Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 15th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

I rise to support this amendment. This is such an important issue, but I can see that is difficult as well.

When I started teaching, which was many years ago, in Coventry, it was very clear which provider offered which course. The advantage was that it was very straightforward for children and schools to know where to go for catering, engineering, electronics or whatever. The disadvantage was that it squeezed out competition, which can raise standards and creativity. It is somehow getting that balance that we are looking for. I would welcome the Minister explaining how far the Government are prepared to go to make sure that there is some sort of co-ordinated provision within each skills partnership. It makes sense to allow providers to play to their strengths and it is also essential that courses that might not be economically viable but are important for the local or indeed the national economy are supported to stay open and be made available. So it is a tricky issue and I cannot recall so far in the debate on this amendment hearing the Minister outline the Government’s views on this.

To bring universities in, my noble friend Lady Wilcox made a very strong point. In the old days, it was just further education courses that were co-ordinated, but now we have a growth in private providers and universities in these contested levels as well. So in the name of clarity for students and users, and for the needs of the economy, we need some guidance from the Government about a co-ordinated approach, making sure all areas are covered. Basically, what happens is that all providers want to provide the cheap courses, and the machinery-heavy courses do not get offered. Schools are happy to go into vocational work, as long as it is classroom-based and they do not need specialist teachers. That very often leaves the college with the courses that need highly specialised tutors and heavy equipment. I would welcome the Minister somehow making sense of all that in her comments.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

I support what my noble friends Lady Wilcox and Lady Morris have said. I strongly support the case for more co-ordination. It is not clear to me, in the Bill, how this is going to work, and I would like to hear an explanation from the Minister of how she thinks co-ordination will be made to work at a local level. The idea that a Secretary of State sitting in London can get into the question of which school should offer which course and how we deal with the problem that my noble friend Lady Morris described is not going to work.

There is the Education and Skills Funding Agency. In the period when I briefly had something to do with it—when I was advising my noble friend Lord Mandelson, when he was Business Secretary in charge of skills—I did not get the impression that that body had the capacity to do this job of co-ordination. It was basically responsible for making sure that public money was handled in an accountable way. What I would love to hear from the noble Baroness is an explanation of how central government intends to approach this question of co-ordination at local level. In my view—and here there is a big lacuna in the Bill—this is most effectively done by councils and mayoral authorities. It should be a devolved matter; it is an opportunity, in my view, to strengthen devolution within England. I do not sense that the noble Baroness shares that view. Perhaps she will explain to us, if she does not share that view, how she thinks this task of co-ordination will be carried out.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I intended to support Amendment 40A. I am not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Baker, intends to move it. Has it dropped out of the system? I was not informed.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Rogan) (UUP)]

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is not in the Chamber so I call the noble Lord, Lord Liddle.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. However, I would just like to say, with great respect to the noble Baroness, that she did not answer the question I asked her on the first amendment. Nor was it a great reassurance to me to be told that Cumbria has been chosen as one of the pilot areas and responsibility placed in the hands of the chamber of commerce. I will explain that in a moment because it is relevant to this amendment.

If you are to have an effective local body that represents private sector and public sector employer interests, first, it has to have a clarity of focus on a particular labour market and, secondly, it has to be broadly representative of the businesses in the area. The chamber of commerce in Cumbria, taking this as an example, does a lot of good work with SMEs. It does a lot of training. It basically finances itself through doing local training courses for junior and middle managers, I would say. However, it has absolutely no connection with our major employers in the county: Vickers in Barrow, or the nuclear industry in west Cumbria—that is 20,000 workers to start with. In the area that I represent in Cumbria, there is a firm called Innovia, although its ownership has changed, that makes plastic films and employs about 1,000 people in a small town, but again it has very little connection with the chamber of commerce. The same would be true of the big firms in Carlisle such as Pirelli, which manufactures tyres, and Carr’s, which is now part of a wider biscuit group. I do this little bit of local storytelling because I do not think that putting skills planning in the hands of a chamber of commerce will prove to be a satisfactory solution. I want to see an employer-led approach—I agree with that—but we need to think about how we make this work more deeply than it seems to me the Government have. The areas do have to be relevant.

That is all I have to say, although I could add one point. In 2010, the coalition Government abolished the regional development agencies on the basis that they were not sufficiently employer led and that they were too bureaucratic and covered too big an area. They replaced them with something called local enterprise partnerships. These were intended to be employer led. Initially, in Cumbria everybody said, “Good idea: let’s have the chamber of commerce being the main private sector representative.” Eventually—and this is not a party-political thing at all—it was recognised all round that this body did not actually represent the proper mix of big and small employers. We have a reasonably effective local enterprise partnership running, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood—one of the great figures of Cumbria who was a Member of the European Parliament on two separate occasions for the north-west area. He has tremendous local credibility and does a very good job. The LEP has looked at skills and done a lot of work on skills. I hear no mention of what the Government intend to do with local enterprise partnerships. They seem to be too scared to say, or too unwilling to say. I do not know quite what is going on there. I have no confidence that the Government have a grip on this. On the principle that there should be a strong, employer-led presence in determining skills policy, I totally accept that. But I just do not think the Government have thought it through.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Rogan) (UUP)]

I call the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green. The noble Lord is not online, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley.

