CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 471-i
House of COMMONS
MINUTES OF EVIDENCE
TAKEN BEFORE THE
INNOVATION, UNIVERSITIES, SCIENCE AND SKILLS COMMITTEE
THE LEITCH REVIEW OF SKILLS
Monday 28 April 2008
LORD LEITCH and LOUISE TILBURY
Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 84
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
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This is a corrected transcript of evidence taken in public and
reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the
authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote
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The transcript is an approved formal record of these proceedings. It
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the
Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee
on Monday 28 April
2008
Members present
Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods
Dr Brian Iddon
Mr Gordon Marsden
Ian Stewart
Mr Phil Willis
Mr Rob Wilson
In the absence of the
Chairman, Mr Marsden was called to the Chair
________________
Witnesses: Lord Leitch, a Member of the House of
Lords, and Louise Tilbury, Former
leader, Leitch Review team, gave evidence.
Q1 Mr Marsden:
Good afternoon. Can I welcome
everybody here to this one-off session with Lord Leitch and Louise Tilbury
to discuss the Leitch Review of Skills. This is a one-off session, but it may
be of interest to those not already aware of it that the Innovation,
University, Science and Skills Committee is intending shortly to begin hearings
post-Leitch, where we are going to be looking particularly at some of the
issues to do with regional skills implementation. It is a great pleasure to have you here this afternoon, Lord
Leitch, and also Louise Tilbury, who is the former leader of the Leitch Review
team. We have a good cross-section
of our colleagues here. Mr Willis
has asked me to take the chair for this afternoon, so I hope I get
a good skills mark! If
I could just kick off, Sandy, your report fell into two sections; there
was an interim report and then the final report which came out in December
2006, and like all reports there was an enormous amount of comment on it and
also a lot of subsequent government activity, just looking down the list
at various papers and what-have-you.
What would you say distinguished your review from previous attempts to
analysis and improve the United Kingdom skills workforce in the
United Kingdom, and what are the specific reasons why you think your
review will make a difference when previous reviews in the past perhaps
have not?
Lord Leitch: Thank you, Chairman. I am very pleased to be here this
afternoon. I am very sorry
I could not attend the Committee on the last meeting because of a family
bereavement, and I am sorry if that caused you any inconvenience. I welcome the fact you are looking at
this "after Leitch" and very happy that you are focusing on such
a critical area. In the past there
have been very many useful studies into skills, but there are certain features
which did distinguish us. One was the
width and the depth of the study; second was the duration of the study and,
third, the emphasis on the study. We
had a very wide remit; we were to look at the optimum mix of skills to maximise
economic prosperity, productivity and social welfare through to the year 2020,
and that was right across the United Kingdom, covering the four
nations. There was also a very
deep analysis looking at comparator countries, and we spent quite a lot of
time in the interim analysis looking elsewhere, raising our head above the
parapet and seeing what was being done.
We visited the United States, Canada, Scandinavia, India and China
and did a lot of desk research. On
duration, we looked at the burning issues of today like globalisation, and then
took a look forward 15 years to 2020, to the medium term, and I think
the other point was emphasis. This time
there was a strong focus on the needs of the economy, and there
I think my experience as a businessman helped. My background is from financial services.
When I retired three years ago I was running 20,000 people in 17
countries across the world, and I think that brought a dimension of
practical experience looking at economic requirement for skills. In answer to your question "What difference
did we make?" I think the
difference was that we did make a difference. We spent a lot of time influencing and consulting; we had
great input from a whole series of contributors, gaining agreement right
across the United Kingdom. Gaining
agreement was critically important, and we tried to make the study as
apolitical as we possibly could. We
raised and defined the agenda and then in the summer of 2007 that agenda and
those recommendations became government policy, and that was the difference we
made. If I may say so, the message
from our report was very stark, very clear, and was really a wake-up call
for the United Kingdom to say that our productivity here is mediocre; the
lack of skills is a major factor in that mediocre productivity; we have
some serious social issues to confront such as social mobility, child poverty,
employment rates with ethnic minorities, and skills affect all of those. The global economy, we illustrated, was
changing rapidly and that was impacting United Kingdom competitiveness,
making it harder for the United Kingdom to compete. Saying that, the visits were very
interesting; I remember one particular visit to the United States
where we met very eminent strategists and thinkers, and they saw what was
happening today as a simmering crisis for the developed world, and
I think we brought that to the fore.
Basically we were saying that to be a world leader in prosperity
you need to be a world leader in skills, and that affects both the
economic prosperity of a nation and also the social issues that face any
nation. That is really why we feel we
made a difference.
Q2 Mr Marsden:
I am going to ask in a moment Louise to give me briefly her
perspective on the difference, but could I just press you on a couple
of points? You talked about deprivation
and child poverty, and also that this was, if you like, an apolitical, very
much analysis-driven report. What
evidence were you able to assemble that skills were the key to solving problems
such as deprivation and child poverty?
Also, being devil's advocate here, one of the other issues that has come
up increasingly since your report was published and which was implicit in it is
the whole issue of re-skilling as well as up-skilling, and one of the
criticisms that was made of the report at the time, and I quote from
previous Select Committee reports of the Education and Skills Committee on
page 16 skills, where Professor Ewart Keep said: "The thing that is missing completely from Leitch is anything to
do with economic development and tying up skilling and economic development
together". Do you feel that was
a fair comment, or not?
Lord Leitch: I was going to make
a qualification giving evidence here today. It has been 18 months since I published, so in
a sense I am a bit apprehensive because I am rusty in some
of the detail, and I apologise for that.
18 months is a long time to be away. It is like doing an exam - you are right up to the minute with
all your facts for the exam but after 18 months you have forgotten
a lot. In terms of how it affects
social issues, we know there is a direct correlation between skills and
income. We know that it is harder to
get a job if you do not have skills, it is harder to get a job and to
keep a job, and there is a direct correlation between having
a job and your income, and that flows through directly to child
poverty. We know social mobility is
a real issue for the United Kingdom and has not changed much since
the Second World War, and we know that the key to getting out of that poverty
trap is having the skills to get a job, and I think we have found
that conclusively. If you look at the
interim report, there are many references when we refer back to these social
issues and the impact on skills, and there are many examples. I remember on social mobility it talked
about the chances of someone from a poorer family going to university and
it is a fact that if you are a child from a wealthier family you
have six times the chance of going to university than a child with the
same ability from a poorer family, and that is the sort of social mobility
issue we face. Also, we can look at health. People with low incomes have more health
problems than those with higher incomes, whether they be obesity or
depression. Having a job is
a great force for improving your health and your awareness. Take crime.
