Industrial Training Levy (Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2026

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her helpful and informative remarks. Skills and training are crucial for Britain, struggling to keep her place in a very competitive global market, and this board is a great and important player in British skilling. It is a good measure and I think that £243 million are involved somewhere in the helpful notes that the department has offered us.

I have some questions that I think might be answered by officials. Very briefly, what is the current grand total of construction apprenticeships for the latest year available? Are there graduate apprenticeships in this industry, and in what numbers? Is the department satisfied with its health and safety record, given the nature of the industry that we are considering?

I find that this proposal brings memories which I think are relevant to anyone considering the future of this great industry. It was the case that, in the early 1980s, big changes were made in these boards. I recollect that, in the other place, the Secretary of State, James Prior, was helped by a Parliamentary Secretary by the name of Morrison.

Time and again, after 10 pm and with three-line Whips, we had orders to abolish board after board—to the point where, although the Opposition of whom I was a part always voted against abolition in this instance, the Government usually had their way. All that was left of these training boards were the great engineering board and the construction industry board. It seems that the start of the problems that Britain now faces around skills and training relates to the decisions taken by the then Government in voting that always happened after 10 pm and went on until midnight. The Government of the day had a good majority, so they got their way.

When I was in the other place, I found that builders were very much against what was proposed in having these issues put on them. I found that, in an era of mass unemployment in the early 1980s, it was very obvious that the apprenticeship boards were being closed down. Even the great companies of Courtaulds, BAE and British Steel pretty well decided not to have apprenticeships. The bottom line was: what was to be made if there were to be any chances of what I would call advantages from the great loss to Great Britain and to our young people? If we look back to those years—the late 1970s and, in particular, the early 1980s—there were great problems.

I hope that the questions I have asked will be answered before the end of the debate.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Jones; his long and extensive memories of the issues here really highlighted the depth and length of the problem that is the background to this statutory instrument.

I thank the Minister for her introduction, which was very clear. I also commend the impact assessment—my plaudits go to the people who prepared it—because it is far better than those that we see for many of these SIs. It sets out a picture of an industry, the construction industry, which is in deep trouble when we need it to be tackling the incredibly poor quality of housing stock in particular and building stock more generally, for which the building in which we are standing might be taken as a symbol. We have here an SI whose proposals, to quote the impact assessment, “include little change” for 2026 compared with 2025. The problems are much broader; an industry training levy can tackle only so much.

I have some questions for the Minister; I will understand if she wants to write to me rather than respond from the Dispatch Box. Paragraph 13 of the impact assessment highlights the heavy reliance on subcontracting and self-employment. This is associated with very poor levels of mental health in the construction sector. The figures on suicide and attempted suicide among employees in the sector, who are often on very low wages and in very insecure employment, are deeply concerning.

That is a huge human problem, but it is also a huge problem for the workforce. As the impact assessment says:

“The industry is very cyclical, with drops in output and employment when there is an economic downturn”.


I recall being at a National Insulation Association conference, in 2011, I believe, when it basically said that the industry was closing down because government funding for it had stopped, and that all its most skilled people were going off to do something else and probably would not come back when there was an uplift.