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[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

I wholly support what my noble friend Lady Morris has said. There is an emphasis on local skills plans, but even if they are working well with good representation from across the board of employers, we are not certain in the Government’s plans how that will happen. So the first problem is whether these bodies will be representative. The second problem is whether they will have the capacity. My fear—which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas—is that even if they are good at it, they will focus on present needs rather than future ones. In a rapidly evolving economy, with artificial intelligence changing everything in the next 10 or 20 years, our education and skills system has to have some leadership from the centre to indicate how education and skills needs are going to change.

There is nothing terribly socialist about this kind of idea. When it comes to government investment in research and innovation, we have elaborate national structures that look at what the key technologies are going to be and invest in what they decide are likely to be the key innovations of the future. If you are doing that with technology and science, do you not also have to think in those terms for education and skills? I find no evidence in this Bill that the Department for Education—I am not going to criticise Ministers—has that long-term vision.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 85 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Blackstone, to which I have added my name. Before doing so, I should say that I support Amendments 15 and 33 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and my noble friend Lady Garden of Frognal. I agree with all the remarks that have been made to date in this group.

I do not often quote a former Conservative Education Secretary so I will take this opportunity to do so, not least because I am in complete agreement with what he says. In the debate last Tuesday, the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, asked:

“How can you fashion an education system if you have no idea what your national economy wants in the way of skilled workers?”—[Official Report, 6/7/21; col. 1236.]


I suppose it is a rhetorical question but it one against which there can be very little argument, particularly given the turmoil of the previous 16 months when the workplace has been turned on its head and changes to working practices that had appeared decades away happened, quite literally, overnight.

There is in addition the urgency of the transformative overhaul that we now know to be necessary to align all sectors of the economy to net-zero targets for carbon and our biodiversity goals. The green jobs task force, which was set up under the 10-point plan, published a report just yesterday—one of a raft of relevant government reports—which says:

“The conclusion reached by this assessment of the evidence is that, if the UK is to grasp the opportunities afforded by a green industrial revolution, we must develop a comprehensive and holistic view of the green jobs and skills challenge.”


A few paragraphs later the report recommends:

“A UK-wide body, including representation from national government and industry, should therefore be established to maintain momentum and coherence in the workforce transition, supported by action from local bodies.”


To me, that reads like a call for a national strategic skills audit, with a focus on aligning with our climate change and biodiversity targets. I think that Amendment 85 would meet that recommendation rather neatly. The purpose of the amendment is to create a structure for an expert panel to provide strategic, evidence-based advice on the skills that employers need now and in future, through a skills audit. It would allow the expert panel to assess economic, social and technical levers, and to disseminate high-quality information to key stakeholders. That in turn would allow all stakeholders, including learners and workers, to make well-informed decisions to support a robust green economic recovery, and would ensure that future skills and qualifications are aligned with the net-zero and nature-positive economy. Lastly, a three-yearly review would keep it up to date and relevant.

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[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I find myself in a difficult situation with these amendments. I listened carefully to the Minister responding to the last group of amendments, and I feel that she was right: a lot of what noble Lords are rightly concerned about ought to appear in the guidance. I do not want the Bill to be overly complicated, with every prescriptive concern, but I do want an assurance from the Minister that the guidance will address some of the valid points made by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and others.

While I have the Floor, I am concerned about the view that, somehow, employers will not be looking ahead. That is not my experience of dealing with employers. They are concerned; they have had to look ahead. Like hanging, the pandemic has concentrated their minds wonderfully, but it was also happening beforehand. Look at all the work in establishing new standards, where employers are involved; they are taking into account their future skills needs and that new green skills will be required.

The Minister was right to remind us about the vitally important work that jobcentre coaches are doing. I would not say that I am absolutely satisfied they have got all of that right, but they are on the right track to ensuring that young people are aware of the skills that they will need in a job market that is changing significantly. We know what some of these are already; we know they need a reasonable standard of maths, English and digital skills—they are absolutely essential. Some of them are fully equipped, certainly on the digital skills front, while others will need some extra assistance and training. The Minister referred to lifelong learning, and we also have traineeships and Kickstart, so there are a number of things the Government are providing. Is everything working absolutely right? No, there are things that I believe—as I have said in a previous debate —need reform, and the apprenticeship levy is one.

I urge the House to be wary of trying to load up the Bill with every single detail. The Minister was right when she said that there is a role for guidance. If there needs to be a reference within the Bill to the fact that some of these points will be covered in the guidance, that is all well and good. I attach a lot of importance to the guidance.

I do not share the pessimism of some that this is a badly framed Bill that will not involve local people as it should. Of course we are going to go through a learning curve, as the participants in creating the local skills improvement plans develop the technique of doing this. What the Government should do on a national level is encourage best practice, looking at examples of where it has been done really well and passing that kind of information on. I suspect I may be in the minority here, but it is no bad thing to have a range of views. I hope that, when the Minister responds, she will take into account the points I have made—she has also made them before—about the balance of what is in guidance and what needs to be in the Bill.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, we should all take notice of what my noble friend Lord Young of Norwood Green says on these matters. He has vast experience in this area, as a trade union official and as a Minister in the field in the last Labour Government, so I would not dismiss a word of what he says. However, I think he is being a little overgenerous about this Bill, which seems very vague in some of its key points.

We support—certainly I do, and I think my Front Bench does—the principle of a lifelong learning entitlement and reform to our qualifications structure to allow modules. That is a very important reform. We support a stronger role for employers in determining skills. All of that is fine at the level of high principle. The question is how this is going to work in practice. I still have very severe doubts about that. Here we are talking about the role of the Secretary of State in relation to the plans that are produced locally. Can the Minister tell us precisely what that role is going to be, because it relates to these amendments?