People on low income are more often the victims of crime and more often
the perpetrators of crime, so there is a direct correlation between all
those issues and skills. But the main
focus of review was on the economic value of skills, and that is why
I rather dispute what you say. We
focused very strongly on the economic value of skills, and we spent a huge
amount of time looking at what the economic value to the individual and the
economic value to the employer.
Economically valuable skills became our mantra throughout this whole
study, and is also something that distinguished this study. What were you doing on skills that made
a difference to the wage premium of an individual, and what did that do
for the productivity of an employer?
For example, you talk about economic skills and the correlation,
and Scotland has a tremendous record on skills, it is Quartile 1 in the
world but if you look at economic performance it is Quartile 3, so there is a
disjoin between the skills and what it is producing, and we pushed very hard to
get solutions to this.
For example, there are 22,000 vocational qualifications in the
United Kingdom, and many of those add very little or no value to the
individual or to the employer, so we focused very hard on this. In terms of economic development what we
said was that we have to give employers a more leading role in driving
this agenda through, and that was part of our recommendation.
Q3 Mr Marsden:
Louise, can I ask you specifically on what Professor Ewart Keep has
said, because he talks about tying economic development and skilling together,
and he also mentioned that the RDAs did not seem to get a great mention in
the original report, the implication being that the regional dimensions of the
skills agenda were perhaps not addressed.
Have you any overall comments or thoughts on that?
Ms Tilbury: Our perspective was very much as Sandy
said, that skills do drive economic performance, both through the number of
people in employment and also their productivity, and the way that we defined
skills was very much not skills for their own sake or just driving
qualifications but economically valuable skills, skills that will see
a benefit to the employer and to the individual. So the economic purpose of skills and their role in economic
development was really at the heart of our recommendations. Coming back to your question earlier about
why this report really made a difference, it is because it came from the
perspective of business and the employer, and looked at how skills can really
drive forward that change from the business level and not from the
perspective of the government, which many previous reports had done.
Lord Leitch: May I add to that? I think skills are delivered at three
levels - at the national level, like the Commission for Employment and Skills;
at a functional, sectoral level, which is where you get the Sector Skills
Councils coming in; and a local level, and our recommendations, if you
recall, were about Employment and Skills Boards doing that at a local
level. Simultaneously, if
I remember, there was a sub-national review going on as to whether
you should have Employment and Skills Boards and what sort of relationship
should there be between those and the RDAs, and I remember we looked
specifically at Sheffield, for example, which was doing a fantastic
job of bringing employment and skills together at the city level, and that
seemed to us to be at the correct approach.
So we recommended the Employment and Skills Boards but, arguably, that
could have been, and I think we said this in the report, done at
a city level or a regional level.
Q4 Mr Marsden:
So you were flexible on that?
Lord Leitch: Yes, and I think that is the right
approach. It depends. If you look at London that has sector skills
within the community but it has an eight million population, so there is
a scale point in this too.
Q5 Mr Willis:
Very briefly, I want to challenge you on this basic premise in your report
which says that skills equals productivity equals economic growth on the basis
that if you look at the United States, Germany, France, which arguably
have significantly greater levels of productivity per man hour than the
United Kingdom has, without question, the analysis of that appears to me
to show greater levels of investment in terms of all those three countries,
greater levels of use of technology, greater use of research and development,
greater and easier access to capital, particularly to growth capital at times
when businesses are emerging, and that skills is just one of a plethora of
factors which make productivity sing and dance. Yet there is this belief that the Leitch Report has pointed us in
this direction and said that, provided we up-skill the nation, suddenly we will
be economically hugely advantaged.
I do not share that optimism.
Am I wrong?
Lord Leitch: I think I agreed with what you
are saying, and I think we said skills are not the only factor.
Q6 Mr Willis:
Where is it in that balance then?
Lord Leitch: There are many studies and factual
evidence that have a direct impact on skills, on employment, on income, on
productivity, on economic performance and, as I said earlier, there are
many social factors too but let us concentrate on the economic ones, and there
are many references again in the interim report to where that factual evidence
comes from. If you look at economic
performance, economic performance is a function of the number of people in
work and how productive they are - do you agree?
Q7 Mr Willis:
Yes.
Lord Leitch: So if you look at employment there is
a very clear correlation between skills and employment. Increased skills means increased income;
lack of skills means difficulty in getting a job, difficulty in keeping
a job. Employment rates, for
example, on ethnic minorities are fourteen points lower. Key reason?
Lack of skills, so there is a direct correlation. If you look at globalisation and
technological change it means more and more jobs are done by other cheaper
geographies in the world. There are
less jobs needing basic skills, for example; we are seeing a shift to the
service economy, we are seeing a shift to more skilled jobs, so there is
a direct correlation between skills and employment. On productivity, skills is one of the key
drivers; it is probably the most important driver within our control, and
I think that is the case - one of the most important levers within our
control. There are other factors. Capital investment is clearly an enormous
factor in driving productivity, but access to capital is not always that
easy. Within our own control it is
easier to drive the development of skills.
Skills are an incredibly powerful lever. We know that workers with higher skills are more productive; we
know that countries with higher skills have higher productivity, and there are
many examples which illustrate this.
There was a study done three years ago by McKinsey and the London
School of Economics looking at manufacturing in the United Kingdom - as we
all know, manufacturing has reduced in size over the years, dramatically; if
I remember it was something like 14 per cent of GDP - and it was
looking at why is manufacturing in the United Kingdom not as productive as
manufacturing in the United States.
Do you know the study?
Q8 Mr Willis:
We do know the study, but I wanted to challenge you. If you look at Sheffield, which you mentioned earlier, the steel
industry there now produces more steel now than it did in its so-called heyday,
and it does that not because people have greater skills but because they have
new technology.
Lord Leitch: But I am also making the point that
that study said the reason why United Kingdom manufacturing was less
productive was because of a particular skill which is management skill,
and that study was conclusive in that, so my point is absolutely right,
I think.
Q9 Mr Wilson:
One thing is absolutely certain, that every decade or two we will get
a panic over a crisis in skills.
What is different about the panic you are creating compared to all the
other panics we have had in the past?
Lord Leitch: I cannot really comment on the
panics in the past; I can talk about the crisis that is going on today and
I think we see it. Globalisation,
technology and demographic change is incredibly strong, and I believe
passionately that skills have to be addressed today. As I said earlier, more and more jobs are going overseas;
anything that can be digitised can be done overseas. If you look at China and India, China the factory of the world,
India is the IT department of the world, they are fantastic threats to our
competitiveness; one hundred years ago we had the industrial revolution, times
have changed very significantly, and these competitive threats across the world
mean that we have to change how we up-skill, otherwise we are going to
disadvantage those people with basic skills.
