Examination of Witnesses (Questions 420-439)
MR DAVID
LAMMY MP AND
MR STEPHEN
MARSTON
8 OCTOBER 2008
Q420 Dr Turner: That is very pleasing,
but if there are any difficulties who is actually taking responsibility
for owning these targets and who is accountable for making sure
that they are actually achieved? Is it yourself?
Mr Lammy: Yes, we are accountable.
The Government is accountable and DIUS is accountable. We set
the targets and we are accountable to the public and yourselves,
but obviously we are partners in this enterprise. The Commission
is a partner with us, the Learning and Skills Council in a sense
has been a success, it has met the targets we have asked it to
meet, but we are moving into a different horizon. Just to touch
on the other aspect of Tim's question, that different horizon
is a horizon where the Bill I took through with Jim Knight was
about raising the leaving age in terms of young people in employment
or training up to 18. That is a new horizon and that is why it
is right to put local authorities in the driving seat of these
arrangements, but also moving to a more slim-line system building
on the success of Train to Gain, so we have got a new funding
agency, more streamlined, more attuned to the needs of business
and, therefore, ensuring the money gets to places quickly and
can drive up those skill levels.
Q421 Dr Turner: How do you address
the question of skills as against qualifications because they
are not necessarily the same thing?
Mr Lammy: Yes.
Q422 Dr Turner: You can have highly
skilled people who do not have any paper qualifications and people
with the highest paper qualifications in the world who have no
practical skills. How are you addressing this?
Mr Lammy: I am really passionate
about this question. I want to put my terms in complete politics
here. I want to ask the Committee not to unpick the good work
that Leitch has done and the consensus that we reached on this.
All of us in this room have qualifications. If we lose our seats
at the next election we will present our CVs, we will have our
qualifications and we will move on and hopefully get another job.
I am absolutely committed here politically that we must not deny
those millions of people I talked about previously who do not
have qualifications. Let us go back before Leitch. In the end
what Leitch was challenging was short courses where you got nothing
at the end to show for what you had done. What he was challenging
and trying to balance was purely the individual business interest
of doing something but not actually being able to measure what
you have done. This is not just about the Government saying qualifications
for qualifications' sake, it is not just about saying we have
got to have a benchmark and proxy by which we can see against
other countries where we are in the system, it is about understanding
that if you look at those people within Train to Gain in the workforce
who have taken up courses, they largely come from social economic
groups D and E. These are the poorest people in the country. I
absolutely stand by qualifications because my attitude is very
much that if it is good enough for us, it is good enough for everybody
else.
Mr Marston: Earlier in the year
we published some research evaluation of the impact of Train to
Gain to both learners and employers. When we asked the learners
in Train to Gain what they saw as the most important benefit for
them, 93% of them said it was about gaining a qualification. From
the learner's point of view the qualification is immensely important
and, as David said, is most important for the people who have
no qualifications yet. The boost to confidence, to motivation,
to self-esteem is very, very powerful from getting a qualification
and you do not achieve that if you only get the skills and they
are not badged and certificated and recognised through a qualification.
Just as importantly, when you ask employers what do they see as
the benefit, they are also seeing the benefit in their own companies
from employees getting qualifications because it changes the motivation,
the commitment to the company, the sense that the employer is
willing to invest in their own employees and they are demonstrating
it through giving the opportunity to achieve qualifications. There
is a very powerful synergy and joint benefit if skills are certificated
through qualifications.
Chairman: We need to challenge you on
that one. We simply cannot let you get away with that!
Q423 Dr Turner: Are you happy that
given you achieve both skills and qualifications in the same person
those skills are then being put to best use?
Mr Lammy: In the end what I think
we are trying to do is make the funding available and the system
conducive to people coming forward who have low skills but no
qualifications to be able to do that. The measure of success is
a trade-off between them and their employer. We know that it makes
you more productive, of course it does. Clearly if you can now
read, write and add-up, when you could not, and if you can now
pursue something at Level 2 or, indeed, Level 3 within your company
then it is a success. If you speak to someone like Neil Scales
at Merseytravel he will say the qualifications that his employees
have been able to do have transformed that business. He will also
say it is not easy, they are now more demanding and more challenging
of him as the director of that company. I think that is the measure
of success.
Q424 Dr Turner: In addition to Train
to Gain employees, and that is clearly understood, do you think
there is any further need for training and development of attitudes
of employers?
