Apprenticeships and Skills Policy

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, and it is an even greater pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins). I will take advantage of the way in which she has drawn the subject so widely because I want to answer a fundamental question: how do we get students who are still at school to focus on the options of an apprenticeship and skills training rather than going to university? Those Members who know me may think that that is a rather surprising thing for me to say—I went to three universities and had attachments to two foreign universities while doing so. She will have to forgive that, but I ask the question seriously.

There are two aspects to answering that question: schools, and the method by which we get people attracted to the options of apprenticeships and skills training, which is through work placements. I will start by looking at work placements as a precursor to people going on apprenticeships. I am sure that we have all had people on work placements in our offices; I know that for much of the run-up to the summer holidays, I have a person on a work placement every week. I wonder how many people we are trying to line up to be politicians when we are supposed to be cutting back the number of MPs.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman’s eyes might care to drift towards the Gallery, where he will see a young person from St Dominic’s college in Harrow—just north of my constituency, but she does live in my constituency—who is the living embodiment of the ideals and ambitions that the hon. Gentleman has just expressed.

[John Howell]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing that person out, and for the way in which he described them. It is fitting to include them in the debate.

It is important to get other people involved in providing work placements—it is not just something for politicians to provide. We need to encourage small businesses to become involved in that, so that people get a feel for the entrepreneurship that is involved in setting up and running a small business. There are a couple of examples of companies in my constituency that do that, such as Williams Jet Tenders, which makes boats to go on other boats. It has a scheme of taking 10 people from the most deprived area of the constituency each year, some of whom go on to do apprenticeships. That training provides them with a lot of experience, and also with a lot of fun, because they end their experience by building little boats that they race against each other. I have been along to present the prizes to the winners, and all of that might sound like great fun, but there is also a seriousness to the skills that they learn: how to make model boats, and how to scale them up from that. Other companies provide that experience as well, including a cabinet and kitchen maker that I have also visited.

Those work placements take a whole lot of learning away from the apprenticeships. I am principally going to mention three areas of learning, the first of which is working well with other people. That may sound obvious, but for young people, working with other people and dealing with the dynamics of that is a skill that needs to be learned. Another skill that is crucial to learn and which work placements can provide is how to cope with criticism. Of course, coping with criticism is something that we as politicians take for granted, so maybe the work placements in our offices do have a purpose, but that is an important thing for people to learn. The third thing is people managing their own time, and making sure that that is part of how they approach life. Those are three examples of skills that work placements can provide, which will take away the need to pick up on those areas of learning during apprenticeships and will also help to make apprenticeships more attractive.

Having dealt with the work placement side, let me turn briefly to the schools side. Schools need to participate. We have been only partially successful in encouraging schools to encourage people to go into apprenticeships and skills training rather than to university. Certainly, among the schools in my constituency, there is a huge variety of attitudes towards encouraging students to go into apprenticeships. Some still have a very old-fashioned view of life and only measure success by the number they send to university.

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[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

What better way could there be to start the new year than being in Westminster Hall under your benign guidance, Sir David? If there were a better way, it could only be being here to discuss matters of such moment, and I give enormous credit to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) for having raised this important subject. J. B. Priestley composed endless panegyrics to the proud city of Bradford—which he called Bruddersford so as not to confuse people—and there was a time when we thought of Bradford as being exemplified by J. B. Priestley. However, my hon. Friend has now adopted that crown, and she is the spokesperson for that city.

I was delighted to hear from the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell). I was a little surprised by his comments about the more deprived areas of Henley—presumably, that is a place that is down to its last Jaguar. I had not previously thought about the teeming stews and slums of Henley, but I am here to be educated. I was also interested to hear about the careers advice that the hon. Gentleman received. I remember the careers teacher at my school encouraging me to leave at the earliest opportunity, saying that I could go into the Royal Navy at the age of 16. He did say, “By the way, they will take anybody.” One of my colleagues, I seem to remember, thought that he was being advised to become an author when the careers master said to him, “Have you ever thought about being a man of letters?” He ended up, of course, as a postman. [Interruption.] There is nothing wrong with that; there are some distinguished postmen.

[Hugh Gaffney (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

indicated assent.

