Examination of Witnesses (Questions 400-419)
MR GARETH
PARRY, MR
DAVID KNIGHT,
MR DUNCAN
SHRUBSOLE AND
MR RICHARD
PACE
28 MARCH 2007
Q400 Mr Wilson: The deeper we seem
to dig into this whole skills area, I am certainly finding that
lot of evidence is suggesting that we have the wrong structure.
What I mean by that is a very complicated, over bureaucratic,
overlapping structure within the skills area. I am also getting
the impression now that it seems to be concentrating in the wrong
areas. Would any of you agree with that as an over-arching summary?
David, you seem nodding both ways?
Mr Knight: I was looking up and
thinking.
Q401 Chairman: I thought you were
praying!
Mr Knight: I might have been doing
that as well. It is not necessarily the case structure, it is
getting the objectives aligned, and that is one of the things
we would have an issue with. There are a number of different parts
to the overall structure, be it in education, be it within employment,
and they are trying to do differing things, so what we would be
keen to do is to get the whole thing working together. How that
is structured from there on is another issue, but that would be
a good start.
Q402 Mr Wilson: You are happy with
the current structure of skills provision?
Mr Knight: I think there are still
some issues there.
Mr Parry: I think that the structure
is cumbersome, I think it is complex and it is confusing, but
I suspect if it needs change it needs wholesale change, and the
effects of wholesale change balanced against what can we do with
the existing infrastructure to make the system work better. I
would come down on the side of the latter and say, if we can position
the front-end service, whether it is the service to employers
or service to the learners, and make the front end of it seem
simpler, then the machinations of how it all works behind the
scene probably can be worked out, but the front end needs simplification.
One of the issues, as I have said, is the continual cycle of change,
which means that nobody ever gets to a point of being held to
account for anything: because every time somebody is held to account—"You
said you have delivered this, have you delivered it?"—"Oh,
that is okay, we are changing, so we know that already, we are
changing"—it just seems that that continual change
creates an awful lot of further confusion in the system. Sometimes
even for an imperfect process, leaving it alone for a bit in order
to let it bed down and taking more of a continuous improvement
approach to it rather than wholesale change can be a more pragmatic
way forward.
Q403 Mr Wilson: Very little accountability
in the system is how you feel?
Mr Parry: I think there is accountability
within the system, but the system keeps changing to let people
get away without being held to account.
Chairman: It sounds like the Civil
Service!
Q404 Mr Wilson: Can we move into
the second part of what I said. We have heard a lot of argument
on this Committee and evidence recently about the narrow economic
assessment of the benefit of skills training and whether the Government
really values the softer skills enough. Do you think that we as
a society should only encourage training development skills that
increase productivity or help somebody get into a job?
Mr Parry: As a society?
Q405 Mr Wilson: Yes?
Mr Parry: No. There is a great
role for learning as a process for the improvements of self-confidence,
self-esteem, social integration and social cohesion. There is
a great argument for that. So it is not about one or the other,
there is a role for both, I have to say, particularly for the
candidate group that we work with.
Q406 Mr Wilson: Can I ask Duncan,
I think you come from the sort of organisation that might have
strong opinions on this. Do you agree with that assessment, firstly,
that that there is a role for it?
Mr Shrubsole: I would agree with
much of what Gareth has said that there are clear both economic
and social justice arguments for learning, and too often we focus
just on the economic. It is not to say that people we work with
and other disadvantaged groups do not want to work, ultimately
they see work as what they want to do, like anybody else does,
but there is a real need for both to help them get to work and
to help them change their lives through learning and development,
to focus on those earlier levels and those earlier stages of learning
and not just the higher level qualifications.
Q407 Mr Wilson: I thought you would
both say that, but do you think that the Government is valuing
that part of the skills agenda enough and is it funding it sufficiently
to make it work?
Mr Knight: I am not sure it is
always right to separate the two areas. The economic, as in the
economy, is going to grow, et cetera, et cetera, and we need the
skills verses the social justice thing, because they become so
interlinked, do they not, one actually feeds off the other? If
we can get people to the point where they can work and can stay
in work and develop in work, that is economic, but at the same
time we are totally transforming that person's life and, through
transforming that person's life, they are going to work better,
be happier, healthier, et cetera, which leads back into the economics;
so it is difficult to separate the two.
Q408 Mr Wilson: I hear what you are
saying, but my question was a bit simpler than that. What I was
asking was: do you feel that the Government values those soft
skills and in demonstrating that value is it funding the support
of those soft skills to the degree that you would like it to?