Mr Lammy: Yes, there absolutely
is. There are two sides to that. One is the new Commission, and
clearly the leadership role the new Commission has. Two is the
role of Sector Skills Councils, the re-licensing, refocusing of
their activity understanding that it is still patchy in certain
sectors. I do just want to put this fundamental point on the table
before Phil comes back in because I can see he is itching to come
back in on this. Let us remember that our business industry organisations
spend £38 billion on training every year in this country
and we as a Government spend round about £4 billion, so the
issue is not us saying that we are the biggest player on training
and skills, it is saying we have this £4 billion, how best
should we use it to lever in change in the system. It is our judgment
post-Leitch that the best way to use that spend is on low skills,
to change the system to be more demand-led. That demand-led does
not just mean employer-led or we would not be giving the money
we are giving through Unionlearn to our unions. That is how we
should be using those limited funds, taxpayers' money, in the
areas where we think employers would not put it, to change the
system.
Q425 Dr Turner: How well-informed
and accurate do you think the information is concerning both the
current skills picture and future skills needs? Who is responsible
for obtaining and collating this information?
Mr Lammy: Clearly the Learning
and Skills Council has had an important role in this area. We
have not yet mentioned the role of Regional Development Agencies
who are key partners regionally and perform key assessments of
both skills gaps and skills priorities in their regions that we
are responsive to. We have now Multi-Area Agreements. In Manchester
they are taking skills very seriously, and in Birmingham in terms
of their Local Area Agreement they are taking skills very seriously.
The system is responsive to those priorities and gaps as and when
they emerge. I do want to say to you in the global downturn that
we are seeing that of course you would expect us to say that we
want to make sure that the taxpayers' money we have is there working
alongside colleagues in DWP. Should people be laid off, should
there be redundancies, should there be re-skilling, we want to
make sure the systems are in the right place for them. We will
be doing all we can and we are sitting round the board of the
National Economic Council to make sure that skills training and
money is there and responsive to those needs.
Mr Marsden: I wonder if I could just
come back to you on this vexed issue of skills and qualifications
because I entirely agree with everything you have said, that it
is not a question of qualifications for some of us and vague skills
for the rest of us, I absolutely agree with that. I am talking
now from having met a group of north-west providers and FE college
heads last week who are deeply concerned that what is going on
at the moment with this process is that providers are, to a large
extent, certificating skills that already exist in the workplace,
and that is valuable, but they are not adding to it. There is
also some evidence that the target driven nature of Train to Gain
is making one or two providers cut corners. I heard one example
of an NVQ being delivered in a day, which I thought was horrifying
if it is true. How do we move beyond the valuable activity of
certificating by qualifications skills that are already there
to actually developing further skills which, indeed, in due course
may lead to qualifications?
Q426 Chairman: Before you answer,
can I just add to that. We heard on Monday, for instance, in our
look at the draft Apprenticeship Bill that most apprentices are
already in work and what is happening is that those skills and
training which they are receiving in work, somebody is now coming
in to assess that and moves them on to an apprenticeship, but
there is no gain as far as the employer is concerned in terms
of skills because they are already delivering them and all this
is really just a bean counting exercise to meet government targets.
Will you wrap all that together?
Mr Lammy: I will wrap all that
together. Phil, who suggested that on Monday? I did not read Monday's
papers.
Q427 Chairman: Our witness. You can
read the transcript.
Mr Lammy: It is complete nonsense.
Q428 Chairman: Will you confirm that
the majority of apprenticeships are actually delivered in the
workplace with existing employees?
Mr Lammy: Of course they are.
Mr Marston: That does not mean
there is no skills development.
Mr Lammy: It is total and utter
nonsense.
Q429 Chairman: I am talking about
value-added. We are paying taxpayers' money to improve the skills
base.
Mr Lammy: Phil, please, let me
just finish on this. I feel so strongly about this. In the Apprenticeship
Bill we are seeking to make absolutely legislatively clear the
quality we believe an apprenticeship has to be. The first thing
to say is that apprenticeships are now operating across many,
many more sectors of the economy and, depending on the kind of
apprenticeship you do, there is a different balance between how
much time you are spending in the workplace and how much time
you are spending in college, but absolutely you are spending time
in the workplace. The other thing to say is if we want to see
more small businesses do apprenticeships then inevitably the apprenticeship
contract will sometimes sit with a group training association,
if you like, or a college provider structure because the small
business has not got the wherewithal, frankly, to take on all
of that. Then you get some of our opposition colleagues suggesting
that is not an apprenticeship, but, of course, it is an apprenticeship.