There are less jobs around for people with basic skills. We have moved to a service economy, and
we have to have more people at the top end, the entrepreneurs, the
technologies, the managers, the leaders, the scientists, to drive that high
value. We are a high value economy
and maybe panic is not the right word, but we have to do something. The United Kingdom at the moment is
mediocre on productivity, it is mediocre on skills in the world, and if you do
not have the natural resources, which the United Kingdom does not have,
you have to do something about the only natural resource which is our people.
Q10 Mr Wilson:
Yes, but growth over the past 15 or 16 years has been pretty good by European
averages, so I return to the point - what is the problem? If we are growing at 2-3 per cent
a year and doing alright, where is the big problem with skills? Those jobs are obviously being filled?
Lord Leitch: I think you are right, we are coming
from a position of strength.
United Kingdom has high employment but it has mediocre
productivity. We have key risk areas and
people without basic skills; we have social issues, we have seen child poverty
not improve as fast as we would like; we have seen social mobility not change;
we have seen employment opportunities for the most disadvantaged in our society
improve but not as much as we would like, so there are sectors of our
communities which are falling behind.
Industries which traditionally have been strong for us have grown, but
we have to compete with the accelerating economies of the world, with China and
India producing three million graduates a year where we produce only
a quarter of a million a year.
Q11 Mr Wilson:
What evidence do you have that skill shortages have held back
United Kingdom economic growth in the past?
Lord Leitch: We have a whole variety of pieces of
evidence. We have seen many employer
surveys which say they could have done better but for the skills shortages that
they have. For example, Ben
Verwaayen, who has just retired as chief executive of British Telecom, was
telling me that British Telecom is high value, driving technological business
forward, and that what he needs to drive his business forward is more people at
level 5 and level 6. It is harder to
get those in the United Kingdom than in Spain, and there are many examples
like this where employers are saying they need more skills of the right type to
drive their businesses forward.
Q12 Mr Wilson:
But employers always say they need more skills. Even if you gave them more skills they would want even more, so
that is not really a comprehensive answer, is it?
Lord Leitch: I do not think they do, actually,
especially over time. Part of the
problem is that employers have not realised that skills mean higher
productivity.
Q13 Mr Wilson:
You talked earlier about the international comparisons and the desk research
you have done. Tell us which countries
are a good model for the United Kingdom to emulate, and why?
Lord Leitch: You are testing my memory here.
Q14 Mr Wilson:
That is what I am trying to do!
Lord Leitch: Firstly, there is no single panacea. We did not come across one country where we
said: "Do what that country does and we
will be alright going forward", but there are some examples. If I remember, community colleges in
the United States were very impressive.
This is their equivalent of further education colleges, and we saw some
brilliant examples there where they say:
"Come in, do this course and we will help you find work". I remember one near Washington linked
to Ford which had new cars and you worked on the cars and then you got jobs in
the motor industry, and they were very impressive and focused. This is training to get you a job. If I remember I was also very
impressed in Sweden with the evaluation of mature skills. If you were a worker in your 40s and
50s in Sweden and you wanted an evaluation of your skills, how they stood up
and what you could do about it, you could go in in a very non-threatening
way to have this assessment, and one of our recommendations was to bring a
national careers service into Jobcentre Plus, and that is happening. Other examples would be in Finland where
continuity is very important. In
Finland skills and education is not aligned to a government so you get
great continuity of delivery, and I have to tell you, Rob, when
I first started this, I thought the best thing we could do was to
deliver what we started on skills; we are very good at ideas but less good at
delivery. In Finland, when
a government changes, they do not have the chop and change of a new
skills policy. They deliver. Those are three points which come to mind
but coming back to your earlier point, Adam Smith in 17-whatever it was ---
Q15 Mr Wilson:
1799.
Lord Leitch: Yes - talked about the fact that the
skills we teach are not good enough for employers, so in a sense you are
right, we have had that common theme all the time. At the same time, it must not stop you from driving to improve
skills productivity, social problems in this small competitive environment
today. That is the difference.
Q16 Mr Wilson:
You mentioned community colleges. Would
you suggest that we adopt a similar structure to the United States in
putting more investment into community colleges?
Lord Leitch: Firstly, I would say there are some
excellent community colleges here.
I remember we visited one in Fife, in Scotland, it was the Lauder
Technical College, absolutely brilliant, getting 60 per cent of its
funding from local employers doing rather similar things. We recommended that qualifications should be
driven by employers, so it would be economically valuable skills, and then FE
colleges should compete to get funding based on those qualifications. So I would not follow automatically the
American model; I think I would follow the recommendations we made in our
report.
Mr Marsden: We are now going to move on and look at
the whole issue of the definition of skills, particularly the knotty
relationship between skills and qualifications.
Q17 Ian Stewart:
In your report there was quite an interesting criticism, almost, that the
emphasis was on qualifications, and that that appeared to be skewing policy
away from skills which were needed to help the future development of
individuals, companies, and the economy in general. Some of the questions
I have revolve around that distinction between qualifications and skills. Do you regard skills and qualifications as
one and the same?
Lord Leitch: Sometimes. That is a difficult question. I started off the review being very unhappy about using
qualifications, because it seemed to me it did not incorporate wider skills,
and a good example is on-the-job training which is one of the best ways to
develop your skills but it does not flow through to a qualification. Skills in my definition means the capability
to do a task, and it can be specific or generic; I do not think there
is a perfect measure.
Qualifications, though, are a proxy for a level of
capability. It is imperfect - as
I said, you have areas like on-the-job training - but it is the only comparable
measure that is widely available, available right across the piece, available
internationally. There is
a correlation between qualifications and capability but it is not perfect,
so I think it is the best we have.
But you also have to use other measures as well, and we used other
measures. For example, on basic
skills such as literacy and numeracy, we used extensively survey data, so you
have to use a combination of both and yes, I was critical of
qualifications. I mentioned earlier
22,000 vocational qualifications, many of which were of no economic value
despite extensive input, so we are spending all this money on vocational
qualifications which are neither delivering value to the individual nor to the
employer. So one of the things we said
we needed to do was to rationalise those qualifications and make them
economically valuable.
Q18 Ian Stewart:
You have mentioned the use of surveys.
Are there any other mechanisms or methods of assessing the skills of an
individual or even the economy?
Lord Leitch: Yes, there is testing, obviously; there
are some national testing schemes and international testing schemes. You have to look at all the measures within
our grasp to assess where we are, and that is exactly what we did.
