Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200-219)
CHRIS HUMPHRIES,
TERESA SAYERS,
TOM BEWICK
AND FRANK
LORD
25 JUNE 2008
Q200 Dr Turner: A lot of people have
suggested that there should be more of an interface between sector
skills councils and RDAs. Do you think the RDAs have the capacity
within themselves to make a useful contribution? It does not seem
to me to be their prime role.
Frank Lord: I think the RDAs do
have a role to play, particularly around business support and
business development. It is important that the RDAs are able to
link in to what is happening at the sub-regional level. In the
East Midlands that was through the SSPs, the Sub-regional Strategic
Partnerships. That bit worked quite well.
Teresa Sayers: One of the keys
to solving this problem is around clarity with regards to the
remit if these organisations are very clear with regard to what
their remit is and we can avoid duplication and the repetition
of activities. From an employer point of view, there is more than
a degree of fatigue on their part at constantly being bombarded
with requests from a whole array of organisations. In our experience
employers just want effectively a one-stop shop where they can
channel their requests and information and then get through to
the appropriate organisations because they are fatigued by being
inundated with requests.
Q201 Chairman: Tom, how about another
job move and we get rid of the sector skills councils and put
it all in the RDAs? Is that a sensible way forward?
Tom Bewick: I would not like to
start and write a new policy here in front of the Committee. I
do feel that in the end it is not the multi-agency world that
is really the problem. It is a complex world out there. I think
it is about who is purchasing training and employment and skills
support. At the moment we are trying to purchase apprenticeships
through the National Apprenticeship Service, bespoke business
support through the regional development agencies and all those
purchasers are people like me in the sense that they are administrators.
They are proxy consumers if you like. They are second-guessing
what the market needs on behalf of the client, in this case the
state. I think we have got to go with an old idea which is starting
to come back, which was around in the late 1990s with the Individual
Learning Account concept and that is the idea of putting purchasing
power in the hands of the individual. I would go a step further
and say maybe we should think about employer company-wide learning
accounts as well. If we had that sort of system where in the end
employers and individuals were driving the system with good information,
advice and guidance around it then I suspect a lot of the institutions
we currently have would either have to change or respond to that
new market demand or would wither away and we do not have that
at the moment.
Q202 Ian Stewart: I am interested
in the Commission itself, in re-licensing sector skills councils
and regional representation. Chris, how will the establishment
of this Commission improve the relationship between employers
and the education/training supply chain? By the way, what does
this Commission bring that its predecessors did not have?
Chris Humphries: This Commission
has a very different remit to the Sector Skills Development Agency
and I think it is worth touching on that, but I will focus initially
on the SSCs. I believe that the sector skills councils are an
appropriate policy response to a need for any education and training
system these days to be able to keep pace with the rate of occupation
and industry change. I would think that because it was a recommendation
of the Skills Task Force which I chaired for the government from
1998-2000, so I admit my conflict of interest and bias here! Equally,
it is a concept that is increasingly being brought into play across
countries all over the world. Both the OECD and the World Bank's
biggest sets of enquiries at the moment are about how to maximise
employer engagement in our education and training system in order
to ensure that it is more responsive to future and evolving need.
I think there is a great sense in having an effective vehicle
through which you can get a better understanding of the way in
which industry and sectors are evolving. The system will never
be perfect because industry changes on a regular basis, the boundaries
between traditional industries become fuzzier and so the system
will have to evolve over time. Biotechnology was not something
that existed ten years ago. It is now one of the most important
evolving, leading edge business sectors of tomorrow. Those things
will mean that our system will always have to evolve and change,
it will always have to work in a way that is responsive to industry
change. Their point is really to do two things: one, to bring
a stronger sectoral development voice into the state and to help
the state understand how to ensure that its institutions and organisations
respond more to it; and secondly, to face out to employers and
encourage the employers to understand the value that can be gained
by them from developing the skills of their workforce; in other
words, to face in both directions and to encourage more effective
co-operation between the two.
Q203 Ian Stewart: Earlier on you
highlighted the tensions between a demand-led system and strategy.
Are you sure that the Commission and all the structures will be
flexible enough to deal with real demand-led situations?
Chris Humphries: I think there
is always going to be a need for a bit of a dynamic equilibrium
between industry as a representation of some of the important
demand and the supply side in terms of a set of organisations
and people that have to respond to a whole variety of different
agendas. If that is not constantly in dynamic change then the
system is probably locking itself into the past. Am I confident
you need both? Absolutely. All the evidence is that economic development
best results from an effective integration of spatial and sectoral
activity. Almost all of the work from Michael Porter onwards on
building successful and competitive economies is based upon getting
an appropriate mix between the needs of a region or area and the
sectors that are most appropriate for the development of that
area. I think SSCs are one important part of a long-term strategic
process which we need to get right.