Mr Knight: I think the answer
to that question is, no, because we would not be raising some
of the questions if the answer was yes. We are both sat here as
organisations saying a lot more focus and investment on the soft
skills area, which actually is very strongly linked to employability
but also helps social integration, can lead to voluntary and community
work. The very fact that they are generic soft skills means that
they can add value in all aspects of an individual's life, but
most of the skills as we as organisations have described them
do not feature in mainstream funding qualifications. So, I think,
in simple terms the answer to that question would be, "No".
Q409 Mr Wilson: There does seem to
be a preoccupation within the skills industry now, and I think
it is being pushed by the Government, that success is really defined
by qualifications. That is the sort of output from it. Do you
think that qualifications are the best way of judging the value
of somebody's skills?
Mr Pace: Not always. You cannot
always measure a person's skill set by the qualifications they
actually have. Somebody may well have a degree or a higher degree
but not be equipped to deal with everyday situations. I think
that is a common thing we come across with our client group. I
do not think you can separate the soft skills from the hard skills.
I think they are all part and parcel of the same thing. If somebody
is going to be successful, I would measure their success not by
whether somebody has a job, but whether they are able to support
themselves within our society in whatever way that is, whether
that is actually accessing benefits, housing agencies or any other
thing, as well as being able to get a job, if that is what they
want to do, if that is what they are able to do. That is the measure
of success that I would use. Some of that is qualification-based,
but a lot of it is not. Certainly the people that we see we are
dealing with, the very low end of people's abilities, even getting
them to be able to speak in public amongst their own peer group
it is a success for us.
Q410 Mr Wilson: Do you think those
sorts of people find the whole idea of formal qualifications a
quite frightening prospect?
Mr Pace: I think they do. I think
they find many things that we take for granted to be daunting,
but that is what we try to do, we try to encourage them by simple
steps, by very slow measures to integrate back into what we call
the common world that we live within.
Mr Parry: The very fact that people
sometimes are daunted by qualifications, if you can ultimately
work with that individual that results in something called a qualification
that is relevant to what they have learnt, then actually the sense
of achievement that can instil in the individual is quite important.
So, I think qualifications, so long as they validate the true
learning, can be incredibly powerful.
Mr Knight: I think, ultimately,
we would regard success as sustainable employment. For people
who we help into employment, 50% are still employed by the same
employer four years later, and we would regard that as a success;
and that is a hard measure, if you like, but I think we would
also agree with our colleagues here that there is a softer success
as well.
Q411 Mr Wilson: You have gone back
to my original question: should training be seen as an end to
get people into jobs? I asked everybody about that, asking about
the soft skills, and you said, "No, we want to develop the
soft skills", and then you have put it right back to the
opposite, saying, "Actually we want to get them into jobs."
Mr Knight: Yes, because the soft
skills are a key part of that. I am not separating them out. They
are still critical.
Mr Shrubsole: There is also a
real change about getting people into work and sustaining that
work, not just getting people in it so that they come back out
again, which is another failure notched up of often many failures.
So you have got to get people into sustainable employment that
they can sustain and that they see a progression path. Some of
that is about working with them before they go into work, it might
even be work a bit longer before they go in, and it is about supporting
them once they are in work as well, and that is where the next
stage of welfare reform needs to start moving to.
Q412 Chairman: Your people are obviously
vulnerable and do need that support that other people take for
granted from networks and friends and family?
Mr Shrubsole: Yes, and they need
it to be of a good and high quality and to push them. We talk
about tough love sometimes—
Q413 Chairman: I am very impressed
with Richard. I think we ought to get him cloned. He has impressed
me with his commonsense and wisdom, not that the rest of you have
not!
Mr Shrubsole: I am hoping some
of it will rub off.
Q414 Mr Chaytor: I would like to
stay with Gareth specifically about your view of the future of
the labour market for disabled people, because the irony that
I see is precisely that the Government is giving more attention
to getting people off incapacity benefit and encouraging more
disabled people to enter the labour market. The predictions about
the changing nature of the economy suggests there are going to
be fewer and fewer jobs at the bottom end of the schools level,
so is there not some conflict here, and how do you see things
developing over the next 10, 15 years (I think Leitch is quite
specific about this) and a reducing of the number of jobs at the
lower schools level? Are we not likely to be encouraging more
people to get back into the market at precisely the moment when
there are going to be fewer jobs for them?
