| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
8 Feb 2007 : Column 343WH—continued
The number of NEETs means, of course, that there are people who are not acquiring skills to fill needed jobs. Is it not curious that we are importing skilled labour from abroad at the same time that we have 1.3 million young people not in employment, education or training? Let me qualify the figure a little, because the Minister will jump up in a moment and say that they are not all people who are ready and able to work. The number includes gap-year students and some people with quite profound difficulties—mental health difficulties, addiction problems perhaps and other
problems that might make it difficult for them to gain employment easily. However, even using the most conservative estimate, if we deduct those people and a few other varied groups—new age travellers perhaps and one or two others—we end up, I think, with a figure not much short of 1 million for those young people who would like to and should be able to work but who have in effect been cheated by the system of their chance to succeed. That is not acceptable. Indeed, it is a pretty damning indictment of the Government.
Mr. Mark Field: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Hayes: I would be delighted to give way to my hon. Friend, who is a great champion of the vulnerable.
Mr. Field: My hon. Friend rightly identifies the significant number of unemployed and, indeed, unemployable young people in this country today. He referred to the fact that they were being kept out of skilled and semi-skilled jobs. Is it not the case that the large-scale and unprecedented immigration to this country also means that, to a large extent, many of the unskilled jobs in the hospitality industry and the like are being kept out of the reach of those among our under-23s who might be able to qualify for them?
Mr. Hayes: Yes. That is a very good point and I shall explain why, but I shall do so only having said first, for the record, that economies do deal with migration in order to meet economic need. They always have and they always will. Economies draw people in as they have growing labour needs, and people leave when those needs decrease, so I am not prejudiced about the issue, but I take my hon. Friend’s point. This is why it is a profound one. If we examine the profile of immigration to Britain, it would be quite wrong to assume that the bulk of it over, say, the last 10 years—I pick 1997 purely out of the air, of course—has been skilled migration. We have let into Britain a very large number of unskilled migrants, and at a time when the demand for unskilled labour is plummeting, according to the Government’s own figures, I am not sure that that is either laudable or wise.
Bill Rammell: I welcome the clarification that the hon. Gentleman has given in response to the point made by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field), because we are in potentially dangerous territory. I ask the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) to confirm that a substantial element of the migration has been in response to the fact that unemployment is at historically low levels in this country. There are 500,000 jobs that we cannot fill from our own citizens—not exclusively from our own citizens—because unemployment is so low, which is a good thing.
Mr. Hayes: Yes, that is true, but I point out again, at the risk of being repetitive—certainly not boring; that would not be possible—that there are 1.3 million NEETs. I noticed the Minister nodding his head when I qualified that number, but I cannot believe that any fewer than 1 million of those could not, in the right circumstances and with the right opportunities and the right help, usefully be employed.
The Minister is right that there is a relationship between migration, economic demand and unemployment, as there has always been. I am concerned about the nature of some of that migration. I represent an area in Lincolnshire that has a low-skilled, low-wage economy with high levels of employment. There is a big demand in the food and food-related industries for labour, some of which is seasonal and part-time, and in recent years, large numbers of migrants have been used to fill those gaps.
I have repeatedly made the case locally and nationally that we have to be cautious about exploitation, not on the part of the big companies, which do their best to ensure that that does not happen, but by the labour agents, or gangmasters, as they are popularly known. We have to be careful about the other circumstances in which such people find themselves in relation to housing and health, and about the pressure on local infrastructure. We must also be careful that the employment of such workers is not used as a means of holding down wage costs rather than creating strong, secure, long-term jobs with decent wages for Britons of all races, colours and creeds.
We have to be a little careful about deeming migration to be a net economic good. Migration Watch recently did a study into the economic effect of migration in which it balanced the growth that it helps to sustain against infrastructural costs for roads, housing, health and education. The picture is not entirely clear. I shall not say too much about this because I do not want to get bogged down, but we must exercise great caution when assuming that migration is necessarily, implicitly always a positive in these kinds of circumstances.
The Minister said that by 2020 we will need 5 million more highly skilled workers, but 3 million fewer unskilled workers. That reflects the findings of the Leitch report; indeed, the Secretary of State said the same in the House last year. The Minister also said that 70 per cent. of the 2020 work force will consist of people who are over 16. That means that we have to upskill and reskill the existing work force. It will not be enough simply to provide the right opportunities for school leavers. It will not even be enough to do that and to engage the NEETs gainfully.
