing, total administrative control, I love
that, but then what about the rest of the country? Would that
have demoralised it? Would it have started to fracture? Ruth Kelly
had two priorities: one, to improve what we do in London, but
not to do anything which damaged the national structure. We have
agreed to make that work and, if we do not make it work, that
will be shame on all of us.
Mr Banks: Just as a point of fact,
as well, the grant letter, now, going forward, identifies the
money which is going to be spent in London separately from the
rest of the country, so it is transparent and clear.
Q73 Stephen Williams: And that grant
letter comes from?
Mr Banks: It comes from the Secretary
of State for Education and Skills to the Chair of the Learning
and Skills Council.
Q74 Stephen Williams: The budget
for London is fixed centrally and given to you and the Mayor then
decides the strategy; is that right?
Mr Banks: That is right.
Mr Livingstone: Which is almost
exactly the position we have now with the similar power I am being
given in allocation of housing grant.
Mr Banks: If there are difficulties
locally within London as to how that should be spent then the
Skills and Employment Board and David Hughes, as the Regional
Director for the LSC, will resolve those, just as we do resolving
priorities elsewhere around the country. As Ken said, in the event
that there is an irreconcilable difference in priorities then
the LSC National Council will look at it, I guess, and ultimately
Ken will go to the Secretary of State and it will be addressed
in that way. The sense of partnership and willingness to make
this work, I think, is something that we would want to communicate
and force very much on the LSC side of the house as well as on
the Mayor's and the GLA.
Q75 Chairman: I am really worried
because, Ken, I have never seen you in such a harmonious relationship
with anyone. I have never seen you nicer, with two people to your
right.
Mr Livingstone: Let us just get
it straight, I am in a different role. When I was a Member of
Parliament I was fighting for a particular ideological position,
which happened to be in the minority, so I was very difficult
all round. Here, I have been given an administrative role in London
and I have got to deliver things, and it is not particularly ideological.
Q76 Chairman: Ken, I realise that,
and it was not a criticism. What I was going to say was, look,
one of the things that could loom pretty fast is that you would
put your priority for the older worker, getting older workers,
the long-term unemployed, back into work, but they are absolutely
stuck in a groove, saying, "We're going to put the money
into younger people, and not people above 25." Indeed, they
are taking money away from community education. There is a college,
Morley College, one of your famous colleges, across there, being
starved of resources because of this LSC determination to draw
money away from community education and older workers and put
it in a different direction. I can see you having a real fight,
quite soon?
Mr Livingstone: These are issues
of balance and debate. I suspect all of us will take the view
that everybody you get into work is a `plus' and therefore whether
it is an elderly person or a younger person they are both going
to be my priorities. I cannot believe actually that anyone in
the Learning and Skills Council will not share the enthusiasm
I have for getting older people back into work as well. I say
`older', a lot of these people are only in their thirties but
they have just never had a job.
Q77 Chairman: Is there going to be
conflict, Chris?
Mr Banks: Inevitably, there are
going to be differences of emphasis and different priorities,
are there not, Chairman, and you would expect that; but I do think
that the tools are there much more now to enable us to be more
flexible. You will remember, there is a right for all adults to
have first level 2, which is the equivalent, which is what we
are aiming for.
Q78 Chairman: With the resources
to accompany that pledge?
Mr Banks: That is a pledge which
has been made and our job is to deliver against it.
Q79 Chairman: With the money?
Mr Banks: Our job is to deliver
against it.
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