Examination of Witnesses (Questions 640
- 659)
TUESDAY 6 MARCH 2007
DTI
Q640 Chairman: I am spending the
weekend with him, so wish me luck!
Malcolm Wicks: We will teach you
some basic skills, Chairman!
Q641 Mark Hunter: Minister, we know
that the manufacturing industry has experienced massive structural
change in the last 20 years, and in many areas it is a fast-moving,
technology-led industry now. Does organising the skills system
according to present employer demand run the risk, in your opinion,
of possibly training people for redundancy in that context?
Malcolm Wicks: Certainly from
a governmental point of view, or society point of view, broadly,
what business we should be in is trying to improve overall skills,
whether it be the very basic skills which, clearly, are holding
a lot of people back from getting jobs in manufacturing, or holding
them back once they are in manufacturing, right through to far
more advanced skills in terms of level 3 graduate and post-graduate
qualifications. That is, essentially, the task of government,
and the strategy of government. In terms of the specific skills
that factory A may need in year Y, that is best left to the company
itself and, maybe, to the Sector Skills Council. It would be absurd
to think that government somehow could have a great national plan
and say: "We need Z-thousand technicians of that kind by
2020" or "Y kind of people with these management skills";
we are not that kind of command economy and it would be absurd
to think that we can be.
Q642 Mark Hunter: I appreciate that,
but given how quickly the system does change, how (as briefly
as you can put it) does the Government plan for future demands,
which are forecast in many cases, as well as present demand? I
do realise it is a significant challenge but I am interested to
hear in your own words how you square that circle, if you like,
in terms of trying to meet current demand but, also, planning
for the future at the same time.
Malcolm Wicks: I think, probably,
the best way and I will ask Mr Allen to add to my remarks essentially,
is to raise the overall educational attainment of our people and
not just our children and young people but those of working age,
so that they can develop the intellectual skills to cope with
the very fast-moving industries in which we are, in one way or
another, all operating.
Mr Allen: We see it as a key role
of the Sector Skills Councils to look into the medium to long
term about the skills demand they see coming down the track and
then inform provision on that basis. They have to be credible
bodies to be able to do that, but that is a key role for them.
As you will know, the SSDA gave evidence they are creating sector
skills agreements which have as their foundation a foresight of
the likely demand within sectors for skills. That is then translated
into the provision that employers need.
Q643 Mark Hunter: I would be interested
to know a little bit more about that, and, obviously, time being
what it is today, would it be possible for you to send us a note
just saying a little bit more about that aspect?
Mr Allen: Of course.
Q644 Mark Hunter: I am interested,
also, to know that given that government-subsidised training is
generally aimed at people seeking their first qualification at
a given level, what assistance is available for those who do find
themselves subsequently having to train, either because of technological
change or because of the demise of their chosen industry? What
assistance is available from government in that situation?
Mr Allen: I would have to come
back to you on the detail on that. In the case of major redundancies,
like Rover, there was a task force put in on the ground to understand
how people coming out of employment could be retrained and reskilled
for new employment opportunities. So for large-scale redundancies
there tends to be a dedicated task force. How it happens on a
more individual basis I would need to provide an explanatory note
on.
Q645 Mark Hunter: I asked the question
because your answer indicates what the nature of the problem is;
the big cases the ones that get the headlines and everything everybody
knows about and task forces are developed and assistance goes
in very quickly. It is what is happening to the smaller companies,
the ones that do not grab the headlines but still, collectively,
there are a huge number of individuals affected. If you want to
send us a further note on that as well that would be very useful.
Mr Allen: Lord Leitch said a lot
about the need to integrate employment and skills services, and
I think that is probably to address how you put people and keep
people in sustainable employment, whether they are in the same
job but they have skills for employment. The added dimension is
information, advice and guidance which would be better for them.
Malcolm Wicks: Up to GCSE level
and the equivalent, there is of course an obligation on the Learning
and Skills Council to fund courses for people who do not have
those qualifications, recognising that many people of working
age should still have an opportunity of improving themselves in
that way.
Q646 Mr Bone: Following on, Mr Chairman,
in my constituency, Wellingborough, we have seen manufacturing,
which only 10 years ago was about 35%, shrink to 19%, but there
has never been any help for the people who have been made unemployed,
because it has all been a lot of small companies going under,
and it has not really been noticed on anyone's radar. So that,
although we have now got more people unemployed than we had in
1997, nobody has picked that up. If it was Rover going bust we
would have tons of help. Has the Government missed that point?
Malcolm Wicks: I hope not because
I understand the point that if a company runs into difficulty
and someone is being made redundant it is a tragedy for that individual
whether he or she is working for a major company or a small one
employing just ten other people. What I would hope—but we
will do some thinking about this and come back to you—is
that through the networks that exist, including Jobcentre Plus,
there is help on hand to relocate people, including advice about
any skills requirements.
Q647 Chairman: Minister, I am just
slightly concerned about the lack of clarity we are getting in
these answers. I thought that a Department looking forward to
try and help industry to make sure it has the skills necessary
to deal with the future competitive challenges would be really
focused on helping people with existing qualifications change
them and get those new qualifications. I am a bit concerned about
the lack of clarity in these answers.