We must look at how we can improve the opportunities of those who are already in the work force, but that is not always a straightforward job, because people have to adjust their skills to meet changing economic and commercial demands. We have a mountain to climb. More than one third of adults do not have a basic school-leaving qualification—double the proportion in Canada and Germany—and the Government do not have an acceptable record regarding the literacy and numeracy of school leavers.
Given the mountain that we have to climb to achieve world-class skills by 2020, one would expect the Government to do everything they can to increase participation in training, but it has fallen in the past couple of years. Participation in further education was down by 13.6 per cent. last year—back to where it was in 1997. Participation in adult and community learning was down by almost 10 per cent. last year to well below its 1998 level. Work-based learning was down by 6.5 per cent. to below what it was in 2000, when figures were first compiled.
I want to amplify that last point, because the decline in adult learning is sometimes parodied as merely a decline in recreational opportunities for prosperous middle-aged and older people who tend to live in the leafier parts of constituencies such as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster, and in small pockets of constituencies such as mine. Of course that is not true.
Much adult and community learning is an important bridge back into learning and work for people who perhaps did not prosper the first time around. That is why I emphasise that work-based learning has declined, as have adult and community work-related courses. This is not simply about people who would like to study Mandarin or basket weaving. It is about people trying to equip themselves to re-enter the work force. That is particularly important given the profile of the work force now and in the past decade.
The Minister is an authority on these matters, so he will know that many of those who enter the work force are from the ranks of the non-employed, such as women who left employment to bring up a family and who seek to re-engage in employment later in life. They have been able to do so in great numbers in the past decade or more. That bolstered our work force at a time when, had they not done so, demographic change would have made life very difficult for British businesses. If we remove the bridges that they need to cross to do that, we will do British business and the British economy no favours at all.
Will the Minister give us an absolute assurance, in line with those that have been asked for by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education and others, that he will wage a war on the decline in adult learning? That is an important element in providing the sort of world-class skills that we need for 2020. Both he and I want to achieve that.
Bill Rammell: I am intrigued by this. I read the hon. Gentleman’s recent speech, or pamphlet, about the development of Conservative policy on skills, and I understood it to advocate a shift in provision and financing towards intermediate skills at the expense of lower level skills. If that assumption is correct, how can I regard what he is saying at the moment with any credibility?
Mr. Hayes: The Minister shows his characteristically incisive and sure touch, but let me explain the point. It would be better if he had also read the document that I have here, which sets my speech in a broader context. I am happy to let him have a copy of it, Mr. Hancock; I know that you keep a copy of it by your bedside. It is called “Towards a Virtuous Circle of Learning”. In that paper and the policy paper, I conclude that too much of business’s investment in skills is spent on remedial training to compensate for failures elsewhere in the system.
One in three employers tells us that they spend money on teaching their new staff how to read, write and count; on soft skills, which are a principal concern for employers; or on high-level skills that are a commercial necessity—the training of airline pilots is an example that might spring to mind if one is going on holiday soon. As a result, intermediate learning falls between the cracks, as do the resultant intermediate skills.
Adult education is usually conducted at further education colleges and is funded by the Government through the Learning and Skills Council. That has historically been an important route to the kind of intermediate skills that I argue we lack. It is people’s first step back into learning and acquiring intermediate skills. The Minister gets around colleges just as much as I do, if not more. As he will know, colleges that try to attract students to become craftsmen such as plumbers—I do not know why we always use the example of plumbers, but they have become an iconic profession—sometimes sign people up to a non-accredited course before signing them up to an accredited course, particularly if those people are uncertain about their core skills. The Government have focused heavily on accredited courses, but I have some doubt about the effectiveness of such an approach, because it narrows the funnel through which people can come back into learning. The two things are not incompatible, but perhaps we can talk the issue through later in the debate, because I do not want to get bogged down in it now.
For my money, there are three big omissions in the Leitch report. I take the report as our text because this is the first opportunity that the House has had really to explore it. The Minister rightly focused heavily on its analysis and recommendations, and it is, indeed, the most recent comprehensive assessment of skills with which we have to work. None the less, there are three gaps, the first of which relates to the role of further education colleges. When I put that point to the Secretary of State, he said, “Well, that wasn’t Leitch’s remit.” However, given that Andrew Foster’s report made it absolutely clear that FE colleges’ move towards self-regulation was a critical means of delivering the skills agenda, it is surprising that Lord Leitch did not take up that baton and run with it and that he did not talk about how such an approach might work in terms of his analysis and recommendations.