Mr Parry: I know you said the
question was specifically for me, but I suspect Dave is better
at answering that question.
Mr Knight: Ultimately, I think
it is a positive situation going forward, providing we have the
right support mechanisms to enable people to get into roles, but
those roles, you are right, cannot just be at the bottom end of
the spectrum, they have to be right across the board, and that
is a challenge for us as a supporter and provider as much as it
is for the disabled person and the education system, et cetera,
et cetera. The route to solving the problem actually starts at
school and getting that situation right and moving through so
that when someone is sitting in front of an employer they are
much better equipped rather than necessarily trying to resolve
the problems later, but, overall I think it is positive.
Mr Parry: I think it is worth
saying, on a very short-term basis, as an organisation we are
currently in a position where we have more vacancies given to
us by employers than we have job-ready disabled candidates to
take jobs. At this moment in time we do not have a shortage of
employer demand, we have a shortage of suitable supply.
Q415 Mr Chaytor: That may be the
case in 2007, but in 2017 that is less likely to be the case,
is it?
Mr Parry: I think increasingly
as we move into a service sector economy, there are an awful lot
of jobs which people with disabilities can do. I am not sure I
fully understand where all of the figures in the Leitch Report
come from. It is almost an elimination of jobs that would be classified
as low-skilled. I think the issue is how you learn to adapt the
job and the job process to the ability of the individual that
is trying to do that job. I think that that should not be dictated
to by qualifications, that should be dictated to by what the employer
needs and what the ability of the individual is. That is the solution.
We are absolutely convinced that there are tens of thousands of
jobs out there for a range of disabled people to do in the short,
medium and long-term.
Mr Knight: Within that there is
still a lot of work to do with employers. The picture is very
mixed. There are some very good employers who have a very positive
attitude to employing disabled people, recognise the skills benefits,
recognise the corporate social responsibility benefits that it
brings as well, but there are some that are not so good, and within
the SME sector there is a lot of work to do as well. The public
sector itself presents its own challenges, because the public
sector sometimes lags behind the private sector in terms of employment
of disabled people.
Q416 Mr Chaytor: Public sector agencies
are still bound by the three per cent targets of recruitment,
are they?
Mr Knight: I do not think so.
Mr Parry: I do not think so.
Q417 Mr Chaytor: That was an item
in previous legislation: three per cent of the work force should
be recruited from disabled people?
Mr Parry: I think that might be
an aspiration as opposed to the reality.
Q418 Mr Chaytor: Within the public
sector whereabouts do you think it is at the moment? Do you have
any idea of the figures?
Mr Knight: I would be guessing,
but it is low.
Q419 Mr Chaytor: This is a question
for Duncan, because the people you are working with are more like
to have chaotic backgrounds and less stability in their lives
than a conventional disabled person may have. Is it the case that
we should simply accept that some people are never going to be
able to function in the conventional labour market and that, therefore,
either they are left to sink or swim or there is a case for structured
employment that may be with third sector organisations as a permanent
solution? Would you accept that some people could perhaps never
function with a "normal", whatever that means, private
or public sector employer?
Mr Shrubsole: I think I will go
first and Richard will fill it. I have a nervousness about the
word "accept", because as soon as you accept that somebody
might not be able to work, that sets up expectations for them.
If you do not have expectations they can do something, whatever
their previous level of experience. Anecdotally, we have had people
do everything from beauty therapy, to police community support
to working in various catering establishments to developing their
own artwork such that they can sell it, and often where they come
out is not where you expected them to go in. There needs to be
a range of solutions. There needs to be working with individual
employers that you build up a relationship with (the issue about
a guaranteed interview which I talked about before), there is
a role for social enterprises (we run our own cafe; other organisations
run different forms of social enterprise) and there is a role
for working with people, and an employment goal could be a good
few years off, not least because they have got to stabilise other
issues in their lives, and that learning bit could be a bit of
stability. Some people use our art room—that is the bit
of stability in their lives when everything else is really hectic,
so they are not going to go straight into work. We need recognition:
work for those who can, support for those who cannot, but activity
and learning for all (to kind of adopt that welfare reform phrase)
and we need to have the expectations and working to help everybody
we can but accepting that for some people it is a long, slow process.
It is about two steps forward, one step back for some people.
Mr Pace: There are a very few
people we could not help in the short term, but over a sustained
period of time we should be able to help everybody, not necessarily
to get the best job in the world but to be able to benefit society.
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