Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, I regret that I did not participate in Second Reading, but perhaps, as somebody has already remarked, there might be a better opportunity here. I declare an interest as a national apprenticeship ambassador.

I felt sorry for the Minister after the performance of my noble friend Lord Adonis, which basically embraced Dante’s advice: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”. I do not agree—this is a good Bill. There are no perfect Bills; those of us who have been involved in education in previous Governments will know that we never get it quite right. It is a good Bill but, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and a number of people have suggested, it could be better, so I support most of the amendments in the group.

I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, who first raised the question of English and maths. The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, gave it even more emphasis. We need to find an alternative. There are certainly many apprenticeship opportunities which do not require GCSE English and maths. I had neither because I was dragged out of school at 15 years old, but I can remember some of the things we were required to do. After simultaneous equations, I am afraid I just could not master quadratic equations or anything else. I do not think that necessarily stopped me in my apprenticeship in telecom.

One thing I hope the Minister will respond to, because it is a constructive suggestion, is that the local skills improvement plans should embrace more than just employers. Perhaps that is the intention, but there are those who said that there is a need not just for students—trade unions have a role to play, as well as others. Trade unions are still doing a good job of getting back into learning people who have not embraced it for many years under the Return to Learn scheme.

There has been a lot of criticism about employers being somehow the wrong people to involve. I do not quite understand that. Where do people think these jobs will come from? There is a fundamentally important need to have employers as part of the local skills improvement plans. My concern is: will employers look ahead? A number of people said that, including my noble friend Lady Morris, while the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, quoted fishing and agriculture as a couple of examples. Even in those industries, it is not just the basic question of going out to sea and catching fish—there are the logistics involved when they return to port. A lot of technology is involved now, even in fishing. The fundamental changes taking place in agriculture require a much greater need for technology. I do not think we should assume that employers will not look ahead, but should we rely on them? No, I think that some of the amendments that have been suggested are right.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 15th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I am pleased to move Amendment 27, originally in the name of my noble friend Lord Patel, who is unable to be here this afternoon. He has kindly shared with me the points that he wished to make and I will make full use of them. I will also speak briefly to Amendment 30.

Amendment 27 aims to ensure that, in addition to national policy feeding into local skills improvement plans, local information about skills gaps and local skills challenges is also fed back into national policy-making. Real-time labour market data, as well as insights into what is happening locally around education and skills options for young people and those wanting to retrain, is vitally important to ensure that the Secretary of State and his department have the insights and evidence needed to make strategic national decisions about education and skills policy.

I hope the Minister can give us some more clarity about how the LSIPs proposed in the Bill will feed into the work of the DfE and BEIS to develop a strategic approach to addressing the skills gaps on a national level. How will information within LSIPs help shape and inform national industrial policy? How will the Government use the reforms in the Bill to identify and respond to regional skills needs important to the overall strategic goals of the UK, such as specialised engineering skills?

Several proposed amendments to this Bill aim to ensure that LSIPs will take account of national strategies and policy—as they should—but what is missing is a feedback loop from the local to the national, which is what this amendment seeks to achieve. Local skills improvement plans have the potential to provide rich insights into what is going on locally around the skills businesses need and the difficulties they may or may not have in accessing them locally. They should, one hopes, provide insights into how local areas will address any skills shortages and how effective these measures prove to be in the long run.

Local skills improvement plans will provide detail and data that should enable the Government to get a much better picture of the skills situation in this country and allow them to map out where there are potential issues. This will foster an understanding of whether particular skills gaps are localised, and therefore need to be addressed locally, or whether there is a pattern across the country that may require national policy interventions in addition to local action.

This amendment is asking the Government to provide a response to the LSIPs as a whole, including a skills map and an action plan. This is surely a reasonable proposal that can only help to further the Government’s ambitions around productivity and joined-up thinking. Ensuring that there is a functioning feedback loop from national to local and from local to national will enable government, both local and national, to identify and address skills shortages more easily and quicker.