Q204 Ian Stewart: Let us now move
on to the re-licensing of sector skills councils. How do you see
that supporting the Leitch agenda?
Chris Humphries: I think it is
a critical part of it. If a sectoral dimension is one part of
an integrated approach to economic and social improvement then
you need to have a strong and effective sectoral organisation
to do these things as far as I am concerned: to have the confidence,
approval and support of principal employers in this sector, to
have very good leadership and management which ensures that they
are efficient and effective in the way in which they capture and
work with and respond to the changing needs of their sector, and
thirdly, to demonstrate that they have had a major impact to the
benefit of both the skills within and the productivity and performance
of its sector. Those are the criteria which are built into the
new re-licensing process and that means the Commission taking
some tough judgments if needs be about organisations that we do
not think are up to the job. If we do that then we can bring forward
recommendations for change. Equally, even where we see SSCs performing
well we need to try and set a forward agenda for them or help
them agree a forward agenda which builds them towards becoming
world-class organisations.
Q205 Ian Stewart: Do employers feel
happy with this?
Chris Humphries: I was not sure
about that.
Frank Lord: The sector skills
councils are really under-resourced. In the employment and skills
board that I chair we have tried to do work with sector skills
councils. We have undertaken all the work within the logistics
area ourselves and we found that there was very little input from
the sector skills councils. Through the EBLO we have had some
sector skill involvement around Semta on the engineering side
of things. I am really concerned about the link sector skills
councils will have with the Skills Funding Agency, particularly
around apprenticeships and in looking at what employers want from
apprenticeships and how the sector skill councils make sure that
from a curriculum point of view those things are brought together.
Teresa Sayers: Certainly our experience
is that our employers and indeed the employee representation on
our board feel frustrated about what appears to be yet another
hurdle that we have to go through. They struggle at times to understand
the environment in which we are operating. The landscape is constantly
changing. They are looking for a degree of stability and an opportunity
to build on what has been developed and take that forward. I think
there could potentially be a loss of momentum.
Tom Bewick: I think my employers
see re-licensing as an opportunity. We are into year three of
a five-year licence and over the next year now with the UK Commission
we will go through this new process. What is really important
is that the Committee understands that the level of resource that
sector skills councils are expected to deliver in this newly reformed
and re-licensed system is static compared to where it was when
SSCs came about a few years ago. The old National Training Organisation
Network represented at that time a quadrupling of resources to
the new sectoral network. What we are seeing this time round is
a re-licensing process that is expecting more of sector skills
councils but on, in effect, less money.
Q206 Mr Marsden: Teresa, in response
to an earlier answer you used the word "mind blowing"
about the attitude of some of the big employers in financial services
to the layers and complexities. Have we got the right sorts of
actual employers, successful, dare I say, employers on sector
skills councils as opposed to people who are slightly out of touch
and maybe slightly over the hill?
Teresa Sayers: Certainly from
the industry that I represent, we are coming from a starting place
where they have not necessarily engaged with initiatives that
come from government. They tend to do their own thing, think that
they can do their own thing and have done so for many, many years,
so actually to get them to a position where they are looking to
engage more with government initiatives, I certainly think that
that is the case we are getting now.
Q207 Mr Marsden: So you have not
got the right sort of people involved?
Teresa Sayers: No. I would say
we are certainly building momentum now and we are now able to
attract more and more of the big players, the high-street players
who now are beginning to understand better the opportunity that
the sector skills council brings them in terms of influence, so
they are becoming more engaged.
Q208 Mr Marsden: So you are getting
there. Tom, can I just hone that in a bit particularly with your
sector, and you may want to answer that direct question or not.
Have we got the right sort of SMEs involved in sector skills councils,
and I say this with particular relevance to yours because of course
the area that you represent is 90-95%, or whatever the percentage
is, SMEs, is it not?
Tom Bewick: The figure, Mr Marsden,
is that 95% of our employers employ less than 10 people. There
are 62,000 businesses across the sectors that we represent.
Q209 Mr Marsden: So how do you persuade
some of those really big, dynamic micro-businesses to spend time
sitting on your sector skills council or putting input into it?
Tom Bewick: Well, let me come
back to that because I actually do not think the measure of success
for engagement with small firms is sitting on a sector skills
council. When my Board first came into being, and we are in some
ways one of the few examples of a sector skills council that is
an organisation that has been built from scratch, not built on
any predecessor body, what was priority number one, I think, for
our sector skills council was to get the National Trust on our
Board, was to get the Royal Opera House, EMI Records and M&C
Saatchi, one of the world's largest advertising agencies, because
what those employers do that I work with, all of whom are at chief
executive or managing director level, is that they provide the
strategic leadership for the sector, but in the end what they
also understand as being the measure of success for us as a sector
skills council is: from this September, does every theatre, does
every arts organisation have the opportunity of participating
in a creative apprenticeship and do these small organisations
have the opportunity of being a part of our National Skills Academy
to plug the skill shortage in back-stage skills? In a sense, we
need to separate, I think, the strategic leadership role of sector
skills councils from what Chris was, I think, referring to as
a third element of a relicensed SSC, the impact they are having
on those actually working or running a creative business.
