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. Wilsons 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 employees
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 decisionI hope that I am
right in saying thisnot 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 rightout of business
necessity, because of a breakdown of the relationship with the employee
or because an employee leavesand 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 stablewhich I do not think Government
changes are providing foremployers 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 forcenobody
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 prescriptiveit is
interesting how on this occasion you referred to more
prescriptionthat would be a major problem for us and would not
be sensible at all. It would also lead to complicationtoo much
detail and complexity, and over-bureaucratisation of the whole
thingwhich 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
pointI think that this really is going past a certain point
with Time to Trainthe 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 Ive met who doesnt think the current
system for
the management of the funding of
skills isnt
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 commissions 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 transitionthe 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
LSCthis is a general question and I have a more specific one on
another matteris 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
employers 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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