Q19 Ian Stewart:
How will your targets, then, assist in the development of what we now term as
soft skills, such as skills relating to innovation, team building, which may be
of more value to the economy than formal qualifications?
Lord Leitch: Soft skills are very important, from
attitude to communication to time-keeping - very important, but very difficult
to measure.
Q20 Ian Stewart:
But how will your targets assist in that?
Lord Leitch: Targets do not necessarily assist but
they can help you, for example, in terms of the output. The output might be in getting a job,
so I think they would help in those areas. One of the key areas here would be one of the Sector Skills
Councils in developing for a particular sector the skills that they need,
but there are other skills. If you look
at NEETs, how many NEETs have we got today?
200,000? There is this big
potential underclass that I worry about of some of those softer skills,
concerning getting up in the morning, having the discipline to go and work, the
discipline to go for an interview, and we have to do something centrally for
those sorts of areas. So it is
a combination of, for instance, Sector Skills Councils and something
nationally to deliver those sorts of areas.
You need them both.
Q21 Ian Stewart:
We have developed some non traditional approaches, bite-sized learning or other
less traditional routes. Do you think
that the targets based on qualifications may discourage the development and use
of those non traditional approaches?
Lord Leitch: What sort of things do you mean by "non
traditional"?
Q22 Ian Stewart:
Well, the bite-sized learning approach, which is outside the qualifications
scheme of things.
Lord Leitch: No, I do not. I think employers having more of
a role, more of a voice in developing skills which are economically
valuable makes that more flexible. You
are giving more power to the employers, the Sector Skills Councils, to develop
those sorts of skills that are absolutely right with more flexibility, more
focus and more measurement in those sorts of skills, and I think we have
that.
Q23 Ian Stewart:
Sandy, in the past you have been pressed on ELQs, but before we ease into that,
does the setting of targets for the proportion of the population at particular
levels of skills attainment have a detrimental effect on those who wish to
re-skill rather than up-skill, and what is there in your report to assist those
who need to re-skill?
Lord Leitch: Setting of targets is a vexed
question. A lot of people have
asked me whether target setting makes any difference; I think you have to
have targets. A business has to
know where it is heading, and to do that you need to start with what you are
aiming to do, so I think targets are important. But we set off starting by saying you have to have a vision,
and the vision has to be world class in skills by 2020, and we mean by that to
upper quartile in the OECD. Then you
have to translate that into what does that mean, and you have to have
objectives, and we have very clear objectives in terms of basic skills,
intermediate skills and higher level skills, and there are numbers in there,
and I think you have to have those to help you achieve your vision. Then you have the specific recommendations,
which drive you to achieve those objectives.
So I think that is a very logical, very pragmatic way of
running targets, but "targets" as a word has fallen into a bit of
disrepute, I think, and I think that is exactly the way to run it.
Q24 Ian Stewart:
When you say that there is a presumption that a person will train and
gain new skills to achieve a particular job, and that will help drive
innovation, what about those people who because of the nature of industry these
days have to change their existing skills for new skills? They also make a contribution, do they
not?
Lord Leitch: Yes.
Absolutely.
Q25 Ian Stewart:
So at that point the question is if, as government policy, we are running for
a flexible labour market in the type of world that you have described, why
do you think a government would not wish to support people studying ELQs
to retrain or train for new skills?
Lord Leitch: The Government does want to support
those. In our report we talk about 70 per cent
of the working age population by 2020 already having left compulsory education,
so to have people with the skills you need you cannot rely on a flow of
young people coming through, and the flow of young people is going to reduce by
2020, so a key part of this is retraining the work force. A critical focus, for example, of
Sector Skills Councils will be on retraining, changing people's skills,
improving their skills, driving that forward.
I do not want to come on to ELQ yet but it is a main thrust of
what we are saying and what is in the report.
On graduate numbers, our objective is to exceed 40 per cent by
2020 - and when I say "exceed" 40 per cent will not be enough in
2020, and it is not just level 4 but it is level 5 and above, so we have to drive
all this forward by that time, and the only way we can do that is by focusing
on the stock of people in work, and that is the strong message from the report.
Mr Marsden: The balance between re-skilling and
up-skilling was one of the issues swirling around the ELQ debate, and we would
like to press you a little on this.
Q26 Mr Wilson:
How does cutting £100 million from the ELQ budget help re-skilling?
Lord Leitch: My job in this review was to do this
extensive comprehensive analysis and then make the recommendations. I never thought I would continue
to oversee the implementation. Indeed,
my review was not an implementation blueprint; it did not cover everything, and
if we had it would have been a lot bigger and much longer. So we did not cover every single aspect of
the skills agendas. Indeed,
I always said it was my job to deliver the recommendations; it is then the
Government's job with the Commission for Employment and Skills to oversee the
success of that journey. I know
there has been a lot of talk about ELQs, and we recommend
40 per cent and above at 2020 and increasing the flow of young
people, but that is not enough; we have to up-skill the stock. There are 6 million people at level 3
in this country, and they are potentially the candidates to move to the next
level. That next level might not be
a qualification but it could be a graduate level skill that we are
looking at so it is important to get to that, and that is going to be
a real focus for Sector Skills Councils.
But I cannot really comment on the detailed arguments because
I do not know the arguments.
The Committee suspended from 4.55 pm to 5.05
pm for a division in the House.
Q27 Mr Wilson:
Your answer was pretty noncommittal --
Lord Leitch: I had not finished!
Q28 Mr Marsden:
Could I say at the risk of irritation that it would be helpful if the
answers could be a little briefer.
Lord Leitch: Fine.
We did not specifically cover ELQs, though I think the principle is
we do have to prioritise, but we need to watch out for unintended consequences.
Q29 Mr Wilson:
The automatic reaction to that is do you feel that what has happened to ELQs
may have some unintended consequences?
Lord Leitch: I do not know enough of the detail,
genuinely.
Q30 Mr Wilson:
Because you have said that any changes in funding streams and mechanisms must
be effectively managed so that the excellent work of institutions such as Open
University is not undermined. You are
probably aware that Professor Latchford from Birkbeck College and the Open
University are very exercised about the impact these cuts are going to have on
part-time students and, in particular, women returners to the work force. Surely you can see there is going to be
a huge impact on these people as a result of these cuts?
Lord Leitch: What I have not done in the last 18
months is get involved in detailed implementation. I do not think that is right, that is a job for the
Government. It has to prioritise, it
has to make tough decisions, and so genuinely I have not been involved in
that. Open University and Birkbeck have
written to me to ask for my views and I have not given them one; I do
not think it is right. If you are going
to give a proper, educated view you have to look into the whole topic and
what was said and done, and I have not done that.
