Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320-324)
MR DAN
WRIGHT AND
MR SIMON
WITHEY
26 MARCH 2007
Q320 Chairman: You recognise the
symptom?
Mr Withey: I have seen the issue
in a number of companies around the country, yes, and obviously
it is a result of budget limits, and so on. I guess we are where
we are, in a way, on that.
Q321 Chairman: A profitable company
and an international, global player will not take on more apprentices
because the Government will not pay for them. You are red in tooth
and claw; you started off saying about the market; but surely
a company which does not take on highly qualified people should
go to the wall, should it not?
Mr Withey: We would not stop recruiting
young people just because government money dried up for apprenticeship
training, for the VT Group. If we had used our allocation and
we wanted another 20 young apprenticeships, we would fund those
ourselves, if that was the requirement of our business, and I
think any decent company probably would do that.
Q322 Chairman: What do you think,
Dan; is it a crazy world?
Mr Wright: Almost certainly. I
think it is slightly different, because if you take a company
like McDonald's, there is just no way we are going to stop bringing
people in and training them to do what they need to do. What we
do is accredit their training and we give their employees a qualification
to walk away with; so it is slightly different. The hot issue
in the hospitality industry is that for many years it has moaned
about the lack of skills, of really top-class, qualified people
coming through, and what they have not done is invest enough in
the development of those people from their own programmes, so
now I think they are suffering the consequences of that, because
of years of lack of investment there. I think there is a bit of
a crazy world scenario there and now, openly, the hospitality
industry is criticising itself for many years of lack of investment.
Q323 Chairman: Do not hold your breath;
galloping over the horizon comes the free training for Train to
Gain?
Mr Wright: Train to Gain will
not deal with the level of skills shortage which the hospitality
industry talks about.
Q324 Chairman: Almost every training
programme we are talking about is subsidised by the Government,
is it not?
Mr Wright: Yes.
Chairman: That might not be all. It has
been a really good session. Could you keep in touch with the Committee;
you have complemented astoundingly and very well the information
and the evidence we had in the first session. If that happens,
that we get that kind of match, we are always very happy; so thank
you very much indeed.
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