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Baroness Wall of New Barnet: My Lords, I, too, am delighted to address the House in this debate and, in particular, to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, who was so kind to me when I made my maiden speech and made delightful comments about my performance. However, I disagree with her view that the terror you feel in speaking in this House applies only to your maiden speech. I can assure your Lordships that in preparing for my post-maiden speech, my nerves are still extremely unsettled.

The gracious Speech, a week ago today, opened with the sentence:

Many noble Lords referred to this statement in the debate last Thursday when addressing the issues of the economy and successful business. In his address to the House, my noble friend Lord Drayson, who is in his place today, put this in the context of,

I want warmly to welcome and to commend in my contribution a separate but related key commitment in Her Majesty's Speech. It states:

One of the key ways of achieving this is by improving the nation's skills and productivity through increasing opportunities for learning and skills development in the workplace.
 
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I suggest that there are three possible ways of doing this, which make the following demands on government, trade unions and employers. The Government must continue to focus resources on front-line delivery in the workplace, to encourage unions and employers to work together and to increase the number and effectiveness of workplace learning opportunities such as union learning representatives. Trade unions must modernise and mainstream learning and skills, and strengthen the voice of the union movement in modern-day workplaces by bringing a coherent approach to all TUC and union education and training activities. Employers must work with sector skills councils and the unions to help drive up demand for relevant and flexible education skills and training in the workplace.

Learning at work is not new, but a quiet revolution in improving the skills of the nation's workforce and the quality of work-based training has been taking place in the early years of the millennium. Our workplaces in the 21st century are our classrooms—the business schools of the shop floor.

Her Majesty also committed our Government to,

I maintain that a key way for this to be delivered is to ensure that opportunity for all is maintained. We currently have 30 million people in paid work.

Moving money to front-line delivery and reforming public services, alongside reducing bureaucracy at work, is essential. The Government must also continue to invest in developing capability and capacity to improve further the quality of learning and opportunity in our workplaces.

May I share with your Lordships the story of a career that began with a teabag? Last week, as Her Majesty delivered her speech in this House, Faye Banks, once written off as factory fodder when she left school at 16 with no qualifications and took unskilled work filling teabags on a production line, was named a young engineer of the year. Her life was transformed through an apprenticeship with a plastics manufacturer that enabled her to gain NVQs and an HNC qualification. Faye is now studying for a Masters degree with the Open University so that she can fulfil her ambition of becoming a chartered engineer and travel the world as a leading machinery designer.

Last week, in his annual report to the Government, the chief inspector of the adult learning inspectorate congratulated work-based learning providers for achieving the best quality training in over three years. He said that "Work-based learning has come of age", pointing out that workplace training providers had taken the call to raise their game very seriously and have learned to work more effectively in partnership with the many organisations involved in vocational education.

Noble Lords may ask why there is a focus on vocational/work related skills and training and the need for change in the workforce. I have talked about some of our Government's successes. However, the UK's key weaknesses are low participation of 16 to
 
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19 year-olds in education and training, referred to by other noble Lords this afternoon, alongside an historic skills deficit in the adult workforce.

If our nation is to aspire to world-class standards, we must measure ourselves against the best in the world. Currently, the UK's performance, compared to what is known as the OECD average, indicates that we fall behind in terms of the number of 17 year-olds enrolled in education and the proportion of 25 to 64 year-olds with skills above level 2.

The Government have tackled many of these things through particular measures. Success for All, in July 2002, introduced reform to the further education sector to improve the supply side. The Skills Strategy, in July 2003, set out a vision for transforming government's national investment in skills, working with employers and trade unions, to create a more demand-led system. I declare an interest in this particular aspect of policy as I work as a trade union consultant.

The Government have also achieved record investment in learning and skills. The Learning and Skills Council budget for 2005–06 is £9.3 billion and will rise to £10 billion in 2007–08.

In addition, the Government commissioned the Tomlinson report, as has been mentioned today. The report, produced in October this year, suggested, among other things, reforming the qualifications system, which will give parity of esteem to what is traditionally referred to as vocational and academic education. That is a very important raising of esteem.

With so much going on in the traditional classroom, it is easy for us to forget that for many of us, our place of learning is, in fact, our workplace. I have shared with your Lordships two anecdotes illustrating this, and I have benefited personally from the opportunities afforded me to gain skills and enhance my learning while being employed in the chemical industry over many years. Alongside opportunities provided during my industrial experience, I have gained considerable skills through my trade union involvement and employment. My story is not untypical of many of the nation's 30 million workers and 7 million trade union members.

Trade unions have a long and successful tradition of involvement in workplace learning. In 1868, the Trades Union Congress was formed. One of its main aims was to improve the technical skills of workers. In 1899, Ruskin College, Oxford, was established. In 1903, the Workers' Educational Association was founded. In 1957, the TUC training college opened to provide shop steward education programmes. In 1977, health and safety representatives were given a legal basis with the right to reasonable time off for training duties.

There are now 150,000 trained union health and safety representatives in the workplace, working in partnership with employers to protect the safety of the organisation and to safeguard the security of all employees whether in the union or not. Few of the 30 million in the workforce can remain unaware of the existence, importance and benefits of all the work carried out by these people. However, what has not
 
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attracted so much public attention or recognition is the quiet revolution that has been taking place over the past seven years to bring about a similar transformation in the workplace in respect of skills and learning, through the establishment of the Union Learning Fund and union learning representatives.

In 1998, the Government's Green Paper The Learning Age established the setting up of a Union Learning Fund. In 2000, the first union learning representatives had been trained and accredited. In 2001, the Employment Relations Act provided statutory recognition for learning representatives. In 1970, for the first time ever, union representatives had a statutory right to represent employees on health and safety issues. Their role was enhanced by the obligation of employers to provide them with paid time off to train and carry out those functions. The health and safety representative movement has had a major impact on making working environments safer. Union learning representatives are now helping to play a similar role in developing a new culture of lifelong learning in the workplace.

Statistics show that in 2004, there are 8,000 union learning representatives working in 4,000 different workplaces. More than 400 innovative projects are being undertaken by 60 different trade unions working with employers and more than 60,000 people receive skills training in the workplace.

In endorsing the Government's policy on skills, which is helping to support the changes to which I have referred, it is important to ensure that the skills revolution is a success. To do so the following actions must be taken. There must be opportunities for all for learning to be as important as security in the nation's workplaces. The Government must continue to focus resources on front line delivery in the workplace to encourage unions and employers to work together and increase the number and effectiveness of union learning representatives. Plans are in place to increase the numbers of union learning representatives to 22,000 by 2010 thereby ensuring that more than 25,000 workers a year receive appropriate information, advice and guidance with their training and development needs.

The trade unions must modernise and mainstream the learning and skills agenda to strengthen their voices in a modern workforce and bring about coherence in training and education activities. There are proposals for the establishment of a union academy owned and run by the trade unions to be set up by 2007. Unions must work together to achieve that. Employers must work with sector skills councils and the unions to help drive up demand for relevant and flexible education skills and training in the workplace. Plans are being developed to ensure that union learning features strongly in the first sector skills agreements to be launched early next year.

The skills strategy published by the Government last summer set out a vision, which it is imperative we realise. We need to bring closer together the worlds of education and employment, learning and work, and classroom and workplace to ensure that the needs of employers are understood and met, so that they are confident that learners are equipped with the necessary skills,
 
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knowledge and attitudes. Likewise, learners, including all those in the workplace to whom I have referred, must be given the confidence that their education and training give them prospects in the future economy and society of our nation.

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