Mr Wilson: In that case I will step back, if we
cannot get a view from you.
Q31 Dr Blackman-Woods:
Lord Leitch, I think a lot of the analysis in your report on future skills
needs is very helpful, but can you tell us how robust you think the modelling
is, and what your analysis of the current and future skills picture is based
on?
Lord Leitch: I am very confident on the analysis
because that is looking at what was on now and I think we had some of the
best brains - Harvard University and Sheffield University - helping us, and
people from the Treasury and DWP.
Modelling, of course, is the future and you need assumptions for that,
but I think I am confident enough of the models we have made to
justify the recommendations. We have
tapped into the best brains here and it is sound. In terms of the modelling where I am confident is working
back from the ambition to be upper quartile.
These are the things you need to do so I am very confident on
that. And, by the way, the Commission
for Employment and Skills is currently independently looking at our models to
verify those.
Q32 Dr Blackman-Woods:
So it might be helpful for us to come back at some stage in the future and look
at those again, is that what you are suggesting?
Lord Leitch: I think it is always worth
revisiting. Basically, I did
a study and I thought it was very important to have an assessment and
continuously to review and keep this in the front of my mind, and that is what
the Commission will be doing. So yes,
you should be constantly looking at it, looking at competition in the world,
seeing where we have to make adjustments and seeing if our progress is good
enough.
Q33 Dr Blackman-Woods:
Nevertheless your report does say it is very difficult to model for 15 years in
the future, so would your conclusion be that it is worth modelling for 15 years
in the future, or is it only worth doing that in a very general way?
Lord Leitch: I said one of the principles was to
adapt and respond. When I first
started this study I thought we could take a skill type, model it
through to the future and say: This is
how many of this you need by the year 2020.
I soon realised that history tells you you always get that wrong, so you
have to build a system that adapts and responds to what employers need,
what society needs, and to drive forward those demand-led, adapt-and-respond
fundamental issues for the strategy.
Q34 Dr Blackman-Woods:
I have heard a number of people comment in relation to your report
that what you did was suggest that in the future there would be very little
demand for low-skilled employment in the United Kingdom. The figure that is usually used is about
600,000 being needed, down from about 3.6 million today. Could you say whether you think that is
a fair conclusion to make from your report, or whether you were just
simply outlining for the future what skills qualifications would be, rather
than what they should be?
Lord Leitch: There will be less low-skilled jobs in
the future. That is the statement from
that.
Q35 Dr Blackman-Woods:
And do you think it is fair? Because
I have heard a number of ministers saying that based on your report
it is likely that the demand for those with low-skilled occupations will be
much, much lower for the future than at the moment?
Lord Leitch: I think that is right, and the
consequence from that that we should give those people who do not have these
basic skills a chance to acquire them, and that is a fundamental
point, a social point and an economic one.
Q36 Dr Blackman-Woods:
We have already discussed targets and whether they are useful or not. However, we would all accept that the
targets set in your report and subsequently added to by Government are quite
challenging. Do you think they are
realistic, given that we are 12 years away now from 2020? Are they going to be met?
Lord Leitch: I earnestly hope they are going to
be met. I think they are realistic
because, remember, there are countries in the world who are Quartile 1 in
skills and we are not, so these are attainable, achievable. I think we have to achieve them. There are competitive countries out
there. I think for the fifth largest
nation in the world where we are is unacceptable. Some countries have made fantastic progress - countries like
South Korea, Australia, France - and some countries are catching up like
Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and I think the consequences of not delivering
are severe - severe at different sections of the work force but also for the
economy and for individual groupings.
So the targets are realistic but they need a lot of commitment and
action to deliver them.
Q37 Dr Blackman-Woods:
And do you think we would be helped in terms of delivering the targets if
a greater role was taken by regions, or even at a sub regional
level? Do you think RDAs,
for example, have a strong enough role in terms of delivering?
Lord Leitch: I think there is a balance between
RDAs and cities, as I mentioned earlier.
To be absolutely clear, there is national, sectoral and local. For example, with RDA, if you are in
Cornwall, you would not have many city structures there because it is not big
enough, but if you are in Sheffield - and what they are doing in Sheffield
is incredibly impressive - you could argue you did not need to do much more to
bring employment and skills together.
So there is a jigsaw here, and I would say I would be
flexible on the local delivery of the jigsaw.
Q38 Dr Blackman-Woods:
But should RDAs have a clear role in setting targets for their region, and
doing sector-specific targets?
Lord Leitch: To be honest, I am not sure what the
sub-national review said. I have not
followed that. Do you know?
Q39 Dr Blackman-Woods:
Yes. It gave a role to poor local
authorities.
Lord Leitch: But not regionals?
Q40 Dr Blackman-Woods:
Yes.
Lord Leitch: I think there is a role for
regionals when you have a big land mass and few cities. That seems logical to me.
Mr Marsden: We move on now to where you recommend in
your report a new partnership between government employers and individuals
in taking action on skills and training, so we are going to be asking a set of
questions about the demand-led system and responsibility for skills.
Q41 Mr Willis:
First, I was very interested in your analysis here of the way forward,
particularly at higher level skills, level 4 and above. You made it clear that you feel that
employers and the employee or the student should provide the main bulk in terms
of the funding of those qualifications and the gaining of skills at higher
levels, is that correct?
Lord Leitch: For the additional funding?
Q42 Mr Willis:
Yes.
Lord Leitch: One of the principles was that those who benefit
most should invest most.
Q43 Mr Willis:
We have a simple calculation that, between now and 2020, we have to move
from a position where roughly 39 per cent of people are going to
university to where 50 per cent going to university in the 18-30
group. We also have to get to
a situation where roughly one in four people have a qualification at
level 4 and above to a situation where four out of ten have
a qualification. That is
a big challenge and will require a huge expansion of higher education
and skills training above level 4. Do
we agree that that is the starting point of this discussion?
Lord Leitch: I agree.
Q44 Mr Willis:
In which case your argument is that, because you see employers and the employee
or the individual as being the main beneficiaries, that expansion will be
funded by those two groups?
Lord Leitch: Yes.
Q45 Mr Willis:
What earthly evidence have you to support that?
Lord Leitch: What "earthly" evidence?
Q46 Mr Willis:
Yes. Where is the evidence to support
that? These were just calculations that
were made without any evidence, were they not?
