Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120
- 125)
TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER 2007
Ms Susan Anderson, Mr Neil Carberry and Mr William
Simpson
Q120 Lord Lawson of Blaby:
No, they are quite different.
Mr Simpson: It is a sign of a dynamic, vibrant
economy that vacancies exist. As people have moved to more productive
occupations, they create a vacancy. As a new position becomes
available, that is a vacancy. It is quite healthy to have vacancies.
Indeed, it used to be the case that the level of vacancies was
correlated with GDP growth.
Lord Sheldon: Thank you.
Q121 Chairman:
I think we had better bring this session to an end, and I am very
grateful to you, but, before we do so, there is one question and
one comment which might be a question. First of all, we should
have asked you and did not on the question of teaching of English
and whether you think it is employers who should pay for it or
somebody else who should pay for it, whether it should be paid
for by taxation or in some other way. That is the first question.
The second is that, whilst you have been very helpful to us, there
is sort of dilemma, certainly in my mind. There is a feeling that
migration is good for employment and so on and yet the CBI wants
to see indigenous British workers take their place. If it is as
good as you say it is, why the devil do you want it phased out?
Ms Anderson: Let us address the issue of language
skills.
Q122 Chairman:
That is the easier one.
Ms Anderson: That is the easier one, yes, while
I am thinking of the answer to the other question. Clearly, the
amount the Government has been spending on English for speakers
of other languages has tripled. I think the figures are from around
£100 million in 2000 to around £300 million in 2005.
I think we would agree that part of that growth or a large part
of that growth is due to migrant workers coming in from other
European states and using the funding available that was probably
designed to help members of the black and ethnic minority community
who do not have adequate language skills. Our view is that, yes,
employers who are benefiting and, indeed, employees who are benefiting
probably should pay more, should accept that they have to pay
more, if not all, of the cost of that language training. But I
would make the point that if we look at groups of Polish and Lithuanians
workers, for example, their standards of English when they arrive,
with English as a second language, are much higher than somebody
from the UK going to France, where they would have a very poor
grasp of French because we do not do language training in the
UK very well. In many states, whether Scandinavia or the A8, English
is very much the language that everybody will learn and levels
of skill are much higher than we would expect of the average UK
worker. They start off with a higher skill level and in some of
the stats, which I am happy to let you have, countries such as
Slovenia, for example, do not just have English, they will have
French or German as well. The UK, of course, is the tail-end Charlie
when it comes to language skill, though we might have a smattering
of very basic French or German if we are lucky. People arrive
with a better skill level and, of course, there is nothing to
replace immersion as a way of acquiring and brushing up on language
skills. The fact that migrant workers are coming into relatively
low-skilled jobs with some ability and they just move forward
in leaps and bounds is not because necessarily they are having
a lot of training courses but because they are immersed in the
world of work and hopefully their communities too and therefore
their language skills just move up. The fact that the Government
is now devising much better fit-for-purpose language courses should
help matters, because often employers and employees need conversation
ability, so there are now more short courses available. I would
applaud what the Government has done in terms of developing these
courses. We accept that employers and employees, migrant workers
themselves, should have to pay more for their courses, but we
do think that many of the migrant workers coming to the UK, from
the A8 countries in particular, start off with good language skills
which can then be brushed up in the labour market.
Q123 Chairman:
I thought there was a slight dilemma in what you were saying right
through the evidence. Your members welcomed migrant workers into
this country because they produced things that employers needed
and yet on the other hand you were also saying—which is
perfectly understandable, but is there not a dilemma?—that
this will be phased out because we will get our skill levels of
our indigenous workers up and they will not really be so necessary.
If it is as beneficial as it is to get migrant workers, why do
employers want to get rid of them at all?
Ms Anderson: I do not think they do want to
get rid of them. Indeed, that will not be possible anyway, because
they will have rights of entry from the new as well as the older
Member States. It is not that we want to get rid of them but we
are saying that for those groups who are outside the labour market
at the moment—because they are claiming incapacity benefit,
for example, or those young people who never enter the labour
market—we cannot afford a situation where, because they
do not have the right skills, they become dispossessed and remain
unattached. That is not good for social cohesion. It is not good
for employers; it is not good for them. We are saying that we
need a twin-track approach: we want to continue to be able to
use migrant workers in order to be able to grow the market, grow
the economy, but we cannot afford to allow those millions who
I talked about on incapacity benefit not to take advantage of
economic growth also.
Q124 Chairman:
When you see the transcript of everything you said, if you want
to add something to it we would be delighted, but you do say in
your written evidence, "We do not believe that migration
is a long-term answer to UK skills issues" and that is what
I am really getting at.
Ms Anderson: Okay.[31]
Q125 Chairman:
May I say, again, thank you very much for coming. You have been
most helpful. I will call this session to an end and thank you
very much.
Ms Anderson: Thank you. We look forward to your
report.
31 Note by Witness: Supplementary submission
from CBI addresses this question. Back
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