[Stephen Pound]

There has been a slightly unpleasant anti-London undercurrent to the debate, with talk about this proud metropolis sucking in all the apprenticeship levies and doing better than other parts of the country. I want to talk about one sector that is reflective of the whole United Kingdom, from Northern Ireland to every other part of the nation, which is the ornamental horticulture and landscaping sector. In our modern workforce, we have this extraordinary problem of a skills shortage. Lest anyone think that ornamental horticulture and landscaping is a minor add-on to the economy, it contributed £24.2 billion to GDP in 2017 and supports 568,000 jobs. It is a crucial sector, but we have a terrible skills shortage. In the absence of the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), I pay credit to her work on the all-party parliamentary gardening and horticulture group, particularly the report it produced last year. I know the Minister is familiar with it and received several copies. I am sure she has many a spare hour in the lonely garret of the Ministry when she is looking for some exciting reading, and the APPG’s report will provide that.

The great joy of horticulture, particularly in the fields of ornamental horticulture and landscaping, is that it offers a route into a skilled profession. Someone who has an aptitude for ornamental horticulture and landscaping—they do not necessarily have to have an enormous amount of academic qualifications, although they help—can access that strand and grow within it and become virtually anything. There is no limit to what someone can achieve. Capability Brown started somewhere. I am not entirely sure where, but it was probably in London, judging from comments today.

We would like to see the Government doing a few things. The Minister will be aware of the modest Christmas wish list, which we have already sent her copies of, but we need to better promote roles in ornamental horticulture and landscaping. People do not understand what the roles are, and we can do much better. There is a lack of horticulture education in UK schools. Current careers advice—I cast no aspersions against present or former careers advisers; they are without a doubt a fine body of women and men—is not giving students knowledge about the sector, which is crying out for entry-level people to work in it. Many would love the idea of an outdoor, creative job that brings about some product at the end of the day—something that they can show and be proud of. We as Members of Parliament are often denied that pleasure, but people who work in horticulture and landscaping certainly have it. The severe skills gap has a knock-on effect for the economy and the environment. When it comes to managing the environment, we need people with knowledge, particularly in landscaping. There is so much that can be done.

I draw the Minister’s attention to a mere two of the recommendations in the APPG report issued in October last year. One is to ask the Government to

“work with sector leaders to promote horticulture as a highly skilled and desirable industry to enter, through encouraging the inclusion of horticulture within the national curriculum…and providing more high-quality horticulture advice through the National Careers Service.”

Recommendation 8 was for the Government to adequately fund FE training, and I think we are as one in this Chamber on that demand. We all call for that. That recommendation also calls on the Government

“to adequately fund FE training in horticulture to ensure the consistent delivery of high-quality training…the Government should ensure the Apprenticeship Levy is more flexible…to fund the work experience requirement of the T Levels and short-term traineeships.”

I am acutely aware of the strictures of time, Sir David, and I am grateful for your typical generosity, so I will conclude. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South has raised a crucial issue. If we do not get things right, we will fail a future generation and a future workforce. I am probably one of the older people in the Chamber. The days when people could leave school at 15, work for the same company for 50 years, have 10 years of retirement and then drop dead are long gone. My son and daughter will probably have 15 or 20 different jobs in their lifetime. People dip in and dip out of different jobs, but they have to have the skills and training. They no longer have a job they can do simply out of sheer muscle. Those days of mass employment are gone.

Nowadays, we are a highly skilled, specialised economy, and highly skilled, specialised workers will not grow on trees. They have to be nurtured, encouraged, supported and financed and their worth has to be recognised. Today’s debate fires the starting gun on that process. It shows how, with a growing GDP and a more skilled, more flexible workforce with areas of expertise growing from FE and careers advice in schools, we can make not only the workforce happier and more productive, but the country a better place. It is not a bad ambition.

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[Lee Rowley]

Excellent. I have none of the one-liners, wit or repartee of either my right hon. Friend or the hon. Gentleman, so I will move straight on to the debate as a whole.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) on securing this valuable and necessary debate. We need to have more such discussions. It would be better to talk more about this issue than some of the other subjects we seem to obsess over in this place and elsewhere.

