Examination of Witnesses (Questions 580
- 582)
TUESDAY 22 JANUARY 2008
Professor David Metcalf and and Mr Mark Franks
Q580 Lord Vallance of Tummel:
Or where? It is just going to be lists of jobs?
Professor Metcalf: No, because it is not—with
due respect to Lord Lawson—an old-style manpower planning
exercise, because you would get everybody then saying you cannot
do that, but that is not to deny that, for example, the sector
skills council which deals with the utilities—and they are
very exercised presently about the shortage of nuclear engineers,
for example—but also to take electricity linesmen, the people
who string the lines along the pylons, they actually do produce
numbers of how many they need, how many there are and so on. We
are not going to get into that level of detail, but if they are
able to convince us that, yes, for the time being they have not
got the numbers that they require, then we are very likely to
put that on the shortage list, but we are not going to go into
details about regions other than Scotland, which we are tasked
to do. I would wish to talk about regional mismatches because
this is something which exercises people in particular regions
and it is also a very important issue. There is a big issue that
it is quite plausible that if you have big infrastructure projects
in one area, that will suck skills out from other areas which
have consequences for those economies. I want to allude to that,
but we are not presently tasked to properly analyse that.
Q581 Lord Vallance of Tummel:
I still do not understand quite how you can put a particular job
on the list of shortages without having some sort of idea of quantification.
To take an extreme, if there is was just one short it probably
would not get on your list, so is there no threshold in your mind?
Professor Metcalf: I took your question to mean
that we would be producing predictions of the future labour supply
and future labour demand. We are not going to do that, but, for
sure, people will be able to make a much stronger case that there
is a shortage if the fraction of their existing workforce that
they say they are going to demand into the future, and if they
can demonstrate that the demand is there, is much higher. However,
as Lord Turner says, of course one also wants to look at the equilibrating
mechanism and one wants to look at whether or not—because
that is part of our terms of reference—it can be sensibly
filled by immigration, because if you can get a wage response,
then it may very well be that that is a better mechanism to fill
the gap, use the equilibrating mechanism rather than use the immigrants.
Q582 Chairman:
Thank you very much. We have all learned a lot and we are particularly
grateful for the way you have managed to bring your thinking into
your answer, which will enable us to study your answers with great
care afterwards. We are very grateful to you for coming along
and helping us on our inquiry. Thank you very much.
Professor Metcalf: Thank you very much indeed.
|
