Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill


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Q 33Mr. Laws: So do you disagree with Mr. Wilson that these measures could be quite radical?
John Lucas: I do. I think that the proposals seek to formalise a process that takes place already.
Q 34Mr. Laws: I have a final question for the CBI. Does the disagreement between your two colleagues on the panel indicate that there are different expectations of what this right means? We have heard increasingly about Mr. Wilson’s staff, who are trying to improve the skills of the work force. With their encouragement, will there be a big upsurge in the demand for training? Will there be a clash between the many employers who will not wish to grant these training rights and the unions and others who will try to ensure that the rights are taken up?
Richard Wainer: First, we must remember that we are discussing a right to request, not a right to have. If the right to request training encourages more employees to have informed and considered discussions with their employers about their skills needs, that can be only a good thing. The legislation is drafted so that if the training will not improve the business or the employee’s productivity, the employer is within its rights to reject the request. We believe that that is right.
Q 35Mr. Laws: So you do not think that the right will have a dramatic impact on your members because they are already delivering about as much training to employees as you would expect under the new system.
Richard Wainer: As Tom said, it is difficult to know what the impact will be. However, I believe that the vast majority of our members already hold these discussions, whether formally or informally. They sometimes take place through performance development reviews.
Q 36Mrs. Sharon Hodgson (Gateshead, East and Washington, West) (Lab): As Richard has just highlighted, the grounds on which an employer can refuse a request for training are quite wide. My questions will be directed to John Lucas and Tom Wilson. Tom, do you think that those grounds are too wide, and that the Government have gone too far? John, what other grounds could be included to give employers the right to refuse those training opportunities?
Tom Wilson: In an ideal world, we would have preferred narrower grounds for refusing a request and we would have liked a right to paid time off. However, we live in the real world and accept that the Government need to make a judgment about balancing employer needs against employee desires. We are comfortable with the judgment that the Government have come to, even if it is not ideal. The same sort of balance was struck with the other right to flexible working and that has worked pretty well. It has shown that with a bit of common sense and sensible judgment, people can work a way through. There are always exceptional cases and requests that cannot be anticipated, but it provides a framework for a serious conversation. That is the important part. Once you have the framework, the serious conversation can accommodate all sorts of requests.
John Lucas: No one can deny that the grounds to refuse are fairly comprehensive. We are broadly happy with that within the terms of the Bill. It would perhaps have been useful to have more provision for employers about the grounds for withdrawing permission once granted. I think there was a conscious decision—I hope that I am right in saying this—not to include that in the Bill. If the Government are set on pursuing this policy it would be good to let employers know where they stand and how they could withdraw that right once a request has been granted. I am sure that there will be instances where employers may want to withdraw that right—out of business necessity, because of a breakdown of the relationship with the employee or because an employee leaves—and I do not think that the Bill sets that out properly.
Q 37Stephen Williams: Supplementary to what Sharon was asking, the last Education and Skills Bill that we considered was about raising the participation age of young people. Suppose an employer refuses a request for time off for learning. Does that not put the young person in a catch-22?
John Lucas: We are talking about people who are over the compulsory age. As an organisation, we are positive about raising the participation age, as Mr. Knight suggested. With this, we are talking about employees above that age.
Q 38Ms Dawn Butler (Brent, South) (Lab): You refer to good employers. What about the employers who are not as good? How would you suggest that we try to disseminate good practices to them?
John Lucas: There are obviously employers who do not train, for whatever reason. The Government have worked hard on Train to Gain during the past three or four months and, as a network, we have seen an increase in uptake. If that sort of scheme is made efficient, easy to access and, more importantly, if the further education skills system is simple and stable—which I do not think Government changes are providing for—employers will train, if it is an easier process to undertake.
Q 39Ms Butler: Do you think that the Bill will not encourage those employers, who are not doing as well as the good ones you talked about, to participate in Train to Gain and to look at it more favourably than they do now?
John Lucas: It is undeniable that those two conditions of simplification and stability are not being met by the Bill. There is an awful lot of change. We do not see some of the bureaucratic processes that were endemic in the Learning and Skills Council being addressed. I hope that once the SFA has been established we can work with Government Departments to try to iron out those processes.
Q 40Ms Butler: My last question is, which of you and Tom Wilson has most contact with employees?
John Lucas: It is a mixture. Obviously, we represent employers but that is 100,000 businesses with about 5 million employees across the chamber network. So we have a lot of contact with employees. Employees are a key resource for business. It is vital for business that we have a skilled work force—nobody can deny that. I just do not believe that some of the provisions in the Bill are the right way to go about that.
Q 41Ms Butler: May I ask Tom the same question?
Tom Wilson: We have 58 affiliates who represent 6.4 million employees, with whom we have a great deal of contact virtually every day in all sorts of ways. On the point about the reasons for denying the request and whether it would be sensible to tighten those up the other way, the TUC would find that extremely difficult. A kind of settlement has been reached, and were we to go down the kind of road that the BCC has suggested and, for example, tighten up the provisions and be more prescriptive—it is interesting how on this occasion you referred to more prescription—that would be a major problem for us and would not be sensible at all. It would also lead to complication—too much detail and complexity, and over-bureaucratisation of the whole thing—which is counter to what the BCC has said it wants. So it is important to keep it relatively simple.