Q210 Mr Marsden: Are you saying then
that it does not matter that you have not necessarily got a number
of people on your council from the SMEs because the leadership
which is overall given by the people that you have benefits the
sector overall? Is that what you are saying?
Tom Bewick: The Charities Commission
will tell you that the ideal size of a board is 15 places. There
are 62,000 businesses, the vast majority of whom are small firms,
so I think—
Q211 Mr Marsden: Is that a yes?
Tom Bewick: Yes, it is a yes.
I think it is important to get the leadership right.
Q212 Mr Marsden: Chris, can I just
come back to you and come back to some of the things that Frank
and other people have been saying about employability. The UK
Commission for Employment and Skills, presumably a key aspect
of it is employability and skills, and a lot of things have been
said, not least in previous sessions by people like Alison Wolf
and others, about the way in which there is a danger with all
the targets that pieces of paper qualifications become proxies
for actual employability or the acquisition of skills. Is that
an argument or is that a danger that you recognise?
Chris Humphries: There is no doubt
that employers are looking for both, and Teresa said it. They
are looking for both the appropriate technical skills and the
right attitudes, behaviours and talents that are actually appropriate
for being able to work in a 21st-Century organisation. I think
what we have failed to do is address enough how to build those
employability skills into the work of developing technical skills
by the way we teach and help them learn. These skills are about
the way people do things, not about knowledge, and you can easily
integrate those developments within our existing qualifications
and learning programme structures, and actually that is the work
of the Commission on this. Our first output will be a report on
how to embed employability skills into the way in which people
are taught and learn their technical skills, so we do both at
once.
Mr Marsden: Good.
Q213 Ian Stewart: When we look at
your remit as a commission, employer-led, responsive to employers,
employer demand, in that system government has a voice, employers
have a voice, but how do the individuals have a voice?
Chris Humphries: It is a concern
that I share as well. We have three good, very strong trade union
reps on the Commission. We have Brendan Barber, Dave Prentice
and Graham Smith from Scotland TUC. We have a very strong piece
of work being undertaken with the support of all members of the
Commission, employer and trade union, into what are the barriers
to employee engagement and employee demand, and we are very keen
to make sure that we understand the customer journey, the individual
journey in all of this so that the individual voice gets reflected
into the system as well.
Q214 Ian Stewart: That is fairly
similar to what Lord Leitch said when I asked him the same question.
Why is it, in your view, that there is little or no mention of
trade unions in the literature?
Chris Humphries: I think there
is a danger of not giving enough recognition to the need to have
an agreement, a compact here between the individual, who is working
for the employer, and the employer, who is seeking to give them
work, and of course we have to recognise the individual in all
of that. We know trade unions can play a key role in that, and
there are enough examples of good practice over the last decade
in all of this to know that, when working in partnership, they
can really bring change in the skills arena. I am very much supportive
of getting strong trade union engagement in this, but also we
have to recognise that significant parts of the workforce are
not participating in a trade union, so we have to give the individual
voice recognition too.
Q215 Ian Stewart: Getting that balance
right. Frank, what can the ESBs add to the value and to the delivery
of the Skills Agenda and are they an employer body too far?
Frank Lord: Too far?
Q216 Ian Stewart: Do we actually
need you?
Frank Lord: Absolutely, you need
us, very much you need us because what will be important is that
the employment and skills boards can feed back, and it is looking
at what those mechanisms are for feeding back now because it is
less clear how they will feed back, but, if they do feed back
and they need to feed back, what they will be able to do is to
pick up on a local basis exactly what kind of skills are needed,
what the demands are for skills in those areas and help to influence.
Q217 Ian Stewart: But are the employers
making a good enough contribution to this and, by the way, who
is monitoring what the employers do with the money?
Frank Lord: Well, the partners
around the board are made up from Jobcentre Plus, from the RDA,
from all the voluntary sectors as well as all the agencies, so
it really is a meeting of minds with business partners around
that board.
Q218 Ian Stewart: Is that robust
enough?
Frank Lord: It is because the
actual delivery and commissioning of the work then is joined up
through the agencies and the commissioning bodies represented
on the board, and there are executive groups of that that go away
and report on those activities and those outputs.
Q219 Dr Iddon: Let me stay with you,
Frank, and put it to you that the Government is going to expect
employers to co-fund quite a significant expansion of Level 3
and Level 4 activity.
Frank Lord: Yes.
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