Lord Leitch: No, we had evidence here. You are right about the expansion and you
are right about the increased investment we need to make in higher
education. At the moment the United Kingdom
invests 1.1 per cent of GDP in higher education, the
United States 2.9 per cent, South Korea 2.6 per cent, Australia
2.5 per cent, Scandinavia 2.5 per cent, so clearly there is
a shift to take place here, but those investments are a mixture of public
and private and I think our view was that, looking at what the State
invests in other countries carefully it did not seem right that the State
should invest dramatically more when there are key advantages to that. For example, take employers. We think there is a very significant
opportunity for employers to co-invest in improving the qualifications of the
existing stock.
Q47 Mr Willis:
But employers are not stupid, are they - at least I hope you are not
saying they are. Why have they not come
to that conclusion? Because if their
employees are more productive then there is more profit and they can have
bigger Ferraris or Ford Focuses?
Lord Leitch: Of course they are not stupid, and
employers in this country have done a very good job, by and large, for
training, but one third do no training.
Q48 Mr Willis:
But where is the quantum leap going to come?
Where is your evidence to say that suddenly, because Sandy Leitch has
produced this report and the Government says "Halleluiah", all employers are
saying "Where can we get the latest higher education training? Where can we fund it?"
Lord Leitch: Can I go back an hour, when
I said there is no panacea?
Employers are not going to wake up and say "This is the way we are going
to do it". This is a journey and
there are many steps. I can give
you an example which I think is a beacon of what we can do. There is a Sector Skills Councils
called e-skills, the IT industries of the United Kingdom. They got together and they said "We need
more graduates with a curriculum that suits our businesses". So they got together, pooled their resources
and their expertise and are working with a variety of universities, and
have designed particular graduate courses for them that they can have for new
people and for existing recruits. They
partially fund these, and I think this is the way forward for significant
more investment.
Q49 Mr Willis:
How many other national Sector Skills Councils are doing the same?
Lord Leitch: When you have change you have to start
with a leader on change, and I think this is a great
opportunity. We also have Tesco's,
Royal Bank of Scotland, Flybe and Network Rail all looking to do these
co-investments. If this is done
properly it is the right way forward.
Research happens in other countries in the world and if it happens in
other countries in the world we should be showing that it can happen here, so
I feel very confident we can deliver this, if we get the right leadership.
Q50 Mr Willis:
In the Sector Skills Councils, or where?
Lord Leitch: Can I talk about Sector Skills Councils?
Q51 Mr Marsden:
Yes.
Lord Leitch: I started off liking the concept of
Sector Skills Councils but not so much the delivery. I saw one third doing well, one third badly and one third
unproven, and I thought "Goodness gracious". Conceptually it is the right approach, and I think one of
the areas missing on the two thirds neutral or negative was about strong
leadership in getting employers to come together. Like in many areas in life it is about somebody being the
champion and showing the way, so that is why we call for the reformation and
the re-licensing of Sector Skills Councils.
Q52 Mr Willis:
Let's hope you are right and the Sector Skills Councils all become incredibly
dynamic bodies that take their employers into the trenches and buy into all
these extra skills. Let's assume that
is right. It has never happened before
but let's assume it happens on this occasion.
Lord Leitch: Yes.
Q53 Mr Willis:
As far as universities are concerned, and to some extent colleges but
particularly universities, we have had university tradition which is
basically about university autonomy, about it being, if you like,
a supply-side system. You are
suggesting in your report, and the Government has accepted, that we are now
going to have a demand-led system within Higher Education 2, with
employers, given that you already have briefed that this expansion will come
via employers, through the Sector Skills Councils making demands on higher
education institutions to produce the sorts of courses and products which they
want. Will that not change the whole
nature of our higher education institutions in the same way as Train to Gain is
potentially likely to change - I am not saying for good or bad - the
nature of our further education institutions?
Lord Leitch: Yes, it will alter the balance, but may
I say that the most successful development of university courses in recent
years has been MBAs, which are not supply driven but are also demand led. This is what industry is requiring, and they
have been fantastically successful. So
your example that universities are only supply-driven is not correct.
Q54 Mr Willis:
But the majority, of course, are supply driven.
Lord Leitch: But it is the evolution here.
Q55 Mr Willis:
But that is what you see happening?
Lord Leitch: Yes, but, if you look, there are degrees
in architecture, engineering and all these things. This is not about being supply driven; this is about being demand
driven as well. We need these graduates
in these subjects. There are degrees in
law, medicine; this is not just learning for learning's sake but learning for
a profession. For instance,
Richard Lambert did a report three or four years ago and he was basically
saying there is a mismatch of needs in our society, and university must
engage much more with employers, and I think the forward universities are
doing exactly that. Business has found
it difficult to engage with universities, and they must find it easy to engage
with universities. There is real
employer concern, and what we have now is changing. We are at a turning point.
Q56 Mr Willis:
So we are going to have a Benthamite, utilitarian approach to higher
education in the future?
Lord Leitch: No, that is not fair. It is not utilitarian; it is about
a flexible approach that is demand-led.
Q57 Mr Willis:
Well, let's park that one as well. The
other big driver for this is, in fact, money.
At the moment 90 per cent of all funding in higher education
to support students goes on three year, full-time undergraduates; 10 per cent
goes on part-time. The whole essence of
the development that you see in your report is about part-time students really
delivering in the work place, students who are earning as well as learning at
the same time. Why did you not as one
of your conclusions and recommendations ask for a shift of resources so that
you are incentivising and supporting people up-skilling from level 3 to 4, and,
indeed, from level 4 onwards? Why was
there not a change in the support mechanism recommended so that part-time
students in particular got the sorts of incentives that full-time students get,
which would have done probably more to incentivise this, rather than making
employers compulsorily have to pay for training?
Lord Leitch: There was a recommendation to
allocate part of the HEFCE budget towards this, if my memory is correct.
Q58 Mr Marsden:
Would you like to elaborate?
Lord Leitch: There is a reference that we should
take part of the HEFCE budget and allocate it to more level 4 qualifications in
the work place. Shall we come back to
that?
Mr Marsden: Yes.
Q59 Ian Stewart:
Are trade unions valuable partners in the development and delivery of learning
and skills?
Lord Leitch: Very much so.
Q60 Ian Stewart:
Why, then, have they been all but airbrushed out of all the documentation?
Lord Leitch: I do not think they have at
all. Right from the top we saw the
establishment of the Commission of Employment and Skills having Brendan Barber
on the Commission. We say this is going
to be employer-led; it is also going to have a Director General of the CBI
and the TUC leader, so it is not airbrushed at all. It is in there very clearly; there are many mentions of union
learning reps who have done fantastic work here. I went to speak to the TUC Congress in Brighton and
consulted with them and Frances O'Grady, I spent many hours with them, so they
have been a critical part of what we are doing, and are very important.