It is simply understanding that this small 15 man business in
Derby needs to be in a real partnership with the local college
in order to put on this apprenticeship and have a model where
small businesses can partake. That is the second point. The third
thing to say is that of course we acknowledge there are programme-led
apprenticeships. They are not counted in the figures but there
are programme-led apprenticeships where young people who are not
yet ready for an apprenticeship—young people who are being
supported by the Prince's Trust, by Fairbridge or by the YWCA,
young people who have drug issues or have had crime issues—are
based in the college, of course, in transition to an apprenticeship.
We must not somehow throw these young people aside and say this
is not an important stepping stone to doing an apprenticeship.
Many of these young people are in constituencies like mine, so
I feel very passionately about this, but they are not in the figures.
There absolutely is a work-based component to being on an apprenticeship.
It is not a bean counting exercise, this is a real, real exercise.
Chairman: Very briefly, Stephen, because
we must move on.
Q430 Mr Marsden: Chairman, I would
like to respond very briefly.
Mr Marston: I just wanted to pick
up Mr Marsden's question is there a risk that this is simply a
way of badging skills we already have. In the main we are pretty
confident that is not what is happening, there is real skills
development going on here and this is not just about badging the
skills people already have, they are training and getting new
skills. The evidence we have got for that comes from the surveys
we have done of both learners and employers where, of the learners
through Train to Gain, 81% said, "The Train to Gain training
has given me skills to do a better job in the future", 73%
said, "Train to Gain has given me skills to do my current
job better", 43% are getting better pay out of it, 30% got
promotion. If there is no skills gain going on, why would the
recipients, the trainees, say, "I am getting new skills for
this job, for a future job. My employer thinks it is worth paying
me more. My employer is willing to promote me"? All of that
is evidence that there is a genuine gain of skills that is making
people more productive and able to do their jobs better. This
is not just about badging skills they already have, it is giving
them new skills and the data is showing that.
Chairman: It is important we put that
on the record.
Q431 Ian Stewart: Firstly, your assertion
that all politicians in the room have qualifications is not correct.
However, I wholeheartedly agree with your statement that we should
be promoting the opportunity for everyone. By the way, I also
think that should apply to MPs, that we should have the opportunity
to train and learn in this place and we do not currently have
that. In relation to two of the key issues of the Government's
strategy, employer-led and demand-led, we interviewed and questioned
the CBI, British Chambers of Commerce and the Federation of Small
Businesses earlier this week and certainly my personal view is
There is no uniform employer as is, their views about the Government
strategy and what their requirements and demands are different
from the different organisations representing different types
of employer. I was left with concerns about whether the small
business sector really wants qualifications at all and really
wants training and qualifications that are transferable. My understanding
from Monday's session was that at the smaller end of the scale
particularly they just want the employee to be able to do the
job that they want them to do at that point in time. First of
all, can you define for me "demand-led"? Secondly, how
do you balance the demands of individuals, employers and national
policy? Should this vary between skills level or sectors?
Mr Lammy: My definition of "demand-led"
is the Leitch definition. It is a definition that challenges suppliers
to be more responsive to both individuals and employers. Inevitably,
we are concentrating in this session at this time on employers
and that is largely because of Train to Gain. In a couple of years
we will be talking more about individuals because of the individual
Skills Accounts that will be there for people and because of the
adult careers service. Demand, in a sense, is coming from the
people themselves, whether it is people within the workforce or
people simply wanting to go into colleges, but moving colleges
from where they are at. I come back to the point I made earlier,
and it is to agree with you. £38 billion is being spent by
business and industry organisations on skills, but a third of
UK business is spending nothing at all on skills. There is a tension
in many, many businesses of self-interest, narrow interest, short-term
interest, which can be about just the skills you need for their
business. There are some other things I need to put on the table
here. One is the simplification of the system in relation to our
further qualification and curriculum reform moving to a more modular
system, the QCF piloting, that gives that mobility and transparency
we need in the system. Two is to emphasise the point that I made
previously about qualifications. The first thing I did when I
came into post was to increase the amount of money for leadership
and management for particularly the owners of small businesses.
I took the view that increasing that spend was important because
if the owners themselves have gone on a course, and we are fairly
flexible about what they think they need as a owner, there is
quite a lot of flexibility about that, they get the bug, they
realise what it did for them and take their employees with them.
The evidence was coming through that that was the case. We increased
that amount to get owners themselves on that journey.
Q432 Ian Stewart: I think we can
all support the enthusiasm that you personally have and the aims
of the Government in enthusing people to train and gain skills,
but the commitment of employers is not unquestioned. Some academic
researchers are actually questioning what is being presented as
employer-led equalling employer commitment, both commitment to
the strategy and financial commitment. There are questions about
that. What evidence have you got that employers will play their
part financially? Are the CBI, the British Chambers of Commerce
and the Federation of Small Businesses fully signed up to the
Government's implementation of Leitch?
