Building a High-Skilled Economy

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

That requires not so much an answer as a seminar, but I shall try to summarise in a sentence or two what I might say at such a seminar. The problem in Britain has been threefold. First, we have not promoted apprenticeships as effectively as we should. Although the brand is strong among potential learners, employers and the public, it is clear that the previous Government did not believe in apprenticeships as much as we do. [Interruption.] Opposition Members complain but many people thought that the right hon. Member for Tottenham’s ministerial predecessor—a valued colleague and a good Minister—did FA for FE and was sent to the FO. I do not know whether Fanny Adams is unparliamentary language, but it is certainly true that in debates with that Minister I made it absolutely clear that we wanted to grow the number of apprenticeships, yet the Labour Government insisted on retaining a strong emphasis on what they regarded as their flagship training and skills product—Train to Gain, about which I shall speak a little more in a moment.

The second point in answer to my hon. Friend’s intervention is that although part of the problem is about marketing, part of it is about resource. We have decided to transfer a significant portion of the Train to Gain budget to apprenticeships, because we know the skills apprenticeships can confer. We know how long they take to learn and we know that people want them. We know employers like them. We know what they cost. That cannot be said of the Train to Gain programme, in which the previous Government placed so much faith.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Hayes]

I give way to the hon. Lady, who always takes such an assiduous interest in education matters.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I am sure we are all enjoying the hon. Gentleman’s theatrics this afternoon, but will he look at some evidence? In 2008-09, 240,000 people started apprenticeships, compared to 75,000 in 1997-98, so I do not think it is for Labour to take lectures from the Conservatives about the importance of apprenticeships.

[Mr Hayes]

The hon. Lady must not deceive new Members—[Interruption.] I know she would not do so—except inadvertently, of course; I take that as read—because newer Members might come to believe her suggestion—I put it no more strongly than that.

What the previous Government actually did was to reclassify what counted as an apprenticeship. In France and Germany, about which we heard a moment ago, all apprenticeships are at level 3, and they once were in Britain. When the Labour Government came to power, they reclassified level 2 qualifications as apprenticeships and then trumpeted the fact that there were more of them. As both the Labour Front-Bench spokesmen know, the level 3 numbers remained stubbornly rather less than was required, than the Government wanted and than employers knew they needed. So we should focus on level 3 apprenticeships if we wish to get a true comparison both of our previous performance and of international data.

--- Later in debate ---

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) for his maiden speech. He had no need to be nervous; it was an extremely entertaining and informative maiden speech. I thank him for his kind comments about his predecessor, Kali Mountford. On the Labour Benches, we think of Kali with great affection, so we thank him.

I am pleased that mention has been made of the “Skills for Growth” White Paper, which has been important in defining our skills needs for the next few decades. As the Minister knows, the White Paper put particular emphasis on vocational skills and argued for a dramatic expansion of advanced apprenticeships, particularly for young adults. It also argued for the skilling of adults who are already in employment and those seeking work, and for improving the quality of provision in our FE and other institutions.

At the same time, “Higher Ambitions” set out equally challenging demands for our university sector. It asked universities to work with the Higher Education Funding Council for England to devise new funding incentives so that we could deliver higher education programmes that were more acutely related to the needs of the economy, and to work with the UK Commission for Employment and Skills to identify where new programmes were needed to meet areas of low demand. It set out the need to improve the relationship between universities and businesses and, crucially, to build better relationships between universities and regional development agencies. I noticed that the Minister was very quiet on that subject today, but as the Government are about to destroy the whole RDA framework, I should be interested to hear what he has to say about how universities and FE colleges will work with whatever structure is set up to ensure that regional development continues.

[Mr Hayes]

The hon. Lady will want to know that we are entirely committed to ensuring consistency—indeed synergy—between the economic development functions of local authorities and the work of colleges and other providers. If she is straightforward, I think she will acknowledge that according to the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office, RDAs were not terribly effective in some of the work they did.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I hear what the Minister says, but the new Government still have some way to go in setting out more generally how they propose to build on Labour’s progress in upskilling and reskilling our population, and particularly in outlining how some of the more strategic objectives on skills shortages will be met at regional level. That may not be easily deliverable at local authority level, so the Government have some more thinking to do about our regions.

