Examination of Witnesses (Questions 402-419)
MR DAVID
LAMMY MP AND
MR STEPHEN
MARSTON
8 OCTOBER 2008
Q402 Chairman: Good morning, everyone.
Good morning to you, Minister. Can we say how delighted we are
that you are with us this morning, we did not quite know whether
you would be here. Thank you and congratulations on your new post
looking after higher education. Can I, on behalf of our Committee,
formally thank you for the work you have done on skills.
Mr Lammy: Thank you.
Q403 Chairman: That is appreciated,
even though we are going to give you a hard time this morning!
Can I welcome also Stephen Marston, the Director General for Further
Education and Skills at DIUS. Welcome to you, Stephen, I think
it is the first time you have been before our Committee but we
are particularly grateful to see you. Minister, when Lord Leitch
produced his report I think there was a fairly sharp intake of
breath in that the picture that Lord Leitch painted about UK skills
was pretty dire. Do you agree with his analysis and his predictions
of what would happen if, in fact, we do not step up to the plate?
Mr Lammy: Phil, I think it is
right to say that for the fifth largest economy in the world it
is completely unacceptable that there are just under seven million
people who have the numeracy skills of round about an 11 year-old
and there are still five million people in Britain who would struggle
to get a grade G in GCSE English. I think we all know the historical
reasons for that. Britain has been a country that has been able
to survive with a small proportion of the country going to universities,
having higher skills. There have been many low-skilled jobs in
the economy, particularly in the north of England with a strong
manufacturing base and former industries. We are in that position
and we are not going to be in that position for 2020. I think
the important thing that I took from Leitch when I started in
the job, and obviously it came in as we did our response to Leitch,
was that this was a target that at that point was 13 years away,
at this point is 12 years away, so that is a long trajectory of
travel. We absolutely have to deal with those people. Today I
am even more convinced by his analysis and the reason I am more
convinced is because, of course, the economic conditions have
changed in the period in which I have been Minister for Skills.
When I think of the factories I have been to over the course of
this last year in the north-east, the north-west, and I was up
with former workers from the Rover plant in the Midlands a few
weeks ago, I think of those men and women in a global downturn
market with lower skills, but I also think of the 2.28 million
people who now have literacy and numeracy as a consequence of
Skills for Life. This is absolutely the right direction of travel.
Q404 Chairman: I think we would agree
as a Committee that the Leitch analysis was a very, very good
piece of work. Given the seriousness of it, and the fact that
by 2020 our competitors will also be upskilling at the same time,
they are not going to stand still while we move upwards, the general
opinion seems to be that if we meet Leitch's targets we will just
be where we are now in 2020 compared with our international competitors,
whether that is right or wrong. Given the urgency of the matter,
and we have counted something like 13 different initiatives have
come out of the government over roughly the last 12 months, consultation
papers, white papers, consultations with employers, where is the
roadmap for all this? Where is the sense of direction?
Mr Lammy: The roadmap was our
response to Leitch and we have got a lot to do. No-one would suggest—
Q405 Chairman: With respect, Minister,
your response to Leitch was to accept his targets. What we are
trying to examine is how you are going to meet those targets.
There seems to have been a plethora of reports rather than a real
sense of action. You think that is unfair?
Mr Lammy: I think that is unfair.
I will bring Stephen in in a minute because, as you can see, I
am itching to answer this. I think it is absolutely unfair to
suggest that the action we are taking on apprenticeships, the
growth we have seen and what we want to see is just a report;
it is not just a report, you just have to speak to the young men
and women doing apprenticeships to know that. It is absolutely
unfair to suggest that the key critical work to Leitch that we
are doing, joining up my Department, DWP, ensuring the Jobcentre
is not just about getting a job but also about progression and
skills as well, dealing with the 16-hour rule, dealing with single
mums, is just a report and not action. Of course, that is action.