John Lucas: Going back to my point about the philosophy of how much Government should intervene, once it has gone past a certain point—I think that this really is going past a certain point with Time to Train—the rules and the state of play have to be set out, otherwise you enter a wholly bureaucratic system, which can become acrimonious and difficult. We need to avoid that if at all possible.
Q 42Mr. Hayes: Sir Michael Rake, chairman of the Commission for Employment and Skills, and of BT, recently said:
“There is no one I’ve met who doesn’t think the current system”—
for the management of the funding of skills—
“isn’t incredibly overcomplex.”
He went on to say that the system
“is ridiculous, both in cost of delivering, effectiveness of delivering and so on.”
Is he right? Presumably, Mr. Wilson, you are not a person whom he has met, as he has said that he has met no one who does not think that.
Tom Wilson: To a large extent we would agree with him. I have met him. The three trade union commissioners on the UK commission who work with Sir Michael endorsed the commission’s recent simplification proposals, which adopted the approach of hiding the wiring as it were, rather than trying to rearrange lots of the agencies, which is complex. That approach is probably right, and what has been proposed by Sir Michael and the commission is that Train to Gain should become the new all-encompassing brand and the single portal through which people, particularly employers but also other stakeholders including unions, could access the system. Behind that wiring the approach has done the job of the agencies to route people to the correct part of the sector. Employers and agencies should not themselves necessarily have to know every detail of how it all works, because it is complex.
But, to some extent the system is necessarily complex. These are very large sums and it is important that they are allocated fairly and that taxpayers secure good value for their money. The economy is a complex place; there are 25 different sectors, with different needs and different skill levels, and so it is not sensible to expect that you could have a simple all-encompassing system. We need something that is simple to access and for which there is adequate guidance. That is the important approach and the right approach, and the one that the commission has taken.
Q 43Mr. Hayes: Is not the point that the Bill does not do that job of simplifying the structure? I accept that the economy is complex, but Sir Michael said that the system for the management of the funding of skills was over-complex. So, does the Bill simplify the system, making it less bureaucratic and more employer-friendly, or does it reinforce some of the complexities that Sir Michael complained about regarding the old regime?
Richard Wainer: There is a lot more work to do to achieve that aim than just what is in the Bill, but we support the move to the Skills Funding Agency, and the desire for it to be more demand-led. I think that that will be in the medium to long term. There will be disruption over the next year or so, and our concern is to ensure that the front-line delivery that employers experience remains good. There is a lot more to do to ensure that the system is in place than just getting rid of the LSC and creating the Skills Funding Agency, but this is a step in the right direction.
John Lucas: I think that it is a bureaucratic muddle, I am afraid.
Q 44Mr. Simon: I am sorry to interrupt with a supplementary question. When you said that last time, I asked whether you could give us any detailed information at all about what aspect of this very lightly sketched agency is bureaucratic. Perhaps since you said it the first time you have thought of some. It seems a bit odd to keep saying it, but to have no substantive explanation of what you mean.
John Lucas: It is undeniable that the dissolution of one agency and its replacement with—
Q 45Mr. Simon: Not the transition—the new agency. You keep saying that it is bureaucratic but you refuse to say how.
John Lucas: I do not see anything in the Bill that seeks to remedy some of the bureaucratic paperwork issues that many of our members and particularly our learning providers found. The contracting arrangements, the paperwork, the bureaucracy, the time—
Q 46Mr. Simon: That is because they are an agency and they are not in the Bill. You would not expect to see that in the Bill.
John Lucas: This is a key time for employers. Let us face it; the economy is not going very well. To disrupt normal relationships between LSCs, businesses and learning providers is not going to be a positive thing. Mr. Knight said in some of his speeches recently that companies that train are two and half times more likely to survive the recession. I do not think that we are going to see an increase in training at this key time because of these changes. We are disrupting a whole system. That is problematic.
Q 47Mr. Simon: Do you have some evidence or examples of disruption that you have encountered so far?
John Lucas: Certainly we could furnish you with those from our network. I do not have any in my paperwork here. We are certainly concerned that some of the processes about setting up the YPLA and the transition of funding to local authorities have not been taking place properly on the ground. For example, we know that colleges in many areas have not been contacted at all by local authorities. The relationships that are going to be the key underpinning of the early part of the system are not being established. That is a real problem.
Q 48Mr. Simon: If you could send me some details of disruption that you have encountered on the adult side I should be very interested. I have not heard of a single instance as yet.
The Chairman: If you are going to communicate further information it would be better to communicate it to the whole of the Committee, either in the form of a letter or a memorandum. That applies to other witnesses who may feel at the end of the session that there is something else that they would like to contribute in writing.
Q 49Jeff Ennis (Barnsley, East and Mexborough) (Lab): Continuing on the theme of the change in agencies and the abolition of the LSC—this is a general question and I have a more specific one on another matter—is there a danger that we are focusing too much on apprentices and to some extent will disregard the needs of adult learners?
Richard Wainer: Clearly, the progress we have made on adult apprenticeships is important. As John was saying, from an employer’s perspective, the other ways that Government can support employers’ training, such as through Train to Gain, really need to fit the bill. There is still a way to go to ensure that that programme meets what employers are looking for in terms of their skills need for their employees. Perhaps that is a discussion for another time.
 
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