The progress made under Labour was recognised by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills in its national skills audit, published earlier this year:

“Significant progress has been made in raising the qualifications levels of the workforce and stimulating supply over the last ten years, so that compared to other OECD nations our supply of highly skilled people is likely to place us 10th in the OECD by 2020.”

When Labour left office we were on track to move up the OECD league table in terms of the advances we had made in skilling our population. There is thus a considerable challenge to the Government to maintain that progress.

Similarly, recent publications from Universities UK and the Russell group comment on the strength of the university sector, while arguing that if current standards and quality are to be maintained investment must continue. We may hear something about that in the Budget next week, but it remains to be seen whether protection will be given for education not only pre-19, but post-19, so that we continue to be internationally competitive.

Not only did the Labour Government invest heavily in education generally, including further and higher education, but that investment was accompanied by a strategy to widen participation, to raise aspirations and to ensure that all young people who felt they could benefit from a university or a level 4 education had the chance to do so. I have not yet heard from the new Government whether they will continue to have that high level of aspiration for our young people. The Leitch review very much led us in that strategy. The Minister mentioned the review in his opening speech, but he did not mention whether this Government would keep the very demanding Leitch targets, which stated that 90% or more of the working-age population should have a level 2 qualification, 68% should have a level 3 qualification and over 40% should have a qualification at level 4 or higher. I would be interested to hear whether the Minister thinks those targets should stay in place.

Good progress was being made towards reaching those targets when Labour left office. The Liberal Democrats have often said—I often heard this during my election campaign—that although Labour had made advances in reskilling the population, those had been confined largely to the better-off. Interestingly, data from HEFCE show clearly that that is not the case. A HEFCE publication earlier this year, which looked at trends in young participation in higher education among different groups in England, stated that to overcome gaps in the data on disadvantage at an individual level, the study that it used looked at levels of disadvantage in local areas, taking figures from 8,000 census wards across England. The authors of the study also selected a range of indicators, and they said that, looking across the indicators, they had to conclude that since the mid-2000s young people from disadvantaged areas are substantially more likely to enter HE, that most measures of the gap in participation between most and least disadvantaged areas had fallen, and that the majority of additional entrants to HE have come from more disadvantaged areas. That means that Labour was not only upskilling the population, but it was extending access to higher education to those who had not previously been able to benefit from it. That is another substantial challenge for the new Government: they must—and we will be watching whether they continue to do so—extend opportunities and widen participation in the way that Labour did.

The audit that I mentioned earlier also talked about the importance of increasing skill levels further and identified key areas where there are skill shortages: in management and leadership, in professional skills, at the technician and equivalent level, at intermediate vocational levels and care services, and in customer service and general employability skills. It is important that we continue to make good those skill shortages.

The audit also identified key sectors where we need to be improving the skills levels of our young people and work force in the future if we are to remain internationally competitive. It was interesting to see the areas that had been outlined, which I think are familiar to all of us in the Chamber. They have been identified as low carbon; advanced manufacturing; engineering and construction; financial and professional services; the digital economy; life sciences and pharmaceuticals; the creative sector; care services; and retail, hospitality, leisure and tourism.

Our university and FE sectors are in a sense already embracing this brave new world, because they have already started to think of new ways of delivering courses that give much greater flexibility. I pay tribute to New College Durham for pioneering professional apprenticeships, for leading the drive for good-quality HE in FE, and for developing partnerships between HE and FE. I would welcome a visit to the college from the Minister, because he could meet the staff and see some of the fantastic work that is going on.

The Minister talked about international competitiveness in his opening speech. If we are to remain internationally competitive, we must keep our levels of reskilling high, which means that we will need to know how many young people and individuals in the work force are being skilled and reskilled. If we are not skilling sufficient people, we will need to put additional measures in place. That will mean that we will have to retain some targets, so I would like to hear the Government’s thoughts about that.