Q61 Ian Stewart:
You have just mentioned what was being perceived as the very important
development of trade union learning reps, now 18,000 across the country. Would you see a potential for those
learning reps becoming involved in the delivery of vocational training and
skills?
Lord Leitch: What do you mean?
Q62 Ian Stewart:
Delivering training in the work place?
Lord Leitch: I think some of them do at the
moment. If I remember, I went
to a further education college in the north of England and there were
union learning reps teaching, so it does happen at the present time.
Q63 Ian Stewart:
Was there a recognition that there is a movement out of colleges, the
brick buildings, to the delivery of training for skills in the work place
itself?
Lord Leitch: By union learning reps, or generally?
Q64 Ian Stewart:
Generally.
Lord Leitch: Yes, absolutely. That is the thrust of what we are
saying. It should be work place
training, and we have to push that forward.
Absolutely.
Q65 Ian Stewart:
Would you think that the development of trade union learning reps as deliverers
of vocational training in the work place would be a good development?
Lord Leitch: Yes.
I think that could help.
Q66 Dr Iddon:
Looking at the three institutional levels that you mentioned, national,
sectoral and local delivery, it appeared to me that you did not want to perturb
the existing organisations too much.
For example, with the Learning and Skills Council, you wanted them
streamlined and, in fact, they have been abolished. Are you disappointed about that?
And we have the new Skills Funding Agency.
Lord Leitch: Certainly they should be streamlined, and
the rationale for that was because there was a very dramatic change in
that they would no longer be doing central planning of courses, but we felt we
still needed a body to do things like Train to Gain, apprenticeships, to
manage the funding, so we thought there was a dramatic streamlining
needing to take place. Now, the change
which has gone on seems to me to mirror the machinery of government change with
DIUS coming in, and I think that is a sensible move. So I am not disappointed at all.
Q67 Dr Iddon:
Bearing in mind that change, do you consider that the institutional reforms
advocated in your review stand up to your own principles which are three -
flexibility, simplification and continuity?
Lord Leitch: If you look at the organisational map of
skills in the United Kingdom it is astonishingly complex, and I think
we made this point to try and simplify things.
The changes which are being made are relevant, and the big change
organisationally is no central planning by the LSC, that changes fundamentally,
and the move to demand led. All these
changes absolutely live up to the principles we set out.
Q68 Dr Iddon:
The creation of the United Kingdom Commission for Employment and Skills
and the continuation of the Sector Skills Councils under your proposals is
obviously central to achievement of the United Kingdom's ambitions in this
area, but it relies, as you have been saying all along in this interview on
employers coming on board now.
Employers have been one of the unknown quantities in the past; we have
not always got them on board, have we?
Do you think it will be any better in future with the new institutional
reforms?
Lord Leitch: I am very confident it should be
better in the future but this is a journey and there is a lot of work
to be done. As I said, one third of
employers do no training whatsoever; we have some brilliant employers and
brilliant training that is done; many employers are not happy with their fee
qualifications that are coming through, and we have the opportunity to give the
employers a stronger voice in driving economically valuable qualifications
so, yes, all the changes we are putting in will drive that forward. Can I just say that if you look at the
stakeholders here, you have government, employers and individuals, and no one
stakeholder can do this on their own.
It has to be a partnership between the three, so you need employers
in there who are government-committed driving this forward, and you need
individuals driving this forward, and I feel very strongly on individuals
that there is got to be a change in culture in this country about seeing the
value of learning, and that may be a generational thing to happen but it
will be very difficult to achieve.
Unless we start it, we have no chance of achieving it and improving it,
and the recommendations we made in this report in terms of awareness, national
careers service, in terms of joining-up employment and skills, which to me is
fundamentally important - all these things have to happen. So it has to be the state, the employer and
the individual working in partnership to drive this forward.
Q69 Dr Iddon:
But the companies you mentioned earlier, and we could mention Rolls Royce,
all the big companies of course, have future profits which depend upon working
with the United Kingdom commission.
But what about the smaller companies, the ones that are locally based,
the small medium-sized enterprises? Are
they going to come along with this new plan?
Lord Leitch: I think Train to Gain is
a massive opportunity for smaller companies. I remember, I went to see a small printing company in
south east London, the first company I had been to on Train to Gain, and
the individuals I talked to had never done any training before, and the
bosses of the company suddenly had their eyes opened about the benefit that
this could bring to them. They had
a broker come in and assess what their company needed and they were over
the moon about the results, and I think we can drive that forward for the
smaller companies. We recommended to
put a grant in for management training also for the small and medium
enterprises. I feel very strongly
about management as a skill, and if those smaller companies could develop
more of that it would transform their performance. So Train to Gain has a fundamental role to play but, of
course, it is difficult for a small company with a limited budget
which says they cannot afford to spare someone to go off and train because
they cannot see the return. It is
about persuading them, showing them, influencing them, and helping them to see
a return.
Q70 Dr Iddon:
You have admitted that some Sector Skills Councils are a lot better than
some others. How are you going to make
the ones that are not good better?
Lord Leitch: I think it is the role of the
Commission to do that, and I recommend that we should stand back and look
at them all and evaluate their performance, and see what they have done and
look at the sector skill agreements. I
do not know if any of you have looked at the sector skill agreements but for
the poorer performance they are so complicated and so voluminous you cannot see
what they are there for, but also we have to make it easier for them because
remember, Sector Skills Councils, to be fair, are a fledgling organisation
and have not been going for very long, so maybe I am being a bit hard
on them, but they have to have better funding.
So many of them spend their time scratching around looking for ways to
generate funds, they have to have enough funding to let them deliver their
objectives so we have to help them too, but I think the evaluation lies
with the Commission.
Q71 Dr Iddon:
Finally, concerning careers advice, those of us who saw the disappearance of
the old careers service in local authorities and have seen how the Connexion
service concentrated on certain individuals and left others to get on with it,
usually the brighter ones, have been very critical in this Committee on careers
advice given to people, in schools particularly but beyond that as well. Do you think that the new universal adult
careers service is going to provide better careers advice for all age ranges?
Lord Leitch: Yes, and I think its location is
critically important as well in terms of being closer to
Jobcentre Plus.
Jobcentre Plus has done a terrific job in getting people to
work; it really is outstanding.
Remember, it was a very big merger between Job Centre and Benefits,
it has been a difficult task, and they have delivered extremely well. What has not been happening is the
integration and the join between skills and jobs. Two thirds, if I remember, of claimants after six months are
recycled, so you have to ask why that is happening. Skills are a critical part of it, and having this careers
service skills evaluation is fundamentally important, so it should be able to
do that. But, Gordon, the point is this
is a journey, and what I cannot do now is prove conclusively or with evidence
that these things are going to work.