Malcolm Wicks: Okay, if in writing
afterwards we can be clearer, we will.
Chairman: That would be very helpful.
Thank you very much.
Q648 Judy Mallaber: One issue that
has come up again and again in our evidence is the poor public
perception of manufacturing as a cause of recruitment problems.
I just went out to talk to a group of 16-year-olds that were listening
to our evidence session who are connected with the Youth Parliament,
and when I mentioned going into manufacturing or engineering they
looked completely blankly at me and said they are told the only
jobs worth going into are being a doctor, a teacher or a lawyer.
That clearly does not enter on their radar, even when I was waxing
lyrical about the wonderful structures at St Pancras Station,
built by the men of my constituency, and the idea of building
fantastic bridges. Manufacturing clearly does not have an image
as one that attracts people into it. Do you think we are failing
in promoting manufacturing, and what is the Department doing to
champion manufacturing?
Malcolm Wicks: There clearly is
a problem, and I suspect someone was saying that 10 years and
20 years ago. This is part of the narrative, in a sense, is it
not, of concern about British industry? So I understand what you
mean. I think what we have got to be saying is that manufacturing,
yes, there is the story of decline but it is still a very major
component of the British economy; it is about 14% of GDP and it
employs over three million people. The manufacturing industry
that I have been visiting is just tremendously exciting—small
satellite technology is one example of a growth area in manufacturing;
robotics would be another. All the environmental industries which
are now growing apace; concern with one of the big issues facing
us, namely, climate change these are not only technologically
challenging, and not only are many of these companies going to
be the success stories of the early 21st Century, but they are
exciting places to work. So I, like you, am concerned that that
message is not getting across to children, probably to teachers,
and to their parents. I do not have a silver bullet on that one
but some of it has to be about better links between the school
and industry, and that is a challenge for the school and local
companies, so that more companies are willing to put people in
as school governors and they are more ready to have work placements,
including, I suspect, for teachers, because part of the problem
here will be that teachers have a slightly old-fashioned view,
if I can put it that way—sometimes of what the manufacturing
industry now represents.
Q649 Judy Mallaber: Is the Government
taking action on this? It is a good aspiration that we should
be championing those possibilities, but is anything happening
on the ground? Do you think other organisations are playing their
role—employers' organisations, unions and other bodies in
the educational sector?
Mr Hodgkinson: The DTI has certainly
put quite a lot of effort and money into organisations like SETNET,
for example, who work very hard to connect business to schools—
Q650 Chairman: I am sorry, I did
not hear—
Mr Hodgkinson: SETNET. I apologise.
Malcolm Wicks: Which is the Science,
Engineering, Technology and Mathematics Network, those subjects.
Mr Hodgkinson: That organisation
works very hard; it has a regional network to connect business
to schools to help raise understanding and awareness in schools
of the true state of manufacturing. It is true to say that the
perception of manufacturing seriously lags behind reality, as
the Minister was saying. Part of my role is also to support the
Manufacturing Forum, who I know you have heard about in other
evidence, and they have spent quite a bit of time looking at the
image of manufacturing because of this concern, to try and see
what more could be done to attract to manufacturing its share
of talented young people. One of the things it did was to work
very closely with Enterprise Insight (I am not sure if you have
heard about them). Their activities culminate in Enterprise Week,
and this year there was a manufacturing day, which is in fact
their most successful day in terms of the way they measure their
impact on young people. Indeed, they have now put in place a three-person
team to spearhead a campaign to try and raise the profile of manufacturing.
So there are some things happening as a result of the Manufacturing
Forum's work on examining image and perception.
Malcolm Wicks: One other programme
I would mention is the funding by the Department of what we call
Science and Engineering Ambassadors. This is a very important
programme. They had an event at the House of Commons the other
day to celebrate the work of the ambassadors. There are some 13,000
of them people working in industry and other fields and their
task is to stimulate interest in science and engineering among
schoolchildren, and I think that is bearing fruit. So we need
to tackle this problem in a number of different ways.
Q651 Judy Mallaber: What about the
gender imbalance and the way in which girls and women go into
a very narrow range of occupations and not obviously into any
areas where they might make their mark in manufacturing or engineering,
and so on?
Malcolm Wicks: Our economy is
still in some sectors very much determined by gender, unfortunately.
Again, this is one of those themes that we could have discussed
and probably did discuss, in some respects, ten or more years
ago. We have a women and work sector Pathways initiative which
is trying to tackle this problem of under-representation of women
in the manufacturing industry. Again, in terms of science and
engineering, there are initiatives on that. I think I see some
signs of hope that we are moving in the right direction but, again,
I am not complacent about that because I know from my past experience
in the energy sector that there were often relatively few women
in those important industries.
Q652 Judy Mallaber: If I say to you:
"Well, it is an industry that has lost 50% of its workforce
in the last 20 years; why on earth would I want to go into it",
how do you respond to that?
