Manufacturing Skills

Saqib Bhatti Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to respond on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition and to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I thank the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley) for securing time in this House for this really important topic. I have heard a lot of very good speakers, and I agree with their sentiment. Although we may not always agree on every policy issue, I do agree that our best years are ahead of us.

Before I was a Member of Parliament, I was a director of the local enterprise partnership in the west midlands. I remember my first ever meeting, in which I spoke to the chair of an FE college, who told me that the time between what his college could deliver and what businesses said that they wanted was about three years. That told me two things, as a small business owner: that the skills landscape is incredibly complex and difficult for businesses to navigate, and that demand plays a huge role. I will talk about demand in a bit.

The UK’s manufacturing sector is hugely important, accounting for roughly 8.5% of total economic output across the country, and employing roughly 2.6 million people. I was delighted that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) mentioned the Lunar Society, because I was a member of a modern-day Lunar Society—in fact, I helped to write its constitution. I was pleased that she put that on the record.

I am the proud Member of Parliament for Meriden and Solihull East, a constituency in the heart of the west midlands. We are also a UK manufacturing powerhouse, because we are the home of Jaguar Land Rover. The west midlands remains the UK’s leading manufacturing region, and Jaguar Land Rover is right at the heart of that. The region contributes £10.4 billion and employs more than 200,000 people.

The shadow Chancellor and I recently visited Rolls-Royce, which has a huge facility in the west midlands. I invite the Minister to visit it, because it does a huge amount of work. I know it is said that the UK does not manufacture anything anymore, but I reject that; I do not think it is true. I saw at first hand engines and control panels being built for some of our most important and sensitive projects, and met a number of apprentices, who showed how important apprenticeships are. I am proud that the previous Government over 14 years created more than 5.2 million apprenticeships.

As shadow Minister of State for Education, I regularly hold meetings with businesses, further education colleges and others who are very concerned about skills shortages in the manufacturing sector. In July, I hosted a roundtable in Parliament with Enginuity, a charity focused on closing skills gaps in the UK’s engineering and manufacturing sector. It was clear from the businesses we met that they expect the Government to do much more to help support manufacturing, and help engineering businesses to recruit the best talent. We spoke at length about some of the findings in Enginuity’s recent “Mind the Gap” report. Its research found that around half of surveyed SMEs reported skills-related issues in the past year, with 36% experiencing skills gaps and difficulty recruiting workers. It estimates that the failure to plug that gap in manufacturing skills costs the UK economy £5.2 billion annually. That is clearly an important area that needs to be fixed, we must all agree.

I would like to know about the Minister’s relationship with the DFE and how she works to ensure that the advanced manufacturing workforce is skilled, not just at NEET-level but throughout careers and lifelong learning. I am confident about the future of the UK’s manufacturing sector. It is a growing industry that will offer varied and exciting jobs for the future, but there are significant challenges coming manufacturers’ way as a result of Government policy, which we already see.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister wrote in The Times about the prospect of Britain facing

“economic catastrophe and moral failure”

because a generation of young workers has been written off to a life on benefits. I agree, because youth unemployment is now 16.4%. When the Conservatives left office, it was 14.2%, so there has been a significant increase. There are currently one million 16 to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training. I welcome the Government’s focus on reducing that number, because we will support them in the right policies; unfortunately, however, it is the view of His Majesty’s Opposition that the Government’s approach to tackling that grave injustice is entirely wrong.

I have talked about demand in this sector. The drastic shortage of jobs in sectors such as manufacturing is a result of the Government’s policy platform. I did not once hear Labour Members talk about the impact of national insurance, tax and the reduction in the national insurance threshold, or that the cost of employing an apprentice has gone up so much that is has become challenging for businesses to take them on. Where they are employed, the opportunity cost means that fewer apprentices are taken on, as a result of such policies. It is obvious to us that the Government’s tax policies are making it harder for young people to get into good jobs.

That is not just the view of the Opposition. Huw Pill, chief economist at the Bank of England, agrees that higher national insurance contributions and the Government’s increase in the national living and minimum wage have priced out entry-level workers, many of them young people.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Could the shadow Minister set out exactly, in pounds and pence, how much less he thinks apprentices and young people should be paid today than they are under the current minimum wage?

[Saqib Bhatti]

I reject the framing of the question. [Laughter.] No one finds youth unemployment funny. Many business owners talk to me about what happens when a young apprentice is interviewed. They say that if they have a 25-year-old with experience versus an 18-year-old with no experience, that hinders the prospects of hiring them. That is the reality. I am sure the hon. Gentleman is a conscientious MP, so I encourage him to pose that question to his small business owners in the way I framed it.

[Brian Leishman]

Will the shadow Minister give way?

[Saqib Bhatti]

No, I am going to carry on. When met with reality, the Government’s plans in this space fall far too short. The Government have made lots of noise about recruiting targets. I just noticed that the Government announced 40,000 new construction placements every single year. Will the Minister confirm whether that is the same or a different version of the announcement made in a Government press release in August 2025, which mentioned

“40,000 future builders, bricklayers, electricians, carpenters and plumbers”?

Government by press release is one thing but recycling old press releases is something else. Those apprentices deserve better.

There has also been no mention of the impact of the Government’s fiscal policies. Just as we were having this debate, I saw a headline saying job vacancies are at their lowest in 12 years. There are 176,000 fewer jobs now than when Labour took office.

Members have mentioned the Education Secretary’s ambition to close off academic options and offer more vocational options for the 14-to-16 age group. I am deeply sceptical of that policy, and the Opposition are calling for an evidence-based approach. When a previous Labour Government introduced similar reforms, fewer children from poorer backgrounds ended up going into academic subjects. They were funnelled into vocational work. We believe that plenty of people who would have been able to get into higher-quality jobs were funnelled off at a lower age, so we are deeply sceptical. The policy announcement is welcome, but we are yet to see significant detail. Many of the headteachers I spoke to last week asked how their teachers will be trained to deliver vocational subjects and where the funding will come from.

We are incredibly proud of the reforms instituted by the previous Conservative Government, which have meant that England’s education delivery is among the best and most resilient in the world, according to the programme for international student assessment rankings. When I meet people from the advanced manufacturing sector, they laud the fact that a knowledge-rich curriculum has helped young people to gain critical and analytical skills, including in numeracy. We are really worried that some of the Education Secretary’s announcements will undermine opportunities for young people.

The criticism comes not just from the Opposition. Jon White, the chief financial officer at building materials firm Huws Gray, has said that employers are struggling with a lack of incentives to hire younger people. He pointed to the Government’s narrowing of the gap in respect of the national minimum wage, which I have alluded to, and said that they should change the rules in respect of how employers can spend the apprenticeship levy. I hope the Minister can shed a bit of light on some of the questions around the apprenticeship levy.

Making it easier for employers to hire young people is really important, which is why we have pledged to halve employer national insurance for young people aged 21 to 24, to help them get to into work. We have also offered more incentives to small businesses to take on young people. Small businesses are often lauded as the lifeblood of the UK economy and the high street, and they, not big businesses, are the greatest employers of young people across the country. We believe our approach will free up the business sector and manufacturing to employ more young people; I would welcome the Minister’s response.