I cannot do that.
Q72 Dr Blackman-Woods:
Are you genuinely satisfied with the response by Government to your report?
Lord Leitch: I am very pleased with the
response. I spent a lot of
time consulting right across all political parties, trade unions, individuals,
trade organisations and employers, and I spent a lot of time ensuring
that we had something that was pragmatic and deliverable in that sense but also
exciting enough and demanding enough to deliver what we needed as a nation, and
I think that time was well spent.
The Government have taken my agenda and recommendations and it is now
government policy. If you look at the volume
of material published since then it is remarkable, and just reading World Class Skills before this session,
what they are coming up with as action points is a huge array of initiatives
which they have to deliver, but I think they are committed, they have made
investments, they are looking at Train to Gain increasing to a billion
pounds in 2010, so the money is coming too.
So yes, I am very pleased.
Q73 Dr Blackman-Woods:
Are there any areas or recommendations that you thought they should have
accepted and have not?
Lord Leitch: There are always going to be. What I have not got is the job of
balancing the nation's purse. We also
said in the report, if I remember, that it is up to the Government to
evaluate our recommendations and look at value for money and practicality and
the balance point, and there is one point where we said all funding should be
demanded by 2010, and they have not gone for 2010 because they think there is a
danger of jeopardising five FE colleges, so they have gone a little bit
later on that. But that is OK. From my very crude calculations I think
they have accepted delivering about 95 per cent. You know, in many reviews you do the review and nothing happens,
and here many things are happening.
Q74 Dr Blackman-Woods:
What about the pace of progress towards achieving those targets, as opposed to
delivering documents about how they might achieve them?
Lord Leitch: It is only nine months since they set out
the policy. I think I would
give them a little bit longer.
Q75 Dr Blackman-Woods:
So you would not agree with Richard Lambert of CPI who said that he thought
that the Government's response to the Leitch proposals was a bit lame,
that the Government had pulled back from some of the bolder recommendations,
and he also commented, "I think the rather leisurely way the Government is
going about the Leitch proposals will make it very difficult for business to
make these changes in time", so do you think that is not a sensible set of
comments at this stage?
Lord Leitch: I think it is not balanced. I think he has some validity on some of
the points mentioned in 2010.
I think it is no way leisurely, and looking at the volume of
material they have produced, it is anything but. There is an urgency, a commitment, they see that we need to
raise the game and the consequences of not doing that - no, I disagree
with the balance of the point. There
are many good things they are doing.
Q76 Dr Blackman-Woods:
So would it be fair to conclude that you are generally optimistic about the
Government achieving these targets?
Lord Leitch: Yes, I am.
Q77 Mr Marsden:
Louise, you have been on the other side of the table, as it were, since this
review was completed working with many of the stakeholders. Is there anything, looking at it from the
other side of the fence that you think:
"Gosh, I wish we were moving a bit quicker on that".
Ms Tilbury: In terms of implementation?
Q78 Mr Marsden:
Yes?
Ms Tilbury: No.
I am incredibly impressed by the speed at which the Government has
picked up and gone along with the recommendations. The important thing to remember is that it is a vision for
2020 and there is a lot of reform that needs to be gone through in the
very short period of time, even to 2010.
In terms of organisational reform the Commission was set up from
1 April this year, and I think that is ready to go now and we will
see a change again this year.
Q79 Mr Willis:
Sandy, in terms of this 2020 vision, one of the big flaws in our adult training
skill system over decades, not just this Government, has been the employee who
finds himself in a job not only where his employer does not train him or
her but also where they see the need for training themselves as an individual
in order to move on, with the employer who has absolutely no incentive to
invest in that employee so they will move on.
Where in your report is that huge group of individuals tackled? Where do you see the advantage to them
moving on between now and 2020?
Lord Leitch: I think what we have tried to say in
this review is that there is an incentive also for the employer because, by and
large, what we see from all the evidence is that if individuals improve their
job performance improves. So what we
have tried to do through the Commission, giving employers a stronger voice
by sector skills, is to demonstrate that and to encourage more participation
and investment from employers, and I think that will happen. At the same time, as you know, we have said
in areas like basic skills there are too many employees without basic skills,
and we came across this pledge that was being implemented in Wales on
a voluntary basis, which was a voluntary pledge for employers to
commit to give their employers training up to level 2, and we think if we do
a strong exercise in promoting this we can get employers to do this on
a voluntary basis. What we did
say, however, is if that is insufficient by 2010 we should look at whether
compulsion is the right answer for that basic level of skill that people
should have.
Q80 Mr Willis:
But the 6 million at level 3 is the big target group, is it not, that you
really have to do something about?
Lord Leitch: Yes.
Q81 Mr Willis:
Why would I, as a business man - and I am not a businessman,
I am just a humble politician but if I were - want to invest money in
an employee who did not affect my bottom line and who is likely to move off
when they have those skills? That is
the flaw that I see.
Lord Leitch: No, I do not think it is
a flaw. I think employers
will not do that if it is not going to impact their business but we think, by
and large, giving people more skills on the job will improve their performance
on the job, and that is the change we have to make. I think you are right, if employers think there is no value
to me in training, they will not train, and what we want to get over is a
message to more employers that there is value to them as an employer.
Q82 Mr Willis:
But as an individual I want to move, I do not like his business;
I do not like working for him any more.
I want to move on.
Lord Leitch: If there is no value to the employers and
you are going to move on, you cannot expect employers to invest.
Q83 Mr Willis:
Who is going to invest in my skills, then?
Lord Leitch: The majority of people we are talking
about are employees who will improve their performance through more skills, and
we know that.
Q84 Mr Marsden:
At that point we will have to leave it for this afternoon, but can I thank
you both for coming to answer our questions this afternoon, particularly, as
you say, as things have become a little rustier in the passage of time,
but we are going to add to your afterlife and also the documentation by
launching our own inquiry which will open on May 14 with one
whole-day session in Leeds, so we hope that will be the start of further
discussion. Thank you.
Lord Leitch: Can I say thank you and, finally,
the more I immersed myself in this topic on skills the more passionate
I became about its importance to the nation and the economic performance
and prosperity of the nation, but the real prize is deeper and richer than just
economic prosperity. It is about pride,
fairness, quality of life, and an opportunity for everyone in this country, and
it is the best investment this nation could ever make. Next to national defence it is probably the
most important task and priority for this nation, because by driving economic
prosperity we can then have the sort of social and welfare and health systems
we need, and creating that wealth and skills is such a critical driver to
allow us to do that. Thank you for your
time, and I am very relieved you are doing this study.
Mr Marsden: Thank you.