Mr Lammy: That is a fair question.
Ian, one, I say it is a 2020 vision. Two, the spend that employers
are putting into training is going upwards at the moment, it is
going in the right direction. Three, we as a Government, you are
right—let us get to the heart of the politics of this—in
the absence of levies, because that is the politics of it, let
us be clear about it, it is the elephant in the room that has
not been put on the table yet, are putting drivers in the system
to encourage those employers who have been more reluctant. That
is what the right to request time for training is about. In the
same way that people have requested flexible working, it is putting
the power in the hands of the individual to say to their employer,
"I would like to do some training". We are doing that.
We are giving people individual Skills Accounts so they can see
the quality of learning and have a portfolio of learning that
is in their name. We are giving them an adult careers service
so that in a market in which jobs may well come and go people
can see and hear and get that information and guidance that has
not been in the system. At the same time, we are working with
our unions through Unionlearn to be on the factory floor, to not
have government ministers proselytising about learning, but to
have your colleague nudging you saying, "I did it, you can
do it". This is not some sort of top-down Train to Gain,
this is lots of activity within that.
Q433 Ian Stewart: Let me just press
you on that. We had Lord Leitch before us and I pressed him as
to the role of trade unions, for example, and he was effusive,
he said they play an absolutely key and fundamental role. Then
I asked him why then was there little or no mention of trade union
involvement and commitment within the Leitch Report itself. I
pointed out to him that the TUC was mentioned on about the second
to last page. David, how do you square your unprompted mention
of trade unions and their involvement and where do education providers
and trade unions fit into this triangle? It is now being articulated
by you, but why is it not in the written material?
Mr Lammy: As you know, I have
tried to emphasise always the work of trade unions. Spend has
gone up in relation to the money that we are giving to trade unions.
Trade unions are critical to this discussion as far as I am concerned,
absolutely critical, and will remain critical over the next 12
years it seems to me. I was in the Boots Distribution Centre in
south-east London, which is a centre that is going to be closing
down, and unions have played a critical role in giving those folk
skills training that many of those people thought they would never
be able to do. I have got to go back to Foster. Foster said in
his report: "There are highly conflicting needs and interests
in the sector between employers, learners and government, all
and none of them are being met". He questioned the rationale
of those courses without their apparent connection to employers.
Now, go back to 2005 before we had Train to Gain. We are pushing
providers to move in a particular direction and I do not want
to see us go back to the picture that Foster painted. I say that
Train to Gain is critical, Unionlearn is critical, the individual
learner and their empowerment, whether it is through the right
to request time to train or the Skills Account, is critical.
Q434 Ian Stewart: Can I stop you
there and pose the question again. At the outset I said that some
researchers are questioning the commitment of employers within
an employer-led system and employers' commitment financially as
well. The concern they seem to have is that the employer commitment
is not stabilised, is not growing, it may even go backwards and
the Government may end up increasing its financial commitment
to make sure all this works. How do you ensure that does not happen?
Mr Marston: I do not think the
data bear that out. Every couple of years we do a national employers'
skills survey and, as David mentioned, employers' own money investment
is going up, it has gone up from about £33 billion to £38
billion now, and an increasing proportion of employers have training
plans, an increasing proportion of employers have training budgets.
There is a lot more to do. It is a big mountain we are trying
to climb, but we are going in the right direction. We are confident
that the more we can show to employers that we are serious about
meeting their needs, we are not just foisting on them things that
we think are good for them and they do not agree, we are trying
to do things, training, skills, qualifications, that have real
value and merit for them, and if they believe that then more and
more of them will be willing to engage in that.
Q435 Mr Marsden: On that point, could
I just say to Mr Marston that I think it would be extremely helpful
if you could provide the Committee with factual detailed analysis
of how those figures were obtained. I can only say, and I think
I probably speak for other colleagues, there is a deep, deep scepticism
out there among training providers, FE principals and many other
people (a) that that has increased and (b), perhaps more importantly,
that it will increase. Perhaps, David, that is where I come to
you. You have rightly mentioned about the downturn situation and
we are planning for the long-term, but there is a short-term,
medium-term problem with employers, is there not, in that it is
going to be very difficult to get them to put the sort of increased
investment that you want to see, which we all want to see, in
the next couple of years given the economic downturn. If that
is the case, what flexibility, and this has been suggested to
me by a number of people, has the Government got for doing some
sort of deal with them where it says, "We'll do a bit of
funding in the first year but you have really got to plough in
in years two and three"?