Malcolm Wicks: I think by trying
to explain why that is what has happened in terms of the industrial
restructuring of the United Kingdom and, also, in similar economies
in Europe. I would say do not think of manufacturing as in inevitable
decline; it is a very important part of the economy. Probably
for every one job in manufacturing there are, I think, maybe,
four in service sectors that depend on manufacturing. I would
repeat the answer I gave earlier: that if you look across the
piece at some of the really important work in Great Britain this
Century, some of the big challenges how do we tackle the most
debilitating medical conditions affecting too many of our people,
the role of pharmaceuticals there, the role of bioscience and
the stem cell research, which will lead to industrial development;
climate change, energy conservation these are really very, very
important things which are part of the manufacturing industry
and, surely, should be among the best careers now for young people.
Q653 Chairman: Minister, you have
talked about science, technology, engineering and mathematics
(STEM) in answer to several questions so far. Your evidence rightly
places great weight on the importance of those skills, yet of
the young people going to university and taking university courses
in their subjects, only 50% of them go into a job related to those
courses. Is there anything you can do to try and encourage them
to take up work that is more directly related to their academic
qualification?
Malcolm Wicks: I guess that raises
wider questions, does it not, about the purpose of university
education? I do not think one should always assume that someone
who has trained in a certain field should necessarily work in
a closely related industry, given that much of the purpose of
a university education is teaching intellectual and analytical
skills. Having said all that, I do rather agree with you that
it does seem to me that we are missing some tricks here, because
on the one hand I often hear from businesses and employers who
bemoan the fact that not enough people are coming out of universities
with scientific, mathematical or engineering qualifications and,
yet, one just knows, not only through the data but anecdotally,
of many people who end up in sectors the City of London, for example
where no doubt they are making use of their skills but, actually,
it does seem a bit of a waste that they are not working more directly
in the areas where they were trained.
Q654 Chairman: So what can we do
about that, if anything?
Malcolm Wicks: I speak as a mere
social scientist now, wearing the hat of Science Minister.
Q655 Chairman: We have that in common.
Malcolm Wicks: I do have to be
careful about this. Part of it is a challenge for business because
some of it will come down to salary and career prospects. I think
one has to say, as I have said, why is it that the bright PhD
in chemical engineering is not working in chemical engineering
but working in hedge funds? No doubt his skills are useful there
but would they not be more useful in chemical engineering? Not
to dodge the question, but I would want to ask that question of
business itself.
Q656 Chairman: Some of the skills
that people tell us they are short of, though, are the sort of
soft skills (there is nothing soft about commercial awareness)
but not the academic skills, anyhow: workplace experience, management
techniques, and so on. It is difficult, I suppose, without being
a partisan Chairman, but are we forcing too many people into university?
Would manufacturing be able to develop these skills rather better
with alternative career routes for these people? Is the 50% target
working against the best interests of the skills that manufacturing
actually needs?
Malcolm Wicks: I am sure you are
not being partisan—
Q657 Chairman: I am trying not to
be.
Malcolm Wicks:—because I
cannot quite keep up with what your partisan position is on many
things at the moment.
Q658 Chairman: I am sure that was
not a partisan comment either!
Malcolm Wicks: Absolutely not.
Just a scientific comment, really. I think that aspiration is
an important one because, clearly, when you look at the structure
of our economy, in many of the emerging areas of the economy,
in terms of manufacturing and service sectors, we need people
with graduate-level qualifications and, indeed, post-graduate
qualifications. However, we need to address what has been a long-term
weakness, surely, in Britain, certainly since the War; that we
have never had I think we have now but in the past a proper story
to tell about the more than half of our children and young people
who will not go to university. So it is the familiar theme about
the importance of vocational qualifications. What we are now putting
into place through this mapping of Sector Skills Councils, Learning
and Skills Councils, Train to Gain and many other things we can
talk about, is a way of addressing this issue about vocational
qualifications. I agree with you: not every good careerist will
be built on a university degree.
Q659 Chairman: My own son is doing
a vocational qualification at present, but for reasons I do not
understand he has had to be defined as a university student and,
as a result of that, the course has become less vocational in
tone and rather more focused on some of the academic work that
is not relevant to the skills set he is trying to develop. I am
concerned about this overlap here. I am not convinced the policy
is absolutely right.
Malcolm Wicks: Can I ask Mr Allen
to make a contribution on some of the reforms going on in terms
of 14 to 19-year-olds?
Mr Allen: Two comments, Chairman.
Leitch is very clear that globalisation means that more jobs will
be dependent on high level skills, including degree levels, so
he is asking the UK to raise its ambitions for that. We are looking
to respond on that level. In relation to people for whom university
education is not appropriate or of no interest, the Government
is doing 14 to 19 reforms so that there is a raft of more vocationally-based
pathways into learning and training for people who respond better
to more applied learning or learning in different contexts. In
14 to 19 they are bringing forward specialised diplomas, which
I think will include engineering and science in the early batch,
to cater for people who do not aspire or do not see relevance
in a university education.
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