Turning to Amendment 30, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, which I also support, I am rather surprised that it should be needed at all and that the publication of LSIPs is not already in the Bill. Every LSIP needs to be available, not only to all interested parties in the education and skills system within the area it covers, as specified in the amendment—particularly providers of careers guidance—but also more widely, both so that others can learn from different approaches being taken and as input to national skills policy-making.

Apart from the essential publication of the LSIPs, as in the amendment, there needs to be a process for regular progress and performance reporting, not least to promote the sharing of experience and good practice, as well as for monitoring and accountability purposes. This is yet another element of the framework that is not clear. It is not clear if that feedback loop is going to be there, what sort of performance monitoring is going to be in place, and what happens if LSIPs do not reach the standard one might hope from them. I beg to move.

[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?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

We will go back to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, to see whether he wishes to participate.

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

Thank you, my Lords. I apologise that, on the previous occasion, I committed the offence of forgetting to unmute.

I am aware—as are many other noble Lords—of the deficiencies of the apprenticeship levy. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, almost said, we should be careful before we throw the baby out with the bathwater. It has done a lot of good. It has focused employers’ minds on the importance of apprenticeships. We have an Institute for Apprenticeships which is involving employers in creating new standards. I agree with the noble Baroness who said that there was a need for reform. But a consultative process is going on. I ought to have declared my interest as a national apprenticeship ambassador.

Employers already have the ability to use apprenticeship levy money to support not just supply chain companies but other companies outside their supply chain, and there has been a better take-up of that. Indeed, the Government have made more of the apprenticeship levy available. My concern at the moment is that, if we are really looking for growth in apprenticeships, this needs to be in the area of small and medium enterprises, especially in small and micro companies. Those companies frequently complain that the administration is too complicated, and that they find it a burden. We should bear in mind that many are saying, “Look, I’m struggling just to keep my business afloat and now you want me to take on an apprentice”. My response is to be understanding We need to work on helping them to remove some of that administrative and basic training burden. I also say to them, “Look, having a young person whose digital skills might be a lot more advanced than yours can often be of benefit to your company”.

I agree that some of the apprenticeship levy money has been spent in the wrong place. My concern is the 16 to 18 group, where the levels of youth unemployment are exceedingly high. I have already acknowledged the work of the job coaches, but more needs to be done on that front. So I am in favour of reform of the apprenticeship levy. I do not think that we should call it something else. We are just beginning to see a much better understanding by both parents and potential apprentices of the value of apprenticeships. I was interested in a recent development. UCAS, which used to be the clearing house just for those interested in going to university, has now opened another portal where people will be made aware of apprenticeship routes and vacancies. So reform is needed, but I still think that the basic concept is right. There are always areas where things could be improved, perhaps including the role of the Institute for Apprentices.

The apprenticeship levy is a bit like the curate’s egg—good in parts. I think the Government are aware of that, which is why there is a consultative process. I welcome the opportunity for the Committee to have this debate.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, this seems to be our only opportunity, in considering the Bill, to mention the words “apprenticeship” and “levy” in the same sentence. We should utter these words sotto voce because, at Second Reading, the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, made it very clear that the levy was beyond the scope of the Bill. That is not the fault of the noble Baroness, of course, but speeches by several noble Lords at Second Reading, which have been reinforced today, demonstrated that I am not alone in finding it rather perplexing that the levy does not merit a mention in the Bill. This is despite the fact that the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education—which develops and approves apprenticeships and technical qualifications with employers—is quite prominent in clauses that we shall consider in later debates on the Bill.

Apprenticeships are key to ensuring that Britain is equipped with a well-skilled workforce in the years ahead. The levy scheme—which we have supported in principle—has yet to produce anything like the effects hoped for and required. So, while I am happy to support the intent of this amendment—and understand the reasoning behind it on the basis of what the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said in introducing it—I urge caution at this stage with regard to the levy and using its funds for any purpose other than apprenticeships. In that, I think I am reflecting the comments which my noble friend Lord Young has just made.