Examination of Witnesses (Questions 632
- 639)
TUESDAY 6 MARCH 2007
DTI
Q632 Chairman: Minister, I am pleased
to offer some distraction from, I know, your pressing concern
at present, which is Sunday's engagement between Wolves and West
Bromwich Albion. I am glad to offer you some distraction ahead
of that very important appointment, I am sure, in your diary.
It is nice to have you back in front of the Committee again. I
always ask Ministers to introduce themselves and their team; it
is more important than usual because one of the names is wrong
today, I believe.
Malcolm Wicks: I am Malcolm Wicks,
Minister for Science and Innovation, with one or two other responsibilities
in the Department, including for skills. With me is Jeremy Allen,
who is the Director of Skills in the Department at the DTI, and
Keith Hodgkinson, on my right, who is the Deputy Director of Manufacturing
Strategy at the DTI.
Q633 Chairman: Let me begin with
a very general question, if I may. One of your targets in the
Department is to raise the levels of and demand for skills, but
I am not entirely clear what your relationship is with organisations
like the Sector Skills Councils. Perhaps you could answer that
question.
Malcolm Wicks: Obviously, Chairman,
you have just seen Bill Rammell from DfES and they are, by definition,
and by name, the lead department on education and skills. Clearly,
from our perspective of trade and industry, from a business perspective,
skills is one of the key components which will enable us to create
the kind of economy that we need to create in the 21st Century.
So skills is a major theme within our Department. We have some
specific spending budgets, albeit fairly small-scale, for niche
areas: encouraging science in schools, for example. The main funder
is the DfES but we do share the stewardship of the Sector Skills
Councils with the DfES. I am bound to say that in many of our
discussions in the Department with the business sector and with
trade unions certainly when I was Energy Minister you are never
far away from a discussion about skills issues.
Q634 Chairman: Can I ask if the Department
was consulted by the Treasury over the commissioning of the Leitch
Report?
Malcolm Wicks: It was before my
time. Can I ask Jeremy to give you a proper answer on that one?
Mr Allen: We worked alongside
the Leitch Review team and we input views as we could to the thinking
that went into that review.
Q635 Chairman: And the choice of
the National Skills Envoy were you consulted over that as well?
Were you consulted over the need for a National Skills Envoy?
This Committee does not fully understand the role of the National
Skills Envoy, Sir Digby Jones, nor why he was chosen particularly
as the character to do that. Were you consulted over the creation
of the post?
Malcolm Wicks: I think the Department
was consulted alongside DfES, but I was not involved myself.
Mr Allen: I will check on that,
Chairman. I am not sure whether the name was canvassed to the
Department before the appointment.
Chairman: It would be helpful if you
could. Thank you very much.
Q636 Roger Berry: Is manufacturing's
poor qualifications profile the fault of the employers or is it
the fault of the funding and teaching system?
Malcolm Wicks: Obviously, this
Inquiry is focusing on manufacturing. If I could venture a slightly
more general answer and then, perhaps, Mr Hodgkinson could focus
more on manufacturing. I was hesitating there, Mr Berry, because
it is difficult to generalise; there are many people with very
high skills in manufacturing. I was visiting a company with the
Chancellor of the Exchequer called Ceres yesterday, which is in
the Crawley area, which is producing really cutting-edge work
on fuel cells where most of the people, I think it is fair to
say, in that growing company are at graduate or post-graduate
level. It is difficult to generalise but, nevertheless, I would
take as a generalisation that skill levels in parts of industry
as a whole are not as good as they should be. We know that from
the data; we know that from international comparisons and, most
recently, that has been confirmed by the Leitch Review. In terms
of where we need to be to use that term "knowledge economy",
there is not enough knowledge out there; there are not enough
skills out there and there are not enough qualifications out there.
That is as true for segments of manufacturing as, indeed, for
other parts of the economy. Mr Berry, would you let me bring in
Mr Hodgkinson on this one?
Mr Hodgkinson: Of course, manufacturing,
as the Minister says, is very diverse and so is made up of lots
of different subsectors and it is difficult to generalise, as
the Minister has said, about skills needs. However, some skills
needs are common across manufacturing subsectors, and the Sector
Skills Councils are, of course, tasked with investigating and
talking to businesses about those skills needs. For example, SEMTA,
in their sector skills agreement, point to a need for around 10,000
new skilled technicians, so there is potentially a gap there at
the technician level. If you look at another sector, like bioscience,
for example, the skills needs there will be extremely different
and more around the sort of higher education end of the skills
spectrum. So it is difficult to generalise but there are, indeed,
gaps and those are being identified by Sector Skills Councils.
Malcolm Wicks: Another one I would
add is sometimes the gap in terms of management and leadership.
That may be true in all sizes of companies but I think it can
be the reason why, often, entrepreneurs with a good idea wishing
to innovate, setting up a small company, do not actually make
it, because of the lack of project management skills or leadership
skills. I would identify that as another gap.
Q637 Roger Berry: Reference has been
made to the National Skills Envoy, Sir Digby Jones. I heard the
File on 4 programme in the last two or three weeks on the
skills shortage, and Sir Digby referred to the money being put
into skills training (the £11 billion, for example, that
the LSC receive), and he said: "The money is not delivering
what the employers want". Do you agree?
Malcolm Wicks: I would partially
agree, yes, and I think that is confirmed by the Leitch Review.
The establishment some little while back now of Learning and Skills
Councils was very much an attempt to make sure that in future
training at FE colleges and by private training providers could
be demand-led. In other words, it should reflect the needs of
the local economy and, therefore, the needs of employers and individuals.
I think that has worked to some extent, but the feeling now is
that we need to give that a further push. A lot of this comes
down to how we bridge the gap between the training provision that
we have and the needs of the local economy and the needs of business
people. I think the Train to Gain initiative is very much trying
to help us bridge that gap so that we have people who can understand
the needs of a company, understand the needs of a manufacturing
sector and then provide advice about where skills can be acquired
and what training programmes might be necessary.
Q638 Roger Berry: Another comment
of the National Skills Envoy was that employers need to be "bribed"
with public money to formally train their staff. Do you agree
with that?
Malcolm Wicks: That sounds like
Digby, yes!
Q639 Roger Berry: It does rather,
yes.
Malcolm Wicks: I do not think
I would put it like that, but there is an issue because while
(and, hence, the thing about not generalising) many, many larger
companies—and indeed some medium-sized ones as well do not
need to be taught anything by us about training they are world
leaders in terms of skills and training; they have learning centres
in their factories, etc, nevertheless, I think it is true to say
that there are parts of British industry, including manufacturing,
that may talk the talk but they do not walk the walk in terms
of providing training, and, at worst, rather rely on poaching
skilled staff maybe from some companies that do train. I think
there is an issue here about how we really raise the game across
manufacturing—indeed across industry and the service sector—in
terms of companies taking more ownership of their own skills needs.
That is not to say that is a monopoly ownership because individuals
and, of course, government have a major role to play, but I think
there is an issue there which Digby, in his own way, has touched
on.
Roger Berry: Thank you very much.
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