I should therefore like the Minister to refocus on the issue. He talked about the Further Education and Training Bill with some pride, which is understandable, given that it does some important things. However, it is pretty ironic that at the same time that we are considering giving FE colleges foundation degree-awarding powers, we are also giving the Learning and Skills Council new, draconian powers to sack professionals such as college governors, managers and principals. It is ironic that, on the one hand, we want to trust FE to do more, but that, on the other, we trust it so little that we must make it accountable to the LSC, rather than to its own governors and to learners. I am not sure, therefore, that the Bill is all that it might have been. I would have hoped that it would give more scope to the proposals set out in the Leitch report and certainly to those set out in the Foster report, given the time between the publication of that report and the Bill. It is not good enough to say, “We didn’t have long enough.”
The second big gap in the Leitch report concerns business engagement. It is pretty weak to say, “Sign this pledge. If you don’t, the sword of Damocles hanging over your head will strike at a future date.” It is pretty weak to send Digby Jones around the country, like
some mad advocate of temperance, expecting people to sign the pledge. Leitch might more usefully and helpfully have looked at all the other means by which one might engage employers. He rightly talks about the need to move to a more demand-led system and away from the largely supply-led system that we have now. I know that the Minister shares that sentiment, by the way, because I have heard him express it. However, we must define what that system means and certainly how we will engage employers.
I have no definitive view on that issue, but the Minister will know as well as I do that various things have been talked about. One might have thought that Leitch would consider the issue of a licence to practice, which might be voluntary, and which might be based on the model used by Investors in People, the British Standards Institution, the International Standards Organisation, the Association of British Travel Agents, estate agents and Corgi gas-fitters—there is any number of examples. I am not yet in a position to announce such a scheme as my party’s policy, but I would certainly have wanted Leitch to investigate it further.
Leitch might also have looked at a levy system—perhaps a voluntary one—which would surely have a bit more weight and force than a pledge. One business man told me, “We are quite happy to have ‘hail fellow well met’ meetings with the LSC once a month over coffee, but it doesn’t matter a lot until we have to stump up.” There is a sense in which there is a relationship between commitment, money and funding, and a voluntary levy system could have been explored, although I would not favour a return to compulsory levies, for reasons with which you will be familiar, Mr. Hancock. Equally, Leitch might have looked at the range of fiscal options available to engage employers. Again, I do not take a definitive view on that, but we need to have a debate about it as a House and as a nation, and it is a pity that Leitch did not look at the issue a little more closely.
The final gap in the Leitch report is, frankly, pretty big: he did not really explore the bureaucracy, regulation and micro-management of the skills agenda, which dog so much of the good work that is done. FE colleges tell me, as I am sure that they tell you, Mr. Hancock, and other hon. Members, that they are constantly dogged by micro-management. Seventeen bodies have oversight or a regulatory role in the FE sector, according to Foster, and that is repeated in the Leitch report. Surely, we need to treat FE as grown up and to give FE colleges much more capacity to innovate and much more opportunity to self-regulate. Of course there must be lines of accountability, because public money is involved, and Ofsted must continue to play a key role.
The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, too, can play a role, as it will in relation to foundation degrees, for example. There will be the necessary protections if we move to self-regulation, and there must, of course, be some long-stop accountability back to the Government. However, as we know from Ofsted’s current inspections of FE colleges, very few colleges are in desperate measures or unsatisfactory; the vast majority are satisfactory or better, and some are very much better. By undervaluing the expertise, professionalism, imagination and creativity of FE
professionals, we will sell them short and, perhaps worse, we will sell learners short. We therefore need to look at the issues of bureaucracy, over-regulation, control and micro-management and at the way in which the system is managed and funded. Bluntly, that means that we will again have to look closely at the role of the LSC, which is a very large body.