I want to talk about apprenticeships and skills. I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for her time over the past few months when I have been to talk to her about apprenticeships. I am a strong supporter of what the Government are doing on apprenticeships, and the direction is very positive. A number of months ago, I had the opportunity to go to Rolls-Royce, which is a major employer in the south of my county, so I have seen what a good-quality apprenticeship programme does to raise the aspirations of people in the local area and equip them with the skills they need to succeed in the workforce for the next 50 or so years.

The Minister knows the feedback I have received from a number of people and organisations in and around my constituency. Chesterfield College is a large training provider in my part of the world. Smaller training providers, such as Stubbing Court Training, say that there have been problems with the introduction of some of the measures. Some of that is understandable—changes are never easy—but she knows some of my underlying concerns. I have passed them on to her, and I ask her to continue working to resolve them.

The debate on skills is one of the most interesting that we need to have in this place, and it speaks to a much bigger point. I was pleased when the hon. Member for Bradford South discussed the challenge of automation within five minutes of talking about skills. I see automation as a challenge and an opportunity. I wanted to congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing North on his final comments because it was refreshing to hear a speech where automation was not seen just as a problem, but as something that is coming, is inevitable—there is no point arguing about that—and is an opportunity to grasp, because it brings many opportunities for people.

The challenge I see is that we have to start equipping those in the workforce and those coming into the workforce for the next 50 years. That is a truism—everyone knows that. I was with a member of my family yesterday. He is 11, and he had just gone to an interview to decide what secondary school he wants to go to from December. He came back and was telling me about all the things he wants to do. It struck me that he will probably still be in the workforce in 2060 or 2070, a long time from now.

I differ slightly from the hon. Member for Bradford South on one point in her introductory remarks. She talked about the Government having a knowledge of what skills are needed and the changes to come. I am not sure we can look that far ahead—I do not suggest the hon. Lady suggested otherwise. Ultimately, for 11 and 12-year-old children, who will still be in the workforce in 2060—hopefully, I will still be in the workforce in 30 years’ time—we must equip them with the skills to be able to still work and take advantage of what the workforce brings. The hon. Lady talked about automation, so I will throw in a few more statistics: the OECD estimates that 15% of jobs will be fully automated and another third partially automated; McKinsey talks about half of all tasks in the workforce being automated; the World Economic Forum talks about 7 million jobs going in our country, but potentially more than 7 million jobs being created. That is the fundamental challenge that we have to try to work through. We cannot plan for it in the traditional way. We cannot execute it from the centre. We have to equip people with the skills to be able to deal with it in the next 20, 30 or 40 years. Partly it is about core knowledge, and the Government have done an enormous amount in terms of reforms in schools over the past 10 years, but part of it is a different set of skills: flexibility, problem solving, persistence and agility. Those are the things I used to look for when I employed people in my old industry, and they are the most difficult things to work out in an interview process.

An interesting discussion needs to be had in Parliament and other forums, including in industry, about how we start codifying and understanding skills. I am not saying we will get to an NVQ level 3 in persistence or anything like that, but we have to have a better understanding of how we define and measure such things so that we can help to teach people or at least develop such skills.

[Stephen Pound]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me—I know this applies to you, Sir David—that anyone who has been in the scouts or guides who applies for a job, as is the case in any area that I have ever been employed in, will always get an interview? Does he not agree that that is an excellent thing to have on a CV?

[Lee Rowley]

As a former scout, I completely agree.

[Stephen Pound]

Once a scout, always a scout.

[Lee Rowley]

I am conscious of time, so I will make my other two points. The first has already been made by others, so I will not dwell on it, but it concerns the need for skills training to be as close to the workplace as possible, not because education is not an end in itself, which we must never forget, but because we need to ensure that we equip people with the right skills that are necessary in today’s and tomorrow’s workplace.

My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) talked about entrepreneurship. It is telling that when I left university in 2002, we all wanted to go and work for big companies and do well on the corporate ladder. When people come out of university now, they want to be their own boss, set up their own company and do their own thing. We have to recognise that what people want to do in the world of work is changing. When we debate skills, I hope we can consider equipping people to be able to have the skills that they will need for the next 60 years. They will need different skills—soft skills, particularly—and we need to train them in ways different from how we have trained them historically.