Mr Lammy: There are two questions
there. The first is when you mentioned providers, college principals,
and there is deep scepticism, I have got to say I would be surprised
if there was not some deep scepticism from providers and suppliers
because we are forcing them to be more responsive to employers
who were grumbling previously that they were not doing the courses
that were necessary in the workplace. That is what politics is
about, it is that people are going to be a little bit sceptical
of the direction of travel because the pendulum in politics always
wants to swing back to the status quo and the status quo was what
Foster and Leitch were writing about.
Q436 Mr Marsden: Forgive me, David,
I am not going to completely let you get away with that.
Mr Lammy: It is true though.
Q437 Mr Marsden: A lot of the college
principals, and particularly the north-west we are talking about,
are people who have engaged very strongly with employers in the
past. They are not saying they are not engaging with them, they
are merely saying they are sceptical either about their willingness
or their ability, which is perhaps more important in the present
circumstances, to put more money in.
Mr Lammy: Okay. On that second
point, both to the point that Ian and yourself were making passionately,
I am not sitting here saying all employers are playing ball, I
am not sitting here saying all employers are investing in skills
and training of their employees, I am not saying that. I am saying
I am trying to better the system, we are putting in levers and
those levers do stop short of levies for employers. We have been
absolutely clear on that, but also said we will revisit that at
the appropriate point.
Q438 Mr Boswell: That is the nuclear
deterrent, is it?
Mr Lammy: No, because that brings
with it other arguments about does that really work and you can
then get into arguments about employers becoming complacent about
skills because there is a pot of money over here. That is another
future discussion that the Committee may want to explore. In the
absence of that I am trying to indicate to you that we are applying
pressure in lots of different places. In relation to what you
are saying about this global downturn, of course it is right to
say that there are some sectors that will be affected by this
and certainly I have had representations from not all but parts
of the construction sector. I have had representations from parts
of the retail sector. There are other sectors—IT—where
growth is expected to continue, for example, and there are strong
parts of our manufacturing base because it is in the high skilled
technology area where also growth is expected. Across 25 sectors
of the economy you would not expect it to be uniform. Indeed,
someone said to me the other day, "This must mean that apprenticeships
are not going to arise". Do not forget, for example, with
apprenticeships we are also saying that we as the Government and
the public sector need to pull our weight, so we have got to see
huge growth in public sector apprenticeships and I do not think
the economic downturn should really be affecting that. Flexibility
was behind your question and you are absolutely right, there has
to be flexibility. We are moving in that direction with the compacts
that we are signing with individual Sector Skills Councils where
we are getting into the nitty-gritty of what is required in your
particular sector that is relevant for your particular sector.
There are some sectors where they want to place the emphasis,
for example, on higher skills and we are responsive there with
Level 3. There are some sectors where there is a quid pro quo
on apprenticeships, and we are willing to do that. We must always
keep in mind, of course, the taxpayers' priority in this discussion
and, broadly speaking, as I say, they were underlining and support
Leitch.
Q439 Chairman: Can I just ask you
one thing, David. We have spent nearly an hour on these first
three questions and we have a lot to go through, so if we can
all speed up. That is not a criticism because we are enjoying
very much the discussion with you. My concern about this whole
agenda, and Des, Tim, Gordon and Ian have raised it, is in terms
of the Leitch agenda he was looking ahead to 2020 and the sorts
of skill levels that we will need in order to be able to compete
in an economy in 2020 and we do not know it will look like. We
have really got to up the skill level. He also made the point
that 70% of the 2020 workforce has already left school and is
actually in the workplace or in some employment. Whilst the whole
business of Skills for Life is making sure people with no qualifications
get those, nobody around this table would disagree with you, the
real challenge is what do we do for those people who are in work
who want and need the skills of tomorrow but the employer does
not see those as relevant to his business? How do we incentivise
those? How do we get the people with Level 3 skills to actually
re-skill in areas where the Government says, "Our policy
says first we will fund Level 3, but we will not fund anything
else"? How do you ensure these 20,000 degrees that are going
to be co-funded by employers? Where is that coming from? As a
Committee we cannot see where the commitment is from people to
invest (a) in individuals where there is no real benefit to their
business or (b) why they would invest in higher education because
there is no evidence to say that would happen. Where is your evidence
that this is all going to happen? Do you appreciate the point
I am making?
Mr Lammy: I do appreciate the
point you are making. I suppose I am prompting you to look further
because I am saying that clearly you have to look at the Skills
Accounts that we are piloting and you will want to take an interest
in that.
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