We are moving this system, and remember we are moving this system
in response not just to Leitch but also to Foster, to make the
system more demand-led and, therefore, Train to Gain, where we
are putting our money, that billion pounds of spending up to 2011,
that is action and you can see that action on factory floors across
the country. The extra money we are giving to Unionlearn is action.
I do not accept that somehow we are navel gazing and producing
reports. This is absolutely about action on the ground to deliver
against what we know we have got to do.
Q406 Chairman: You have mentioned
there were two areas of risk to the execution of the post-Leitch
agenda. One was engagement with employers, trying to make sure
that employers actually took it up, and today you have got one
in 10 employers who are actually involved with apprenticeships.
The second was to get individual workers, either in work or out
of work, to engage with that. That was the other big danger. Do
you feel the strategies you have got in place are actually coping
with those dangers or are they still real dangers in terms of
the success of this agenda?
Mr Lammy: I would say in a measured
way that Train to Gain is two years old. It came into shape in
April 2006, really got going in September 2006, and that was a
wholesale transformation in meeting that concern that you know
employers have had, "The colleges are not running the courses
we want, it is not responsive to what we need", there is
a disconnect between the local college and what the employer really
needs. We also want Skills Accounts and we are piloting and moving
to Skills Accounts. We also want an adult careers service and
we are piloting and moving to an adult careers service. I do not
want to say that the demand-led landscape is completely finished,
it is not, we are on a journey, and Train to Gain is a big part
of that journey. It is only two years old as a programme but in
those two years it has achieved a lot.
Q407 Dr Gibson: I was going to ask
Stephen, how will you know when it is working? Vision is one thing,
strategy and priorities, all that stuff is very admirable and
great, but how do you know when it is working because many great
schemes just stutter to a halt and have not been picked up early
enough? We are talking in generalities. How will you know whether
it is working or not? When will you hit the button if things are
going wrong? What would make that happen?
Mr Marston: There are two ways
in which we will know. The first is that one of the most important
things about the Leitch Report was that it had quantification
in it, it set targets. To pick up one thing the Chairman said,
Lord Leitch absolutely did not recommend that we carry on as we
are and remain middle of the pack. One of the most important things
he said was that is not good enough and we need to get into the
OECD upper quartile, eighth best in the world. We have got targets
that track year by year by year through to 2020 on what we need
to do if that is what we are going to achieve, so we know whether
it is working in terms of whether we are on track to achieve those
targets.
Q408 Dr Gibson: Kind of league tables,
is it?
Mr Marston: There is a very strong
theme of international comparison in it. That was one of the most
important bits. The wake-up call from Lord Leitch, in a sense,
was for years we had been looking internally at our own national
position and that was the first time when a really rigorous comparison
had been done internationally across all members of the OECD.
That was the wake-up call. We are way behind, we are not narrowing
the gap, other countries have a much better skills base, and if
we do not do something dramatic about it we will not be economically
competitive. That international benchmarking, combined with targets
that over the next 12 years will get us to that OECD upper quartile,
is a key way in which we can track whether we are getting there
or not.
Q409 Chairman: Are we on target at
the moment?
Mr Marston: We have met our interim
targets so far, yes, but some of these trajectories—forgive
me if I get a bit technical—are not flat lined, they pick
up in the later part of the period. Although we are meeting our
interims so far, and David referred to the Skills for Life success,
2.28 million adults and the Level 2, we are on track for those,
it gets steeper and harder from here so there is a lot to do to
keep meeting those targets.
Q410 Mr Boswell: Obviously I am aware
from my previous experience of the intractability of all of this
and I just happened to fish out for idle curiosity the national
targets for 2000, which I have carried ever since I was a minister.
It is not easy, as we all know, although it is entirely worthwhile.
Something you said, Minister, that was interesting was you were
talking about the difficulty of getting employers to engage with
colleges directly, and clearly that has been uneven and is part
of Leitch's concern. Your suggestion was that you needed an intermediary
in the shape of Train to Gain to do that. Also, through the decisions
which are coming through now, for example the aftermath of the
LSC, you are creating a number of other additional bodies. Are
you sensitive at the same time to the problem about proliferation
and confusion and clear pathways for the employer faced with all
of these bodies, most of which I cannot remember what they are
and they are not experts on it, particularly if they are SMEs,
to try and find out the path whereby they can help you contribute
to the targets?
Mr Lammy: Tim, as I would expect,
there are quite a number of issues to unpack in your comments.
I think the first thing to emphasise is what guarantees have we
put into the system for employers over the last short period that
perhaps did not exist in your period in your time. We have got
the new Commission, of course, and you have heard from Chris Humphries.
Have you heard from Sir Mike Rake as well in relation to that?
Q411 Chairman: Yes.
Mr Lammy: That is an independent
voice in the system representing employers at the top table and
unions are on board with them in the Commission to keep us real
to what we say we need to do in terms of Leitch. That is the first
thing. The second thing that has changed dramatically since your
period is that you would have presided over 100 national training
organisations and there was an unbelievable amount of fragmentation
in that period, I think, that we were coming out of and we now
have 25 Sector Skills Councils. They are only five years old.
In a sense, it is easy for us around this table sitting here nationally
in Whitehall, but there are two dimensions to what we are saying
that are really important. One is to say that some sectors are
stronger at qualifications and skills than others.
Q412 Mr Boswell: Yes.
Mr Lammy: If I go to some of the
motor manufacturers within manufacturing, they have a strong history
of investment in this area. If I am talking to the IT sector,
they are doing fairly well. e-Skills are doing very well in this
area. Other sectors traditionally have not been investing and
part of getting them into the Sector Skills Council arena is to
say, "This is serious. You have got to get serious about
this". I am talking about areas like logistics. I have had
conversations recently in terms of the railways and some of the
investment that we need in terms of staff there. Differences between
sectors is the other thing. I also want to say there are big differences
regionally. I go up to—
Q413 Chairman: Yorkshire?
Mr Lammy: I was going to say the
north-east. There are quite deep connections between industry
that is there and local people and schools and we are seeing bigger
take-up within Train to Gain. I then come to London or go down
to the south-east and there is much more fragmentation, coastal
towns, a very different picture indeed. That employer engagement
looks different in different parts of the country, it looks different
across different sectors, but the important thing is to put the
money in that place, to have brokers who are independent negotiating
with companies, to have unions driving this agenda. It is hugely
important to have that voice in the system. It is all of that
that gets us to where we want to be.
Chairman: We will explore some of those
issues as we go through.
Q414 Dr Turner: Do you think the
UK is going to meet the Leitch targets?
Mr Lammy: As I leave this post,
yes, I do.
Q415 Dr Turner: Can you back that
positive statement up with some evidence and tell us where the
students are going to come from to meet these targets?
Mr Lammy: The students?
Q416 Dr Turner: Where are you going
to get them from?
Mr Lammy: I am sorry, I am not
with you on that.
Q417 Dr Turner: How are you going
to recruit the students to train to meet the targets?
Mr Lammy: Do you mean in terms
of the teachers of—
Q418 Dr Turner: The students.
Mr Lammy: I do not quite understand
the question.
Q419 Chairman: The people, either
the students coming out of schools to be skilled or people already
in the workplace, where are they going to come from?
Mr Lammy: That is happening. In
relation to the young people, we have a big commitment to apprenticeships
and there is an appetite there. It fits with what we and colleagues
are doing in the Department for Children, Schools and Families
in relation to their diplomas, and that is happening, the appetite
is there. In relation to adults, you just have to look at the
success of Unionlearn, you just have to look at the numbers who
have grabbed the opportunity presented by Skills for Life, the
success of advertising campaigns that we have run around the gremlins
and now "skills: it's in our hands". The appetite is
there, adults are coming forward and taking up these courses and
there is this rejuvenation of training in the workforce, so in
that sense I have to be optimistic because I have seen the results
of it.
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