Again, I have not taken a definitive view on the issue, and I have simply said that we must think again about the ways in which we might manage the skills agenda. Like Leitch, I would like to see an enhanced role for sector skills councils, which are employer-oriented bodies. There are problems with that, and the Minister knows them. They include the issue of cross-sectorial skills and the fact that some councils are not yet fully up to speed. In addition, we need to ensure that they take sufficient account of the industry bodies that already exist in certain sectors and make the most use of them. There are, therefore, issues with that model, but it is a good way of managing the system more effectively. It would be odd to give sector skills councils strategic responsibility without also giving them funding responsibility, because such a mismatch does not bear any kind of logical analysis.
The essence of Leitch’s report—his analysis of the problem, his emphasis on why skills matter, his definition of the scale of the mountain that we must climb and his strong emphasis on building a demand-led system—make his report an extremely welcome addition to the wider debate and critical to our debate this afternoon.
I want to deal with only a few other matters, briefly, because I can see that many other hon. Members want to contribute to this three-hour debate. They are matters that concern the whole House. First, the Secretary of State was—I do not say it lightly—a little blasé this morning when challenged by my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State on apprenticeships. Yes, he is right to say that things have improved in relation to the number of drop-outs. I acknowledge that, but, my goodness, it is from a very low base. The idea that we could have, according to the sector, anything from 20 to 60 or 70 per cent. of people dropping out—the Minister raises an eyebrow, but there are one or two in that range, and if he checks I am sure he will find that that is right—is not acceptable, is it? A certain number of people have always left apprenticeships, as they have moved into full-time work earlier than expected. That has always been the case, historically. However, we have a big problem with apprenticeships and the number of people who do not complete them. It is no use just starting the race: what matters is winning it, and we want all our young apprentices to be winners.
The second problem with apprenticeships is that too many lack employer engagement. When I say that to people, they throw their hands up in horror. They say, “What is an apprenticeship if it is not linked to an employer?” I should guess that everyone’s image of an apprenticeship is much the same: going to a firm, learning a craft and working with experienced people who know the job. However, it came to my attention only in the past week that in one region of Britain half the apprenticeships had no direct employer engagement. Not only that, but a significant number of apprenticeships are not mentored. There is no skilled, grey-bearded craftsman looking after and encouraging,
teaching and inspiring the young apprentice. Apprenticeships have become rather different from the apprenticeships that were once valued and highly esteemed, which taught real competencies that lasted for life.
The second issue on which I want to say a brief word is train to gain. The Government place immense faith in train to gain, and they are right that it is critically important to encourage small and medium-sized enterprises to take training seriously. It has always been a problem historically: the chances are that for someone who works for a big firm training options will be available, but small businesses sometimes struggle to think about and invest in training as much as they need to. I was a director of what was originally a small, and later a medium-sized, IT company. When a company is very small people are too busy dealing with the weekly and monthly imperatives to worry much about what might happen three, six or 12 months down the line. I am sure you know that, Mr. Hancock. That is the sort of problem that faces small businesses when they deal with issues such as training; the payback from training is obviously, usually, longer term. However, I am still to be convinced that train to gain is the right way forward.
There are three problems: first, the dead-weight cost, which was recognised by those who closely studied the pilot scheme, when there was 85 per cent. dead weight. Hon. Members will remember what was said about that at the time, by independent commentators with no political axe to grind. Secondly, there is some evidence of a problem with training people in things that they already know. Someone who is already doing something perfectly satisfactorily goes on a course, to be trained to do it satisfactorily. That is not helpful, or a good use of public money. Thirdly, there is a need to ensure that the brokers are a useful bridge between educators and business, and not an unnecessary one. There is a slight risk, in that regard, in cases where further education has formed or could form direct relationships with local industry, of clogging up the system a bit by putting into place a network of brokers. I do not have a dogmatic view about it, but there are questions that need to be asked about train to gain.
The third and final matter that I want to touch on is vocational diplomas, which are so critical to world- class skills. Vocational diplomas mark an important opportunity to get vocational education from 14 to 19 right. I have welcomed them in the House, as the Minister knows. However, it is a very ambitious plan to set up 13 diplomas covering a very wide range of skills, and to expect them to be of the necessary rigour. It is a big ask of education—of schools and colleges. It will necessitate new relationships, of a kind not seen before, between schools and schools, and schools and colleges. Those collaborations should include higher education, where appropriate, and employers. We cannot see the matter as an agenda only for secondary schools. They will not be able to do it; it is as simple as that. They need to draw on the resources and expertise of all the organisations I have mentioned, to provide the quality that young people deserve.
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |