House of Lords

Thursday 9th May 2024 Lords Chamber

Thursday 9 May 2024

11:00

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of St Albans.

Introduction: Baroness Porter of Fulwood

Thursday 9th May 2024 Lords Chamber

11:08

Ruth Oates Porter, having been created Baroness Porter of Fulwood, of Fulwood in the city of Sheffield, was introduced and took the oath, supported by Baroness Vere of Norbiton and Lord Johnson of Lainston, and signed an undertaking to abide by the Code of Conduct.

Introduction: Baroness Hazarika

Thursday 9th May 2024 Lords Chamber

11:13

Ayesha Yousef Hazarika, MBE, having been created Baroness Hazarika, of Coatbridge in the County of Lanarkshire, was introduced and took the oath, supported by Lord Dubs and Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws, and signed an undertaking to abide by the Code of Conduct.

Rural Crime

Thursday 9th May 2024 Lords Chamber

Question

11:18

Asked by

[The Earl of Shrewsbury]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they are making in tackling rural crime.

[The Earl of Shrewsbury (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare my interests as a retired farmer and a member of the National Farmers’ Union.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

My Lords, since 2010, overall incidents of crime have come down by 55% on a like-for-like basis. The Government are committed to tackling rural crime. Decisions on deployment of police resources are a matter for chief constables and locally elected police and crime commissioners. However, the Government set up the National Rural Crime Unit to help police secure specialist operational support, develop bespoke approaches and share best practice.

[The Earl of Shrewsbury (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that reply. Rural theft cost the UK £49.5 million in 2022 and that overall trend is increasing exponentially today. Fly-tipping continues to be the most prolific form of rural crime. Is my noble friend satisfied that the punishments meted out to those who commit rural crime—if indeed they are caught—provide an effective deterrent? Does he agree with me that the results of the recent election of police and crime commissioners provide an opportunity for those elected to prove their support for rural issues, especially in the fight against rural crime?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My noble friend made a couple of very good points. First, the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act 2023 was given Royal Assent in July last year. Secondary legislation is needed before it comes into force and work has begun on the necessary regulations, with a view to hearing debates in Parliament in this Session. As noble Lords will be aware, there has been some progress on equipment theft; in fact, there was a story this morning in the Daily Telegraph and commendations go to Kent and Thames Valley Police for having arrested seven people relating to a hoard of over 1,000 suspected stolen items. It is not really my place to comment on sentencing, but I do think that significant progress is being made.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, will either the Minister or those in his department have a specific meeting with the newly re-elected police commissioner for Dyfed Powys, Dafydd Llywelyn, who represents one of the most rural areas in the whole of England and Wales? There have been specific crimes in that area that need investigation and possibly increased powers to deal with them. Will he give such a commitment?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I would of course be very happy to meet the said gentleman. Let me go into the details of the National Rural Crime Unit a little. It was established in January 2023, with a grant of £300,000. It is working and was set up with a significant input from the National Farmers’ Union, as noble Lords will be aware. The unit has made a real difference; Farmers Weekly reported on 25 April:

“They have absolutely changed the playing field in terms of policing”.


So the first port of call should be to superintendent Andrew Huddleston in that unit, which is doing great work.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, is participating remotely.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate the hugely experienced David Allen on his election as crime commissioner for Cumbria. With 47 million visitors to the Lakes annually and an associated increase in rural crime, will Ministers respond to his early call for resources to fund a major expansion in the automatic number plate recognition programme? We need it to cover our arterial road system, in particular the A66 and A69. As a matter of note, Vauxhall in London has more of these cameras than the entire county of Cumbria.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

On resources, there are now over 149,000 police officers in England and Wales, which is a higher number than any time before. The Government have also confirmed a total police funding settlement of up to £18.4 billion next year, which is an increase of £842 million. On how the money is spent locally, the noble Lord will be aware that those are very much local decisions, but I hear what he says and he made some interesting points.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, I am a member of the APPG on metal theft and we have identified and reported on the enormous and growing scale of metal theft in rural areas, which of course has a massive impact on rural communities. Church roofs are stolen; a kilometre or more of copper cable is extracted from the local comms system, taking out telephone networks; and so on. Such crime is overwhelmingly committed, we heard in evidence, by organised criminal gangs. They are rarely caught and rarely held to account. Does the Minister think the police have the right strategies and tactics for handling organised crime in rural areas?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

Again, the noble Lord makes some very good points. As he will be aware, operational decisions are taken locally, so that is a matter for chief constables in conversation and association with their police and crime commissioners. But plenty of national resources are available, as I have already highlighted.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, notwithstanding the figures that the Minister just gave us, the National Farmers’ Union Mutual says that 80% of its members have reported disruption from crime in their areas. One specific ask from the National Farmers’ Union Mutual is for improved protection to be given by extending the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act to include GPS theft from farmed vehicles. Will the Government consider doing that as a matter of urgency?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

That is a very good point. We still have to commence the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act, as he knows, and a call for evidence went out last summer seeking views on the secondary legislation, as required. That would be the appropriate place for making these points and discussing this. It has been targeted at agricultural and construction sectors—manufacturers, dealers, retailers and so on. I wait to see what the results of that call for evidence deliver, but I think the noble Lord makes a very good point—and, going back to the story about Kent that I referenced earlier, it was because of a GPS tracker that these people were caught.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, it is recognised that one niche area of rural crime by organised crime groups is laundering money through events such as illegal hare coursing, which is causing a huge problem. We were very grateful for the recent support of the Government in trying to bring an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, but is the Minister sure that the new police and crime commissioners not only understand the problem but have the right training in place so the law can be implemented?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

First, I commend the right reverend Prelate on his work in introducing the amendment to that particular Bill. It came into force on 1 August 2022 and, without his efforts, I do not think it would have happened. Hare coursing is not a notifiable offence, but the statistics I have are very encouraging. There has been a 60% reduction in the poaching of both hare and deer over the course of the 2022-23 season. The National Rural Crime Unit informs us that there has been an increased use of criminal protection notices when used alongside the new measures, including those involved with hare coursing. I was very pleased to hear about the successful prosecution of two individuals in Lincolnshire last week for hare coursing. So, it would seem to bear out that enough work is being done, but of course I will follow up and, if there is more to say, I will come back to the right reverend Prelate.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, we hear more in the media about crimes in urban areas and cities due to the numbers. However, many rural crimes are serious. Cuts in bus services and the decimation of youth services have left young people adrift. Young people are vulnerable to predation by criminal drug gangs running county lines. Prevention is always better than cure. Why have the Government abandoned vulnerable young people in rural areas?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

Well, that was more of a statement than a question and I do not think the Government have abandoned rural young people.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, Julia Mulligan, our very good North Yorkshire police and crime commissioner, brought out a report five years ago about the wide gap in support between rural and urban victims of domestic abuse. That report, Captive & Controlled, stated:

“Abuse lasts, on average, 25% longer in the most rural areas”.


Can my noble friend assure me that this gap has narrowed, and how has this been achieved?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My noble friend asks a good question, but the findings of the Captive & Controlled report are not easily replicated, so it is difficult to give him the assurance he seeks that the gap is narrowing. But teams in the Home Office and Defra have sought to understand the additional challenges that victims in rural communities face, and we have invested to help address those. That includes funding for an older persons’ rural domestic abuse practitioner in Northumberland and support for children, young people and families in rural communities in Shropshire and Devon. I would also say that the duty to collaborate we are introducing through the Victims and Prisoners Bill will further help police forces understand and commission to meet the needs of the victims in their communities.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, would the Government agree with me that there is a direct relationship between crime and poverty? What are we doing, really, about all the things that are happening in the countryside that are stripping people of jobs? It is very, very difficult to get a job in the countryside that pays enough for you to live on the wage. It is a low-wage economy.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

That may be the case, but there are also lots of good opportunities in the country and, of course, we live in a world where the gig economy gives people opportunities to live pretty much wherever they want.

Uganda: Anti-Homosexuality Act

Thursday 9th May 2024 Lords Chamber

Question

11:29

Asked by

[Lord Cashman]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what representations they have made to the government of Uganda regarding its Anti-Homosexuality Act.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act has increased violence and discrimination against LGBT+ people. The UK has made its opposition clear to all levels of the Ugandan Government. On 3 April, the Ugandan Constitutional Court struck down some provisions. However, the legislation remains, including the death penalty for so-called aggravated homosexuality. The Deputy Foreign Secretary met the Ugandan Justice Minister on 3 April and underlined the importance of ensuring that people are free from persecution regardless of sexuality and stressed our concern at this legislation.

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on the action they have taken so far, but they can and must do more. The Ugandan law criminalises even those who supply services to LGBT people and, as the Minister said, people face the death penalty for aggravated homosexuality or 20 years in prison merely for being homosexual. The situation is dire and worsening, with arrests, people going into hiding, blackmail and service providers closing. Therefore, I ask the Government to mirror the actions taken by the United States, Canada and the World Bank: targeted sanctions on named individuals and on access to individual assets held in the UK and an immediate pause on development support that could be used by discriminatory actors. Finally, they should call on Uganda to end implementing the law with forced anal examinations. Such barbaric human rights abuses must be vigorously denounced.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I will start with the last point: I entirely agree with the noble Lord, and I thank him for all the work he has done on this and many other related issues. This is an appalling situation for minorities in Uganda and is part of a pattern that, unfortunately, we are seeing across many sub-Saharan African countries. No one in Uganda can be under any illusions about the UK’s position on this. We have raised it at every level of government and we will continue to do so. We do not discuss openly what plans we have on sanctions, but we will look at all opportunities to continue to raise this and ensure that the Government of Uganda, the Parliament of Uganda and those proposing this legislation understand how devastating it is and what enormous damage has been done to Uganda’s reputation in the world. I will continue to work with the noble Lord and others to ensure we are taking every action we can.

[Lord Fowler (CB)]

My Lords, I entirely support what the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, just said about Uganda, but should we not also be concerned about the position in many other countries around the world? There is a terrible worldwide toll of over 600,000 deaths a year from HIV and AIDS. Should we not recognise that the threat of unjustified heavy sentences can add to the problem by preventing people coming forward for treatment and add to the stigma that is already around AIDS?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Lord has done so much work in this area, and of course we agree with him. The problem with this kind of legislation is that it deters people from seeking the medical help that they need for what is now a curable disease, maybe to the point where it is not curable for them because they have been put off seeking the support they need. The UK will continue, through its ODA programme, to make sure it supports proper access to medical services. That will be dealt with on an absolutely fair and open basis and not in the discriminatory way that these laws promote.

[Lord Bellingham (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister not agree that one thing that could make a really big difference to this appalling situation would be a change in regime and free and fair elections? He will have noted that the European Parliament concluded that the last elections were neither free nor fair and, in fact, were violent. What more can we do to ensure there is multi-party democracy? Will he find time to meet the outstanding new leader of the opposition, Joel Ssenyonyi, who is a brave young politician who deserves our support?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. We will work with any Government of Uganda; they are important allies and members of the Commonwealth, and they are doing important work elsewhere in Africa for peace and security. However, it is only through having a good, friendly relationship with a country like that that we can state how appalled we are at legislation such as this. Obviously, we want to promote free and fair elections at every stage, but the Government of Uganda are the Government of Uganda. They are doing great things in support of peace and security in Africa, which we support, but this is an unacceptable regression on freedoms and personal rights.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, it is the voice not only of government but of civil society that needs to be heard. I have welcomed the Government’s contribution to the Commonwealth Equality Network in the past, but we can do more to ensure faith voices and trade union voices are heard. What is the Minister’s department doing to work with the international trade union movement, which has very good policies on this, to influence people in those countries so it is seen as not just a UK Government action but a civil society action that is appalled at these laws?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I think I can reassure the noble Lord. I met with our high commissioner to Uganda this week, and she gave me details of many of the projects we are doing with civil society organisations. For example, some of our overseas development assistance money goes to fund grass-roots efforts to shift attitudes on gender-based violence. There are many other things that we are doing. He is right that many faith-based organisations are key to this. One of the unfortunate drivers of this legislation has been promoted by an evangelical view of Christianity, and not one, for many of us would who ascribe to Christian values, of compassion and kindness; it seems to be one of quite the reverse. I know that many faith-based organisations want to have nothing to do with that and want to try to correct it. We will work with anybody who seeks to support people affected by this legislation.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

I agree with the Minister. On a visit to Kampala before the pandemic, I met with the leadership of the Anglican community—my visit was about the abolition of the death penalty—who said that they would support my work on the death penalty, as long as I did not campaign on LGBT rights; the death penalty is now supported by that community. I am grateful that Lambeth Palace has disassociated itself from that. Will the Minister agree that the development partnership agreement the UK has with Uganda, which includes the sentence

“We will also use a full range of tools to defend democratic norms and the rights of excluded groups, for example the LGBT+ community”,


is no longer operable because those groups, which we have been supporting, now face the very criminal penalties that the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, indicated? Will the Minister further agree that our relationship with Uganda cannot continue as it has? We need a formal review of our development relationship, and we need to state to the Government of Uganda that, in our view, their Act is inconsistent with the Commonwealth charter. We cannot carry on as we have before.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Our bilateral ODA, which is due to increase quite considerably this financial year, goes not to the Government of Uganda but to very specific areas of need, such as strengthening health systems and empowering women. We prevented 2.4 million unintended pregnancies through family planning advice, increased modern contraceptive use by 5.7%, and supported 600,000 women to access electricity through GET FiT, our renewable energy programme. Crucially, as I said earlier, we are funding grass-roots efforts to shift attitudes on gender-based violence and engaging women’s rights groups to defend against discrimination. Our ODA programmes are constantly under review, but it is important that we continue to support those kinds of efforts in Uganda and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa where we see a regression on LGBTQ rights.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, the Government of Uganda are a member of the Commonwealth, as are so many other nations that, unfortunately, have very similar policies. As has been mentioned, the Commonwealth charter commits Uganda to compliance with international human rights laws, in particular relating to equality. Will the Minister and his department do what they can to ensure this important topic is put on the agenda for the next Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, which is in Samoa in October?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that very important point. I spoke to the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth on this subject and we have agreed to continue to discuss it in the lead-up to CHOGM. We want to make sure that human rights and the very values that underpin the Commonwealth are reflected in the work of that important meeting.

AI: Intellectual Property Rights

Thursday 9th May 2024 Lords Chamber

Question

11:39

Asked by

[Lord Holmes of Richmond]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to protect intellectual property rights in relation to artificial intelligence, in particular large language models, since discontinuing plans to develop a code of practice.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare my technology interests, as set out in the register, as an adviser to Boston Ltd.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Viscount Camrose) (Con)]

My Lords, this is a complex and challenging area. We strongly support AI innovation in the UK, but this cannot be at the expense of our world-leading creative industries. Our goal is that both sectors should be able to grow together in partnership. We are currently working with DCMS to develop a way forward on copyright and AI. We will engage closely with interested stakeholders as we develop our approach.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, our great UK creatives—musicians who make such sweet sounds where otherwise there may be silence; writers who fill the blank page with words of meaning that move us; our photographers; our visual artists—are a creative community contributing billions to the UK economy, growing at twice the rate of the UK economy. In the light of this, why are the Government content for their work, their IP and their copyright to be so disrespected and unprotected in the face of artificial intelligence?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for the important point he raises, particularly stressing the importance to the United Kingdom of the creative industry, which contributes 6% of our GVA every year. The Government are far from content with this position and share the frustrations and concerns of many across the sector in trying to find a way forward on the AI and copyright issue. As I say, it is challenging and deeply complex. No jurisdiction anywhere has identified a truly satisfactory solution to this issue, but we continue to work internationally and nationally to seek one.

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. As I said in my letter last week to the Secretary of State on behalf of the Communications and Digital Select Committee, the Government’s reluctance to take a clear position on copyright in the context of AI and large language models is leading to

“problematic business models … becoming entrenched and normalised”.

The Government urgently need to take a clear position, and soon. On a practical basis, what support are they giving to market-led initiatives to improve licensing deals for news publishers and to get collective licensing regimes off the ground, to ensure that smaller rights-holders are also not left behind?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I thank my noble friend and her committee for that important letter. First, we must not underestimate the difficulty and complexity of the issues involved in resolving this question; there are very problematic jurisdictional and technical issues. That said, the Government greatly welcome any arrangement between private sector organisations finding a way forward on this; we can all learn a great deal from the success of those arrangements. We believe that a collaborative way forward on both sides, in partnership, will be a very important part of the eventual solution.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister was right to say that we should recognise that AI can bring opportunities to the creative sector. For example, nearly a decade after a near-fatal stroke, the musician Randy Travis has released a new song featuring AI-generated vocals. This has been done with his consent and the involvement of his record label, but elsewhere, as we have heard, AI tools are being widely used to create music in the style of established artists, despite no permission having been given and a total lack of creative control on the part of those artists and their representatives. Can the Minister outline how the Government are actively involving musicians, artists and writers in determining how best to protect that very precious intellectual property, while allowing creativity to flourish? I echo the noble Baroness’s theme: this is an urgent matter and we would like to hear how the Government will address it.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

The issue raised by the noble Baroness is of deep concern to everybody. As I say, there are some very serious problems, not least regarding the jurisdiction where any alleged infringement may or may not have taken place. Of course, any jurisdiction that implements rules one way or the other will find that the AI work she sets out so compellingly is simply offshored elsewhere. The Government engage very closely with creative groups, including fair remuneration groups for musicians and many others, and will continue to do so, looking for a solution to this difficult problem.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Viscount told the Lords Communications and Digital Select Committee that he did not

“believe that infringing the rights of copyright holders is a necessary precondition for developing successful AI”.

Does he still hold to that view, and does he accept that it should be the clearly stated view of the Government?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I do not believe that the AI industry, in the long term, will require long-standing copyright infringement for its success. That is and continues to be the Government’s view; any unauthorised use or copying of intellectual property or copyrighted material is an infringement. Of course, there is a range of exceptions to that, and there is the possibility of giving permission for that to happen. It becomes a very complex area, both legally and technologically, but, as I say, we continue to look for a solution.

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Cross Bench!

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

I am most grateful. AI is already creating IP of its own, but it is unable to register it because, by law, a human being needs to register IP. In trying to create a legislative bottle into which this genie could be reinserted, have the Government taken that into account?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

The noble Lord raises a very interesting question. The laws surrounding the copyrighting of machine-generated content are getting fairly elderly now and certainly need to be looked at as part of the overall position going forward.

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, it is clear from the questions being raised that this is a very complex area, not least because we are bringing together the creative and legal industries and the technologists who are programming, developing and trying to stay ahead of the curve on this. What plans do the two departments involved in developing the code of practice have urgently to engage with industry—especially over the summer, when there will be a number of events and activities, including London Tech Week—so that we can more quickly develop the code and other requirements?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

Perhaps my noble friend will forgive me if I gaze into a crystal ball for a moment and predict that the eventual solution to this will involve three elements: first, some modifications to our copyright legislation; secondly, some use of technology to enable a solution; and thirdly, internationally accepted standards of interoperability in any eventual solution. We engage widely with techUK and other technology partners, but above all we engage extensively internationally. I point to our specific engagements with the World Intellectual Property Organization, the UN agency the ITU, and of course the follow-up to the AI Safety Summit, which we are co-hosting in Seoul in a couple of weeks’ time.

[Baroness Featherstone (LD)]

My Lords, what action are the Government taking to compel AI companies to implement measures to monitor and report IP infringements?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

One of the principles we set out in our AI White Paper is transparency. That principle—repeated across the OECD and in the EU’s AI Act—will go a long way towards doing what the noble Baroness asks. There are, though, a number of technical difficulties in implementing transparency—not legally, from our side, but rather, the computer science problems associated with processing the very large quantities of data required to generate true transparency.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, a lot of people are excited by the prospects for AI. Indeed, this country is in the lead in developing such policies and the associated opportunities. As one of those involved in preparing the GDPR in Brussels, I am concerned that the opportunities and excitement associated with the use of AI must be balanced against the protection of individual privacy and the rights of corporate structures and individuals who are worried about the abuses that might occur unless legislators are up to date and moving fast enough to deal with these matters.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

My noble friend makes some important points: AI must advance on the back of well-executed data protection. Let me take the opportunity to thank him for his outstanding contributions during the recently completed Committee stage of the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill. We continue to share the goal that he set up.

NATO: French Nuclear Weapons

Thursday 9th May 2024 Lords Chamber

Question

11:51

Asked by

[Lord West of Spithead]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what discussions they have had with President Macron regarding the allocation of French nuclear weapons to NATO.

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)]

My Lords, French participation in NATO’s nuclear structures is a matter for France. None the less, we are pleased to see President Macron emphasising the European dimension to France’s deterrent. As the two European nuclear powers, the United Kingdom and France regularly discuss, and are increasing co-operation on, nuclear deterrence issues, to help safeguard European security, and the overall security of this important alliance.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, the defence of Europe is reliant on NATO, not some half-baked EU military organisation. We are safe because of NATO—let us not fool ourselves. We allocate out nuclear weapons to NATO, which is under the US nuclear umbrella. France, of course, does not, although in 2020, 2022, and now this year President Macron has floated ideas about French nuclear weapons being allocated to some EU organisation—I am not yet clear what yet.

At what is a perilous time for our continent, with what is going on in Europe, this is not the time to play little political games about nuclear weapons—it is the time to focus very carefully on a nuclear umbrella that has been the underpinning of our NATO protection. In our discussions with President Macron, we need to make sure that he understands this, but in the nicest possible way.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

I assure the noble Lord that we are always nice to President Macron and our friends across the channel. He raises a vital point. This is a key alliance and that is why, back in 1962, the United Kingdom was very clear about its independent nuclear deterrent and its use in terms of the European security question and in supporting the NATO alliance. We are having constructive engagement with France on the importance of European security, particularly in light of Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine. We have strong engagement at various strategic and technical levels, and indeed through the TEUTATES agreement, which builds on technology and research capabilities. The co-operation is strong, and we also welcome the statement made in President Macron’s recent state of the Union address, in terms of both tone and substance.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree, in relation to the important point made by the noble Lord, Lord West, that the unambiguous commitment by the United Kingdom and United States of their nuclear capability to NATO, and the clarity of purpose governing that commitment honoured by NATO, has been critical in maintaining the credibility of NATO as an effective defensive alliance? We should be very vigilant in ensuring that that stability is not threatened in any way.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My noble friend speaks with deep insight, and I totally agree with her. The strength of NATO is in the support of its membership—particularly those who have the capacity and capabilities. That is the message that we need to send today. As the noble Lord, Lord West, pointed out, it is particularly important, given the challenging times we currently face.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with the Minister. France’s nuclear policy is a sovereign matter, and a matter for the French Government. But we also strongly support the strength of co-operation between France and the United Kingdom on security and defence, and building on the Lancaster House treaties. The Minister mentioned the European dimension, which is a vital component of this—strengthening and co-operating with NATO. Does the Minister support Labour’s call for a new security pact with the EU, so that we can embrace all these issues, to complement and strengthen NATO?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, one thing we are absolutely clear on is that we want to work with key partners across NATO to ensure a strengthened alliance. That underlies the independent deterrence the UK brings, when it comes to the issue of nuclear deterrence as well. It is important that we co-operate with all key partners, but NATO is the bedrock of our security alliance, and that is where the United Kingdom’s focus is.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, is the Minister as shocked as I am to hear a Question from the noble Lord that does not include the word “frigates”?

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

More seriously, does NATO agree that there is such a thing as a tactical nuclear weapon, which is referred to by the President of Russia? I do not believe it does, but could he enlighten us?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords I fear that the noble Lord might be tempting the noble Lord, Lord West, to come in again. On his serious point, we need to be very clear that loose language is extremely dangerous in any context, and it is particularly dangerous at the current time. We need responsibility and real recognition—and the NPT treaty was signed by Russia in 2022, but it then went to war in Ukraine a month later. We must make sure those principles are upheld by all responsible powers across the world, and those who do not need to be challenged quite directly.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister has just spoken about the importance of language, and that was clearly addressed to the President of Russia. When having conversations with the President of France, are His Majesty’s Government also mindful of the need to suggest, perhaps in private, that we need to be a little bit careful about the use of language about boots on the ground beyond Ukraine?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, as a long-standing Minister at the Foreign Office, the brilliance of our British diplomacy is well known to me, and I assure the noble Baroness that we use those very terms in our engagements with all partners. I come back to the important point about language: it is key. Language matters, and every word that is uttered is monitored, reviewed and analysed very significantly. I say again that our relationship with France is extremely strong; we share many key priorities, including on the defence of Europe and standing together in unity against Russia when it comes to Ukraine.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, was it not a pity that President Macron talked about boots on the ground in Ukraine, when what is needed is air power, if we are going to win this war? Without it, we will lose it.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I am not the spokesman for President Macron—I speak for the United Kingdom Government. What is important is that we show unity of words, purpose and action, when it comes to fighting Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, our military capability, conventional and nuclear, depends crucially on industrial capacity, which it is clear that we in this country have allowed to atrophy to a dangerously low level. What progress are the Government making in increasing the capacity of nuclear enterprise in this country to meet the demands of the future—both military and civilian?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, we are making significant progress in that regard. I am sure that the noble and gallant Lord welcomed the Prime Minister setting out our bolstering of the defence budget, firing up much of our industrial base, including £10 billion over the next decade on munitions production, which will also generate new jobs and investment, modernising our Armed Forces and of course backing Ukraine in the illegal war that has been waged on it by Russia.

[Lord Morgan (Lab)]

My Lords, would not collaboration in defence with President Macron be much more constructive if we used the well-established channels of the entente cordiale, which are over 100 years old now, and ignored the observations, for example, of Liz Truss, who is not sure whether France is a friend or a foe?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, we have reached agreements through established channels, including the Lancaster House agreement. When we go back to exchanges going back to John Major’s time with the then president of France, there are established channels across defence and security. These are vital, and we need to ensure that they are strengthened at this crucial time for Europe.

[Baroness Helic (Con)]

My Lords, President Macron warned in a recent interview, commenting on European security:

“Things can fall apart very quickly”.


Nowhere is this surer to happen than in the western Balkans region—and that would have a devastating effect on the people of the region and the wider security, and it would enable Russia to open a second front somewhere else. Does the Minister agree that the European force, EUFOR, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, will soon need to be reinforced by NATO troops?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My noble friend has great insight on this issue, and I agree with her on the importance of ensuring stability in the Balkans. We do not want to see any repeat of the tragic and abhorrent war that ripped apart Bosnia-Herzegovina. The threat is very clear from Russia, as are the increasing threats from the likes of Mr Dodik when it comes to Republika Srpska. We need to stand together in support, both politically and militarily, to see what can be done, and not just across the Balkans. As my noble friend knows, we are engaged directly in support in Kosovo as well.

Skills: Importance for the UK Economy and Quality of Life

Thursday 9th May 2024 Lords Chamber

Motion to Take Note

12:03

Moved by

[Lord Aberdare]

To move that this House takes note of the importance of skills for the success of the United Kingdom economy and for the quality of life of individuals.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, skills are central to the future of our young people and central to the future of our nation. Every one of the main challenges we face depends for its resolution on our having the right skills, now and in the future. Yet it seems to me that we, including in this House, do not focus enough on how to develop, maintain and enhance the skills needed to achieve net zero; to become a science and technology superpower; to realise the potential of AI; to meet our energy needs; to defend ourselves in an increasingly fractious world; to improve the quality of our health and care systems; to build enough new homes; to upgrade our transport infrastructure; to support our brilliant creative sector; and to pursue numerous other aims. All of these depend on skills.

My belief in the importance of skills is partly personal. I emerged from a very privileged education with an Oxford classics degree, an impressive academic record, virtually no practical skills and little idea of what sort of career to pursue. I believe that we can and should do better for our young people. I am also struck by the contrast between attitudes to education and skills today, and the burning desire to improve themselves that led some 200,000 Welsh people to learn to read the Bible in the circulating schools set up by Griffith Jones of Llanddowror, in my home county of Carmarthen, in the 18th century.

I am absolutely delighted to have obtained this debate to explore how we can better meet our skills needs, and greatly look forward to hearing the contributions of all noble Lords who are speaking, not least the maiden speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell and Lord Marks of Hale, and of course the response of the Minister. I am grateful to the House of Lords Library for its briefing for the debate, for additional research that Thomas Weston has done for me, and to the many organisations which have deluged me with helpful and insightful briefings, to which I fear I shall do less than justice in the time available.

Virtually every sector of our economy currently faces worker shortages; so-called skills-shortage vacancies have risen from about 91,500 in 2011 to over 531,000 in 2022—up from 16% to 36% of all vacancies. A recent British Chambers of Commerce survey found that 73% of organisations are facing skills shortages. We have stubbornly high levels of young people who are not in education, employment or training: 12% of young people, some 850,000, are NEET. At the same time, employers complain that young people leaving education lack work-ready skills: 60% of employers struggle to find the right technical skills and 50% cannot find the transferable skills that they need. UK productivity seems to be stuck in a rut and falling behind that of other countries. Teacher recruitment and retention is not keeping up with demand. We face a serious skills challenge.

What sorts of skills do we need? I know other noble Lords will talk about specific skills, so I will just outline some of the categories needed. First, all of us need basic skills, including literacy, numeracy, digital literacy and no doubt oracy, which had not been invented when I was at school—your Lordships may have reason to regret that. Literacy and numeracy are, rightly, required elements of the school curriculum, although the Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee, on which I served, argued that there should be more functional alternatives to the current requirement to achieve a level 4 GCSE pass, which has a highly damaging effect on the subsequent educational progress of the one-third of young people who fail to attain it.

Secondly, there are specific work or job-related skills, including technical and practical skills, for which training may be delivered by FE colleges, independent training providers or employers themselves. The much-needed green skills belong in this category.

Thirdly, there are the skills variously described as life skills, soft skills or transferable skills. The Skills Builder Partnership identifies eight essential skills: speaking; listening; problem-solving; creativity; aiming high; staying positive; teamwork; and leadership. It has developed a universal framework resource for teaching and assessing these, which is being used in a growing number of schools. These are increasingly important in the modern world, in both our work and personal lives. They are also the skills which employers are crying out for most of all: 57% of employers say they value transferable over technical skills. Employers find that the education system prepares students well for academic progression, rather than vocational pathways, on which there is insufficient focus. Yet 98% of teachers recognise essential skills as important for their learners’ employment opportunities and 86% agree that the national curriculum should include them.

The Local Government Association identifies no fewer than 49 national employment and skills-related schemes or services across England. They spend an estimated £20 billion in total and are managed by at least nine Whitehall departments and agencies. The Minister will have a lot to cover in her response.

I will briefly mention three initiatives within the remit of the DfE about which I feel strongly. Apprenticeships are a key part of skills policy. The apprenticeship levy is an important means of securing employer funding for skills training. There has been a disappointing decline in apprenticeship starts in recent years—from more than 509,000 in 2015-16 to about 337,000 in 2022-23. I will highlight two concerns about the current system. First, the number of apprenticeships for young people aged under 19 has declined even more steeply—from more than 131,000 to less than 78,000, as has the number of entry-level—level 2—apprenticeships, which are most suitable for many in this age group. The levy, in effect, incentivises employers to offer more expensive higher-level apprenticeships, often to upskill or reskill existing employees. This is also important, of course, but the balance seems wrong and needs to be adjusted to ensure a greater intake of younger apprentices, especially at level 2.

Secondly, there is a long-standing need to reduce the barriers of cost, complexity and bureaucracy which deter small employers from offering apprenticeships. Many employers are calling for greater flexibility as to how levy funds can be spent—for example to cover other forms of accredited training. The Government have made some improvements, but take-up by SMEs is still much too low.

A successful skills system depends on the availability of first-rate careers education and information for everyone from primary school age to adulthood. Much progress has been made in recent years, thanks largely to the efforts of the Careers & Enterprise Company and other careers organisations. Some 92% of schools are now part of local career hubs. More than 3,000 careers leaders have been trained, and the average number of the eight Gatsby benchmarks of good career guidance achieved by schools has risen from 2.1 to 5.5 in the last five years. Encouragingly, schools serving the most disadvantaged groups perform above the average. There is still much more to do in improving the quality of careers provision and business engagement, especially at local level and outside schools, tackling barriers to progression into jobs, and firmly establishing careers education as the bridge between young people and business.

The Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 led to the creation of local skills improvement plans across all 38 areas of England—most of them are led by chambers of commerce—which set out actionable priorities to tackle local skills needs. My noble friend Lady Lane-Fox, who is the president of the British Chambers of Commerce, will talk more about them. These should be a powerful tool for understanding and addressing skills needs and opportunities across England. Perhaps the Minister could tell us how implementation of the plans will be monitored and assessed. Should there not also be an NSIP—a national skills improvement plan—to ensure that, taken together with LSIPs, they are meeting identified national skills priorities and that programmes at national and local government levels are effectively co-ordinated?

Later speakers will doubtless mention other skills-related government initiatives, such as T-levels, the lifelong learning entitlement and the advanced British standard. We will also hear about some of the Labour Party’s proposals, including for a national skills taskforce. My impression is that existing initiatives add up to rather less than the sum of their parts, rather than a coherent and comprehensive package for tackling skills needs. They seem fragmented and lacking clarity about how different schemes are supposed to work together.

There are also many excellent organisations outside government helping to develop young people’s skills. The National Citizen Service, along with the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, recently launched a report in Parliament on the enrichment activities they offer. The Scouts seek to empower young people with skills for life. WorldSkills UK, which is this morning announcing the young people selected to represent Team UK at this year’s Skills Olympics in Lyon, described one of its aims as “championing future skills” and helping the UK become a “world-class skills economy” so as to remain globally competitive. I say amen to that.

This Government do not seem keen on strategies, but no well-run organisation of any size would be without a human resources strategy. We, as a country, need a skills strategy to fulfil a similar role. What might such a strategy look like? First, skills should be recognised as a priority for any Government—national, devolved or local—and every area of policy needs to include provision for developing required skills. Secondly, the strategy should be evidence-based, built on sound data about current and anticipated skills needs, shortages and opportunities. There needs to be a process for monitoring and reporting on implementation and progress.

Thirdly, the strategy should be comprehensive and joined up across relevant government departments—I mentioned the nine that have programmes in this area—and across the nation, taking account both of local plans and of regional and national priorities, and seeking complementarity with the devolved nations, from which there may be valuable lessons to be learned.

Fourthly, and very importantly, the strategy should be matched by an education system fully aligned with its goals at all levels from primary to tertiary and beyond. This must recognise and seek to meet the need for skilled technicians and tradespeople, as well as university graduates, and give all of them a strong grounding in basic and essential skills. It is high time for the holy grail of parity of esteem between academic and technical/vocational education to be seized—although I am not sure whether that is the right thing to do with a grail. Of course, the implications of a skills strategy for education deserve a debate of their own.

Fifthly, a strategy should incorporate measures to increase teacher motivation and recognition by allowing them greater flexibility, to teach in a way that best suits their own abilities, experiences and interests. Highly skilled, highly motivated and highly regarded teachers must be a central plank of any skills strategy.

Sixthly, employers must be deeply engaged, both in defining and in delivering the strategy, including by ensuring that their own skills needs are recognised, and through offering work experience placements and apprenticeships.

Finally, the strategy should be vigorously promoted and publicised to individuals, employers, teachers, schools, parents and everyone concerned with skills. Such a strategy should aim to raise skills much higher up the public agenda and recapture some of the passion for education and skills that drove the success of Griffith Jones’s schools. Developing and delivering it would be neither easy nor quick and would depend on attracting the co-operation and commitment of all parties with a stake in raising skills—which is basically all of us. It might be supported by a high-profile campaign to build enthusiasm for pursuing the skills that young people and our economy need and to incentivise and celebrate investment in skills. The DfE’s existing Skills for Life campaign seems lacking in ambition and impact.

I am conscious that I have barely scratched the surface of the issues we are debating. I have every confidence that subsequent speakers will fill many of the gaps. I hope that this House, with the benefit of all the wisdom and expertise that it embodies, will continue to work doggedly with government, education institutions, employers and others in pursuit of policies to make the UK a world leader in skills.

When Napoleon supposedly described us as a nation of shopkeepers, I believe it was meant more as a recognition of our commercial talents than as an insult. Now is the time to apply our talents to a new challenge—to show ourselves to the world as a nation of skills builders. I beg to move.

12:18

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Aberdare on initiating this debate. He and I meet from time to time at conferences on technical education around the country. I admire his determination; he never gives up, he just keeps bashing on.

Today, over 30 speakers in this House want to speak on technical education, including two maiden speakers. We have a rich knowledge of education in this House, but we do not hold the Government to account on education in any effective way. Since 2010, there has been no significant debate in this House on the curriculum, assessment systems, FE colleges, sixth-form colleges or even universities. We need a Select Committee on education and training and my noble friend Lord Aberdare should be its chairman.

The Government’s record on technical education in schools has been abysmal since 2010. The amount of technical education has fallen; the annual number of apprentices has dropped for the last few years because the Government believe—or Michael Gove and Gibb believed—that there should be no technical education below 16 in our schools. I am afraid they have succeeded. By imposing Progress 8 and EBacc on the school system, they have virtually ended design and technology. There has been a drop of 80% in our schools. In the cultural subjects of drama, dance, performing arts, music and art, there has been a drop of 50%. The broad curriculum that I tried to introduce in the 1980s has disappeared totally. This is not acceptable; there has got to be a change.

Many years ago, the Labour Party gave Lord Dearing and me enough to start two university technical colleges. Cameron increased that to 12 and then to 24, and I am glad to say we now have 44 university technical colleges. They are among some of the best schools in the country. We have over 20,000 students and 85% of the colleges get “good” or “outstanding” Ofsteds. What is really dramatic is that our colleges’ level of youth unemployment is between 1% and 3%. As my noble friend Lord Aberdare said, the level of NEETs in the country is 12%; in disadvantaged areas such as Stoke and Newcastle, it is as high as 20%. We have 2%. We are getting two new colleges in the next 18 months, in Southampton and Doncaster. They are expensive—they will cost £25 million. I would like 100. I am not going to get 100 because, in the next 10 years, hardly any new schools will be built, because of declining rolls. It will be an era of closing schools, which will be very difficult to handle for whoever forms the next Government—closing schools is very tricky and very expensive.

In the UTC movement, we have devised a way of bringing technical education into ordinary schools. We want to introduce a sleeve of 14 to 18 technical education into an ordinary 11 to 18 year-old school. That sleeve will have its own classrooms, teachers and equipment and will be separate from the academic route. We will of course continue to teach English, maths and science—as academic subjects, they will probably be shared with the academic route—but there will be a technical route in the school. It will have separate examinations and will be supported by the local university and local companies.

The department has known about this scheme for over a year. We have found 10 schools that want to do it and the Secretary of State and the Minister have been provided with their details. We are waiting for a decision. I believe this will be the only way for whoever wins the next election to get technical education into schools. It means you have to abandon and scrap Progress 8 and EBacc. In the last two years, there have been seven reports advocating exactly that, including two from Select Committees in this House, which said that EBacc and Progress 8 should be abolished and that the exam system of GCSEs should be reduced dramatically and reformed, or even ended.

There is a letter in the Times today from the headmaster of Bedales, which is a very successful school, describing how it is slowly moving away from GCSEs altogether. There is a private school in west London, Latymer, which is going to offer only two GCSE exams in three years’ time—just English and maths. The rest are going to be assessed; the subjects will go on.

As a result of not having the pressure of exams in the summer term, you will get two extra teaching terms. The spring term is now all revision and the summer term is all exams. You abolish all that and you will get extra time for very interesting new subjects such as anthropology, philosophy, archaeology, the history of south-east Asia, graphic design and even the history of pop music. You can get that by abolishing the GCSE system. I would like to see it, but it is not going to happen.

I am holding in my hand an application from the Bede Academy, a school in Newcastle and one of the best in the north-east—each year they get some students into Russell group universities. Those in the Bede Academy want a sleeve specialising in engineering, energy and health. It is a very good 12-page thing. They worked out entirely the quote for the next three years: what sort of teachers they want and the cost of it, including the buildings. They have the strong support of Northumbria University on health, and to introduce the health changes they need £200,000. They also need two digital computing units to teach artificial intelligence and virtual reality, which are not taught at all in Newcastle’s schools. They want six engineering rooms, metal-working and welding workshops, mechatronics workshops, CAD workshops, laser cutting and 3D printer sites. They want all of that and they have put the cost at £1.5 million to £1.8 million.

This, Minister, is an enormous bargain. If you wanted to set up a technical college in Newcastle, it would cost £12 million to £15 million. This is for only £1.5 million to £1.8 million. Before I sit down—and I am about to sit down—I will give this application to the Minister. I do not know whether she has received it or read it. I will give it to her and I hope that, before she sits down, if she is listening to me, she will be able to say when she is going to give approval to it.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

12:26

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I give the noble Baroness the Minister the assurance that I will not repeat that party trick in a moment.

I stepped down from the Communications and Digital Select Committee just three months ago. It was an invigorating experience, spending three years looking at developments in the fields we were examining and interrogating various experts from the top of a number of industries and experiences. It seems that there is a paucity of contributors from that committee, so I bring to the attention of noble Lords an inkling of just two of the reports we brought out. Since the work has been done, I want to emphasise that we can refer to it at any time we like.

One report, on our creative future, was published just a year ago and there is a whole chapter on the skills that we need. Some 88% of employers in the creative occupations find it hard to recruit high-level skilled individuals, compared with 38% of employers across the economy. Someone we interrogated said that skills were currently the single biggest inhibitor of growth. Meanwhile, international competition for creative skills is growing, including creative, technical, cultural management and business skills, and this is likely to intensify. Those are just three or four allusions to a rich chapter that fleshes out the need for creative skills of all kinds in our creative industries, which make such an important contribution to the economy of our country. Since our country’s economy is well stated in the Motion from the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare—it is lovely to see him in his place and giving us the opportunity to discuss these things—we must draw attention to the fact that one sector of our economy is particularly hard hit by the absence of skills.

The other report to which I draw attention relates to fulfilling the second requirement of the Motion, which is for our personal development, and that is Digital Exclusion—or digital inclusion; which would we prefer? It is a fact that, for ordinary, everyday tasks, we lack the skills simply to do the things that are required of us. I left the house this morning, and my poor wife was coping with problems with our internet provider, needing to know language, to have patience and to entertain various options for which she was never trained, though she had a highly technical education and work pattern as a radiographer in the health industry. I myself have got yet again today what I regularly get, which is an imprecation from my bank to do internet banking. I utterly refuse, because I will not give the banks the opportunity to say that they have now mopped up all the remaining recidivists: people like me who will not modernise themselves or live in the modern world. I will say to my bankers that they should continue to send me my monthly paper statement, because that is an important thing for so many people.

We have heard that there has not been a properly developed strategy for skills since 2014, and it was spelled out just what needs to be in that strategy. One of the recurring things that we heard in all the committee meetings was that this need for skills branches out into so many aspects of ordinary, everyday living that we must have cross-departmental approaches to evolving this strategy. It is no good leaving it to the Department for Education, or science and technology or whatever it is. This impacts on the whole of our lives. It needs a dedicated body of people to look at this constantly in relation to the various departments of government. Formal cross-government evaluations seem to have stopped. They need to be reworked and rebegun.

The Government, of course, cannot be expected to solve everything, but they can achieve much by showing interest in driving change against clearly defined objectives. The committee said:

“We have no confidence that this is happening. Senior political leadership to drive joined-up concerted action is sorely needed”.


I could go on, but the reports are there. I place the underlying questions of my intervention in the hands of the Minister in the hope that she can give us some concrete evidence of progress in these areas. It will also reinforce my confidence that the work of our Select Committees gets heard and is implemented, and that their ideas are taken forward.

12:33

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for introducing this debate so comprehensively on a subject where he and I regularly end up at the same meetings and with the same enthusiasms for the world of skills. I sympathise with the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths: my home wifi has been down since Wednesday, and they tell me that they will bring somebody on Monday to sort it out. It is so infuriating; but that is enough of that. I warmly welcome the two maiden speakers, who have chosen a very good subject on which to cut their teeth in this House.

I, too, was on the recent Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee, where members strongly recommended that the Government’s obsession with knowledge needed to be tempered with the acquisition of skills. Few students would need algebra and geometry later in life, but they would all need financial literacy and computer skills. Few would need Shakespeare and the finer points of grammar—that is not to say that Shakespeare is not vitally important, of course—but all would need to be able to read, write and speak. We noted that oracy, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, has said, featured very little in state schools, whereas independent schools were keen on public speaking and expressing oneself.

It is of concern that many heritage craft skills are endangered. They require patience and attention to detail, both of which are often missing in young people who are used to the instant responses of computers. Yet pottery, silversmithing and weaving give immense satisfaction, as indeed do stonemasonry, decorating, fashion, catering and floristry—a whole range. These are skills which require dedication; they contribute to the happiness and well-being of others, but they are seldom taught in schools. We hear from the University of the Arts that the creative industries generated a £108 billion in economic value in 2021 and grew more than one and a half times faster than the wider economy between 2010 and 2019, employing more than 2.3 million people—one in 14 jobs.

Colleges, which do the lion’s share of teaching skills, are too often sidelined by a Government who are obsessed with academia and with learning facts, not skills. Like the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, I graduated from Oxford with a passion for medieval French, which has never been of any use to me whatsoever later in life. Colleges and their hard-working tutors deserve a much better deal, given the key part that they play in generating the skills which we all need. Universities should never be seen as the only respectable route for young people to take. Even ivory towers need plumbers and bricklayers, and academics need hairdressers and caterers.

I have already referred to the creative industries as major players but, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, bemoaned, music, art, dance and drama have disappeared from many state schools, as they have to conform to the demands of the baccalaureate, which squeezes such skills out of the timetable. Can the Minister tell us what consideration the Government have given to tempering their obsession with knowledge and making a place for practical skills in the school curriculum? What consideration is given to the happiness of students as they master skills and produce things other than exam results?

I worked for 20 years for City & Guilds. Founded in 1878 by the City of London and 16 of the livery companies to promote training in trade and skills, the organisation continues to award millions of certificates every year in work-based subjects, all, of course, designed by employers. I say to the Government that T-levels are not unique in this respect. Every work-based qualification since time began has been designed by employers.

The City of London still puts great resource into encouraging financial, professional, sustainability and digital sectors and, like the livery companies, promoting apprenticeships. I declare an interest as a past master of the world traders livery company, which is a modern company. I am very proud that this year’s Lord Mayor is one of our past masters. Livery companies are major contributors to education and charity. I am delighted to see that we have another past Lord Mayor here—in the noble Lord, Lord Mountevans—taking part today, because the City and the livery companies are major players in these areas. Like many others, they would love to see the apprenticeship levy reformed, so can the Minister say what steps are being taken to make the levy more conducive to take-up and more relevant to actual apprenticeships?

I mentioned colleges being essential to improving skills, yet their funding is always less generous than that of schools. The Open University and the WEA also provide invaluable support to those wishing to acquire skills later in life, for jobs but also for life and for contributions to the community. However, they always have to do battle for any government funding.

May I add my voice to the support for BTECs? The Government are obsessed by their new-found T-levels; they are untried, untested and currently with only some 26,000 students enrolled, as compared to 280,000 students studying at least one applied general qualification. BTECs provide a more effective, tried-and-tested route to higher education or skilled employment than A-levels or T-levels. It would be an act of vandalism to stop funding them and would exacerbate the shortage of qualified, skilled people in the workplace. Will the Minister do all she can to stop the Government from ruining life chances for the next generation and weigh in behind BTEC, City & Guilds and traditional apprenticeships to ensure that we can find qualified people from among our own workforce, both doing rewarding jobs and gaining satisfaction from their skills?

I will end with some stats from Open University, which reported that

“58% … of organisation leaders … report a mismatch between young people’s skill levels and employer expectations in the past three years. A decline in soft skills (54%) such as communication, teamwork, time management and technical skills … suggests there is a need for more investment in preparing this generation, that account for 20% of the current workforce, for the workplace”.

So, can the Government please rethink their response to our committee report and give us some hope for the future and the quality of life of young people?

12:39

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of Peers for the Planet and congratulate my noble friend Lord Aberdare, both on securing this debate and on the way in which he introduced it. He managed to cover such a wide range of issues, which I am sure will be highlighted in various respects over the course of the debate. I very much look forward to the maiden speeches that we are to hear.

I want to concentrate my contribution on the importance of green skills for the successful economy of the future, and for the delivery of the Government’s stated commitments towards net zero and a nature-based and nature-positive economy. Those commitments will mean a shift to jobs in low-carbon industries, and in providing nature-based solutions as part of a fair transition to net zero and nature restoration. That change can bring associated health and other co-benefits to all parts of the UK, particularly to the most vulnerable and some of the most disadvantaged.

As my noble friend Lord Aberdare so obviously and clearly explained, we need a national skills strategy. As part of that, we need a specific green skills strategy, which sets out a comprehensive plan for how the Government intend to deliver the green jobs and skills of the future. It is important to emphasise that green jobs are not just going to be those in the energy sector. In the same way that delivering the net-zero transition will need a concerted effort from all sectors—from government, education, government departments and local authorities—so the green jobs of the future will require the same comprehensive approach, with a huge range of jobs and skills needed in all sectors, from the health service and social care to education, transport and the built environment, including learning how to repair things once again, rather than throwing them away.

I would like to specifically ask the Minister about the Government’s promised net zero and nature workforce action plan. In 2023, the CCC noted that it was overdue. It has now been promised for 2024. To echo a remark made yesterday in the House, can the Minister tell us whether we will see it soon, shortly or in due course? Also, how will it fit into any broader national skills and productivity planning, such as the work of the Unit for Future Skills? It is vital that we have a proper, joined-up plan to deliver the skills we need for the future in a fair way, and to seize the opportunities it can bring across all regions of the UK.

As well as the new roles that will be created by the net-zero transition—the CCC estimates this to be up to 700,000 jobs by 2030—a recent report from Bain & Company estimates that around 4 million workers will need reskilling by 2030 to prepare for the new green economy. The Association of Colleges briefing, which noble Lords received, highlights the need for reform of the UK’s tertiary education system to help address future skills gaps, which could be a major constraint in delivering on the plans and commitments that the Government have made. Practically, if we are to deliver the Government’s target of 600,000 heat pump installations by 2028, how are we going to train enough heat-pump engineers when we have 3,000 at the moment and it is estimated that we need 27,000 to deliver on the Government’s promise?

It is also extremely important that we do not leave behind those who work in high-emitting sectors at the moment, whose transferable skills could be redirected very easily to the low-carbon industries of the future. If we do not reskill them, we will lose them to other countries which are developing their own green energy projects.

During debate on the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill, we discussed an amendment which proposed the publication of a green skills retraining plan for the 30,000 or so oil and gas workers still working in our declining North Sea basin. This included a skills passport which would provide financial and practical support so that those workers who wish to do so can easily—and without additional cost to them—reskill and retrain. In that debate, the Minister confirmed that the Government are “keen to take … forward” such a plan and are supporting the delivery of work being led by Offshore Energies UK, which includes a skills passport. When she replies, can the Minister let us know when this work will be delivered? It is now two years since the industry-led integrated people and skills strategy recommended it. Will there be financial support for workers looking to move into green jobs?

12:45

[Lord Marks of Hale (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. I share many of her views on net zero and how we equip young people with the skills to deliver a green strategy.

With much pride, and some emotion, tempered with a healthy dose of butterflies, I rise to speak for the first time in this Chamber. Debating excellence is a hallmark of this House and we have already heard some outstanding speeches today. Therefore, on the advice of noble friends, I have spent time listening and learning before venturing to make my maiden speech.

Given the kindness and the size of the welcome I have been given since my introduction, I would like my first words to be those of gratitude and appreciation to everyone, but especially to my supporters: my noble friend Lady Williams of Trafford and my close party colleague and political mentor, my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley. I also extend my thanks to my Whip, my noble friend Lady Sanderson of Welton; to my mentor, my noble friend Lord McLoughlin; and for the advice proffered to me by Black Rod and the Clerk of the Parliaments. I also thank the doorkeepers, who have never lost patience with me as I have asked—for at least the 20th time—the way to the Peers’ cloakroom. One corridor looks very much like another when you are a newbie.

I have many reasons to be passionate about skills and the need for skill equality across the country but before that, just a little about myself. My seat bears the title of Hale, a beautiful village in lovely countryside just to the south of Manchester, where I was brought up and still live with my devoted wife, and where we raised our four children. I am also an avid runner; since entering the House, I have chanced upon a new training programme. Sprinting from the Chamber to the platform at Euston, via the tube, has completely transformed my fitness, especially when trying to crack a sub-20 minutes. I invite any Mancunians in the House to join me.

As noble Lords will have gathered, I am a man of faith, so entering the Chamber for the first time from the Moses Room was very special to me. I was raised in a traditional Jewish household, where my parents—both businesspeople—left a deep impression on me of the pillars defining Judaism: belief in God, kindness to others, charity, justice and prayer. I have, over time, increased my observance and religiosity to become what is known as shomer Shabbat: someone who guards and observes the Sabbath, which is the most wonderful 25-hour weekly digital detox. I highly recommend it to everyone. As a hard-working entrepreneur, I like to say that I am available 24/6.

On Tuesday, we remembered the Holocaust, with our annual Yom HaShoah events around the country. It is with great sadness and despair that within living memory of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism has returned around the world. Like many Jews in this country, I am horrified and frightened by what I see, what I hear, and what I feel, whether on the streets, through social and other media, or of course in our universities.

I am therefore very grateful for the outpouring of support from noble Lords of all religions and backgrounds, who have been united in their condemnation of this. If we fight together and fight hard enough, we can and will stamp out this virus. I am also particularly thankful to our Prime Minister for his unwavering support of the Jewish community and for everything that he and the Government are doing to ensure that anti-Semitism has no place in society, including today meeting university leaders to ensure a zero-tolerance approach to anti-Semitic abuse on all campuses.

Although I went to a grammar school, my academic interests waned somewhat towards the end, shutting off the option of a university education for me. That was actually no big deal, as I was itching to embrace the world of commerce. I have been blessed with a successful career building a number of substantial companies, mostly in disruptive technologies—even taking one of them to the London Stock Exchange—and have always learned along the way from inspiring colleagues and clients. My business of the last 10 years has been at the forefront of corporate innovation, bringing talented start-ups to the attention of multinational companies and creating an environment for collaboration between David and Goliath. However, it was the skills I learned at school that prepared the way for my career. I therefore congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, on bringing this important debate to the House.

In my business, I am privileged to see thousands of technology and manufacturing solutions from around the world and to witness real innovation. While I believe that you cannot teach the drive, ambition, risk-taking and work ethic that makes an entrepreneur, you can teach them the skills they need to build and run our unicorns of the future. As the report outlines, essential skills include teamwork and communication, which all companies need in order to thrive. Likewise, the many people who believe that skills are particularly important in overcoming adversity and difficulties in life should not be overlooked. Many do not have the privilege of an easy or affluent childhood, but that should never be a barrier to success in future life.

Indeed, we all have a moral duty to ensure that we take the resilience that is often endowed as a result of a challenging childhood and combine it with everything a person needs to succeed, including apprenticeships, which I know can be a lifeline and bridge to a much happier world. Ensuring that young people are properly trained and equipped with the skills that suit their capability and temperament will facilitate favourable outcomes, whether entering the factory floor, rising up the corporate managerial ladder or building their own businesses. That must be the number one goal for UK plc.

The report also addresses levelling up, which I am completely in agreement with. Of course, it does not refer only to the north. The imbalance in skills across the country means that many areas are left behind, which leads to proportionately lower investment in innovation and R&D. However, some of the most successful companies, old and new, have thrived in some of the poorer parts of the country. I know that because I built my first company in Nelson in east Lancashire, one of the most deprived areas in the UK. However, we became an employment magnet and rewarded the workforce with training and career progression, and I am proud that many of our employees rose through the ranks at my company or transferred their skills to find new, exciting jobs elsewhere. We should gravitate to the leaders of these companies, embrace them and learn from them, so that we can copy the formula that works, thereby encouraging more businesses to open and relocate to these areas, which, in turn, addresses the economic imbalance and provides a marketplace for skilled workers. That, in turn, creates wealth, attracts more investment, improves the quality of life and raises the standards of living and education. As John F Kennedy said:

“A rising tide lifts all … boats”.


My only disappointment on joining this House is that I have not been able to spend time with the towering late Rabbi Lord Sacks, a true spiritual leader and a sage of our time. He was—and still is—my inspiration on all matters Judaic and, indeed, in life. He was taken away from us far too early. I will devote my final words to something he said:

“Where what you want to do meets what needs to be done”


is your mission in life. I hope that my contribution to public life, through my attendance in this House and participation in future debates, enables me to do exactly that and, in turn, to make a valuable contribution to this wonderful country.

12:55

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Marks of Hale on a wonderful maiden speech. He is assured of a very warm welcome to our House. He gave an important and topical reminder of the dangers of anti-Semitism. For many of us, Lord Sacks is an excellent example of how the wisdom of the Jewish tradition can be of value to us all. The athleticism of the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Hale, is also clearly very impressive. We look forward to seeing his running shoes alongside the mobility scooters downstairs. I am sure that he will be an important contributor to our debates in this House.

I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, on opening and setting the scene for this important debate on skills. I draw the House’s attention to my interests.

I will focus on two issues. The first is the future of BTECs, which are important vocational qualifications, introduced as a skills reform in the 1980s—I am looking across to the former Secretary of State—and which play an important role in providing vocational qualifications today. The Government appear to believe that they can defund BTECs and everyone will instead move on to T-levels, but the figures do not bear that out. In 2021, 5,300 students started T-levels, and one-third dropped out, compared with one-fifth dropping out from other vocational qualifications and one in 10 dropping out from A-levels. The Sixth Form Colleges Association estimates that, in comparison with the low numbers doing T-levels, defunding BTECs could result in 155,000 students not having a level 3 qualification that they otherwise would have secured through the BTEC route. I very much agree with the warnings from the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, on that issue.

BTECs matter. They are a route into degree apprenticeships, to which Ministers rightly attach a lot of importance. They are a route into higher education, with perhaps 60,000 people getting places in higher education as a result of BTECs in important vocational courses, such as nursing.

We have discussed BTECs in this House before, and I informed the Minister that I would raise with her the assurance that she gave us in a debate in this House on 7 April 2022:

“I know that noble Lords are all interested to see the provisional list of qualifications that overlap with waves 1 and 2 T-levels. I want to be absolutely clear to your Lordships today that through this process we expect to remove public funding approval for just a small proportion of the total level 3 offer, including BTECs. This will be significantly less than half”.—[Official Report, 7/4/22; col. 2202.]


That quotation from Hansard was the assurance she gave us approximately two years ago. I would be very grateful if she could update us on how the defunding of BTECs is progressing. It is possible that, in her statement to us two years ago, when she referred to “this process” she was not referring to the full defunding of BTECs but simply to overlap. I would very much like to hear the Government’s estimate of the total number of BTEC and other advanced qualification enrolments, after they have completed the full defunding process. A useful baseline is the 248,000 BTEC/AGQ enrolments in 2022-23. What is the Minister’s latest estimate of how many BTEC courses will be defunded? How many people will be enrolling on BTECs at the end of the full process of defunding BTECs, compared with that baseline of 248,000? As I said, I gave the department advance notice of this question and very much hope that, in the light of our previous debates, we will get those estimates today.

I also ask the Minister—given the slow take-up of T-levels, and given that we now know the Government do not see T-levels as part of a long-term framework—whether they are in turn going to be replaced by this new advanced qualification. Is there not an even stronger case for pausing the defunding of BTECs to reduce the risk that tens of thousands of young people might find themselves without any suitable qualification that they can study and end up not in education, employment or training? It would be a tragedy if the defunding of BTECs have that result. Given the latest information on the uptake of T-levels, I very much hope the Minister will be able to make some concessions on that.

The second issue I want to briefly touch on is degree apprenticeships. I very much welcome degree apprenticeships—they are an important part of the options available. It is just worth, again, putting the figures in context. There are now about 40,000 enrolments in degree apprenticeships, but half those are by people aged over 25. They seem to be particularly taken up by mature learners. We have about 20,000 young people starting degree apprenticeships, about 10% of the total number starting in higher education.

The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, rightly raised the question of the apprenticeship levy and the pressures on it. Degree apprenticeships are funded out of the apprenticeship levy. They are particularly expensive programs. If they are a significant claim on the apprenticeship levy, their growth is surely part of the answer to the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare: why are we seeing such a decline in the number of young people doing apprenticeships and apprenticeships at levels two and three? The answer is that this fixed pot of money is being increasingly deployed for degree apprenticeships.

I wish to see more expansion—as the noble Lord said—of apprenticeships for younger people and at lower levels. I urge the Government to consider funding degree apprenticeships out of fees and loans, just like the rest of higher education, to liberate funding for more apprenticeships. That would also have the side effect that, instead of trying to drive people on to degree apprenticeships by scares about the fees and costs of higher education, we would have a shared interest in explaining to young people that they do not pay for their higher education courses upfront and they should have the option of a growing number of degree apprenticeships alongside other higher education qualifications.

13:02

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, most sincerely for securing this debate and for his wonderful speech. I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Marks, on his inspiring maiden speech, and I look forward to hearing the maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Elliott. I declare an interest as a professor at King’s College London who teaches students and, one hopes, develops their skills. I have been actively engaged for many years in skills policy, including as a government adviser.

At one level, I am delighted at the great interest in this debate on all sides of the House. But, alas, as the old saying goes, “Fine words butter no parsnips”. If we do not get precise commitments on non-university skills spending and on individual access to skills training in forthcoming party manifestos, in my opinion we will continue to deliver inadequate and inefficient skills policies that fail repeatedly and systematically to solve our main skills problems. This is not because politicians and advisers, let alone Peers, are insincere—it is because not just underfunding but repeated short-term upheavals and repeated unpredictable cuts and changes in skills provision are currently hard-wired into our system.

Skills spending always ends up in the Treasury’s and indeed the DfE’s sights when deficits are looming or a bright new initiative is being marketed—so round we go again. Why skills? In common with other developed societies, absolutely rightly we guarantee all children a free education from the age of five to 18 or 19. We offer free early education to three and four year-olds. We quite rightly have legislative obligations to children with special needs and disabilities and, in England and Wales, we offer support to everyone over 18 who is accepted on to a course in a registered higher education institution.

These are clear entitlements and are clearly understood by the population—and, because they are transparent and stable, people can and do plan ahead to use them. Institutions are also able to plan and deliver. But when it comes to mid-level skills—the sorts of skills we are mostly talking about today and the ones for which our economy is currently desperate—clarity is replaced by confusion and repeated, inefficient, expensive and often destructive change. I shall give noble Lords one example. If you stay at school until you are 18 and you are moderately successful, you will be offered a free education up to and including a level 3 award. Level 3 is the skilled trades level, as well as the usual university entry level; it is the one where our skills shortages in this country are the most glaring.

If you leave school without a level 3, our society turns its back on you. As a citizen, you have a right to a free education while you are 18, but not when you were 20, 25 or 30. This is a travesty—it is a travesty in terms of equal treatment of citizens and a travesty in terms of any coherent skills policy. In the Augar review, on which I was privileged to serve and contribute, we strongly recommended that every citizen should have a right to a free level 3. So have many others, including the Economic Affairs Committee of this House. The current Government, back in 2020, did not make a formal commitment to an entitlement, but they acted fast in launching a new funded program which in practice made this available, on terms that made it feasible and attractive for colleges to plan and launch new courses, which is always a high-risk decision. Why did they do so? It was not because there was a sudden blast of light one day, but because earlier there was written into the manifesto a new £3 billion skills fund to be spent over the Parliament, which Treasury could not just wave away. I am 100% sure that without that manifesto commitment nothing would have happened.

Crucially, access to this programme was simple. If you did not have a level 3 qualification, it was open to you—just as now, if you are offered a place at a university, you have a right to Student Loans Company support. Normally in our skills system, working out what you can access at this middle level, and whether you have to pay and what you have to pay, is a moving minefield. Not surprisingly, most people walk away. It is not that people do not want to train or upskill, but the system is completely non-transparent. In other words, it is designed to cut off our skills pipeline at the ankles. Of course, one programme did not transform things, but it was a major step in the right direction. I say “was”, because now the DfE is announcing new restrictions that will make most of these programmes completely unviable. Why? Well, some poor official has written the usual guff about better targeting, but it is actually because the DfE needs to find some money and it is looking for things to cut. As always, the simplest place to look is skills programmes.

This Government have, in my view, done some very good things for skills—and not only when they were listening to me—but I want to emphasise that these things happened because there was a ring-fenced pot and a very clear commitment in a manifesto. No Minister and no Front-Bench spokesman is going to make a commitment of that sort to me today, so I am not even going to ask the Minister to do so. However, if we enter the next election with only high-level uncosted aspirations and with no clear commitments to access to those mid-level skills for people who do not already have a level 3, five years from now we will be making the same speeches—and, if anything, things will be worse.

13:09

[Lord Patten (Con)]

My Lords, there is a lot of evidence that, once a certain standard of living is reached—economic security in particular—good relationships, happy families, and friends and community quite often follow, although not always necessarily, and both of these depend on skills and on the effort made by all of us on improving the quality of life, as the noble Lord said in his opening speech. There are quite a lot of both of these attributes, good skills and good quality of life, in the United Kingdom.

I do not go quite as far as Cecil Rhodes in his bombastic dictum in another age that to be born an Englishman is to have won first prize in the lottery of life. There may be one or two on the wilder shores of my party who have that view of life, but I will not tempt myself to name them today. However, it is a fact that lots of people want to come to the United Kingdom, which I am glad about—I do not speak of the dangerous lives of people seeking to come to our shores illegally. There are queues of people who wish to come here for the attributes that the United Kingdom has, and we should not just forget that and say that everything is a terrible problem.

I will give some examples. The City of London remains a destination ranked way above a Paris or a Frankfurt by generations of polls of those wishing to come to work in the financial services area, where I work. Our best universities remain a target, too, for undergraduate and postgraduate students who want to get proper legal entry into our best universities. We have some great universities, with always three and sometimes four in the top 10 and in the top 100—I forget the figure; doubtless my noble friend Lord Willetts will know what it is, but an awful lot of our universities are ranked in the top 100. We also always welcome a lot of outside direct investment. The UK remains the second biggest destination in Europe for foreign direct investment, and this is led by tough-minded investors from the US and India. These people must have spotted at least a few useful skills that we still have around.

Yet the paradox remains that, despite this, decent skill levels do not automatically lead to increased productivity, which is a mystery that I think the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, referred to when he spoke of productivity. It is particularly poor in the United Kingdom. It is a genuine mystery, and a lot of very clever people are trying to provide the answer as to why it is there, but we have not yet got it. According to the Office for National Statistics in its report last week, the biggest drops in productivity are in the public sector, and they are in education and in health, which are critically important to all of us.

A lot of effort is being put in via policies of different sorts to improve this, notably by levelling up. However, a generation takes a long time, and we are often told that the levelling-up policy will take a generation. A generation is 20 or 30 years and change takes time. So I applaud the realism of the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, as reported by the Financial Times of 30 April, who said that it remains “work in progress”, describing the process as like “building a cathedral”—and they often take longer than one or two generations. So it is extremely important that we deal with the unsolved mystery of why our productivity is so low.

We must also recognise that skills have lots of attributes that are hard to teach formally, but, if they are not acquired or imbued in some way, all the doctorates or degree apprenticeships in the world will not benefit and bring the skills of life with them. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who said in a speech during a debate which he initiated back on 7 March that we had to be realistic about the problems that the university sector is facing. He is right, I think, that we are facing a bit of a sub-prime issue—I will not overwork it by calling it a sub-prime crisis—in a number of our universities, where we have seen, alas, a lot of sacking of staff and abolition of courses. This is always brought in with a lot of management speak, even by great universities such as Goldsmiths, which has announced that it has a “transformation programme”. Once you see a transformation programme coming and vice-chancellors running for the hills, you know there is trouble. We are facing, there and in a number of our underperforming universities in this country, a bit of a looming sub-prime problem, which the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, was absolutely open in saying that we have.

13:15

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for securing this debate and particularly thank him for his formulation of the Motion, which acknowledges that skills are not just for “the economy” but for life, and indeed are the foundation of quality of life. That reflects the Green approach to education and skills training—that it indeed has to be for life, not just for exams or for vocational training.

I associate myself with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking. We have an education system that wastes term after term preparing for exams, which is not education or learning but is a very narrow skill that most people will never repeat once they leave the education system.

I want to particularly focus in one area of my remarks on the great tragedy of the collapse of lifelong learning provision. The number of publicly funded qualifications started by adults has declined by 70% since the early 2000s, dropping from nearly 5.5 million qualifications to 1.5 million qualifications by 2020—those are Institute for Fiscal Studies figures. Essentially, what is left is an extremely narrow range of courses focused particularly on education for jobs that might exist at this particular moment.

The total spend on adult education and apprenticeships combined will be 25% lower in 2024-25 than in 2010-11, and markers have already been made on the plan for adults over the age of 24 studying level 3 and 4 qualifications being forced to take on debt. We are loading our young people down with debt that they will never be able to repay, and now we are seeking to do the same thing right through our age ranges. We have seen the damage it has done to our young people. What damage will it do to people seeking to get ahead, to have that weight of debt on their shoulders?

What is happening here? I will quote one figure: in the last decade, there have been 4 million “lost learners”. That means people who have not been able to advance their productivity—to focus on something this House often looks at—but also have not been able to improve their health through education and skills training, which is very much underrated.

One of the ways in which we utterly fail to value skills is by failing to value the people who teach the skills. In a UCU survey that came out last year, among further education college staff 77% said that the quantity of work had “increased significantly” in the past three years. More than four in 10 say their workload was “unmanageable”. Those who provide education and skills training need to be valued as essential workers and paid and treated accordingly—and that is not what is happening now. If the noble Lord, Lord Patten, wants to look at why productivity might be low, exhaustion, overwork and lack of being valued and treated well may well be factors in that figure.

I want to pick up points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on green skills, and particularly, as she said, that they are too often thought of as relating just to the energy and technology sectors. I will focus briefly on land-based skills in particular. We have seen a cascade of closures of agricultural colleges around the nation, among them recently the 125 year-old Newton Rigg College in Penrith, which is much mourned and much valued. It was deemed no longer financially viable. That is the product of government policy decisions and government funding decisions—a system that has failed to acknowledge that we need food security in this country and that that requires skills.

We have seen some movement from the Government in acknowledging that food security is not just, as I think the Prime Minister three PMs back said, a matter for the supermarkets. There is now some acknowledgement that it is a matter for the Government. Surely land-based skills, the ability to grow food and—I stress this—the ability to engage in environmental horticulture and care for our natural spaces are skills in one of the greatest areas of shortage for our country.

I ask the Minister a question. I know that we are about to start a GCSE in natural history. Can she update me, now or later, on how that is progressing, what student numbers are looking like and how many of those courses are likely to be introduced?

I have two brief final points. Even when a Green Government have introduced a wonderful education system and lifelong learning system, there will never be enough skills. We need to think about where the skills are going. We have an oversized financial sector, which employs 9 million people and swallows up many of our physics and maths graduates and many other people with key levels of skills. We need to think about where those people could be better used for the state of our society—for the future resilience and well-being of all of us.

I also briefly note that we need to acknowledge skills that have been acquired through experience. We need to stop talking about “unskilled jobs”. Many of the jobs that people do on the minimum wage are really difficult, and they have to learn to do them, and we need to acknowledge them in the levels of pay and respect.

I will finish by reflecting on a young woman I met in the north-east recently. In her mid-20s, she had spent a decade caring for her father, who had a horrible degenerative disease. She is a NEET—not in education, employment or training. She has learned so much and has so many skills, but she does not have a lot of confidence, because society has not valued what she has done. We need to value skills that people, particularly women, have acquired through care, and acknowledge them when they seek to enter the labour market.

13:22

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, some people think that learning a foreign language is just an academic pursuit for the top set, but languages are an important skill for everyone. They enhance the economy and individual lives. I declare my interests as set out in the register.

The UK is often caricatured as no good at languages, partly in the belief that “Everyone speaks English, so why bother?” But this is a myth: only 6% of the world’s population are native English speakers, and 75% speak no English at all. In the 21st century, speaking only English is as much of a disadvantage as speaking no English. Another myth is that we need not bother because there is always Google Translate. But when it comes to nuance, cultural sensitivity and understanding, humans and interpersonal skills will always be needed. Ask any soldier who has been deployed to Afghanistan how vital their interpreters have been and how easy it might have been for a single wrong word on Google to have made the difference between life and death.

I return to the UK and the value of language skills to our economy. Research estimates that lack of language skills here costs an estimated 3.5% of GDP. SMEs making use of languages are 30% more successful in exporting than those that do not. In 2022, Cambridge University research calculated that, if we invested more in teaching French, Spanish, Mandarin and Arabic in schools, we could increase our exports by up to £19 billion a year. The British Chambers of Commerce sector survey showed that 38% of businesses expect to need language skills.

Yet employers are frequently forced to recruit from overseas because they say our school leavers and graduates fall short of the language skills that they need. A CBI skills survey said that modern language skills were the ones that employers were the least satisfied with. Only 9% of English 15-year-olds are competent in their first foreign language beyond a very basic level, compared with an average of 42% across 14 European countries. But tighter immigration rules have had an adverse impact on recruitment from overseas, making it even more important to invest more, and more strategically, in language teaching and learning here in the UK. In 2023, only 33% of the target for MFL trainee teachers was met.

This is a challenge not just for graduate or international jobs. One survey showed that the highest level of language skills shortages is among basic clerical and admin staff. You do not always need to be fluent: basic conversation in one or two other languages will often land you the job. Without language skills, the shutters come down on possible career paths not just into business but into diplomacy, international relations, defence and security. Qualified linguists are also needed in key sectors, such as public service translators and interpreters in the NHS, the police and the courts.

As well as opening doors to jobs and careers, learning languages also means learning about other cultures and countries. Trips and exchanges abroad can be inspirational and life-changing. The British Academy has shown how languages bring recognised transferable skills, such as problem-solving, creativity and an international mindset. Believe it or not, there are also proven benefits to cognitive function, the delaying of dementia and helping recovery from stroke. Research has shown that primary school age children who learn another language perform significantly better across the whole curriculum, including in maths.

The fact that the lowest take-up of language GCSEs corresponds exactly with the UK regions where we have the highest recorded skills shortages and unemployment, and the most pupils from low-income families and on free school meals, should in itself be an enormous red flag to politicians and policymakers concerned with levelling up. More attention and more investment in language teaching and learning would be a great help in that regard.

I conclude by flagging up the headlines for six key areas needing urgent attention if we are to improve language proficiency in the UK. I hope that the Minister will be able to comment on each of them, however briefly.

First, double down on boosting take-up of language GCSEs and A-levels, for example by introducing the advanced language premium as an incentive to schools, modelled on the advanced maths premium, which has been successful.

Secondly, sort out the financial and bureaucratic obstacles to trips and exchanges—the Minister knows from our recent debate what I mean by that.

Thirdly, encourage more local authorities to replicate the Hackney transition system, so that key stage 2 language learning is built on, rather than undermined, when children go to secondary school.

Fourthly, look at the FE sector: a landmark report from the British Academy said that FE colleges were a language learning cold spot.

Fifthly, deal with the haemorrhaging of languages from universities. Over 60 of them have cut some or all their modern language degrees since 2000. We must return to a system which protects languages as a strategically vulnerable subject.

Sixthly and finally, do not forget our 2 million bilingual children and make sure they have the chance to gain academic qualifications in their home or heritage languages, many of which are of strategic importance to the UK, whether in business, security or diplomacy.

13:28

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, on securing this debate and opening it so brilliantly, and the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Hale, for a gently brilliant but forceful speech. If I am not down in the Chamber and up in my room and I see his name on the annunciator in future, I certainly will turn the sound on and listen to what he has to say.

The skills problem in this country is of long standing. There are Blue Books written in the 19th century which decry the shortage of skills here relative to Germany. As people such as Correlli Barnett and others have pointed out, the roots lie in a sort of class prejudice that attributes prestige to a subject in inverse proportion to its practical and commercial value: the prestige is higher the more academic it is and lower the more practical and commercial it is.

I saw that in my own life. My grandfather, who was a skilled lathe operator during the First World War producing torpedoes, educated himself in mechanical engineering and rose up the firm a bit. Eventually—obviously, he was inspired by the prediction of what my noble friend Lord Baker would recommend—he ended up teaching mechanical engineering in a college of further education. So it always seemed a wonderful thing to me, and when I went to university and acquired a degree in natural sciences, I asked my director of studies if I could move to mechanical engineering. He said, “No—you’re quite clever enough to continue doing pure science”. He was wrong in two respects: I was never going to be another Einstein, and we need clever people, whether at university or in colleges and schools, to acquire the skills to make the things we use. If I go over a bridge, I want to know that the engineer who designed and created that bridge was good, and that the people who welded it were skilled in what they were doing.

Sadly, there are only two ways to increase the supply of skills in this country. One is to increase the skill levels of the domestic population, and the other is to import skills from abroad. My thesis is that unless and until we break the national addiction to importing skills from abroad, we will never seriously tackle the lack of domestic skilled people. Almost the only person who has done anything useful and practical is my noble friend Lord Baker; most of the other initiatives have been ineffectual or half-hearted.

Since Tony Blair opened our borders to the importing of skills from abroad—this is not a party-political point, because he was, sadly, followed by the coalition Government and Boris Johnson—spending on training of people at work has declined, and, predictably, the time people at work spend on training has declined. One of the things that brought home to me how deeply entrenched this belief is in the need to import skills from abroad—and, indeed, the virtue of doing so—was when I was on the Select Committee in the other House and we went up to Sunderland after the referendum. We were greeted by people from the local district council, the county council, the local CBI, the Institute of Directors and the chamber of commerce, and they said their principal fear was that they would no longer be able to import skilled workers from abroad.

The only major employer that was not present was Nissan. I remembered visiting Nissan when I was Trade and Industry Secretary shortly after it set up, and I asked a rather stupid question. They were too polite to point out who was stupid, but I asked them whether they had had any problems recruiting trained automotive workers in Durham when they set up. Of course, there were none within hundreds of miles of there, so it was a stupid question. But they said no, they had trained them, and they were very keen to be trained. Now, the Nissan factory is the most productive factory in the whole Nissan network across the world. So I put it to the local CBI, IoD and chamber of commerce that if Nissan had been able or inclined to follow its belief that the way to get skills was to import them from Europe, there would be 7,000 people in Sunderland flipping hamburgers or unemployed, instead of being the most productive workers in the Nissan network.

We have to break this addiction—but, unfortunately, we have convinced ourselves that, at least for specific skills shortages, we must import the workers from abroad. Yet, since we took that view, in almost all the areas where we initially had a shortage, the shortage has got worse. That should not come as any surprise, because the International Labour Organization, way back in 2004, warned:

“What may begin as a simple temporary ‘spot shortage’ of trained native workers, can be made considerably more permanent by attempting a quick fix from migrant labor. Any program which imports migrants into a sector whose employers are complaining of insufficient trained natives, can be expected to exacerbate (rather than alleviate) its native shortage. Rather than raising incentives to entice new workers to seek training to fill the empty slots, visas are likely to be used to avoid the needed market response”.


But we did not take any notice of that.

My conclusion, therefore, is that if in future we say there is a specific shortage and for a while, we will have to import people from abroad, that must be permitted only if there is an agreement between the employers, educators and the Government that they will train more people in that sector, so that we do not have such a reliance, within a specific period. Employers will have to recognise and acknowledge that during that period—probably indefinitely—they will have to pay more for those people.

I mention pay because it is rather important. The very idea of a shortage of labour in a free market is an oxymoron. Again, this was pointed out by a colleague of the author I have just quoted, who said:

“Long term labor shortages do not happen naturally in market economies. That is not to say that they don’t exist. They are created when employers or government agencies tamper with the natural functioning of the wage mechanism”.


Allowing indefinite reliance on importing labour from abroad has enabled us to put off tackling the shortages, which the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, has, thankfully, brought to our attention, and which, hopefully, with the advice of my noble friend Lord Baker, we will in future remedy.

13:36

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, has plainly scored a real bull’s-eye in initiating this debate. I also cannot help but applaud the noble Lord, Lord Baker, for his everlasting ebullience and fighting spirit. Long may that continue. Finally, I welcome the hopeful and positive messages in the maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Hale.

In total, there are just under 1 million vacancies in the UK economy. As the ONS recently identified, most UK businesses now face a significant shortage of workers. In most sectors of our economy, shortage of skills is a critical factor, as it is, for instance, in construction, manufacturing, health, education and business services—just some among many.

There are shortfalls in every category of worker with skilled trades in the lead. I give just two examples: in 2022, there were 43,000 vacancies in skilled metal, electrical and electronic trades; and 83,000 vacancies in social care. In all, the ONS estimates that the UK economy is short of over half a million workers with the appropriate level of skill. This is surely one, if not the only, reason why the country is experiencing low growth and relatively low productivity—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Patten, a moment ago.

One root cause of the skills shortage is the post-pandemic exodus from the workforce of around 400,000 adults aged 50 to 64, but there is other causation too. We lack an appropriate balance between vocational and academic education. Allow me to offer some evidence of that imbalance and the reasons for it.

Fewer than 3% of 16 year-olds are becoming apprentices. In 2021, 250,000 students entered university, while fewer than a quarter of that figure took on apprenticeships. Remarkably, the number enrolling in FE colleges is only a 30th of the number attending university. The OECD records that our secondary schools perform above average by global standards, which we all welcome, but that the bottom quartile in those schools has a very low sense of personal well-being.

Poorer children are performing far less well than their richer classmates. For instance, the richest 33% gain an A or A* at A-level, compared with only 5% of the poorest decile of students. The problem appears to be worsening; post Covid, persistent absence has affected almost one-third of all UK schools. The ONS has identified that one in seven 16 to 24 year-olds is not in education, work or training. According to the Prince’s Trust, the main cause for that shocking statistic identified by those dropping out is their mental health.

Over 3 million people in the wider population now draw PIPs—personal independence payments. Nearly 8 million people of working age in the UK now say that they have a significant disability or health condition. Can we not do more to help these individuals to find work which suits them and in which they will be happy and productive? Can we do more, especially in our schools, to expose young people to the satisfactions and pleasures of work and to arm them with the soft skills necessary to navigate the workplace?

The economy is highly dynamic, constantly reinventing itself and demanding new skills and abilities. Society too is dynamic, constantly evolving, and embracing social and cultural shifts. It is not clear, however, that our education, skills, health and welfare systems are acting in step and that they are sufficiently dynamic and innovative to keep abreast of and respond to these ever-changing needs of both individuals and the economy. These issues are deep, stubborn and challenging and, as a nation, we need to step back and consider in the round how best to address them.

13:41

[Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for this extremely important debate. I am beginning to think that the only place that there is no skills shortage is in this Chamber, although the real skill might well be fitting all that we have to say into the brief time that we have been allotted.

I was thinking through the things that I am lucky enough to have done over the last 20 years and wondering on which I should focus today. Should it be the work that we did when I was setting up Doteveryone, helping people in this building and the other place with the skills to understand digital technology more? Should it be the challenges that I saw as the chair of WeTransfer, a mid-scale tech company, as we tried to recruit people who can help us to design the future? Should it be the skills that we see and that my noble friend Lady Hayman talked about, as a director of Peers for the Planet, in transitioning to the green economy? But, as some noble Lords know, I am a relatively eternal optimist so will focus on two things that are actually working, on which I would like Members on all the Front Benches to respond in saying how important they are in their own strategic plans for skills.

The first is the local skills improvement plans that have already been mentioned, particularly by my noble friend Lord Aberdare. As president of the British Chambers of Commerce, I am thrilled that we run 32 of the 38 LSIPs that have been created around the country. These are collaborative plans that are very local and encourage businesses, local education providers of all colours and any other interested parties to sit down and map out what they need for their area to succeed. We have so far engaged over 65,000 businesses in these plans, and I will just talk to your Lordships about two specific examples.

The first is in Coventry and Warwickshire, where the chambers have been working with over 3,500 different employers. Over 74% of the employers that the chambers are working with say they have never sat down with any of the higher education providers in their area in the last five years. This unlock has been fundamental in helping both businesses and the providers plan for what both sides need over the next two or three years.

It is staggeringly interestingly to me, particularly as former chair of the committee on Covid and its long-term implications, that there seems to have been an extreme drop-off, post-Covid, in how much collaboration happens across different bits of the economy and the sectors serving the skills parts of the economy that we are talking about today. However, these local skills improvement plans are a tangible way to encourage this collaboration. When the providers have mapped out their needs, they will then come up with a plan, on both the business side and the education side—higher, tertiary or any level—for what is needed to plug those gaps. It could be advanced manufacturing or very simple skills in hospitality. There is a whole range of things.

The second example that has come out of these local skills improvement plans is the partnership that the British Chambers of Commerce has with Aviva, where we have committed to train 150 town planners. This is just a small start but gets to the core of so much of what we are talking about. Both the Government and the opposition parties have launched major reforms into planning. It is interesting that they are doing this with very little understanding of how we are going to execute that, as we have no town planners. This very small start should be an indication of how we can encourage businesses to match with a national network—Aviva with the chambers, in this case—to have the fundamental skills we need to create this change.

Please support the LSIPs. The funding runs out in 2025 but they need to be there until 2028 and beyond. We need a long-term focus on something that is actually working and that employers tell us is working.

I cannot stand here without mentioning the Open University, of which I am chancellor. The noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, has already mentioned its importance and I know noble Lords have had briefings from the university in research for today’s debate. We have this incredible national asset sitting in front of us, yet we have had battles for the last decade to get the requisite funding for this organisation. It is the organisation that is helping people to continue to retrain and get the skills they need. Some 63% of our learners are in work. They are not part-time learners; they are double-time learners. Please, let us support this fantastic organisation.

13:46

[Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I stand here today deeply honoured to be a Member of your Lordships’ House and proud to be sitting alongside my first boss, my noble friend Lord Kirkhope, who gave me my first tour of this place in 1996, when he was the Member for Leeds North East in the other place. Looking around this historic Chamber, I recall him proudly telling me how it was built using limestone from Yorkshire. I like to imagine that the seam of rock each building block is carved from runs all the way to Mickle Fell, the highest point in the historic county of Yorkshire, close to where my grandparents, the Elliotts, lived.

I thank noble Lords on all sides of the House, as well as Black Rod and her staff, the doorkeepers, police officers, advisers, and all the other wonderful staff, for their warm welcome and guidance. I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Marks on his excellent maiden speech. I note that he was born on the other side of the Pennines to me, so I will resist making any further reference to Yorkshire. I am grateful for the advice that I received from noble friends in preparation for today, in particular my mentor and noble friend Lord Kamall, and my noble friends Lord Borwick and Lord Kirkhope, who introduced me to the House earlier this year.

When I mentioned to another noble friend that I was planning to make my maiden speech on 9 May, they said, in rather more colourful language than this, “Really? That’s Europe Day. Are you going to talk about Brexit?”. That’s a subject I do not intend to revisit, at least today. I am instead delighted to have the opportunity to speak about something more foundational, which is far closer to my heart—the subject of business as a force for good in delivering skills and training opportunities. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for raising this important subject today.

Our nation’s prosperity is firmly anchored in the vigour of our business community, a truth echoed by the very fabric of this Chamber. The Woolsack before us, symbolising the historical wealth from the wool trade, serves as a constant reminder of the essential role of business in creating the prosperity our nation enjoys. In terms of our future prosperity, 64% of apprenticeships in England are provided by businesses—almost double the number offered by colleges, schools and public bodies combined. I use this opportunity to pay tribute to my right honourable friend Robert Halfon, who has championed apprenticeships throughout his parliamentary career in the other place and leaves behind him the tremendous legacy of the lifelong learning Act.

We should also remember that civic-minded business leaders familiar to this place are behind some of the most successful schools in the UK, not least the JCB Academy, the Ashcroft Technology Academy, the Harris Federation and the Dixons Academies Trust. We should never forget that businesses, from the smallest corner shop to the largest supermarket chain, are responsible for generating the tax revenue that funds our education system. Take Sainsbury’s, for example, which typically pays in excess of £2 billion annually to the Exchequer—enough to fund 50,000 teachers, 100 new secondary schools or nearly half of the entire adult education budget.

To repeat, the business community is essential to the skills debate, whether through the provision of training, the establishment of schools or the payment of taxes that fund our public services. On top of this, businesses are also a powerful engine for social justice. Earlier this year, the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, eloquently spoke about the vital role of business in tackling poverty, especially through the provision of high-quality jobs. This is a cause that I also champion as president of the Jobs Foundation, as declared in the register of interests. I am grateful to be supported in this work by my noble friend Lord Harrington and the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, who both serve on our advisory council.

As part of this role, I travel across the country, meeting local business leaders and entrepreneurs. The stories I hear are a powerful reminder of the direct impact that businesses have on people’s lives. I recently visited a local London bakery called the Dusty Knuckle. As well as serving delicious baked goods, it works with young offenders, helping them grow their skills and confidence through a combination of on-the-job training and mentorship in a successful, warm-hearted business. In the words of one of its trainees, “I feel so much happier. I feel like a real person in the real world; like I actually exist”.

Another successful entrepreneur shared with me his father’s story. Many decades ago, his father fell in with the wrong crowd and ended up in prison. After his release, he successfully completed a training course to drive fuel tankers across the country. The entrepreneur still vividly recalls the moment his father opened a telegram from Shell, telling him it knew about his period in custody but was still willing to give him a permanent job. It was, he told me, the one and only time he ever saw his father cry. These are just two examples of businesses being a force for good, and an illustration of why a successful society requires successful businesses.

I will conclude with the words of Winston Churchill, who delivered many of his wartime speeches in this very Chamber: “Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others see it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse pulling a sturdy wagon”. I look forward to working with noble Lords across the House to ensure that more people have access to these opportunities in life, and that we support businesses to do even more good in the local communities they serve.

13:53

[Lord Harrington of Watford (Con)]

My Lords, it gives me the greatest pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Elliott’s maiden speech, to which I will return a bit later. First, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for allowing us to have this debate. Of all the many speeches, I will refer particularly to that of my noble friend Lord Baker, who I have been a willing acolyte and devotee of for many years. I congratulate him on the work he has done for the UTCs. We have heard an excellent maiden speech from my noble friend Lord Marks of Hale—which is the wrong side of the Pennines to me, as well as to my noble friend Lord Elliott. I look forward to many contributions from him in the future.

I must briefly return to my noble friend Lord Elliott, because our lives have a lot in common. I am following him today, but he followed me to Leeds Grammar School, which we both attended—unfortunately for me, with a 20-year gap. He chose to be Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell, which, as he explained, is where his grandparents come from. It has a link with Leeds Grammar School. My noble friend referred to it as one of the highest peaks in Yorkshire. For me, it was a place of terror and one where I had absolutely no skills whatever; it was the location of our school outward bound centre, which I am sure my noble friend thrived at. For me, I promise your Lordships, it was not the highlight of a school career.

Our paths crossed again in later life in London. He has shown skills in so many things that he has done, with his work as a policymaker with very successful groups, such as the TaxPayers’ Alliance and others, for which he deserves absolute credit. I wish in 2016 he had used his skills in, from my perspective, a rather better direction than Vote Leave. He did say he was not going to mention Brexit, and I will not, but I have remained, and remain to this day, a major fan of the noble Lord, Lord Elliott. The work he has done has always been to do with business and jobs, as typified now by the Jobs Foundation that he mentioned.

I speak in this skills debate as a person who prided myself, in my business life, on training apprentices and giving people opportunities in life. Luckily enough, in my political life, my first job was as an apprentice adviser to David Cameron in 2011. That was probably because he could not fit me in to promote me to be a Minister at the time, but I took it as being very important. With Nick Boles and others, I worked on the apprenticeship levy. The apprenticeship levy, to me, was an excellent idea because it felt that, if businesses were paying to train apprentices, they would in fact hire apprentices. It sounds very simple, but very good in theory. It was only some years later, when I reappeared as Business Minister, following other jobs, that I found most meetings I attended had people criticising the apprenticeship levy. It did have its faults—and it does have its faults to this day. But its achievements have been very significant in increasing the number of apprenticeships.

I am delighted to see Robert Halfon here in the Chamber today. He has contributed so much to skills. One of his early jobs in that was probably taking over from me as chairman of the grand-sounding Apprenticeship Delivery Board. Actually, it was all of our responsibility to bring apprenticeships to the forefront of companies that had not considered them otherwise.

Many good things have come from that. We have seen ups and downs with apprenticeships, but the overall trajectory seems very good. We have seen the implementation of a lot of different standards, and apprenticeships in fields that had never dreamed of before. Degree apprentices, banking, estate agencies, accountancy—you name it, a lot of people have been given an opportunity in life that they would not have had otherwise.

I would like to say, though, on the crucial manufacturing sector, which is absolutely at the centre of the skills debate and of most plans to bring about growth in the UK economy, I am very concerned. Starts have gone down from 120,000 to 45,000 per year, according to Stephen Phipson of Make UK, an organisation which has done so much in the training of apprenticeships. We have tried to look into why that has happened, because most people would think that apprenticeships in engineering, manufacturing and things like that are natural types of apprenticeship. There are a number of reasons. It appears that private training companies are dropping out of apprenticeships training. Their costs have gone up dramatically and the figure placed for these apprenticeships—which I think was £26,000 per year—has not increased over the time. Of course, the cost of providing those apprenticeships has gone up, so many have dropped out. We need to recognise this, and to get these firms back into providing apprenticeships.

Secondly, there are other providers, such as colleges of further education; they appear to be dropping out of training these kinds of apprenticeships as well. We have tried to find out why. There are a few technical matters: for example, they are not allowed to use the apprenticeship levy for capital expenditure. Of course, if you are training engineers, the tools and the equipment are extremely expensive. It seems to me rational that they should be allowed to use the kind of money from the levy to facilitate that, because it is as much part of the apprenticeship as the labour.

So we need to look into this carefully. I hope that this Government and future Governments will listen to Make UK and to people who really want to see apprenticeships succeed, because they know how important the skills agenda is to the economy.

13:59

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, as ever, I declare my interest as a state secondary school teacher in Hackney. I join the chorus of thanks to my noble friend Lord Aberdare for this opportunity to debate the issue, and I congratulate him, as ever, on his hard work, his opening speech, and the fact that he has acquired the skill of speaking Welsh, which he kept very quiet. He is an inspiration to us all.

I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Marks of Hale, and Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell, on their excellent maiden speeches. They were able, thought-provoking and delivered with a high level of skill.

I also thank all the organisations that sent me briefings for this debate, and admit that I read none of them. Because I do not think we needed to. Everybody agrees that skills are vital for the success of the UK economy and for the quality of life of individuals.

I am honoured to be among so many people with so much experience, particularly those responsible for the Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee report. I described in an email how, having read only the first page of the summary, I had punched the air three times. Thinking about it further, the report does not go far enough. Perhaps that is why the Government rejected pretty much all of it.

In our schools, we are confusing knowledge with skill, as the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, pointed out. They are not the same. The knowledge-rich curriculum is teaching students the art of learning large amounts of facts rather than skills. Some are obviously transferable; many are not. We are all aware that students lack the skills for life today. We decry that fact that they lack the basic skills for work or adulthood, yet we persist in doing nothing about it. We consider much of the vital work as extracurricular, or cram it, once a term, into PSHE day.

Our curriculum and methodology have changed very little since Victorian times; filling our heads with facts so that students go off to work in banks or the colonial service, or march unquestioningly across no man’s land. Why do we insist on memorising so much when we have the internet to hand? How many people can truthfully say that they do long multiplication these days? They have a calculator on their phone. Genuinely, who sits down in a sports hall and writes by hand for three hours?

I am fully aware that many noble Lords will be forming the words “hippy-dippy” in their minds, and deciding, “We tried that in the 70s and look what happened”. No, we did not.

We need to concentrate on what matters. Mental arithmetic needs to be hammered in, and grammar, punctuation, and good oracy skills, need to be the bedrock of any education. But rather than long division—which you can do on your phone—would it not be better to have an intuitive knowledge of how to design, populate and interpret a spreadsheet? Would it not be better to teach students about their bodies, so that they can look after themselves and save the NHS billions? Rather than study the plays of Shakespeare, would it not be better to write, produce, act in and record a film? I have said in this place before that I believe that every student should leave school having started at least one business. Dare I say that this might be fun to learn, and fun to teach.

These things would give students real-world skills that can be honed in tertiary education, or used instantly in the workplace. Add touch-typing and a high level of Microsoft Office skills and you now have a cohort who can hit the ground running when they leave education. The joyous thing is that this would actually save the nation money in filling the skills gap and helping with student attendance, teacher retention and student attainment.

To quote from one of my favourite films, “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, on the subject of university,

“I didn’t go myself. I couldn’t see the point. You see, when you work in the money markets, what use are the novels of Wordsworth gonna be, eh?”


I have not even started on my own subject, design technology, which the noble Lord, Lord Baker, very kindly talked about, or craft skills. As far as I know, AI has not learned to change the fuse in a plug yet or, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, repaired something. It cannot do sports, or loads of the other skills we need. The winds of change are coming. We have a once in a lifetime chance to start a revolution. Will the Minister join me in storming the barricades?

14:05

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, while also thanking the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, I remind your Lordships of my registered interest as chairman of the Chartered Institution for Further Education. The institution, the only royal chartered body exclusively for further education, was founded in 2015. Its chief aim is to improve skills education in the UK by creating what could be called, in shorthand form, a Russell Group of further education colleges and providers—the best that we have in the country. It has certainly succeeded in doing so. Aspiring members have to satisfy a council of their peers of the high quality of their governance, leadership and management, teaching and learning, and their financial strengths, including reserves, as well as student satisfaction and, above all, the employment destinations of their students. Typical of our members is Burton and South Derbyshire College, which was very recently adjudged “outstanding” by Ofsted in all areas. I pay tribute to its principal, Mrs Dawn Ward, for her wholly distinguished leadership.

The chartered institution has developed a number of projects aimed at spreading good practice in the vocational sector: for instance, its skills update licentiate programme requires participating college lecturers, such as in automobile engineering, to revisit their industries regularly over a full year to gain the most contemporary know-how that, for instance, Mercedes, Toyota or Jaguar have available, which then may be passed on to students so that their skills are wholly up to date. This year, we also launched an initiative with the Association of Apprentices to enable those successfully completing to be recognised with a post-nominal designation.

I want to touch on T-levels for a minute or two. These present a prime opportunity to elevate professional and technical education, but there are some real concerns that need addressing. T-levels have rightly been mapped against technical jobs that are in high demand; they require a common vocational core in the first year and then an occupational specialism in the second. For instance, engineering T-level has three routes: design and development for engineering, which has four specialist pathways in the second year; maintenance, installation and repair for engineering, which leads to five; and engineering, manufacturing and processing, which has four. Adding them up, there are 13 highly specialised engineering career pathways among which a school leaver, in principle, may choose. In fact, even assuming that the student has the knowledge at 16 with which to make that choice, the chances of finding, even among the best colleges, one that can provide more than a couple out of the 13 is very remote. It is clear that the provision is far too complicated and ought to be rationalised.

In spite of this Government’s impressive record on improving numeracy and literacy teaching, far too many young people in school are still unable to achieve adequate GCSE results in English and maths. To progress to T-levels, they have to retake them at FE colleges, which distort the main vocational mission of those colleges. Alas, even with significant support, resitting learners do very badly; only 14% pass in maths and 22% in English, so T-levels will be wholly unavailable to them. Also unavailable to them next year, when funding ceases for level 3 vocational trade programmes, will be any kind of advanced qualification in, say, carpentry, joinery or bricklaying. These young people will be marginalised, and their chances of employment much diminished. As the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, said, we need to revisit the decision to end funding for vocational level 3 programmes, while T-levels are being developed and their glitches removed.

All T-level students are required to spend 45 days of their courses at industry placements. There is evidence from colleges that employers are suffering from fatigue with T-level work experience—as well as with apprenticeships, as the noble Lord, Lord Harrington, told us. Placements are becoming very difficult to find, particularly in rural and deprived areas. We badly need to look again at funding schemes to support and incentivise employers to engage in placements, especially in SMEs.

Finally, I remind your Lordships that March’s joint report on restoration and renewal says that

“businesses in all four nations of the UK will also benefit from the work … that restoring the Palace will generate. Jobs and opportunities will be created”,

while skills and trades will be revitalised. Many of these will be heritage crafts, of course. I am delighted that representatives of the programme board have approved in principle a Palace of Westminster apprenticeship scheme that I have been proposing since restoration and renewal was first debated in this House. It will, of course, be a huge opportunity to showcase apprenticeships and to emphasise the importance of skills for the UK’s economy. We must take advantage of it.

14:12

[Baroness Valentine (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Aberdare for introducing this topic. We have the economic challenge of building relevant skills for the future and the social challenge of one in 10 youngsters being unemployed. I shall focus on the need to join these two thoughts up by finding ways of upskilling these people for worthwhile jobs—both for their own quality of life and for the sake of the economy.

The most recent government skills survey found that skills shortage vacancies have grown from 6% to 10% in the last five years. Prominent examples include a shortage of 200,000 employees with green skills, three-quarters of businesses with digital skills vacancies, and more than half of our manufacturers struggling to find skilled workers. On the other hand, only 11% of UK workers have advanced digital skills. Last year, the number of young unemployed increased by 10%.

Through my work as a director of Business in the Community, I see at first hand the challenges that young people face in forgotten places across the UK. Let us take, for example, Claremont ward in Blackpool, where there are 480 unemployed individuals in just 12 streets. There is a concentration of families in slum housing where there is a subculture of many youngsters not leaving their bedrooms post-Covid.

Last week, I visited Eastwood primary school in Keighley to understand the challenge in enabling children just to learn to read—a fundamental skill, if they are to go on to get a good job. The school provides a haven of calm for children in an area where parents dare not let them out on the streets. It provides food for families, clothes and a safe place for parents to learn cooking skills. It also ferries children to the dentist because there is not one locally. There are four year-olds with rotten teeth and abscesses which keep them off school. Sadly, these challenges and interventions are common to schools in Claremont, North Earlham, Foleshill and other places where we work.

Looking outside the school system, Pillgwenlly, in Newport, is an ethnically diverse community—more than 32 languages are spoken at the local primary school. On the streets, county lines are commonplace and there is a red light district opposite the police station. Community organisations such as the Newport Yemeni Community Association and Kidcare4U run catch-up clubs for more than 120 children on Saturday mornings. However, funding is due to end in August.

Let me turn to some practical steps that might help. These fall into three categories: first, finding realistic routes to help the young unemployed into work; secondly, helping those in secondary school to understand work and future job opportunities better; and thirdly, supporting heroic teachers in challenging primary schools, so that children can leave feeling confident in themselves and able to read.

Extensive work carried out by the Rank Foundation in Claremont suggests that we need an intermediate labour market to provide opportunities to get the youngsters currently sitting in their bedrooms into work. This involves working eight to 12 hours a week in real work situations, paid at a living wage, which provide dignity and purpose. It would help further if the Department for Work and Pensions considered talking to these people online, rather than insisting they come into the office.

The apprenticeship levy has not been fully spent. I encourage the Government to double down on apprenticeships, making them as flexible as possible but also advising companies that they can pass the levy on to their supply chain, a fact of which many companies are unaware.

In Sheffield, we have recently launched a campaign with local businesses to provide routine and frequent employer encounters for all the schoolchildren in the area. This is based on robust analysis by the Careers & Enterprise Company which suggests these contacts can reduce future likelihood of unemployment by 20%. The advantage of this approach is that businesses can talk directly about current skills needs such as digital or manufacturing.

Finally, national government needs to recognise the challenges and support schools on the front line. I have just one small ask: to provide genuinely accessible NHS dental services to these children. Who knows, one of them might be inspired to become a future dentist.

14:16

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, on securing this excellent debate. I declare my interest as an officer of the APPG on financial education for young people.

To equip young people with the best opportunity to succeed in future training and jobs after leaving school is to give them essential life skills. These must include financial literacy, among other work-related skills, and their teaching and fostering in schools must start early to ensure young people are ready to enter and thrive in the workplace. Some 79% of teachers surveyed by Teach First in 2022 believe their pupils are less ready today for the world of work compared to previous years. Recent research from Young Enterprise in its Inspiring Futures programme, which delivers applied learning programmes nationwide to pupils in areas of disadvantage, found that the young people they seek to engage consistently assess themselves as significantly below average in crucial personal attributes such as resilience, confidence, managing money and work-readiness.

As many pupils leave school and go straight into the self-employed workplace as sole traders or entrepreneurs and do not have the money, time or employer commitment to increase their skills, they must be able to rely on the skills they learn at school. Furthermore, school leavers that do go on to undertake further skills training would benefit from the underpinning of a sound financial education. Pupils who complete the Inspiring Futures programme have been shown to progress significantly and exceed their previously average skills assessment. This improvement shows how applied learning can enable young people to acquire critical skills for workplace readiness, including financial literacy, which also enable upward social mobility and positive emotional well-being.

However, the skills landscape is constantly changing. In 2023, the World Economic Forum estimated that six in 10 workers will need re-skilling by 2027, showing the importance of fostering and securing confidence and adaptability in young people now, at both primary and secondary curriculum levels. I would be grateful if the Minister indicated any progress made on this pivotal curricular point, which I may have mentioned previously in your Lordships’ House. It is that confidence and adaptability, combined with financial education and numeracy, that makes young people financially literate.

Financial education alone is not enough; the confidence to apply it and make informed decisions in the real world is vital to a young person realising their full economic potential. Moreover, it is not just the individual who wins. The Centre for Economics and Business Research found in 2021 that 11% of UK workers had experienced a fall in productivity over the preceding three years due to their personal financial situation. It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that research by GoHenry complements this finding: it predicts that an extra £6.98 billion would be added to the UK economy annually by prioritising financial education in schools.

This prediction is further strengthened by the Essential Skills Tracker 23, from the Skills Builder Partnership—together with the CIPD, the Edge Foundation and KPMG—which reveals that the cost to the UK economy of low essential skills in 2022 alone was £22 billion. Again, good education alone will not cut it. The same tracker found that 18% of workers with above-average literacy and numeracy levels have a very low essential skills score, meaning that they cannot properly implement and take advantage of that education. The 13% of the population who experience real social mobility—enjoying a strong income, job satisfaction and life satisfaction—combine their education with these all-important skills and confidence.

I was delighted to be part of the panel judging the recent Devon county final of the Young Enterprise Company Programme, which empowers young people to set up and run a student company under the guidance of a volunteer. Students make all the decisions about their business, including managing the company finances, and gain or embed the essential workplace skills I have mentioned. Putting all the fantastic studies I have cited aside, I saw for myself the terrific impact the Young Enterprise Company Programme can have on the young participants’ abilities to learn, adapt, and earn and manage money, and the boost it gives to their confidence and leadership abilities.

I hope that today, I have managed to highlight just how critical financial literacy and these enabling skills are to our young people right now; that they deserve early prioritisation in both primary and secondary school curricula—including through schemes like the Young Enterprise Company Programme, which I hope the Minister will endorse—and that they have the power to create a society with a confident young workforce supporting a more successful UK economy, not only by managing their own finances, future employment and quality of life successfully, but also our collective financial security.

14:23

[Baroness Fairhead (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Aberdare on securing this important debate and on his truly excellent opening speech. I also congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell and Lord Marks of Hale, on their optimistic maiden speeches. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my interests as set out in the register.

Today we have had a very wide-ranging debate on this huge and hugely important topic. I will focus on just one issue—artificial intelligence—and aim to provide some specific suggestions for skills-building in this area. AI is a revolution. As Jamie Dimon, the former chairman of Citigroup, said:

“Think the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, computing and the internet.”


I know that, as my noble friend Lord Hampton said, AI cannot change a plug, but deploying AI responsibly and securely does have the potential to enhance productivity, improve lives and boost our economy quite significantly. To take just one healthcare example, doctors’ lives can be enhanced massively by AI by combining the spoken word of a consultation with relevant images such as x-rays, adding any of the required prescriptions discussed and possibly scheduling new appointments. The doctor just needs to check the note before authorising, saving huge amounts of time and improving their own lives and those of their patients.

Yet students are not equipped with these skills at school. There are still very few computer scientists entering our market, and businesses are not fully grabbing hold of this capability. A BCC report last September found that less than 50% of SMEs plan to use AI. We need to both increase the skills across the population and reduce the fear of deploying.

Government has a clear role here to educate, promote and, of course, to fund. In schools, more programmes need to be developed to make digital and AI skills adoptable by school leaver age, rather than assuming this happens later. The Department for Education has correctly built AI skills into BTECs and is working with hyperscalers to create bootcamps which link to jobs boards. Whether BTECs continue or the advanced British standard assumes part of that role and picks up the skills of AI, that will not be for 10 years, which is a long time for the current students to wait. More needs to be done now with 14 to 18 year-olds to make them ready for the world of work.

As the noble Lord, Lord Baker, mentioned, it is very difficult to change the curriculum in those years, given its high-stakes, examined nature. However, I urge the DfE to work with headteachers, the British Computer Society, the tech industry, the LSIPs and other interested employers to find a pragmatic solution in the short term. Potentially, a sleeve of UTCs could be added; perhaps there are other solutions.

In further education, real progress has been made since 2018, following the AI industrial strategy. Over 11,000 students have been enrolled in AI and data science conversion courses, and over 25 AI centres for doctoral training—which will train over 1,800 PhD students by 2033—have been created. Much of this was driven by Professor Dame Wendy Hall, with whom I had the privilege of working as a Minister, and whom I consider a national treasure. This momentum needs to be continued. Can the Minister confirm that these programmes will be?

On business education, last week DSIT launched two activities: the AI skills for business competency framework and a flexible AI upskilling fund pilot. These are welcome additions and go some way to removing the skills obstacles and the obstacles of fear surrounding the use of AI. However, they are nascent; the pilot is currently small. If proven out, I hope that it can be expanded rapidly.

That is not enough, and more must be done to promote AI effectively and to inform and connect, which is something that the Government could do. They could promote success stories, highlight major programmes—possibly within government—where the adoption of digital and AI have massively improved productivity, highlight companies like Uber which offer additional AI building skills to all of its 3 million drivers, not for the benefit of Uber but for the benefit of their people, or promote our own tech industries, AI unicorns like Quantexa, which help provide the data and help companies store it, to ensure that IP continues to reside in the UK.

Playbooks for SMEs need to be created to help them take those steps. These must be supported by a database of excellent case studies. As I discovered as Minister, SMEs like to see companies that look like themselves and have done it like themselves, and that is the way to encourage them.

Finally, more needs to be done to harness the offerings of AI companies which are willing to work with Governments as part of social responsibility. I sit on the board of Oracle, which works with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and has a programme for training 50,000 people to build AI skills, primarily focusing on women, and works with government and businesses. A lot of our businesses and other hyperscalers would be prepared to work with the Government on that.

This all needs to be part of an overall framework and strategy, as my noble friend Lord Aberdare said at the beginning. I sincerely hope that we look to future skills, and AI is part of them.

14:29

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for the chance to have this debate.

I work very closely with the Better Hiring Institute, an organisation I recommend to noble Lords. A trend that we are increasingly seeing is for skills-based hiring. That is where, rather than listing qualifications or CV items, a company gets down to the core of what skills it needs for a particular job and then goes looking for a match. As the noble Baroness, Lady Fairhead, said, skills change rapidly. Companies look for the skills that they need now. For example, if a new AI product comes out, they want their people to have command of it—if somebody is offering a course in it, that is what they want. This is therefore driving a real interest in micro-credentials: short courses that will bring someone up to speed in the area that an employer needs.

Together, these trends offer great opportunities to government, if government will take an interest and involve itself. First, if the Government will work with the recruitment industry, which is certainly prepared to work with them, there is the opportunity to gather data to get a grip on what skills are required and where, as well as on how the trends are developing. Secondly, on the other side, there is the opportunity to help the process of moving into micro-credentials by helping develop an underlying system for identifying which of these have quality—again, that is partly about processing data, but it is an area where you want a very reliable source, so we get back to the issue of individual learning accounts and all the scams that went with them. We need to integrate that sort of structure of learning with proper pastoral care and careers guidance and work that into the structure of apprenticeships and other larger qualifications. I hope that the Open University will take a close interest in that.

This comes back to what other noble Lords have said about the need for employers to take a very close interest in driving training. The noble Lord, Lord Marks of Hale, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox of Soho, made that point in the context of LSIPs. To pick up on what my noble friend Lord Lilley said, we must allow no escape via immigration. We have to train our own people. We want to pay our own people more and to have a workforce with ever-rising skills, capability and pay. We must not allow that to be undermined by people going abroad to buy the skills in cheaply. We must focus people on training here. As my noble friend Lord Lingfield said, the links between good education organisations and industry, so that education is in tune with what industry needs, is a very important thing to see develop.

Turning to schools, noble Lords know that I am the proprietor of the Good Schools Guide. In the next few years, I suspect that we will have a real look at what we want a school leaver to know. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Baker will be at the forefront of that discussion. The Government have shown, through their interest in the ABS, the idea that they want school leavers to have a broader understanding of things than we are providing now. The direction is clearly there.

Micro-credentials will again have a strong role here. It used to be the case that the Open University provided courses that people could do as a supplement to A-levels, but that was driven out by universities being unconstructive in valuing them. Given that universities will now take qualifications from all over the world and from all kinds of backgrounds, they are being very unhelpful in so narrowly insisting on the qualifications they get out of the UK school system. I hope that they will become partners in broadening education—and, indeed, in broadening the education that they provide themselves. My degree in physics consisted of nuclear physics; it did not go beyond that, not even to understand how the weather works. My daughter’s education in the arts does not involve anything to do with economics or business. Why not? We are not educating people for the world that they will have to face outside, so we need to look at that.

That comes back to what many noble Lords have been saying about BTECs. T-levels are too massive and too specialised. If we are broadening people’s education, that is not the road to go down. We will learn something from them, but BTECs occupy a much more important place for many of our young people. We absolutely must guard that.

I will pick up on something that the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said; Shakespeare, yes, but let us learn it the way it was written—which is to be performed and to be understood. My wife taught Shakespeare in prisons, and it went down a storm because they understood the stories and liked the bloodshed. To learn it as prose criticism is deadly. We want to get back to a shared culture; no country survives without a shared culture. Something like performing Shakespeare is a really important part of that.

14:35

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell and Lord Marks of Hale, on their maiden speeches, and of course my noble friend Lord Aberdare on his very comprehensive introduction.

At the outset, I say that I agree entirely with what the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, said about EBacc and Progress 8. They both need to go. They are holding the arts back in our schools and beyond. A future Government should make that pledge before they come to power.

The mover of this Motion, my noble friend Lord Aberdare, had to point out to me that “education” is not mentioned in it, even if it seems nevertheless logical that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, will answer for Education. Such is the modern-day conventional assumption that what we call skills and education go together hand in hand, but that does not have to be true, depending of course on how one defines both words. “Skill”, like “innovation”, has become a watchword, even a buzzword, to the extent that it is perhaps too easy to stop seeing what the word means and instead pay lip service to something we have not thought carefully enough about, and perhaps to promote certain narrower meanings above other meanings. For instance, my research tells me—I bow of course to the expert linguists and historians among us—that “skill” comes from the Old Norse “skilja”, which seems to have had quite a number of past meanings, including, believe it or not, to break up, to separate, to discern, to distinguish, to understand, to find out and to decide. Even further back in time, this word was used to denote knowledge or even divine wisdom, which begs questions about the separation of knowledge and practice that we have heard about today in this debate. There are meanings here that are wider than a skill being simply the supposedly or conventionally right way of doing something, or learning something that becomes automatic because it is practised. The original etymology seems to contain other things like analysis, breaking things up and perhaps putting them back together again—deconstruction in other words—critical thought, and even perhaps contemplation, which our more modern, narrower understanding of “skill” does not seem so much to contain.

This older understanding is important because, over a number of decades, education itself has changed significantly within the UK. The particular modern usage fits our current, very specifically framed, educational system. Of course, as we have already heard, there are many different kinds of skills, including life skills, craft skills, and green skills. But the idea of skills that are necessary for specific jobs, including the job of study itself, nevertheless holds a kind of primacy within this world of skills. Education itself, particularly higher education, has become monetised and therefore transactional in a way that was not true 30 years ago, but is now very true since the introduction of tuition fees in 1998 and the accompanying expectations that an increasing number of students now have. Among those expectations I point out three: first, that students can get a piece of paper telling them that they have an extremely good degree that validates their course of study; secondly, they can get a well-paid job at the end of their course, which is part of the expected transaction; and thirdly, they have learned the skills that will equip them for that job. That is true even of those who follow the academic route, because of the change in culture of higher education.

Therefore, when the Government talk the rhetoric of “low-value” courses and send out the message that the arts and humanities are less important by cutting the top-up grants to those university courses, they are also saying that the skills learned for those courses or during that time of study are less important because the skills, like that important piece of paper which gives you your grade or the examination that determines that grade, must be something that according to the modern understanding of a skill is quantifiable because it has an objective, predetermined use.

I will make just one further point. The irony is that the real world thinks differently. Companies consistently want well-rounded people, not necessarily those with very specific, narrowly defined skill sets, important though those might be. I also know from my own experience closer to home that not all colleges, such as drama colleges, are interested in the skills that enable you to get a good degree. They look for things beyond specific skill sets such as passion, enthusiasm and originality of thought, which perhaps in the “skilja” definition might also be thought of as skills.

14:41

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this fascinating and informative debate. I congratulate my friend the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, on securing it, and both maiden speakers on their excellent and insightful contributions. I look forward to hearing more from both of them in due course. I also declare my interests in technology as an adviser to Boston and to BPP University.

I will talk about three things this afternoon: talent, technology, and Kenneth Baker. We have such an opportunity to be skilled for success in the fourth industrial revolution. I will take the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, first. I am so privileged to be able to call him my friend. He has done more than anybody in this country to drive forward opportunities for those who all too often have been dismissed or underrated by the state and society through pushing technical education. He deserves the respect and thanks of this House and every single individual across this country for everything that he has done and continues to do so vociferously and effectively.

Skills for success in the fourth industrial revolution—what will it take? First, we must understand that inclusion and innovation are the golden threads. In reality, inclusion enables innovation. We need to consider AI, blockchain, the internet of things and all the elements of these new technologies as tools in our human hands. They are extraordinarily powerful but are still tools. We would not in any sense give an individual a powerful tool without first giving them the skills to make a success of using it. If we are to get optimal outcomes, not least from artificial intelligence and all the other new technologies, it needs to be human-led—human in the loop, human over the loop.

What do we need to think about in terms of society, our democracy and our economy? First, socially: imagine what we could achieve with this skills approach if we had truly personalised skills training and education in real time, considering not just the skills that we need to succeed in AI but AI’s impact on skills. Secondly, the issues goes to our very democracy. Skills need to abound. In a year when over 40% of the world will go to the polls, how can we ensure that all our electors have the skills to make sense of what is out there, not least the proliferation of deepfakes? Media literacy, digital literacy and, yes, financial literacy are all required if people are to be able to play their full part as citizens in our democracy. Moving beyond that, there needs to be much more consideration of risk literacy and resilience literacy. In addition, can we put an end to calling so much of this “soft skills”? These are not soft skills but essential skills, and without them the world is incredibly hard.

I move to the economy—why not have a stat in our debate? PwC says that, by 2030, AI will increase GDP by £15.7 trillion a year but, without the skills, how can we ensure that we are all enabled to take advantage of those economic and social opportunities?

What do we need to change? I offer at least three things. First is the curriculum—yes, in schools first but, beyond that, in higher education and across all training programmes. We need nothing short of a full transformation of the curriculum. Would my noble friend the Minister agree? I know that, when she comes to wind up, she will offer examples of elements throughout the curriculum. It is clear that these are pockets, certainly positive ones, but she must agree that we are far from the complete garment.

Is the Minister aware of the accreditation in ethical AI that is being led by the current Lord Mayor, who is doing such an excellent job and understands this area so clearly? Does she agree that we need accreditation for all our data scientists, developers and deployers of AI? You would not have an accountant, lawyer or any other professional unaccredited and unqualified. Would that not be a positive boon and an opportunity for the UK, not least in ethical AI?

Does the Minister agree that we need to ensure that, whatever the training and the skills programme, it must be both inclusive by design and accessible by all? Can she assure the House that this is the case for all skills and training programmes? If not, why not, and when can we say that this will be the case? We need to move beyond STEM and even STEAM: every voice in every decision should be skilled to articulate and contribute and to have the skills that it takes to make a success individually, connectedly and collectively.

When it comes to STEAM, I believe that there is only one place where we should consider this: if AI was to the human intellect what steam was to human strength, then you get the picture. Steam literally changed time. It is now our time to completely transform the skills ecosystem in the United Kingdom if we are going to enable, empower and unleash all that human talent and enable human-led, human-in-the-loop and human-over-the-loop AI and all the other technologies. If we get it right, it will not just increase all our skills but fundamentally change for the better the relationship between citizen and state.

There has been talk of the lack of a skills strategy. We need to go further. We need a vision for skills. No one even gets off the sofa for a strategy, but a vision for skills, to enable, empower and unleash all that human talent, is our mission for today and should be our mission for all days. #OurAIfutures.

14:48

[Lord Mair (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend, Lord Aberdare, for introducing this important debate. I also congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Marks of Hale and Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell, for their excellent maiden speeches.

I will make two points, declaring my interests as an academic and a practising engineer, as set out in the register. The first is on the acute shortage of skilled engineers and technicians, who are so important for the success of the economy, and the second is on climate change and the pressing need for green skills to be embedded in our education system.

A recent report led by the Institution of Engineering and Technology estimated that there is a shortfall of around 200,000 workers in the STEM sector. It called on the Government to help tackle the UK’s engineering skills shortage by embedding engineering into the current school curriculum. This is consistent with the findings of the recent inquiry of this House’s Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee, which the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, mentioned. Like them, I was privileged to have been a member of that committee.

A key finding of our report published in December is that there has been a significant decline in recent years in the number of pupils taking up technical subjects during key stage 4—14 to 16 year-olds. This is coupled with a wider decline in the opportunities available throughout the education of 11 to 16 year-olds to develop practical skills. Our committee heard from many witnesses that the current GCSE curriculum is too full and overly focused on academic pathways. Our report recommended a more balanced national curriculum to enable all pupils to study at least one technical or vocational subject should they wish. We recommended that the EBacc performance measure should be abandoned, as was so forcefully advocated in this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking. Creative, technical and vocational skills must not be sacrificed in favour of an overly full curriculum of academic subjects, as so well articulated by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton.

The UK must do much more to encourage children to develop STEM skills, including practical skills, and to make full use of them. This is not just about universities and higher education. Although we have outstanding engineering courses in our universities right across the country, more than half our young people are not suited to universities. The importance of further education colleges has been overlooked for far too long and the opportunities for attractive degree apprenticeships are growing. Both these routes were spoken about by the noble Lord, Lord Harrington of Watford. They could have a major impact in reviving the fortunes of vocational and technical education, critical for the engineering industries. It is highly significant that in Germany 20% of 25 year-olds have a higher technical qualification, whereas in the UK the present figure is only 4%. That is because in Germany there is a much wider range of opportunities in technical education for young people.

My second point relates to climate change and green skills, about which the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, have spoken. There is an urgent need to fast-track vital green engineering skills into our economy by 2030 at the latest. Led by the Royal Academy of Engineering, Engineers 2030 is an education and policy programme rethinking engineering and technology skills for our future world. It challenges how the engineering workforce needs to be different and how we should teach and professionally develop young people. We need to do things differently. The reality is that right now we lack sufficient numbers of engineers and technicians to deliver even the commitments already enshrined in legislation. The demand for substantial growth in green jobs comes at a time when engineering skills have largely stagnated over the past 10 years. In higher education, the proportion of students studying engineering has remained at around 5% for the past 15 years in this country; this compares with 22% in Germany.

A large proportion of young children have a strong preference to contribute to solving environmental problems and achieving net zero. It must therefore be a top priority that we equip them with the green skills and technical tools to do this, particularly promoting greater engagement of girls and young women. Gender diversity in engineering remains largely static. According to EngineeringUK, women made up just 17% of the engineering workforce in 2021. The real barrier to girls entering the engineering profession is perception. Many girls miss out because they perceive that engineering is only about machinery or hard hats and construction—apparently subjects only for boys—and they do not want to be thought of as the odd one out. This mistaken perception is also widely held by parents and by many teachers. In reality, engineering is very much wider than machinery or hard hats and construction. Engineering is simply applied science, which employs—I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Lilley—very clever people. It covers a huge range of subjects, many of them involving green skills that will build the net zero world of tomorrow, ranging from biotech to environmental solutions and from innovative new materials to novel energy systems such as hydrogen, all of which are potentially hugely attractive to both boys and girls.

In summary, both our economy and our path to net zero depend critically on engineering. There is a substantial untapped resource of future engineers and technicians—especially girls—in our schools. We need to address this urgently and plug the skills gap. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

14:55

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for raising this important debate and I congratulate both my noble friends Lord Marks of Hale and Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell on their maiden speeches; I look forward to hearing more of their valuable contributions.

Reading the newspaper headlines this week illustrates the seriousness of the situation in which we currently find ourselves, with regard to the quality of life for many in the country and the real need for skills for the success of the UK economy. We are told that there are a record 2.8 million people off work with long-term illness; that thousands of youngsters appear to have given up on school since the pandemic, with the highest number of so-called “ghost children” being recorded; and, to top it off, that almost a quarter of children aged 10 and 11 in British primary schools are clinically obese and that, for pupils in the poorest areas, the figure rises above 30%. However, with the right life skills for both young and old, this can be turned around.

We need only to look at further headlines to see think tanks calling for a wholesale curriculum and assessment review of the education system to add new topics such as financial education and mental health. The advanced British standard may indeed be an improvement on the current framework, but it is years away. The existing status quo is centred on teaching for exams that students will sit, but that is not necessarily what will help them in real life.

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege to visit a school academy in one of the most deprived boroughs of London. The academy is the envy of its peers in both the public and private sector, boasting an Oxbridge acceptance rate of 15% and a Russell group acceptance rate of 64%. I asked the principal how she achieved these results. Her response was that “Everyone, both teachers and pupils alike, wants to be here”. The same message came across in a business session recently, when discussing culture and values. The adage “If you love what you do, it is not a job” could not be more true. If we can create an environment where people feel good about multiple aspects of their life and in control of their situation, that will give them the confidence and ability to find a job that they love, grow the economy and attain a high quality of life.

The skills that make a difference can be narrowed down to four key pillars: food education, physical education, financial education and social education. Food education is paramount because you are what you eat; your gut is your second brain and what you put into it matters. Physical education follows, as it boosts energy, confidence and sleep quality, as well as reducing anxiety and stress. Financial education will then enable you to live the life that you want within your means. The right basic knowledge and small regular savings can create a potentially life-changing sum over the long term. Lastly, I will concentrate on social education, which is becoming increasingly vital as smartphones take over our lives.

During my visit to the same academy, the principal flagged that one of the few issues that they did experience was poor social interaction, and I noticed that some of the pupils, when they talked to me, did not look me in the eye and had trouble engaging directly. I think about my own career and consider myself extremely fortunate to have worked in the same room, paradoxically, with individuals who left school at 16 with no qualifications, all the way to rocket scientists with PhDs in astrophysics. The glue that bound us together was confidence and self-belief in what we were doing, which was derived purely from real, in-person, human interaction.

However, in the current day, by the age of 11 some 91% of children in the UK own a smartphone. The restaurant chain Prezzo has found that its customers between the ages of 12 and 27 suffer from “menu anxiety” and are too socially nervous to engage in a conversation with a waiter, preferring to order by QR code. The most truly shocking statistic is from a recent survey which found that a quarter of 18 to 34 year-olds have never answered their phone. This surely must be addressed as a top priority.

It will not surprise the Minster to hear me ask the Government how they will increase awareness on food education, physical education and financial education—but I would like to ask something else. Please can she update the House on the expected timeframe for a compulsory ban on smartphones in schools, to address the clear and present danger of in-person social interaction, which is arguably the most important life skill, becoming a thing of the past?

15:00

[Lord Mountevans (CB)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Aberdare on securing this very important debate. He has undoubtedly touched a particular vein here in the House, with tremendous engagement from all participants. I also congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Marks of Hale and Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell, on their excellent maiden speeches.

The much-vaunted UK knowledge economy masks an inherent imbalance with, and under-celebration of, our skills economy. “Education, education, education” has enabled our universities to blossom—perhaps at the expense of our colleges. For several decades, we have hollowed out and failed to invest adequately in our skills infrastructure. This has been further compounded by the aspiration for a degree, with all the supposed hierarchical status it promises.

It is regrettable that it has taken significant skills gaps and chronic skills shortages to deliver the wake-up call to UK plc of the pivotal importance of skills. We must go well beyond the virtue signalling of apprenticeships. Government policy has placed great importance on front-skilling the school pupils while neglecting their older siblings’ and parents’ needs for upskilling and reskilling. We are failing to value and appropriately fund the technical skills, the digital skills, the future skills, the green skills—as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman—and even skills foresighting. At the centre of everything, we need bold leadership and sustained political attention, kept honest by a strong voice from industry and a joint commitment to long-term investment.

I will speak on apprenticeships, on the colleges on which we rely for so much of skills training and, finally, if time permits, on the experience in my own maritime industry. Apprenticeships are a vital part of investing in individuals to deliver better skills outcomes for the wider economy. My understanding is that over 250,000 apprenticeships are commenced per year. This is not enough and, as we have heard, it does not adequately address the vital SME need. Figures from the OBR indicate that receipts by government for the apprenticeship levy will reach close to £4 billion in 2024-25, while the apprenticeship budget stands at £2.7 billion. Is the balance going to a good end in training or education?

We know there has been a significant increase in the number of young NEETs. Something must be done for this group. Yet apprenticeships remain the only part of the education sector where 16 to 18 year-olds are not fully funded by the state. Can this be addressed in any way? There needs to be a joined-up approach to apprenticeship across government, with direct ministerial oversight.

Now I turn to colleges, on which we depend so heavily for training away from work. For the colleges, this is a particularly challenging time. We rely on them to tackle the chronic and acute skills shortages, particularly among struggling SMEs and those sectors blighted by Brexit and the pandemic. If I may paraphrase the words of a friend, Dr Paul Little, principal of the renowned Glasgow College, I fear we are sleepwalking into a vocationally light future with an underpowered skills system and an underinvested skills infrastructure.

On the maritime experience, we are in fact very fortunate with the training options in maritime. We have heard a lot of quite depressing statistics one way and another today, and areas of great concern, but I think this is a success story, and credit goes to the Government for that. A number of universities are offering excellent degree courses and some professional organisations are offering specific professional qualifications in significant shore-based specialisations such as law, insurance and ship-broking.

There is time to concentrate only on seafarer training. We are indeed fortunate that seafarer training has operated essentially on a global basis through the supranational regulator, the International Maritime Organization, which is based across and up the river, and the UK’s national Maritime and Coastguard Agency. Our UK maritime sector is blessed in having a close tripartite relationship between the ship owners, the educators and workforce representatives, convened for almost a century by the UK Merchant Navy Training Board. This is borne out of inherent concern for seafarers’ safety, both coastal and deep sea, placing a higher value on competency and proficiency than on merely gaining a qualification.

I should add that the SMarT funding arrangement has been a great success for the training of seafarers, with 50% of the cost paid by government. This scheme supports seafarers’ training while ensuring a flow of very well-qualified seafarers—when they come ashore—into the maritime professional services, where Britain is the global industry leader. We are also fortunate in having a Maritime Skills Commission and blessed to have four seafarer education and training colleges, located in Glasgow, Warsash in Southampton, South Tyneside and Lowestoft. The skills and training acquired in these colleges are still recognised as the gold standard for maritime skills worldwide, and long may this last.

The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, noted the strong contribution of the City of London Corporation, City & Guilds and the livery companies to education and training. It is interesting that the noble Baroness, Lady Fairhead, is a fellow liveryman of the Goldsmiths’ Company, which makes an outstanding contribution to education and training. When I was elected to the City of London Corporation, I served on a number of school boards. I quickly realised that one area of great importance is aspiration. The City’s colleges and schools have succeeded in imbuing and developing aspiration in staff and students. I do not believe that any of us has mentioned aspiration, but it is vital for teachers and their students alike. I could wish to associate myself with very many speakers, but I do so with what the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, said about the value of foreign language teaching.

15:06

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, certain themes come across in trying to sum up what has been said in this debate. A clear one is the fact that we do not seem to have a handle on training for skills—a skill you can actually do in later life—or we have a dozen badly attached handles on it. We have an education system that is plugged into passing X number of little dots.

It is also an education system which says that getting your A-levels and going to university is what you should be aiming for, regardless of things such as how much money you will earn and what you actually want to do. You are taught by a group of people who have done this, which I am afraid is one of our problems: we have this conveyor going through. When it comes to skills and training et cetera, we know that you did things such as what used to be NVQ level 4 or HND level 5 when you messed up your A-levels. That was true when I was at a college doing my A-levels. Regardless of whatever you wanted to achieve in life, that is what you were supposed to do. It has become incredibly apparent that we have not thrown that off.

I do not know what hold the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has over the Whips’ Office, but allowing him to have the first dig at any debate means that an Education Minister really has to have a word with their friends. There has to be something here, but the noble Lord is essentially right. We have not taken skills seriously enough. They are secondary options. It probably goes back to grammar schools and secondary moderns, and beyond that, but that is what we have.

I have a couple of special interests that I should declare. I am dyslexic and president of the British Dyslexia Association. I also work for a disability assistance company, Microlink. One thing I have discovered, and indeed raised at many points, is that if you tell one group: “You’ve got to pass English, you’ve got to pass Maths”—which means remembering formulae, when all dyslexics have bad short-term memory; I think I have met one person who denied that in about 40 years—you have actually created a problem. Other groups have problems with it as well. Other people just do not learn because they do not think it applies to them, but you have still got to get English and Maths.

The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, spoke about how your phone has a calculator in it. The calculator has been around an awfully long time; it just happens to be in a convenient place now. There is something else on his phone he did not mention: the voice operation button. Every single computer that you buy today allows you to talk and turns that into text, then will read stuff back to you; it is built in. Twenty years ago, you had to plug the stuff into it, but now it is there. We have an automatic way in to allow you to access information. We are still not fully taking that on board.

Ten years ago, I had a long battle to allow people to take apprenticeship qualifications without passing a written English test—true, it was a tapped English test, but it still had to be a written English test. The examples of that were ridiculous in the end; it was basically that they had not thought of it. A lot of the briefing for this debate spoke about good standards in basic skills; if you are going to expand the base of people who will take these qualifications, you must allow other ways in. Many people struggle with English; it is a difficult language. If you want the academic reason why, the English got conquered by the French and created this non-phonetic structure that we pride ourselves on taking other words into—learn that without a phonetic route.

Going through, you must have a degree of flexibility. The Minister is probably the most informed person on this subject that I have seen sitting in that place in this House. I hope she will be able to give me some assurance that we will make sure that that barrier is not there in the future.

The second thing I should say here goes back to the point that we know what the education pathway is. We also know that the most important people for influencing what you will try to do are your parents; teachers come second. We know that if they had been a banker, for instance, you are likely to become a banker—or an actor or politician; in all those cases, you will think of doing that. If they are unemployed, that is what you think happens to you.

We have one big challenge: careers pathway advice in the future. We have spoken about this, and I believe the Government have been talking about it and doing things. It is a big challenge; do not underestimate it. The full benefits of any change now will probably not be seen for many years, possibly decades, but we have to start at some point. If we are to expand this to take in all the new technologies and developments, we must start now. Can the Minister give us some guidance about how this expanded knowledge of what is available is out there?

I will give a little example of where we need to do it. I am part of our DCMS team and we get presentations by the creative industries—film, et cetera. Do noble Lords know what happens to the back-room boys of the film industry? They are usually graduates, often in English, who decide that they want to go into the creative arts. Then they have to retrain, work on the job and spend time running around. They do not take HND or NVQ qualifications at level 4 or 5 in the subjects they need; they may be difficult to find. Indeed, there are local pathways for skills at this level, which is roughly the training, if I have it right—I have a nod there from the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, who is retaking her place, so I will take that as a win. But that is a local pathway, not a national one, and this is a national industry. Surely, we should be expanding our national careers structure to take in level 4 and 5, and say where you can go, because there is a huge unmet need. That need is historic; the first time I heard of a lack of technician-level training in this House was well over 30 years ago.

We have got to start to address—the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, was the first to say it—the idea that we are not taking these things seriously. Unless you do that, you will continue down this path of ignoring where the demand is where you can generate a better than living wage, and go on to do other things.

I could have expanded on these points—a lot of the other information was about social skills—but there are just a few seconds left to me. Everybody says, “tell the teacher to do it”. Teachers have an awful lot to do. Are we encouraging children in our schools—for instance, in sports clubs and arts organisations—to get a taste in school, then go out to where they will meet adults they will have to talk to and interact with? You can acquire many social skills there in a non-professionalised way, with people they may look up to, not people they are forced to say “Sir” or “Miss” to in a classroom. That would be a better way forward.

We can try to make school a smorgasbord of trying things—trying a few essentials to go on and do other things to acquire more skills, inside and outside the structure. Unless we get out of the idea that we are just getting rubber-stamped to a certain level on subjects, then told, “Off you go, life is perfect”, we will continue to fail. It is quite clear that most of us do not learn that way, or we do not learn successfully. Unless we can embrace that at a more fundamental level than we do now, we will merely continue to make the mistakes of today.

15:16

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Addington. He always speaks with such engagement on this topic.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for bringing this important subject to our Chamber today. I know that he has a strong interest in the subject, as do many Peers who have engaged in this debate that demonstrates the cross-party support for the importance of skills in our society. I was particularly pleased that the noble Lord alluded to the learning undertaken by our Welsh forefathers. Modern Wales has much to be commended on in its innovative work. At Skills Competition Wales, over 280 talented young people from across the country were recognised for their outstanding vocational skills at an awards ceremony at Trinity Saint David University in March this year.

I congratulate both our maiden speech contributors. I am sure that we will welcome their future contribution to the House.

In Breaking down the Barriers to Opportunity, Keir Starmer set out clearly Labour’s fifth mission in government: to break down the barriers to opportunity for every child, at every stage, and shatter the class ceiling. We will track our progress on this mission through three stages of education: boosting child development, with half a million more children hitting the early learning goals by 2030; achieving a sustained rise in young people’s school outcomes; and building young people’s life skills with an expansion of high-quality education, employment and training routes, so that more people than ever are on pathways with good prospects by 2030.

The Office for National Statistics, based in Newport, estimates that there were 851,000 young people not in employment, education or training between October and December 2023. That number has risen by 20,000 compared to the same period in 2022, and accounts for 12% of all 16 to 24 year-olds.

Education is at the heart of Labour’s mission to expand opportunity. From our earliest years through to learning or retraining as adults, gaining knowledge, skills and qualifications, and exploring our interests and abilities, enables us to build the lives that we want, and the society that we share. Today, the best education that our country has to offer is not available to every young person. The opportunity to learn and train as an adult is limited and available to too few. At this point, I want to acknowledge the work of the Open University; it is a marvellous organisation, initiated of course by Harold Wilson.

Our mission to spread opportunity means enabling everyone to access the opportunities that excellent education brings. Despite much talk, the Government have not developed the apprenticeships and skills pathways that will allow adults to reskill and upskill throughout their life. The result is that we have too few people who have the skills we need for growth. So what will Labour do to redress this huge deficit? Retraining and upskilling will need to be locally based and tailored to the needs of each community: plumbers to fit new heat pumps; engineers to lead the application of AI; and solar power fitters to harness renewables. We will set up new technical excellence colleges in all parts of the country, so that people have the specialist skills that local businesses need, and transform the apprenticeship levy to give employers the flexibility they need to train their workforce in new and relevant skills.

During National Apprenticeship Week in early February, Labour took the opportunity to announce further changes and policy initiatives. We set out our plans to boost skills training and drive economic growth, as data revealed that a decade of decline in apprenticeships and training is holding Britain back. Apprenticeship starts have declined, and the Government have failed to equip individuals and the economy with the skills to meet national challenges, including the transition to net zero and rising demand for digital skills. To reverse this downward trend, we will train over 1,000 new careers advisors to provide professional advice and guidance at schools and colleges, alongside high-quality work experience for young people.

Labour will give businesses the flexibility that they are asking for to train their workforce and deliver growth. We will start by turning the apprenticeships levy into a growth and skills levy. The Government’s current levy has seen millions of pounds that should be used for skills training going unspent, even as businesses report growing skills shortages. Giving businesses flexibility will ensure that this money can be better spent on a greater range of training courses, including basic English, basic maths and digital skills, so that businesses can fill gaps and people can gain new skills.

As part of a wider package of reform, we will establish Skills England, a new national body, driving forward a national ambition to meet the skills needs of the next decade. This will be driven by pushing power and decisions on skills spending out from Westminster to local communities, so those communities can better match up skills training with their local business needs and grow local and regional economies. My noble friend Lord Griffiths made many apposite points regarding the need for skills in, for example, the creative sector. Young people and adults are ambitious for their families’ futures; they want to learn new skills and get new jobs, or progress at work, but they are being let down. We will reverse this trend. We will give businesses the flexibility that they need to train people up, from digital technologies to the green skills needed to tackle climate change.

An important aspect of the skills agenda is digital skills, again noted by my noble friend Lord Griffiths. We lack a properly developed strategy. We need a digitally literate population. If we fail, we will be left with a lack of opportunity, particularly in employment. We rely on the internet, as many noble Lords have said, for applying for jobs, accessing education and training, banking—except for my noble friend Lord Griffiths—paying bills and accessing other services. People find employment online and many social media sites are available where professionals can network. Last year’s consumer digital index, which is run by Lloyds Bank and commissioned by the DfE, reported that there are about 13 million people in the UK with very low digital capability, which means they

“are likely to struggle interacting with online services”.

Furthermore, we need to provide adults with the opportunity to improve their literacy skills. The National Literacy Trust estimates that more than 16.4% of the adult population are functionally illiterate. How can people improve their digital skills if they do not already have good literacy skills?  

Adult skills spending has been cut under this Government. Last December, the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out that 

“total adult skills spending in 2024–25 will still be 23% below 2009–10 levels. Spending on classroom-based adult education has fallen especially sharply”. 

This is driven by falling learner numbers and real-terms cuts in funding rates. In 2024-25, it will be more than 40% below 2009-10 levels. This is very damaging to our economy, and the situation needs to be reversed.   

Digital skills are crucial for the future of our economy, businesses and workforce. That is why a core pillar of Labour’s industrial strategy is to harness data for the public good and to transform digital skills. Young people need to understand developing technologies to be able to use them. Our curriculum review will embed digital literacy and skills throughout children’s learning.   

Can the Minister say how the Government are working with businesses to understand the digital skills needs of the future? How can all skills needs be best met now, and what can the Government do to future-proof our skills needs as a country? I add my support to the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, who questioned the defunding of BTEC courses. I look forward to the Minister’s response on these extremely important matters.

Despite the rhetoric, the Government have overseen a decade of decline in skills and training opportunities which is holding Britain back. From digital to green skills, childcare to social care, a Labour Government will harness the talents and abilities of the British people so we can strengthen our economy and break down barriers to opportunity. We will provide more training opportunities so people can gain new skills, access better jobs and grow our economy. That is the difference we will make.

15:26

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords across the Chamber for their contributions. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for securing this very important and well-supported debate. It was an honour to be present to hear the maiden speeches of my noble friends Lord Marks of Hale and Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell. Listening to a maiden speech reminds us all just what a privilege it is to serve in your Lordships’ House.

If I may, I will step back and remind noble Lords what the Government are looking to achieve with our overall programme of skills reform. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, started by talking about the need for a strategy. I hope he recognises many, if not all, of the seven points in his speech in the Government’s approach.

The Skills for Jobs White Paper, published in January 2021, is the blueprint for our reforms. It sets out the case for change and the vital need to drive up skills in our country. We know that a third of productivity growth can be attributed to increases in skills levels. I join other noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lord Baker for his work over many years to bring a focus to the skills agenda. But we still face significant gaps in skills at higher technical levels, with level 4/5 being the highest qualification for 10% of adults, compared to 20% in Germany and 34% in Canada. 

My noble friend Lord Patten was absolutely right to highlight the importance of improving productivity in the public sector as well, and my noble friend Lord Holmes was right to stress the importance of inclusivity and innovation in developing skills programmes.

The gaps in our skills are creating significant challenges in the labour market. As we heard from a number of noble Lords, employers report that they cannot find people with the skills they need, particularly the technical skills that drive innovation and enable adoption of new technologies. I acknowledge the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, regarding foreign languages, but I may need to address some of them in writing.

As it stands, a quarter of job vacancies in the UK are due to skills shortages. Some estimates show that, by 2030, we will face a global skills shortage of 85 million. There are major challenges for the future, as we know from research published by the department’s Unit for Future Skills, which estimates that between 10% and 30% of jobs could be automated through AI. The significance of AI was brought out powerfully by my noble friend Lady Fairhead. That is why we have introduced a series of reforms, with the aim of developing a world-leading skills system that is employer-focused and fit for the future. This is backed by an investment of £3.8 billion over the course of this Parliament to strengthen higher and further education. The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, spoke about the need for stability in the skills system. Probably the strongest thing we hear from employers is that they want stability so they can plan and invest.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, asked about opportunities for lifelong learning. I remind her of the important lifelong learning entitlement, which will transform opportunities to upskill, reskill and develop skills throughout one’s lifetime.

I will divide my remaining remarks into three broad categories, focusing on an employer-led skills system, our support for priority growth sectors, and the reform of qualifications. I hope that addresses the spirit of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Birt, about looking at this issue in the round and not in a fragmented way.

As the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said more eloquently than I can, employers need to be at the heart of our skills system. The Government have worked hard to bring education and business together so that skills and training provision directly support economic growth and productivity. The Government are proud of their new high-quality apprenticeship programme. Nearly 700 apprenticeship standards are now available, covering around 70% of occupations in this country. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, asked about the drop in the number of apprenticeships. I think he knows what I am going to say: we focused very much on quality, so we took out apprenticeships that did not deliver for apprentices. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, that I am not sure what changing the name of the apprenticeship levy achieves, but I think that Labour’s proposals are estimated to halve the number of apprenticeships, which would have a very serious impact on our economy.

I thank my noble friend Lord Harrington for acknowledging the value of the apprenticeship levy. I will address some of his concerns, and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, about reform of the levy. We already pay 100% of the apprenticeship training costs for 16 to 21 year-olds in respect of SMEs. We have also doubled the levy transfer limit from 25% to 50% so that levy payers can maximise the benefit of their levy funds.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, gave us her expert insight into the importance of level 3 apprenticeships. As she is aware, they are the most popular apprenticeships, accounting for 43.3% of starts in the current academic year. We now have 229 apprenticeships standards at level 3 and an active apprenticeships campaign promoting both level 2 and level 3 apprenticeships.

My noble friend Lord Harrington noted the importance of manufacturing apprenticeships. The Government are investing £50 million in a two-year pilot to support providers to deliver more high-value apprenticeships, particularly in areas such as engineering, advanced manufacturing, green technologies and life sciences.

My noble friend Lord Lucas talked about the importance of micro-credentials. He will be aware that we have introduced skills bootcamps, which provide flexible training for adults aged 19 and over, which are directly linked to roles in priority sectors. These, again, were courses that were designed and delivered in partnership with employers to respond to their needs. There are now more than 1,000 skills bootcamps available across England.

Turning to the local skills improvement plans, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, for her leadership in this area. I was glad to hear how important and innovative that direct link is—if I followed her remarks correctly—between business, higher education and further education, just getting people in the room together to work out what an area needs.

The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, asked about oversight of the LSIPs. The employer representative bodies are now leading on implementation and review of the plans, and each of those bodies will publish a public annual progress report in June 2024 and June 2025, setting out their progress.

We also think the introduction of institutes of technology is extremely important. They are collaborations between colleges, universities and business, designed to deliver the best technical education and help businesses to get the workforce they need. We will have 21 of these new institutes in place from September.

The noble Lord, Lord Mair, said that—I hope I wrote this down correctly—20% of adults in Germany have higher technical qualifications, and that this is an important gap in our skills landscape. That is why we have introduced HTQs to meet exactly that need at levels 4 and 5. They have a quality mark that is awarded only to those qualifications that deliver the skills employers need. That also speaks to the point about recognition of qualifications that the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, referred to. To date, 172 qualifications have been approved as HTQs across seven routes. The Government have also sought to prioritise five sectors that are critical to driving our growth in the 21st century: green industries, digital technologies, life sciences, creative industries, and advanced manufacturing.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and the noble Lord, Lord Mair, all talked about the importance of green industries. The net-zero growth plan sets out how the Department for Education is empowering people to get skills for green jobs, but this challenge is a very significant one, whether it be in relation to workers in offshore wind or, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, used as an example, in relation to heat pumps. We are funding a range of apprenticeship standards in green occupations, including level 4 electrical power networks engineering and new low-carbon heating technician apprenticeships. We also have T-levels to support this area in construction engineering and land management.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, asked about the nature action plan. On timing, the technical answer is “soon” but not “in due course”—that is the good news. We have made a public commitment that it will be published in the first half of this year, and that public commitment still stands. I think that is “soon”.

Digital technologies are a foundation for our economy, but 18% of the UK labour force do not have the essential digital skills that they need for work. The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, asked about cross-departmental working. As an example, we are working closely with DSIT to convene the Digital and Computing Skills Education Taskforce, aiming to increase the number of individuals taking digital and computing qualifications and attracting people into digital jobs. We have invested over £100 million in the National Centre for Computing Education, to improve teaching of and participation in computer science GCSE and A-level.

I recognise very much, in my noble friend Lady Fairhead’s comments about AI, the pace of change and the difficulty in government to stay ahead of the curve. I hope the House agrees that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has given great leadership in the area of ethical AI and safety in AI. My colleagues in the department are also making great progress, and I look forward to being able to update the House on some of those activities in due course.

The third area of focus is on life sciences. The UK life sciences industry is one of the largest in the world, with the potential to create up to 133,000 new roles in 2030. Through the Office for Life Sciences, my department is working with employers and industry bodies to identify and address skills challenges.

The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, talked about the importance of the creative industries. This is one of the fastest growing sectors of the UK economy, and we have clearly set out the Government’s ambition—shared with industry—to support a million new jobs through education and skills objectives, in our creative industries sector vision. We have developed 57 creative and design occupational standards and we have more flexible training models to support apprenticeships in the creative industries, where short-term contracts or other non-standard employment models are the norm.

Finally, our fifth area of strategic focus is on advanced manufacturing. Manufacturing provides 2.6 million jobs in the economy—7% of total employment—but there are currently 70,000 vacancies. Our plan sets out our ambition to establish an advanced manufacturing skills forum with the National Manufacturing Skills Taskforce. Again, this is supported by skills bootcamps and T-levels, to create a pipeline of skilled workers.

I turn to our qualification reform, which was a subject of interest for my noble friends Lord Willetts and Lord Lingfield and the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. As the House knows from our debates on this subject during the passage of the skills Bill, we aim to fund only qualifications that are of the highest quality and lead to good progression outcomes. T-levels are delivering fantastic results for those 16 to 19 year-olds across the country. I encourage my noble friend Lord Lingfield to perhaps meet some of those students with me, because they are delighted by their courses. Over 30,000 young people have now enrolled on a T-level since their launch four years ago, with roughly 16,000 enrolling in the last year.

My noble friend Lord Willetts asked some very specific questions about the precise number of qualifications that will have funding removed and the number of students taking them. I will cover some of those points now, but I will also write to him and put a copy of my letter in the Library, because this is a slightly complex area. We have not yet finished all our decision-making on the funding of qualifications, but we have published the number of courses and enrolments, rather than students, where either funding is being removed or we are considering it, and I will put the links to that information in my letter.

As the House knows, we are removing public funding from qualifications in phases. The first phase was for 5,500 qualifications, which had either no or very low enrolments. The second phase is for the removal of funding from qualifications that overlap with T-levels. The final phase relates to our approval process through which alternative academic qualifications must go to be funded from September 2025.

On the second phase—the removal of funding from qualifications that overlap with T-levels—waves 1 and 2 covered about 130 qualifications and about 39,000 enrolments. Within that, there were 10 qualifications that had more than 1,000 enrolments. Wave 3 covered 85 qualifications with 17,000 enrolments, and there were five qualifications with more than 1,000 enrolments. Wave 4 is expected to cover around 70 qualifications and 32,000 enrolments, of which nine qualifications had more than 1,000 enrolments. I raise the point about the relatively small number of qualifications with large numbers of enrolments because my noble friend Lord Lingfield talked about T-levels being too complicated, but the existing system is extremely complicated. We want to bring simplicity and clarity to the quality of the qualifications that young people are undertaking.

The final reason why I would like to write to my noble friend, rather than try to explain this in any more detail at the Dispatch Box, is that T-levels are very large courses covering a variety of occupational specialisms and lasting two years. The qualifications being defunded are of different sizes; some can be very small, and one person could take several enrolments. The enrolment data for older-style qualifications cannot be directly compared with T-levels, which are much larger. I assure my noble friend and the House that students will continue to have a range of options available to them at level 3, in addition to A-levels and T-levels, including new technical occupational qualifications and alternative academic qualifications, helping to ensure that all students have a range of options. Each one of those will have employer standards and occupational standards at its heart.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

I am very grateful to the Minister for the full answer she has already given. Can she give her assurance that the measure of enrolments, which I understand is not the same as the number of students, going back to the baseline that I referred to, will be in her letter to me?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

It will.

I turn to the wider points raised about the curriculum by my noble friends Lady Sater and Lord Effingham, the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. To critics of the curriculum, I say as a starting point that we work very closely with the Education Endowment Foundation, which gives a robust, highly respected and independent evidence base about all the reforms that we have undertaken, so there is nothing ideological in what we are doing in our schools. It is based on the best available evidence, including randomised control trials and other similarly robust approaches.

I absolutely agree with the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, that it is a bit artificial to separate knowledge and skills; it is the combination of the two that is powerful. I agree with my noble friend Lady Sater about the importance of confidence and agility, but we believe those are based in a knowledge-rich curriculum that fosters competence and mastery in a subject. I may have to include my response about storming the barricades with the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, in my letter. All I can say at this point is that it sounds an interesting option.

In relation to my noble friend Lord Effingham’s question regarding prohibition of phones, if additional evidence emerges that they are a problem—we know that most schools already prohibit phones in some way—we will seek to make our guidance statutory. The noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, emphasised the importance of careers. I remind the House that in the financial year 2024-25 we are investing more than £90 million in high-quality careers provision for all.

I am running out of time. My last point is to acknowledge the point made by my noble friend Lord Lilley that the Government cannot make a success of these skills reforms on their own. Employers must also do more to support the development of workforce skills. We have seen employer investment in training fall by 7.8% in real terms between 2017 and 2022. As my noble friend said, we must move away from reliance on migration to fill skills gaps and towards investment in the skills of our domestic workforce.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

At the beginning of her speech, the Minister said—I have not heard a Minister say it before—that the forecast of the skills gap in 2030 is hundreds of millions, if not billions. It is absolutely extraordinary, and our education system as presently constituted cannot possibly meet it. I gave her forewarning of this in my speech: will she consider the proposal that has been put to her to insert into ordinary schools in the UK a technical sleeve, known as a UTC sleeve? We have 10 schools that want to do it and applications have been made to her, but there has been no reaction at all from the Department for Education. When will she be in a position to give approval to this? Will it be before the next election?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The skills gap numbers that I cited were in relation to global skills gaps. The point I was making was that this is not a uniquely UK problem in relation to skills; it is a global problem. As the noble Lord knows, his correspondence with the department is the responsibility of another Minister. I understand that it is under consideration.

15:53

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I have found this a thoroughly absorbing, enlightening and encouraging debate. I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken, from so many different perspectives. I particularly look forward to hearing more in the future from the noble Lords, Lord Marks of Hale and Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell, following their splendid maiden speeches. I am also grateful to the Minister. I very much echo the tribute by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, to her knowledge and commitment to this area, and thank her for her characteristically comprehensive response to such a broad debate. I am certainly not going to try to summarise in any sense, but I very much look forward to reading it in Hansard. It has very much confirmed to me the importance of skills as an issue, the breadth of areas it covers and the scale of the challenges we need to address. It is much too broad for a single debate, so I hope we will have other opportunities to discuss it.

My noble friend Lord Clancarty spotted the fact that I had omitted “education” from the Motion. That was because I wanted to focus in particular on the skills aspect. Other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Addington, commented that skills are not taken seriously enough. It seems that for too long education has been a powerful horse pulling a rather ramshackle skills carriage, when what we need is for them to work in harness with other horses: employers, other departments, parents—all the groups we have talked about—and they should be pulling a first-class, golden carriage accommodating both education and skills. So I was very glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, talk about a vision for skills, which perhaps is the design for that golden carriage that we need. This is an issue that I will certainly wish to push further, but I reiterate my thanks to all noble Lords for a really inspiring morning.

Motion agreed.

Inadmissible Asylum Seekers

Thursday 9th May 2024 Lords Chamber

Question for Short Debate

15:56

Asked by

[Lord German]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the number of people who have entered the United Kingdom without prior permission since 7 March 2023 and so have been deemed inadmissible to the asylum system, and what plans they have to deal with them.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I must first draw attention to my interest in the RAMP organisation, which supports me, which is in the register.

My purpose in tabling this topical question debate is to establish facts about the Government’s policy in respect of the 73,000 asylum applications, covering roughly 90,000 people, that have been made since the introduction of the Illegal Migration Bill on 7 March 2023. The Minister will know very well that we on these Benches do not support the Government’s policy on removal of asylum seekers to Rwanda or provisions in the Illegal Migration Act. However, he will be very pleased to know that I do not intend to re-rehearse those arguments today.

Today I am seeking answers from the Minister to confirm how the Government intend their policy to be applied. This matters to the taxpayer, to the 90,000 people caught up in it and to the many organisations that are seeking to support them. I also seek to pursue some of the questions to which the Public Accounts Committee in the other House sought answers in its evidence session of 5 April 2024.

Those individuals who arrived in the UK on a visa, for example as a student, and then later claimed asylum, for reasons such as civil war breaking out in their own country, would have their asylum claim considered in the UK. However, as there is no legal route by which to enter the UK to claim asylum, once the Illegal Migration Act is fully in force most of the asylum applications made since 7 March 2023 will be deemed inadmissible. This means they will have lodged an asylum application but, due to their method of travel to the UK, their cases will have been placed on hold pending a third country accepting their removal—namely, Rwanda. Their asylum claim is not admitted into the UK asylum system, so the substance of their claim would never be assessed in the UK. They are effectively in indefinite limbo until they can be sent to a safe third country.

In the Permanent Secretary’s letter of 25 April to the chairs of the Public Accounts and Home Affairs Committees in the other House, he confirmed that the exact number of these asylum applications deemed to be inadmissible would

“only be confirmed once the full triage”

of these arrivals had been completed. So my first question is: what do the Government predict will be the number of inadmissible cases from 7 March 2023 to the present, based on their current modelling?

We have two cohorts of people who are in limbo within this 73,000. The first is the Illegal Migration Bill cohort, who arrived between 7 March 2023 and 19 July 2023. These amount to 21,313 applications as of 14 April this year. These individuals are not subject to the duty to remove, but they are subject to the ban on leave to enter or remain, on settlement and on citizenship. Whether they are inadmissible into the asylum system is a decision to be made by the caseworker, following guidance. What happens after that is what I am trying to establish. At the moment, the Government appear to be doing their best to pretend that these people do not exist—maybe they are hoping that they can leave it for the next Government to sort out.

In the Commons Public Accounts Committee evidence hearing of 15 April, the director general of the customer services group at the Home Office stated that this March to July 2023 cohort would start to be processed this month. Has that practice of processing commenced? Secondly, when would the Minister expect the processing of the asylum applications of the March 2023 to July 2023 cohort to be completed? Thirdly, have the 2,500 caseworkers, previously recruited to clear the legacy backlog, been retained? If so, are they being used to clear this backlog?

We have a bizarre situation here, in that individuals can be admitted into the UK asylum system if they are deemed not to have arrived irregularly. However, despite the ban on granting leave having come into force last July, when the Act received Royal Assent, there has been no guidance since then on how the ban is being applied to them. How is the ban on leave being applied? When will guidance be published about how leave can be granted to this cohort and what rights and entitlements should be attached to that leave?

The second limbo cohort within this 73,000 is what I call the Illegal Migration Act cohort, those who have claimed asylum having arrived from 20 July 2023 to the present day. As of 14 April, there were 51,926 cases, representing around 64,000 people. Of course, this figure is growing each day as more people arrive. It might be wise to remember that, despite the Government’s focus on small boats, small boat arrivals accounted for only 37% of the total number of people claiming asylum in the UK in the year ending June 2023.

Once Sections 2 and 5 of the Illegal Migration Act are commenced, asylum claims meeting the criteria will be automatically deemed inadmissible, with the duty to remove to a third country. I would like an answer to the question: what is the Government’s plan for these people? This is a matter of capacity, from both the Rwandan side and our own.

Although the Government insists the Rwanda scheme is uncapped, the reality is that only a small proportion of these limbo cohorts will ever be removed there. The Rwandan Government spokesperson said last weekend that Rwanda could relocate “thousands” over the course of the five-year partnership. There is no indication from Rwanda that this amounts to tens of thousands in the first year.

The Government intend to detain people prior to their removal to Rwanda. Currently there are about 2,200 detention spaces in the UK. Given that there are immigration detainees not related to this Rwanda policy already occupying detention spaces, what detention capacity is available for those being removed to Rwanda? Are there plans in place to create more detention spaces?

Current evidence suggests that the majority of these 90,000 people will remain indefinitely in limbo. They cannot have their asylum claims processed in the UK and they cannot be removed to a safe third country—with some few exceptions with which I agree, particularly in relation to Albania and India.

Without permission to work, they will have to rely indefinitely on asylum support, and there is a huge risk that many will be exploited in the black market. This is what closing down the asylum system looks like. Have the Government made an assessment of the impact of this policy on the numbers of people entering the black economy and very likely being exploited? This is not good for the individuals concerned, our communities or the taxpayer. The Government need a plan, and we need to understand what it is. They cannot simply pretend that this group of people do not exist. Amid the numbers, the data and policy detail, it is essential that we remember the human cost of this policy failure—people’s lives held in suspension. What assessment has been made about the long-term impact of this period of limbo on individuals and communities?

I will turn to money. The Independent Commission for Aid Impact highlighted in its last report the increasing amount of aid spent on asylum seekers and refugees from the aid budget—28% in total. In the Public Accounts Committee, the Home Office director-general for migration and borders was asked if that money could continue to be used, and he said it was an issue under review with the Treasury regarding the ODA rules and applicability, because the asylum seeker classification is the one that permits ODA funding for their first year in a country’s asylum system. Can the Minister tell us if ODA money can be used to support this growing cohort of in-limbo asylum seekers? I hope that he can provide answers, which I am seeking on behalf of not just the tens of thousands of people in this position and the organisations that support them, but the taxpayer who will have to fund it.

We need transparency around what the Government’s policies are. These are not simply operational matters; they are policy issues for which the Government has responsibility. Apart from the huge cost of the scheme, people need to understand what will happen to them. I remind the House that these people are illegal only because the Government have deemed them so; they are men, women and children who have sought protection in the UK, yet the Government have refused to consider their cases. The top nationalities of these people are Afghan, Iranian, Eritrean and Sudanese, which previously had grant rates of 98% to 99% for entry into this country. They are refugees. The current policy will hold these people in a government-imposed limbo, in a state of purgatory. It is not a good place; it denies hope and devalues the futures of so many who have fled for their lives.

16:07

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord German, for obtaining this debate on a very important area that, although it has, sadly, become very party political, is somewhere that we need to get real and use everyone’s creative thinking to try to find solutions. This is affecting virtually every country, to a greater or lesser degree, in Europe; it is not going to go away; we are dealing with the lives of vulnerable people; and I hope we can try to think together about the way forward. I have a certain reticence to speak as this is an area where some of the legislation is extremely complex, and I hope I will bring some light rather than more confusion to it.

The passing of the Illegal Migration Act, alongside the Rwanda plan, appears to have created much more confusion and overlapping statuses for asylum seekers. We now have asylum seekers whose applications were made before 28 June 2022 and the Nationality and Borders Act, those whose applications were made from 28 June 2022 to 6 March 2023, the group between 7 March to 19 July, and then those who applied after 20 July 2023. As I understand it, all are affected by slightly different legislation.

This is not my area of expertise, but it seems clear to me—this echoes the concerns certainly of many on these Benches, but I think throughout the House—that a number of applications for asylum will be deemed permanently inadmissible, yet the asylum seekers will remain in the UK as they cannot be removed either back to their own country or to Rwanda, simply because there are not enough spaces. This has already been pointed out with some detailed figures; as I understand, there are nothing like enough places for the numbers who need to be removed. They are stuck here. I thought that the word that the noble Lord, Lord German, used was very significant: they are in a state of limbo, never to be granted leave to remain. This cannot be a sustainable situation not only for their sake, which is the biggest issue, but because of the cost to the taxpayer, as thousands of asylum seekers will remain indefinitely dependent on Home Office accommodation and some sort of support.

There are also questions about the choices left for those trapped in this situation and the fact that thousands of those intended for deportation to Rwanda cannot, at the moment, be located. It indicates that they may be driven underground, where they are at risk of exploitation and destitution.

I would like to raise the particular point not only that hundreds of unaccompanied children housed in Home Office hotels and hostels went missing last year—we do not know whether they have been kidnapped or, as some people say, recruited by criminal gangs—but that recent reports indicate that over 350 children were held in UK detention facilities in France between January 2022 and October 2023. Many of these children would have been left extremely traumatised, yet it appears that the Home Office held no information on the number of officers trained in safeguarding and modern slavery at these facilities. We have a duty of care to these children, who are extremely vulnerable, and these reports are indeed alarming.

I will also take this opportunity to ask the Minister how many asylum-seeking children in the UK are unaccounted for and what the Government are doing about it. What are we doing to ensure that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, arriving now and in the future, are properly cared for and protected? We urgently need robust safeguards and clarity on where responsibility for these children lies.

I know that, many times during the passage of the Rwanda Bill 2024 in this House, my right reverend friend the Bishop of Chelmsford spoke passionately for the case to protect unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. I wish simply to press on the Minister and the Government the importance of protecting these vulnerable children from danger or exploitation while they are here, however long they are here for, regardless of their immigration status.

16:13

[Lord Rogan (UUP)]

My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord German, on securing this timely debate. The asylum issue has been high on the national political agenda for a considerable period but, until recently, it was not a particularly prominent subject of debate or discussion in Northern Ireland. In common with the rest of the United Kingdom, there were frustrations with some hotels being unavailable to holidaymakers and others because they were being used to accommodate asylum seekers. Other than that, it was seen as an issue more relevant to Great Britain.

That has changed dramatically over the past two weeks. In one of his first acts, the new Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris asked his Justice Secretary to bring forward legislation to enable asylum seekers entering the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland to be sent back to the United Kingdom. It is the Irish Government’s view that 80% of recent asylum seekers arriving in the Republic have come across the Irish land border. The reason, according to the Irish Deputy Prime Minister, Micheál Martin, is the deterrent effect of the United Kingdom Government’s Rwanda Act, with which your Lordships are all too familiar. These comments were seized on by our own Prime Minister as something akin to a cause for celebration. Other senior members of His Majesty’s Government have expressed similar views.

As noble Lords will be aware, we have an open border on the island of Ireland. The common travel area is an arrangement which began in 1922 and includes a basic right for United Kingdom and Irish citizens to travel freely between the two countries. While the major political parties in both jurisdictions have supported the open border concept, Sinn Féin/IRA had always been particularly adamant that everyone should be able to cross back and forth from north to south free of impediment.

However, the developments I have described have provoked something of a rethink from Sinn Féin supporters. In an opinion poll published last weekend in the Sunday Independent, 52% of Sinn Féin supporters said they now want checkpoints on the border to limit the number of asylum seekers arriving from Northern Ireland. That number is even higher than the 50% of respondents in the Republic of Ireland who said they hold the same view. According to a recent opinion poll, 82% of people in the Republic of Ireland also want immigrants who have travelled through Northern Ireland to be deported back to the United Kingdom.

The Irish Government’s initial response to this developing situation was to pledge to send 100 Gardai officers to police the border—the only land border between the United Kingdom and a member state of the EU. However, they now appear to have backed away from this. In the meantime, Rishi Sunak has made clear that His Majesty’s Government refuse to take back any refugees from the Republic of Ireland unless France agrees to take back refugees who crossed the English Channel to get to the United Kingdom in the first place. Put simply, the situation is nothing short of a mess.

Your Lordships will most probably be aware that a general election must take place in the Republic of Ireland no later than March 2025. The hardening of public opinion on immigration and asylum south of the border is quickly being reflected in changing policy stances taken by the political parties fighting for votes in the Republic of Ireland. It has served as a reminder that Sinn Féin’s capacity for hypocrisy and political opportunism knows no bounds. The party of open borders and unbridled immigration is undergoing a conversion.

But they are not alone in the hypocrisy stakes. One cannot but recall the recently departed Irish Prime Minster Leo Varadkar travelling to Brussels to brandish a photograph of a bombed customs post and insist that any border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland was unthinkable. No doubt he was still intending to stand for re-election before embarking on that grossly irresponsible and offensive stunt.

One can only hope that, with the UK general election only months away, Rishi Sunak’s position on the border issue is not motivated by the shallow quest for votes in Great Britain over the well-being of the people of Northern Ireland. The noble Lord, Lord German, asked several questions which need answering; I simply ask one more. What are His Majesty’s Government intending to do—in partnership with the Irish Government—to remedy this situation?

There is a time and place for politics; all of us in this House understand that. However, history tells us that playing politics with the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is generally helpful to no one in the long run. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

16:18

[Lord Hussain (LD)]

My Lords, Britain has a history of giving asylum to many political leaders, human rights workers and students, in some times, from various countries. Two that come to mind are Pakistan and Bangladesh, from which political leaders have sought political asylum during military rule in those countries or, sometimes even if the military has not ruled directly, when the political space for politicians has been squeezed and many of them had to flee. Britain has been home to many of them during their asylum.

My question is very brief: what will happen to any political leaders or human rights activists from such countries who come to the UK? Will their applications be sorted here, or will they also need to be sent to Rwanda?

16:19

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, both my noble friends have asked some questions. I am not sure whether my noble friend Lord Hussain’s question is a new one, but my noble friend Lord German certainly asked questions to which many organisations and many citizens want to know the answer.

The Refugee Council has sent us its estimates. No doubt the Minister has seen these, and I hope he will be able to answer on them, directly or indirectly, because if the Government will not say and will not give us the answer then what has happened to accountability, and if they cannot say then what does that tell us about how much they are in control? Last week, I asked some questions about numbers and the Minister regarded them as operational matters that he was not able to answer. I hope he will be able to be more forthcoming today.

I wanted to speak about housing, but I realised that time would be against me. I think all noble Lords will understand that, for everyone, housing is essential for stability and a basis from which exploitation and a whole range of abuses, including trafficking, can be avoided. If one does not have it, one is in real trouble.

I was a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights six or seven years ago when it considered detention in various circumstances, one of which was immigration detention. There are plenty of reports on the damage that detention can do. The committee was actually very shocked at the evidence it heard. The Government may say that one aspect of detention has been solved, which is the lack—or rather loss—of hope. They may say that is now irrelevant because detainees know they will be removed to Rwanda. I would challenge that.

I would also challenge how people are currently being detained, according to widespread reporting. This is not new, but people are being picked up from reporting centres and taken into detention without belongings, clothes, medication, phones or the means of contacting anyone who can help or needs to know. Neither the treatment nor the occasion is new, but if an asylum seeker is complying with the terms of their bail conditions, goes to report and behaves entirely properly then why are they received and dealt with in that way? Why the brutality and dehumanisation?

Of course, people are becoming more aware of what might happen without warning. I understand that they are being advised to pack a bag now, with contact details of lawyers and support organisations, and leave it with friends so that somebody can access it. But we also know that people are already slipping away and going underground.

I also want to ask about the Safety of Rwanda caseworker guidance, version 1.0. The legislation requires “compelling evidence”. The guidance has a section on this that is introduced by saying that it

“explains the meaning … for the purposes of considering claims that Rwanda is not a safe country for the claimant in question”.

How does this differ from the guidance from which the Home Office, and advisers and experts, have been and are working when the issue is whether a country other than Rwanda is a safe third country?

It is important to be clear what is required for evidence to be “compelling”. I thought I understood that when we were debating the Bill, but looking at the guidance, I am not sure I do. It looks to me as if the previous, or existing, tests are those required to be met. The references are—I suppose inevitably—to cases that precede this April. The term “compelling” is repeated and repeated, but that does not necessarily help. I am very much a lay person, but it did not seem to me in the past that the Home Office was satisfied with evidence provided by an applicant for asylum when it was not compelling.

I have been asked by a psychologist—I should declare that they are a personal contact—who has made assessments of asylum seekers and acted as an expert witness to the court, about my questions and whether I can pursue them, which chimed with my own reading. It is important, of course, that experts and advisers are clear, as well as the Home Office, because “compelling” must mean something. The guidance refers to

“a credible report from a suitably qualified independent expert, based on an adequate assessment”.

Of course, but is that a particular expertise that is different from previous expertise? The guidance also states that

“where the assertion is of a type for which strong, objective evidence ought to be available, such as the existence of a medical condition or a history of engagement in political activism, the threshold is unlikely to be met in the absence of strong, objective evidence in support of the claimant’s own account”.

Evidence of political activism is likely to be available—certainly in documentary form in the applicant’s coat pocket. It is exactly the sort of thing that it would be unsafe to travel with. As regards medical conditions, does this mean evidence recorded prior to the claim? Is it something new? Further assistance would be very helpful.

The guidance states that the impact of the threat of removal to Rwanda must be discounted. Is this rhetorical? Is it possible for an individual to be assessed without taking account of the whole situation, including removal from all his social, religious and support networks? My noble friend Lord German has raised some very pertinent questions about limbo-land, or purgatory. One thing is for sure: limbo-land is not a safe country.

16:27

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord German, for setting up this important debate; I agree with most of what he said. I also welcome the Minister to his place; how glad I am to see him still here. Only he and one or two others are left defending the policy to deal with this problem. His former boss was on the television just recently, calling out the plan and saying that it would not work. His former colleague, Robert Jenrick, was also calling it out, saying it would not work. Presumably, these are all colleagues he worked closely with to ensure that the plan was well set. There are also some behind him saying that the policy is not tough enough and will not work, and some saying it is too tough. We also have the now-Labour MP for Dover joining in with the criticism of the plan.

So desperate are the Government to get any flights off the ground that they paid a volunteer £3,000 to leave. The British taxpayer will now be paying for their board and lodging in Rwanda for the next five years. Did the Minister sign that off, or can he explain who in the Home Office did? As we are talking about numbers, as the noble Lord, Lord German, says, that means that that part of the plan stands at one. Are the Government currently planning to increase that? Will we see any more volunteers recruited to go to Rwanda? What is the Government’s target?

I will also use the Government’s figures for the numbers of people. Where possible I have tried to use Home Office figures. The numbers show that 1,123 people have arrived on small boats in the last week—some deterrent. How can the Minister tell us that this is working? Of those arrivals, 711 arrived on 1 May, which is more than twice the number—300—that the Government’s Rwanda scheme will take, at a cost of half a billion pounds. Can he explain how that is value for money, at £2 million per person?

Will the Minister confirm that there have been 8,790 arrivals so far this year? According to the Government, that is a 34% increase on last year, and 13% higher than in 2022. Can he explain how the deterrent is working?

So nervous are the Government, and so worried about the ineffectiveness of their own policy, we learned today that they have announced that they will stop publishing the numbers on preventing crossings as a result of collaboration with the French. Can the Minister explain why?

As the noble Lord, Lord German, pointed out very effectively, the current backlog since the Illegal Migration Act became law is 52,000, according to government figures. The overall backlog, according to the right reverend Prelate, is some 90,000. We have a huge number of asylum seekers in the current system who do not have a clue what will happen to them and no idea how the Government’s plan will work. The vast majority are either lost, or in asylum accommodation or hotels. Can the Minister tell us exactly how many of those 52,000 people the Government are able to locate? On the larger figure of 90,000, can he confirm that the Government know where all those people are?

Can the Minister tell us how many asylum seekers the Government are currently planning to send to Rwanda? What is the actual figure? How many of these are currently detained? How many flights are planned, and when can we expect planes to take off? The numbers are dire, as I and other noble Lords have said.

The Government’s plans to deal with the situation are in disarray. Some say, including us, that the plans are not working and will not work, at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds. As I have said to the Government in this Chamber many times, all of us want to stop the boats: we just fundamentally disagree on how to do it. There is also considerable confusion, as pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord German, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, the right reverend Prelate and, for different reasons, the noble Lord, Lord Rogan. There is complete confusion about what the Government’s policy is. I say to the Minister that there is an opportunity today to clarify the numbers and to say what will take place, which parts of the policy are working and what the Government are going to do.

As we have said time and again, of course we need to boost the UK’s border security. We will do that with a new cross-border police unit to smash the smuggler gangs, and work with enforcement agencies across Europe to go after the gangs upstream and stop boats arriving at the French coast in the first place. Above all, we will fix the chaos in the asylum system, clear the costly backlog, end hotel use, save the taxpayer billions of pounds and introduce a new unit to swiftly remove thousands more people with no right to be here.

If the system is not in chaos, can the Minister define for the Chamber what chaos is? What most of us see is asylum seekers coming to this country, none of them being detained, many being lost and the Government having no idea what to do with many of them. The Government keep going on about Rwanda, saying that that will sort this out because it will act as a deterrent, yet the figures show that the complete opposite is happening.

Finally, can the Minister explain to noble Lords from all sides, and Members in the other place, why the Government are obsessed with Rwanda, when actually what would work is a basically competent policy that deals with the issue in front of us, rather than the pursuit of Rwanda, which seems to be the end goal that the Government have for everything?

16:30

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord German, and all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. As noble Lords are aware, the UK has a long and proud tradition of providing safe haven to those who genuinely need our protection, and we remain committed to providing such protection, in accordance with our international obligations.

The matter of the Government’s proposed approach to addressing the cohort of individuals who have entered the United Kingdom since 7 March 2023 is therefore an important one. It may be helpful if I set out, in general terms, the Government’s approach and recent successes in clearing the asylum legacy backlog, give a brief update on the Government’s aims for deciding the asylum claims which have been made since 7 March and clarify how inadmissibility provisions will be applied. Before I do that, again none of the speakers addressed the simple question of why people have to claim asylum in the first safe country. It seems to be forgotten repeatedly and often that these arrivals in this country have all left a safe third country. It is a long-standing principle that those in need of genuine protection should claim asylum at the earliest opportunity, in the first safe country they reach, and this is the fastest route to safety.

I remind the House of the progress the Home Office made in 2023 in clearing asylum legacy backlog. As noble Lords will recall, the legacy backlog comprised 92,601 asylum claims lodged before 28 June 2022, when provisions within the Nationality and Borders Act came into force. The Prime Minister committed on 13 December 2022 to clear this backlog by the end of 2023. The Prime Minister’s commitment to clear the backlog was delivered at the end of the year and, in total, 112,000 asylum cases were processed in 2023. Increased efficiency and capacity saw the Home Office not just clear the backlog but exceed it by also processing over 25,000 asylum claims lodged on or after 28 June 2022. To achieve the success of 2023, the Government enhanced processing and deployed an additional 1,200 caseworkers, thus meeting the target to double the number of asylum caseworkers and increasing productivity.

As of 14 April 2024, there were 2,545 full-time equivalent decision-makers in post, answering the question of the noble Lord, Lord German. That is nearly double the number of asylum caseworkers in April 2023. In addition, the streamlined asylum process was developed as part of the legacy backlog clearance strategy for adults. It centred around accelerating the processing of manifestly well-founded asylum claims from legacy claimants of certain nationalities, such as those from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya, Syria, Yemen and, more recently, Sudan. This involved the use of an asylum questionnaire provided to claimants allowing them to explain why they required protection status in the UK. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees welcomed the introduction of the streamlined asylum process, publicly stating

“Removing the requirement for substantive interviews through the use of a questionnaire for asylum seekers from certain countries with very high grant rates should meaningfully reduce the current backlog of cases awaiting adjudication. Simultaneously, the procedure should uphold appropriate safeguards by maintaining individual interviews before any negative decisions are made”.


Since April 2023, children’s claims from high grant rate nationals of Afghanistan, Eritrea, Sudan, Syria and Vietnam have also been considered through the streamlined asylum process. It remains a key priority to consider claims as efficiently as possible, to clear the asylum backlog and to reduce the number of people on asylum support, in turn reducing the burden on taxpayers. By our speeding up decision-making, asylum seekers are given the certainty they need to plan for their future. In 2024, flow claims—those lodged on or after 28 June 2022 and before 7 March 2023, as well as asylum claims from those who arrived before 7 March 2023—are being prioritised now that the legacy claims have been cleared.

The Home Office has continued to build on existing processes and systems in its approach to tackling this latest cohort of claims. For example, the streamlined asylum process was extended to include eligible claimants from 28 June 2022 to 6 March 2023. During July 2023, the streamlined asylum process for children’s claims was also rolled out to claims from the same nationalities lodged from 28 June 2022 until 6 March 2023. We have recently redesigned the statement of evidence form for children, making the process quicker and more streamlined. The process for accompanied and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children enables cases to be progressed more quickly.  The latest provisional data shows that, as of 14 April 2024, there were 7,358 outstanding claims made on or after 28 June 2022 and before 7 March 2023. This demonstrates that we are making good progress on clearing the remaining claims. That means that the Government have made excellent recent progress in clearing both the legacy and, shortly, the flow backlog of asylum claims. The Government remain committed to their objective of deterring illegal migration to the UK and stopping the boats.

The Government are clear that those who fear persecution should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach, and not put their lives at risk by making unnecessary and dangerous journeys to the UK. Illegal migration from safe countries undermines our efforts to help those most in need. Controlled resettlement, via safe and legal routes, is the best way to protect such people and disrupt the organised crime groups that exploit migrants and refugees.

[Lord German (LD)]

I wonder if I could ask about those who come directly to this country and those who pass through other countries? Given that nearly two-thirds of all people who are here irregularly do not come in small boats, what percentage have come directly? For example, those who overstay visas have not come via a third country but have arrived directly. I understand that the Government do not know how to split up that two-thirds, but is there any data on the numbers arriving here directly in that 60-odd percent?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I can reassure the noble Lord that I am coming to a more detailed set of number shortly, if he will bear with me. The safe third country inadmissibility policy is a longstanding process, intended to encourage individuals to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach. That is an established part of international asylum procedures, applied across the EU and explicitly provided for in UK law, including in the strengthened provisions introduced in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022.

 With the exception of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, those who choose to travel from a safe third country such as France, and then claim asylum in the UK may find their claim treated as inadmissible to the asylum process. That means that the UK will not consider the substance of the person’s claim and will seek their removal to a safe country.

In answer to the right reverend Prelate about facilities in France, anyone detained at the border is held for the shortest time possible. We prioritise processing children and vulnerable people as quickly as possible. Individuals in detention are held in safe and decent conditions. There are established procedures in place in every facility to monitor people’s welfare and safeguarding needs. These facilities are subject to inspection by HMG’s Inspector of Prisons, accompanied by their French counterpart, to ensure that they are of the highest standards.

 It is in this context that current removals to Rwanda may apply. Any individual who is otherwise suitable for an inadmissibility decision and who has arrived in the UK through dangerous, illegal and unnecessary methods since 1 January 2022 may be considered for relocation to Rwanda, under the Migration and Economic Development Partnership. Individuals will only ever be removed to a third country when that country is safe and removal is appropriate, according to the individual’s particular circumstances.

Once commenced, the provisions in the Illegal Migration Act will further strengthen our approach to inadmissibility.  When a person meets the four conditions under Section 2 of the Act, they will be subject to the duty to remove. Any asylum or human rights claims made against the person’s country of origin will be declared inadmissible. The UK will not consider the substance of the person’s claim and will seek their removal either to their home country—if it is safe to do so—or to a safe third country, such as Rwanda.

As of 14 April 2024, there were 21,313 outstanding claims made between 7 March and 19 July 2023. In addition, there were 51,925 outstanding claims made on or after 20 July 2023. I would caution that this data is provisional. It is taken from live operational databases and has not been cleansed to remove duplicates. The finalised figures as at the end of March 2024 will be published later this month.

 

The right reverend Prelate also asked me about the numbers of missing children. There are 111, they are all male and 98 have reached the age of 18. There are 13 left who are under the age of 18.

These provisions will apply to both adults and children. The duty to remove does not require the Secretary of State to make removal arrangements for unaccompanied children, but there is a power to remove unaccompanied children in limited circumstances, such as family reunion with a parent. However, any asylum or human rights claim made against the child’s country or origin will be declared inadmissible. Taking these measures will send a clear message that children cannot be exploited and cross the channel in small boats for the purpose of starting a new life in the UK.

Once commenced, these inadmissibility provisions will apply to those who are subject to the duty to remove under the Illegal Migration Act, and who entered or arrived illegally on or after 20 July 2023. As all asylum claims are generally worked in date order, the next cohort of asylum claims that are due to be progressed are those made by individuals who arrived in the UK after 7 March 2023. Further information will be published on our plans to decide these cases in the coming weeks. I am afraid there is no more I can say at this point.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

I appreciate that the time allocated for the Minister is passing but, since several noble Lords took far less time than their allocation, I am sure the House will be sympathetic if he continues.

I think he has finished with the numbers, which he said would answer my noble friend Lord German; I am not sure that they have. On the same subject, the only way to come without crossing the channel would be to fly or to be here already, because we are an island. The report on safe routes published some months ago merely reported on what the safe routes are, without proposals for new safe routes. Can the Minister tell the House what proposals the Government have in mind so that their conditions can be fulfilled? I also hope he can answer the question from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, about the reporting.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The noble Baroness will be aware that under the provisions of the Illegal Migration Act, a consultation process took place with local councils and authorities to find out what their local capacities are. I believe that consultation process has concluded, but I do not yet know the outcome. That will presumably inform the debate as to the safe and legal routes that may or may not be made available after we know the numbers.

We are continuously working through cases that could not previously be progressed as they require further investigation. The difficult cases typically relate to asylum seekers presenting as children, where age verification is taking place; those with serious medical issues; or those with suspected past convictions, where checks may reveal criminality that would bar asylum.

To come on to a few of the more specific questions, I can say confidently that detention capacity is sufficient. I cannot comment on other operational aspects around detention, but as of 24 April there were 2,200 people in immigration removal centres, which includes those liable for removal to Rwanda.

In answer to the questions from the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I can say that any evidence presented by an individual will be considered on its own merits. The information needs to be substantial and reliable and support the claim being made.

In answer to the questions from the noble Lord, Lord German, about our ODA spend, that is all reported in line with OECD rules. We do not include support costs for those in detained accommodation, nor for those whose asylum claims have been declared inadmissible.

[Lord German (LD)]

I am sorry to interrupt again, but can the Minister answer the question? His officials told the committee in the other House that there is ongoing discussion about whether the continuous use of ODA is possible. Have those discussions with the Treasury reached a conclusion, and is the Minister able to say that it is certainly possible to spend this money now?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I am afraid I do not have that information to hand. I will see whether I can find it, and I commit to write to the noble Lord if I can.

I turn to other aspects of the various questions I was asked. The noble Lord, Lord Hussain, asked about individuals who were previously present in a safe third country and entered the UK by a dangerous and unnecessary method. I am afraid that they are liable to relocate to Rwanda. It is an ongoing operational matter, so I am unable to provide a running commentary on individual numbers or cases.

In answer to the comments by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, about colleagues, I note that he now has a colleague who says:

“Don’t trust Labour on immigration they really want open borders … The Government wants to close legal loopholes … Labour seems intent on creating them”,


and

“Labour … are not serious about stopping small boats, tackling criminality, protecting people from the smuggling gangs or saving lives in the Channel”.

What on earth did the colleague mean by all that? I think the noble Lord knows.

As I hope I have made clear, the Government recognise the crucial importance of having in place a robust operational plan to deal with individuals who have outstanding asylum claims in the UK. We are getting on with the job; we will have a lot more to say on this subject, and I expect to be questioned on numerous future occasions on this very subject. I have little else to add.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

The Minister did not manage to answer the question from my noble friend Lord Rogan about the situation between the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic. I am sure he would appreciate an answer.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

With apologies, I did mean to, but for obvious reasons I cannot comment on the internal policies of another country, and I do not think it would be appropriate to do so in this case.

Integration of Primary and Community Care (Committee Report)

Thursday 9th May 2024 Lords Chamber

Motion to Take Note

16:51

Moved by

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

That this House takes note of the Report from the Integration of Primary and Community Care Committee Patients at the centre: integrating primary and community care (HL Paper 18).

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, many of your Lordships will know that for a long time I have been concerned with health and social care principally though the experience of carers. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard carers say something like, “What I don’t understand is why it doesn’t all fit together. How come the GP didn’t know that Mum was being discharged from hospital? Why did the community nurse and the social worker not know each other? Why have I got to give Mum’s details over and over again to different people?”

So when I was asked to chair a House of Lords special inquiry into integrating primary and community care, I was delighted. I express my most sincere thanks to the 12 cross-party members of the inquiry, most of whom are speaking today, for their knowledge, skills, commitment and wisdom. Most unusually, we had—for reasons beyond anyone’s control—three changes of clerk during our deliberations, so I acknowledge the ongoing support of Chris Clarke and, most of all, Matthew Burton, who was and is a shining example as our policy analyst. I am most grateful to our special advisor, Professor Gerald Wistow, whose long experience in both the health and social care fields was invaluable. I welcome, too, the other speakers in our debate and am grateful that the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, has chosen this one in which to make his maiden speech.

The inquiry took evidence from 70 witnesses, we had 76 written submissions, and we undertook two visits to projects in areas where integration is definitely benefiting patients. Defining integration is not easy, but we took as our definition something from a government policy paper that had been in use for years before that:

“the planning, commissioning and delivery of co-ordinated, joined up … services to support people to live healthy, independent and dignified lives and which improves outcomes for the population as a whole. Everyone should receive the right care, in the right place, at the right time”.

I guess no one in this Chamber will be surprised that our inquiry found that there is a very long way to go to achieve this, and that patients are constantly being inconvenienced or endangered, or missing improved long-term health, because they are not receiving joined-up care in the right place and at the right time. Poorly co-ordinated care significantly undermines the quality of patient experience in the NHS and can have profound consequences for long-term health.

The inquiry heard of patients suffering vision loss, or facing critical delays in treatment, due to the mishandling or loss of records between services. Patients in care homes frequently endured inconvenient and unnecessary trips to see their GPs or to hospital appointments. Consultants did not talk to each other or consult about patients, resulting in the absurdity of a patient seeing three separate consultants for the three injuries sustained in one fall.

Community nurses were unavailable and rarely in contact with other professionals. Complex care is fragmented across various services, which do not co-ordinate with each other to plan overall patient care and recovery, let alone to take responsibility for the preventive services which we all know are the long-term key to a viable NHS. Social care was not actually within the committee’s remit but witnesses frequently referred to the lack of integration between those two elements as an even more serious problem than the intra-NHS difficulties.

The inquiry identified four key obstacles to integration which could be addressed. I will refer briefly to each of them, with our suggestions for tackling them. The first was structures and organisation. The Health and Care Act 2022 encourages local autonomy and subsidiarity to encourage interservice relationships, but designing a universal policy has proved difficult. The imbalance of power and representation in ICBs, ICPs, local authorities and the voluntary and community sectors limits integration. Of course, it is relatively early days, and almost all our witnesses said that they must be given more time to mature.

We do not propose further reorganisation but suggest that the membership of the governing bodies should be widened and accountability enhanced through better inspection. Health, social care and voluntary sector leaders should work together as equal partners, as they are likely to possess a real understanding of their respective communities. This would encourage integrated policy-making and service provision, as well as a more preventive approach to public health. Importantly, there should be a single accountable officer at place level, specifically charged with working with local leaders.

Our second obstacle was contracts and funding. The NHS allocates an excessive amount of funding to reactive hospital care at the expense of preventive primary and community care. That is a strong statement, but it was not our conclusion: it was the opinion expressed by all four former Health Ministers and Secretaries of State who gave evidence to us. They were from different parties and were Ministers in different circumstances, but they were adamant on that point. Too much money goes to hospitals. Service contracts lack incentive for multidisciplinary care and reform is needed to ensure that this is incentivised.

Co-location encourages better communication and easier access for patients, but the existing GP contract and partnership model hinders this, as does the fragmented funding across different health disciplines. Of course, there is the huge divide between local authority-funded care and that funded by the NHS. The better care fund has made attempts to bridge this gap, but joint funded mechanisms need to be significantly enhanced. The better care fund should cover a larger proportion of relevant NHS and local authority expenditure, and the fund’s statutory responsibilities should be devolved to place-based commissions. This would enable decisions on joint funding to be taken by those with a better knowledge of local needs.

The third obstacle we encountered was data sharing. Single patient records have not been universally adopted, and full implementation faces issues of interoperability and widespread IT inadequacies. For example, we came across people putting the same data into three separate computers because the machines do not talk to each other and the systems are not connected. More frustration was expressed by our witnesses on the inadequacy of connectivity than almost anything else. As well as the technical issues, data sharing is hindered by cultural and perceived legal obstacles. The DHSC should publish guidance that clarifies how data and privacy laws apply to patient data, so that everybody is clear about their responsibilities.

Our fourth obstacle was workforce and training. Staff shortages make integration more difficult; of that, there is no doubt. When you are up to your eyes on the front line, have you time to develop new ideas for integrating? Specialised staff are not trained sufficiently in the work of other disciplines, and there are of course hierarchies of professions and services. Integration needs to be included in all initial clinical training, and clinicians should be introduced to other services by job rotations. Better training for social care workers would enable them to work more effectively with primary and community care workers, and social care must be included in the NHS long-term workforce plan.

Mindful always of the current problems faced by the NHS, we were aware of the shortages of people and resources that undermine integration, however good the intentions of individuals. We emphasise that better integration will reduce the long-term stress on the NHS, as it leads to more holistic and preventive care over time and encourages a problem-solving approach to work that ignores or bypasses artificial professional divisions. Our visits to Coventry and Pimlico provided us with evidence that real integration happens where you cannot see the joins between the professions.

In summary, trusting and constructive working relationships are essential for integration, together with aligned contracts and funding, as well as seamless data sharing. These were the focus of the 16 recommendations that we made to the Government as our inquiry ended. The Government’s response was delayed and when it came, it was very disappointing. In fact, it did not even give the usual “accept” or “reject” response to the individual recommendations, apart from one very lukewarm acceptance. In short, the Government’s response says that everything is under control and all the issues we raised are being addressed.

I will give an example. We found co-location to be extremely beneficial for integration and recommended that the Government should

“investigate different ownership models for GP practices”

and

“their co-location with other community services”.

The Government’s response concedes that co-location can be good but is not required. Although the Government say that NHSE and the DHSC are investigating

“new models of primary care estates”

there is no further information about that, and no timescale is given.

On another of our recommendations—for a single accountable officer—all the Government say in response is that some progress has been made and that a single accountable officer is “one way” of ensuring integration. That is another lukewarm response, which is in direct contradiction to the Government’s previous statements and commitment in the integration White Paper that a single accountable officer must be appointed.

For social care, we make what seem to us to be very sensible, cost-effective suggestions about multidisciplinary teams and joint training, as well as amending the workforce plan to include

“a strategy for increasing the size of the social care workforce”

so that it is sustainable in the future. Again, the Government’s response is immensely disappointing, merely saying that they will “consider” how they will

“support better integration of health and care to create a more flexible, agile workforce”.

In conclusion, I emphasise that the special inquiry was very clear about the purpose of integration: it is not an end in itself, but a means of achieving patient-centred care, reducing inequalities and getting a better balance between community-based care and hospital-based care. Despite endless commitments over many years to the importance of integration, I am sorry to say that the Government’s response to our report is a missed opportunity to show commitment and to bring about important changes, many of which are simple and virtually cost free—I emphasise: they are simple and virtually cost free.

The Government merely fudged their response. They lack any sense of urgency to deal with problems that will only become more urgent as our population ages and lives longer, with more comorbidities. We called our report Patients at the Centre. I am yet to be convinced—although I hope that the Minister may prove me wrong—that the Government are really committed to ensuring that patients are at the centre of primary and community care. I beg to move.

17:03

[Lord Altrincham (Con)]

This was an exceptionally interesting inquiry, which was most skilfully pulled together by our chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, because the waterfront of the inquiry was very broad. As we were following the Health and Care Act 2022, the Hewitt review and the Fuller report, we started our work quite soon after some initiatives in the health service for integration had just started. In a sense, you do not have to do an inquiry to know that there is a whole lot wrong with the health service.

One might think that everything would be somewhat familiar, but one of the fascinating things about the inquiry was how much was rather new and interesting. The first thing that I comment on was that there was a common understanding in submissions of the problems. We heard from completely different kinds of professionals from across the country who shared again and again the same issues, which the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, has mentioned. In terms of the understanding of what is wrong, we heard Professor Yeandle talk about the fact that integration had not progressed for 25 years; we heard from others that life expectancy had stalled, that people are living too long with sickness, that health services are incredibly underresourced, and that prevention is being ignored. These issues are everywhere, and they are common. At the same time, we had a strong sense from the submissions of a common understanding of the need for change. That was interesting, because again one might think that surely the health service does not wish to change or somehow that these are institutional situations that cannot be changed. But we heard again and again from professionals who knew that they needed to work differently. That was interesting, because if we combine a willingness to change by people with structures in government and organisations that might make that possible, there might be some cause for optimism in this extremely difficult area of public policy.

Again, the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, mentioned the common understanding of the importance of integration. Everybody knew that integration needed to be done better. Everybody knew that parts of the health service they were working in were performing poorly. We heard from parts of the health service that are performing extremely well. I did not know before being on this inquiry that, if you get sick, you need to be in Greater Manchester. By far the best outcomes in health are in Greater Manchester; it is a great thing to tip off your neighbours. People talk about health tourism in London, but they are missing the best opportunity. The lessons from integration in Manchester and the co-ordination of the local authorities are not easy to transpose on to other parts of the country. We talk about that in our report, because some of these integrated care systems are not aligned well with local authorities; an extremely consistent part of the feedback we had in the inquiry is that you need to align with the geography and the shape of local authority services. We learned that from Manchester and from elsewhere, and it is what we put into our recommendations. The Government said that they are on to it, but they are not doing anything about it. Those will be the frictional areas where the quite large districts that form these integrated care services or boards will break down. We heard again and again that when it gets to county borders or geographic borders—not just whether you are near a teaching hospital but where you get to organisational frontiers, as it were—service breaks down.

That goes on to the issue of the structures that we were talking about. The integrated care system had only just started when we did our inquiry. In a sense, it is almost too soon for us to comment on it. There has been talk about how it should be reviewed after three years, and that will be very important. But we hope that it does in a sense address some of the issue we were trying to review, which was to try and integrate the service much better. It is only just starting out, however, and the districts concerned are very large. Maybe it is too soon to comment on that. We heard very good progress more with the primary care networks and these health centres and health hubs. That was very encouraging, because if the health service was able to provide multidisciplinary teams in a context where you could divide up medical with semi-medical and with not really medical at all-type services, we heard that it would go very well. Professor Everington speaks very well about the differences between biomedicine and social prescribing and providing a broader service. This is a very encouraging area of health, and it would be interesting if that were to be the model.

We also heard from Professor Fuller, but she makes the comment that in her own experience of trying to do the multidisciplinary thing when she is Dr Fuller, when the practice is full she has to work in a cupboard because they do not have the space. That is why the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, mentioned the importance of providing space where some of these services could take place. That is what Professor Fuller herself has run into.

In conclusion, there is cause for optimism from the report. There are willing people and there are some structures in the health service that are quite new and which might provide some improvement in this area. It has been a pleasure to work on the report.

17:10

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, this debate is very timely as it picks up neatly from our recent debate on the long-term sustainability of the NHS. One of the key takeaways from that debate was the urgent need to move to a more preventive model of care, with investment moved upstream. It will be critical if we are to lower waiting times, improve access and reduce health inequalities.

It is indisputable that funding growth in the health and care system is skewed towards the acute sector. Despite the fact that the majority of daily NHS activity happens in general practice in the community, a large proportion of expenditure on health and social care goes towards acute hospital trusts. Community sector funding has grown at only half the rate of hospital trusts in recent years. The answer to overcrowded hospitals is not simply more hospitals; the health and care system must be radically refocused to put primary and community care at its core.

As we have already heard, a more radical shift to a preventive model of health was one of the key findings of our Select Committee, which was so superbly chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley—whom I always think of as my noble friend. In short, our committee found that a lack of co-ordination between the everyday primary and community services relied on by people using the NHS was leading to substandard care, missed opportunities for home or community-based treatments, and an undue strain on already overstretched hospitals. Our report argued for a healthcare sector where patients were given the type of care they needed, when, where and how they needed it. That might be access to a GP, a pharmacist, a district nurse or a mental health nurse, along with greater focus on more joined-up preventive care. The evidence is quite clear that investing in primary and community care—which includes mental health—results in lower demand in hospital and emergency care. It really is not rocket science.

A wholesale shift in thinking and culture is required, and it goes a lot wider than funding, as our report said. As the King’s Fund has argued, it involves national measures and targets for the health and care system shifting towards longer-term goals to integrate care and ensure that services can focus on population health rather than being focused on short-term acute measures. This approach is very much backed up by the World Health Organization, which has argued that a primary and community care-focused approach is the most effective and sustainable way of improving the health and well-being of our population.

We have already heard about integrated care systems, which have an important role to play in delivering this change, particularly if they focus on population health, as was the original intention. From the evidence we received, it was clear that local leaders know the challenges for their local communities and the local landscape of primary and community care, and they know it best. Leaders of integrated care systems, place-based partnerships, including health and well-being boards, and primary care networks are best placed to design and deliver joined-up primary and community care.

ICBs should be held to account for their achievements in growing primary and community care services rather than for the performance management of hospital systems, and a stronger primary care voice on ICBs and representation from the voluntary sector would undoubtedly help.

It was clear, as we all know, that the workforce is crucial, not just in primary and community health but in adult social care and the voluntary sector. We need a skilled and well-valued workforce to support people to live independent and healthy lives. Surely the Government should now commit to fully funding and delivering the NHS long-term workforce plan, alongside developing an equivalent plan for social care, where workforce shortages are leading the sector to struggle to support those who need social care, in turn placing additional pressures on primary and community care. Can the Minister say when the Government will heed the calls of so many in this Chamber and in the wider sector to produce a workforce strategy for social care?

Other speakers will no doubt focus on the importance of data sharing for successful joined-up services. We must ensure that patient records can be easily accessed across the health and social care system, including in primary and community care. I found the government response to our recommendations on this issue vague and technocratic. Will the Minister please say exactly what the Government are doing to ensure this happens?

I will pick up on a couple of other specific points from the government response. Recommendation 2 of our report said that elected local government officials should be given the right to chair ICBs where that was the will of the board, underlining the truly joint and equal role of NHS bodies and local authorities in producing a holistic health and social care system. The government response did not make clear whether they were prepared to let this happen. Can the Minister please answer this specific point?

Recommendation 5 was for the Secretary of State to instruct the CQC to develop a specific integration index to compare how well ICSs co-ordinated different services in their areas. The government response does not commit to implementing this. Will the Minster say what the Government’s intentions are in this area?

Finally, recommendations 14 and 16 contained important proposals on training and job rotation. We saw a clear tension between our hospital-centric system of health and care, with increased specialism, and people having increasingly complex health and care needs, which need an integrated, holistic response, hence the need for a different approach to training and job rotation. I would like to see clinical and managerial health leaders strongly encouraged to work in community settings and develop experience across a range of sectors. I found the government response on this unsatisfactory—indeed, there was no response to the point about job rotations. I strongly urge the Government to think again.

17:17

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I declare and update my interests as listed in our report, as I now chair the Bevan Commission in Wales. It was a pleasure to be on this committee, so ably chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley. She kept our focus on the topic at hand and worked extremely hard when there were changes of personnel in the clerical staff supporting our committee.

I came to this very important inquiry with experience of having set up hospice services from scratch, where nurses and care assistants needed upskilling and where bringing everybody together, including clerical and reception staff, for open education sessions resulted in them being able to outreach into community services. We established integrated working. Each person knew what the other one could do, and people worked to the top of their game.

As a committee, we were very keen to explore ways to transform the patient experience and decrease demand on health and social care services. We were acutely aware that we should not incur expenditure nor suggest major reorganisation but should reduce the waste from inefficient practices, and that much can be done by different attitudes and approaches.

We were acutely aware that patients want continuity of care. They often feel pushed from pillar to post, not sure whom to contact or even how to contact someone whom they have seen previously. If they get past an answerphone, they find that they are repeating their story time and again, uncertain about who does what and endlessly waiting for the next appointment along a whole chain that feels like a disjointed slow relay. Our suggestion to put health and social care providers together as much as possible, sharing ongoing training, sharing premises and with access to each other’s records, is really at the heart of patients’ experience of integration.

Yet the government response is deeply disappointing. Rather than welcoming our recommendations to provide additional strengths to their plans towards integration—which are outlined in their response—it reads as if the Government are saying, “We are doing it all already”. Yet, time and again, we heard from services about how disjointed they are. We heard about the changes that need to happen to bring health and social care together under one roof in premises fit for purpose, and we heard how disjointed IT systems are. The data held in the different record systems should be viewed as the patient data—it is about them—yet there seemed to be endless blocks to bringing staff and systems together.

We had hoped the Government would welcome our suggestions for patient data to be shared usefully and safely; for the multidisciplinary team to meet together and plan care; for joint education that would upskill social care to remove the risk-averse barriers to interventions that so often result in patients being put in an ambulance from home or a care home and sent to an already overcrowded emergency department for problems such as a blocked catheter or blocked feeding tube to be sorted out, when it could happen so much more easily if staff were upskilled and the patient would not then need to be moved. Many of the bureaucratic blocks could be overcome by honouring contracts that have all staff working together with common aims and contractual changes that reward work done and outcomes, with meaningless bureaucracy stripped out.

We repeatedly heard how patients cannot get the holistic care they need because staff are working in silos, often overseen by risk-averse attitudes from their managers; they do not feel able to do what needs to be done but revert repeatedly to a view of limited job responsibility. By staff working together under the same roof, as we suggested, for evolving general practices and primary care, integrating with local social care providers and the voluntary sector, the culture of care provision could be improved and better monitored to provide far better health outcomes in the longer term, particularly for frail and vulnerable people, for whom stability of place and of staff is especially important.

The Hewitt Review, published in 2023, found that culture, leadership and behaviours matter far more than structures. We wanted to break down the barriers in contracts and in behaviours, but the Government’s response seems to pull back from supporting our recommendations to focus on broad policies that were written recently, rather than address the need to build on them to create the crucial interpersonal relationships that determine good care. We felt disappointment in the Government’s response because it did not build on what they already are putting in place and encourage further integration, and it seemed almost to dismiss some of our suggestions by saying what they were doing but without welcoming our recommendations.

17:22

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I too felt very privileged to be a member of this committee and want to extend once again my sincere thanks to my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley. She worked tirelessly and used the knowledge and the commitment that she always shows, even on occasion in difficult circumstances with an unusually high turnover of staff working to her. However, I also want to thank the staff because they always worked in a professional way to support the committee effectively. I knew I could rely on the very good other members of the committee to be detailed about the report. It now seems quite a long time ago, but I do want to take therefore a slightly different approach to my speech, as it is meant to be fairly quick.

When I was chairing the Public Services Committee, particularly during Covid, I got to know National Voices, a charity that works essentially with people with long-term conditions, often more than one; and these are the people that an integrated care system should be measured against. I want to go back to what National Voices said when it worked with the patients it was seeking to represent about what they wanted from what we call an integrated system but what it calls a person-centred, co-ordinated care system. We have different definitions, and we like the sort of rhetoric of integration, but we must never forget what the real purpose of it is, because creating care that is co-ordinated around the needs of the individual, rather than the requirements of the health and social care organisations, seems as far away today as it has ever been.

National Voices asked patients what they wanted from the system—and I shall give noble Lords some quotes. They said:

“My care is planned with people who work together to understand me and my carer(s), put me in control, co-ordinate and deliver services to achieve my best outcomes”.


I do not think that that is an outlandish demand. However, it recognises that, while we may be trying to patch together different services and feel that we have succeeded when two organisations say that they are talking to each other, the end product of integration for service users is an outcome whereby they feel more in control of what is going on. The outcome of all this co-ordination means that they and their carers understand what they need to do to keep improving and help make things happen. They said that they wanted to be able to say:

“I was supported to set and achieve my own goals. Taken together, my care and support helped me live the life I want to the best of my ability. I was in control of planning my care and support. I could decide the kind of support I needed and how to receive it”.


I am afraid that we are still a long way away from getting professionals to talk to each other about the whole person they are meant to be helping. Even when we get to that, unless that collective voice of professionals puts the service user in control, we will not really get the outcomes that we need. How do service users want communication to take place? Again, they have some simple wishes. They always want to be

“kept informed about what the next steps would be”.

They want to be sure that “the professionals involved” have “talked to each other”, so that they can see that they have “worked as a team”. They want to be able to say:

“I had one first point of contact. They understood both me and my condition(s). I could go to them with questions at any time. That person helped me to get other services and help, and to put everything together”.


People with different needs know that they need different expertise, and they welcome that expertise—but first they want to know first that the professionals will talk to each other and that someone will put everything together.

These statements—and I could go on—are straightforward and moderate wishes. As I understand it, integration has been in the last three NHS plans. There was even an integration White Paper two years ago yet, last year, with all the new structure that the Government say we must wait to see, NHS England and the DHSC issued contradictory instructions to ICBs, ICSs and trusts. That means that, if they take any notice, they will revert to working in silos. We have to move away from the rhetoric and get on with delivering what patients need, when they need it and in the place they need it.

17:28

[Lord Jamieson (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a councillor in Central Bedfordshire and a member of the Government’s Older People’s Housing Taskforce.

I am deeply honoured and proud to be here, making my maiden speech. I am just a little sad as my mother, who was brought up in occupied Holland by a single parent, is no longer with us, but am pleased that my father, who taught me British constitution and about the House of Lords many years ago, was able to see me introduced. I express my huge thanks to all those who have been so helpful and kind, as I go through this astonishing learning curve—Black Rod, the clerks, the doorkeepers, everyone who works in the House and all your Lordships, who have been hugely welcoming. I express a particular thanks to my supporters, my noble friends Lord Porter of Spalding and Lady Scott of Bybrook, and my mentor, my noble friend Lady Redfern, who were all stalwarts in local government before me.

I started life as an engineer in Sheffield, working for British Steel. It is a tragedy in this country that we do not support our engineers enough, and I moved to marketing and banking as I sought to further my career and pay the bills, before getting involved in politics locally, then nationally as chairman of the LGA. Why? Because I, like councillors across the country, just wanted to do something for our communities and get stuff done.

One of the great successes of our society has been increased life expectancy, something I am sure that all noble Lords will be pleased with. In 1970, the average male life expectancy was 69, compared to the average age of a Peer today, which is 71. Today, someone retiring can expect to live to 85—a quadrupling of retirement. This is great news, but it comes with costs, most visibly in health and social care. This is exacerbated by other trends: a declining birth rate, along with people starting their careers later, and smaller and more disparate families. Long gone are the days when we had three generations of one family living in the same street or town, supporting one another. There is a breakdown of our traditional communities as we live more insular and transient lives.

There is one statistic that really brings this home: the proportion of the working population employed in health and social care. Currently, it is around one in seven. A recent Dutch report estimated that it would be one in four by 2040 and, without change, would inexorably rise to one in three. This is simply not sustainable; we need to think radically differently if we are to have a sustainable system and ensure that we all enjoy a fulfilling old age. It will require cultural change and a willingness to embrace the politically difficult. I am an optimist, and I believe this can be done, and we will achieve it.

I welcome this report, and the great work of the committee and the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, and its recommendations, many of which are in line with the work of the Local Government Association. We need to focus on prevention and early intervention—keeping people healthy for longer and out of hospital—and the crucial roles of primary, community and social care, integration, colocation, data sharing and a genuine, joined-up approach.

There are other key issues, such as housing and community. Living in isolated, inappropriate housing does not work. I saw the difference first hand, when my Dutch grandmother moved to an older person’ apartment in her sixties, next to shops, older people’s clubs and transport, and lived there for more than 30 years, needing virtually no additional help until very late on, and had a great life. My English grandmother continued to live in the family home, and had a very different set of outcomes.

We need homes that are suitable for later living, which are part of a community and in the community. There are many life-changing stories from the extra care housing we built in central Bedfordshire, but we need much more of this. Technology offers the opportunity to deliver so much more—AI, diagnostics, personalised medicines, robotics and health monitoring automation. We need to embrace this, but it will mean a radical change to the way in which our public services are delivered.

Finally, on keeping active, Department of Health figures show that only 17% of men and 13% of women over the age of 65 are sufficiently active. This is not just about exercise. Older people have so much they can contribute to society. We need to include them, and they need to include themselves. The retired can and should be the bedrock of our communities. While there is much that government should do, this is a much broader issue. We personally need to think about what it means to get older, and how we plan for it. We should not abrogate this and rely on others. People think about pensions, but not about housing, personal resilience, building their community networks and ensuring their own fitness and quality of diet. This is what I mean by cultural change. If we are to have a sustainable and positive old age, we as a society need to embrace it, recognise our own responsibilities, build communities and accept a changed public service delivery model.

17:34

[Baroness Redfern (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Jamieson’s excellent maiden speech. I have enjoyed our mentoring discussions since he entered the House. Having served a successful term as chairman of the LGA, he noted in his leaving remarks:

“When we can speak with one voice, and with coherent arguments, we have real strength”.


That is crucial to the LGA’s ongoing success, now and into the future.

My noble friend also held the position of leader of Central Bedfordshire Council. His further interests are, in particular, sustainability, improving the health service, and the levelling-up agenda. I know he is committed to all councils playing their part in improving the health of their residents, meeting their housing needs and providing green spaces, which we all agree are vital to improving well-being and tackling social isolation. Yes, my noble friend certainly has much to contribute to the House and we look forward to his future interventions in the coming months. Finally, I am told that his immediate plan on leaving the LGA was to see Bruce Springsteen, but I do not know whether he managed to do it. He says that he did, so there we go.

It is indeed a privilege to speak in this important debate. I thank the Government for their response on this area of primary and community care. I thank our chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, for her excellent chairing throughout our meetings, when we had the opportunity to hear from the many witnesses who gave up their valuable time to attend. I also thank our much-valued secretariat.

The value of collocation and multidisciplinary working in primary and community care is unquestionable, but having said that, care will continue to vary, whether in urban, rural or, indeed, coastal communities. It is valuable to pool additional funding into the BCF where that need is greater. I agree with the importance of all local authorities keeping boundaries under review, with support from all affected partner local authorities.

The overwhelming issue is the major barriers arising from the variability of our IT systems. Much work is needed in all areas to bring those systems together so that they are compatible, and to make real and lasting improvements by promoting interoperability between IT systems. That would not only make it easier for people to track information but allow for quicker decision-making, acknowledge patient privacy and, above all, cut bureaucracy. In essence, data sharing must improve so that we can say that data is just one click away, sweeping away the many fragmented systems that ask patients over and over again to supply the same medical information and engulf them in bureaucracy.

I am pleased to note that the Government have emphasised how important it is to provide additional clarity where necessary to support further integrated working practices. They have also acknowledged that the digital transformation of health and social care is a top priority for the DHSC by enforcing these standards through compliance notices, together with financial penalties, in parallel with an accreditation scheme. The framework accreditation programme will simplify procurement and speed up the adoption of innovation through frameworks, so I welcome NHS England changing the NHS standard contract by requiring trusts and foundation trusts to use only accredited frameworks from April 2024.

I turn to the estate. In essence, in many instances the answer to overcrowded hospitals is not building more hospitals but linking with intertwined primary care and social care services, as infrastructure is simply too important and costly to get wrong. If this does not happen, more expensive hospitals will need to be built to manage acute needs that could have been prevented or better managed.

For most people, being treated at or as close as possible to home is best for their health and is how they want to be cared for, rather than leaving their health needs until they require hospital treatment. That is best, and cost-effective for the NHS, but there is a cycle of invisibility of primary and community health and care services, which are hard to quantify and easy to overlook because less data is available.

Equipping our valued staff with improved training, creating opportunities through built-in shift flexibility for health workers, and giving greater responsibility for good career progression will no doubt improve morale and retention. For those reasons, that will attract and interest new employees, making the NHS a serious, attractive proposition now and for their future progression. As ICSs become more involved in education, training and planning, a plus point must be extending the provision of placements across primary, community and social care, in particular the independent and voluntary sectors, so that students can gain valuable experience of care outside hospitals, thereby introducing them to wider career opportunities.

Delivering primary care with the premises and tools needed to keep patients healthier for longer has to be a win-win: reversing the predicted rise in demand for high-cost, reactive, hospital-based care; supporting people in taking care of their health and well-being; and intervening early, keeping people healthy at home for as long as possible, and enabling them to retain their confidence, particularly when they live on their own.

This is against the background of an expected increase of 25% in the number people in the UK aged over 65 by 2050. That is certainly a massive challenge for any Government. I welcome the expansion of community pharmacies, which are showing good signs of integration and co-operation and take significant time away from GPs. The Government are consulting on extending prescribing rights to dental therapists and hygienists; this is hopefully to be concluded soon, ensuring a faster service. Therefore, patients must be given more powers, via the NHS app, to control their own health and NHS services, and to facilitate self-care in collaboration with professionals. Unfortunately, we have low levels of digital literacy among some staff, patients and service users; that is a barrier that must be worked upon and overcome.

Yes, much has to be done. Much more needs to be done if we are to see patients at the very heart of their health journey.

17:41

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I too pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley. She and I have sat on a number of Select Committees in recent days, and I have to say that she was excellent as the chair of this committee. She steered us through the depression of weeks on end of people coming to tell us how the IT problems in the NHS were really difficult—and somebody else’s fault. She also took us through the days when people came from NHS England to tell us how perfect the situation was, and how our fears were groundless.

The noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, and I, week after week, bowled questions to people about IT, data-sharing and data governance, and I do not think we ever got a straight answer. Nor does the Government’s response deal with a critical question: who is responsible for the co-ordination of patient data? We can talk about anything we like, but until that question is answered and can be answered by everybody, we are going round in circles—and so are patients.

In preparation for this debate, I went on to the new NHS information portal. There is a lot of good stuff and good guidance on there, but nothing sufficiently definitive, as yet, to lead us out of the central problem: the responsibility of GPs to be the guardians of data. Such is the amount of patient data they have to deal with and co-ordinate that they are drowning in the system. As we have heard, they are having to deal with different IT systems. I know the noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, talked up Manchester, but I urge him to recall that, while Greater Manchester was recording increased health outcomes, two of the boroughs were not. Those boroughs were Oldham and Rochdale, areas I happen to know extremely well, and where for decades there has been a lack of GPs and community health staff.

In London we still have major hospitals that cannot talk to each other because they run on different IT systems. It is as simple as that. Therefore, unless and until we can go back and deal with some of those issues, which we flagged up in our report, we are on a hiding to nothing.

We know that the Pharmacy First programme is being rolled out. Only last week, in a report in the Guardian, pharmacists were cited as saying that they are not being given data. I think this is because GPs are being highly cautious and reluctant to pass on information in case they are held responsible for a data breach.

There are other parts of the health service in which that same problem comes up again—ophthalmology and audiology. Most people who have a problem with their eyes go to an optician, not a GP. The opticians do tests, then they refer somebody to a GP and, if there is a problem, they are sent to the ophthalmology department where, several months later, they go through exactly the same tests and get the same results. The same thing happens in audiology. The story of audiology is not one of the private sector and the NHS working together in a triage system; it is a story of delay, duplication and waste. If we cannot get it right for two conditions for which we have systems that could be put together quite easily—provided a data protocol was established—how will we do it for something such as complex neurological conditions, or some of the conditions that the noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, referred to in connection with old age?

I take the opportunity to say that noble Lords should listen to Hanif Kureishi talking this morning on the “Today” programme about what happened to him when he had a blocked catheter, and how he nearly ended up being unnecessarily blued and two’d into A&E, all because somebody could not find a community nurse. They did at the last minute, and he was sorted out.

One of the things we did not manage to get down to in the report, because we were so busy talking to all the GPs who could not sort out these data problems, is the lack of community health staff and the lack of local authorities that know where the health deficits are in their area, working in partnership with primary healthcare staff. I was sitting in an NHS hospital yesterday and I noticed a screensaver that read, “Confidentiality of patient data is everybody’s responsibility”. What it did not say is, “Co-ordination of patient data is nobody’s responsibility”. That is the issue we looked at and on which we came up with several recommendations. It is a great shame that the Government did not listen.

17:47

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, and the committee on their report and on securing this debate. I also welcome my noble friend Lord Jamieson and congratulate him on his excellent contribution today.

I declare my interest as an adviser to the Dispensing Doctors’ Association, and the fact that my late father and brother were both dispensing doctors. Dispensing doctors are general practitioners who provide primary healthcare to around 9.9 million rural patients. Almost 3.5 million of those patients live remotely from a community pharmacy and, at a patient’s request, dispensing doctors are allowed to dispense the medicines they prescribe for them. Only certain patients are eligible to receive dispensing services from a dispensing doctor. In total, around 7% of all prescription items are dispensed by such doctors.

The unique benefit of a dispensing doctor service is that it provides access to medicines and general healthcare under one roof. They provide a total network of 1,107 dispensing practices, spread across England, Scotland and Wales, and are a wonderful example of integration between prescribing and dispensing services that are collocated.

Turning to the conclusions of the report and the Government’s response, I think it is important to note that in Scotland health and social care partnerships have existed for a few years, yet funding arguments continue and, despite integration, there is still inadequate funding for social care, with a lack of care placements, delays in discharge from the acute sector and difficulties admitting patients in A&E, so integration has not yet met the needs of patients in Scotland. I ask my noble friend directly: does he agree that neither GPs nor their contracts currently prevent shared facilities? There used to be physios, district nurses, health visitors and others all collocated at a surgery, but it was these very organisations that removed themselves from the premises, not GPs.

I have some points to put directly to my noble friend the Minister. Remote consultations are simply not the answer. Complex patients and multiple conditions need more face-to-face time with GPs. Social care is means-tested; healthcare is needs-led. The difference between them must be addressed before integration can proceed further. Does he not agree that coterminous health and social care areas do not necessarily work for health, where patients may be given a choice, and it could actually destabilise current general practice if that were to happen? I also ask him to consider that it is not about who owns GP practices, which is perhaps a red herring. The Government must address the rules about occupation, then ownership itself becomes irrelevant. Will my noble friend and his department be mindful of the poor history of contracting, particularly GPs contracting out for out-of-hours service?

I ask my noble friend this directly, because this is something where NHS England, particularly in parts of Suffolk, has got the wrong end of the stick: why has EPS for dispensing doctors, and indeed hospitals, not been commissioned and the infrastructure put in place? The question of who is to pay for that infrastructure remains a vexed issue. I put to my noble friend the words of Dr West, who chairs the Dispensing Doctors’ Association; they strike a chord with those of many others, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and my noble friends who talked about data sharing, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley. He asks why there is not one prescribing record per patient. Currently, there are different records for GPs and each hospital where that patient may be treated.

Will my noble friend urgently address the issue of GP training? The government response says:

“We will ensure that all foundation doctors can have at least one 4-month placement in general practice by 2030 to 2031”.


I am staggered, as I am sure others are, that this is not already the case. How can it be that, among doctors who are reaching the end of their training and are looking to have a placement, there are still about 100, as of this week, who do not yet have a placement to go to? That is unacceptable when they have reached the end of what is already a very long period of study and training.

To conclude, if integration is to proceed, which I would welcome, it has to be costed and well thought through. There is no one size fits all. What may well work in an urban area such as Pimlico, which was the example that was chosen, may not work in North Yorkshire or other very rural, sparsely populated areas. It has to be acceptable for the doctors and healthcare workers as well as the patients. Again, I note that integration in Scotland has not yet brought benefits to patients. I urge my noble friend the Minister to put GPs at the centre of patient care and ensure they have access to all patient needs, to ensure better care and fewer emergency admissions to hospital and a joined-up healthcare and social care service.

17:54

[Lord Allan of Hallam (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, and all the members of the committee for a very useful report on the challenges of integrating primary and community care, and for some potential solutions. I am grateful particularly for an opportunity to talk about data and technology in the health and care system, which is one of my favourite topics. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, on a thoughtful maiden speech. I was delighted to hear that he studied and began his career in my home city of Sheffield. Once people have followed the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, to get their health sorted out in Greater Manchester, he might agree that they might then want to cross the Pennines to get a decent higher education in Sheffield.

The recommendations in the report on structure were really interesting and substantive. I shall talk about them first, then go on to the data. The report talks about integrated care boards, integrated care services and integrated care partnerships. If I may coin a Latin-based neologism, we could refer to them all as ICXs—integrated care entities. Some valid questions are already being asked about their effectiveness. Having to talk about them in this convoluted way in a sense already indicates that there are some real questions of accountability: who is doing what? To an extent, the thing that is supposed to pull everything together is itself causing some confusion. I read the Government’s response and, on the recommendation on maturity, they said that they were going to start a three-year research programme. This is great and serious, but three years from now will be a long time from when the ICXs were set up.

The Government also talked about the CQC process and about NHS England surveying people to ask about the effects on them in 2025-26. Does the Minister feel there is a sufficient sense of urgency? Trust and morale once lost are very hard to rebuild, and there enough indicators out there. The Government have placed a lot of store on the ICXs delivering all this. If they cannot deliver more quickly, and if we have to wait another three or four years before we really start to understand it, there are some genuine questions to be asked. None of us wants another reorganisation, but we need this thing to work, as the committee’s report has highlighted.

I turn to my favourite subject. Building to some extent on the comments from my noble friend Lady Barker, we need to understand that an interaction with the health and care system is, in technical terms, an event. The real priority is to get a proper record of that event. Three things need to be noted. Who was the person who had the treatment? Which organisation treated them? Ideally, that would go down to the individual, but certainly we want to know the organisation. Furthermore, where did it happen? With these three accurate identifiers, it is possible to start to pull the data together, whichever system it is stored in.

Each person has an NHS number. I shall be interested to hear from the Minister as to how he feels about the rollout of the NHS number. This report talks particularly about NHS organisations. To what extent is this being used within the NHS and other organisations? It is still certainly my experience—and that of others—that hospitals want a hospital number. Why do they want this? Why are they not dealing with the NHS number? It is critical that there is a real push to make sure that the NHS number in which we have invested and which is given to people is being used.

The Government have invested in something called the unique premises reference number—the UPRN. Every single premises in the United Kingdom has its own number. Government policy is to use that everywhere but, again, we are not seeing this happen. I am ready to hear from the Minister about the extent to which this is being pushed out across health and care so that, when talking about where someone is treated, it always means the same place.

Lastly, is there a unique set of basic organisational codes? There are tens of thousands of records so, in that way, it would be possible to identify the organisation that treated someone. Absent all of this, there is something called fuzzy matching. For example, John Smith, who lives in the High Street, was treated at some vaguely named health centre. Humans like that, but computers hate it—computers need precision. Those are the basics. We can then move on to the content of what happened in the interaction. Again, that is complicated. I think we would go a long way and solve a lot of the problems highlighted in the report by just knowing who the person was, uniquely, where they were treated and which organisation dealt with them. That could be done much more quickly.

The report’s recommendation on the data protection guidance was really important. My noble friend Lady Tyler talked about the Government’s response as being vague and technocratic. We end up talking about data protection in these very technical terms, and end up saying that data protection law says no as a default response. If we think about it in much more human and intelligible terms, would anyone be surprised that the data was used in a particular way? This is a basic human test that we can all understand.

If I go to an A&E department, and my medical data goes to the ward then to my GP, I am not going to be surprised—in fact, I will be surprised if it does not make that journey. If you pass it on to a dentist or an optician, I may be okay with that, but I would probably want to have a conversation about it, and say it is fine for some of my medical data to go to dentists and opticians some of the time. If you pass it to a pharma company for something totally unrelated to my own personal care, I might be very surprised and very angry. It is about applying those kinds of human tests.

There is a legal basis behind this that is missing. Will the Minister look at making sure that the people who work in the system are given training to understand the principles behind data protection? I suspect a lot of it is very detailed, telling them what the law says and how to tick the boxes; that is what gets us into this frozen position where data does not flow when it should, and people are surprised it is not flowing. Sometimes data may end up flowing where it should not, because people have not understood that it is happening. In their response, the Government talked about the secure data environment and things like OpenSAFELY. Those are very good solutions for dealing with areas where people would not want data to be flowing freely. We have created a place to deal with that, but let us get the data moving to where we want it to go.

Finally, I wanted to touch on workforce. The NHS workforce plan, which we have all welcomed, rightly focuses on doctors, nurses and other associated medical professions. However, when we are talking about this kind of work, in a lot of cases we need people to be skilled up. We need a very skilled workforce in other disciplines—for example, in change management, which is itself a discipline. Encouraging people to work differently is not something that happens overnight, and it is not necessarily a medical skill. The ICXs would benefit from having a skilled workforce who understand how to do change management.

Contracting is rightly a major feature of the report. It is about writing better contracts and being more insistent with those you are contracting with. It is not just about pounds and pennies and value for money. It is about saying, “We are not going to buy your system if it hasn’t got the right data standard, and I am going to insist on that because I know I can. I am not just going to sign whatever you stick in front me”. That kind of contracting ability is really important. Data analysts, who can look at all the data generated by these systems and figure out what is going on, are highly skilled professionals. I do not think we have got to the point in the workforce plan where we understand that need and how we are going to meet it.

We have an excellent report, and I thank the committee for what they produced. It has zeroed in on some of the real priority areas. The Government’s response is well intentioned but thin, and I hope that the Minister can put a bit more flesh on the bones of what they are going to do in practice.

18:02

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Baroness Pitkeathley on her incisive introduction of what I consider to be a pragmatic and thoughtful report, although I am sure it did not make for pretty reading by the Minister. I thank all members of the committee for their thorough application to the task that was before them: to shine a light on integrating primary and community care to put patients at the centre, which is exactly how it should be. They have done it by offering solutions that are, to quote my noble friend Baroness Pitkeathley, “simple and virtually cost-free”. I am sure that your Lordships’ House would say to any incoming Government, “Watch and learn”.

I am delighted to commend the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, on his excellent maiden speech, through which he surely honoured the memory of his late mother. As the noble Lord so clearly understands the links between health, housing, environment and other factors, I am sure that we can all look forward to his constructive future contributions.

Day in and day out, primary and community care services provide vital support to millions but, like much of the NHS, they are under considerable strain. Yet, as the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, said, acute services receive more attention and priority from the Government.

The backdrop to this debate is that backlogs have now reached more than 1 million in community health services. The latest NHS data shows primary care delivering almost 30 million more appointments in March, which is an increase of 25% compared to the same period before the pandemic. Yet, as your Lordships’ House has noted on many occasions, the greatest economic returns from the NHS budget come from investing in primary and community care. This makes good sense.

Some £14 is added to the economy for every £1 invested, and, crucially, it lowers demand in the need for hospital and emergency care. This begs the question being probed in this debate, and which is the headline question to put to the Minister: if these points are accepted—and maybe they are not, in which case I am sure the Minister will say that—then why is there a concentration on acute services, at the expense of prevention and proper integration between primary and community care? There is also a lack of proper integration between the NHS and social care. Why has this situation been allowed not just to develop but to deepen in its severity?

The noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, highlighted that it was repeatedly put to the committee that poorly co-ordinated care undermines the quality of patients’ experiences and can have profound consequences for their long-term health. It should not be that somebody’s health and well-being gets worse because professionals do not contact each other; because patients are made to make inconvenient and unnecessary trips to multiple locations and practitioners; because staffing is inadequate; or because records are not being shared. It is telling that a broad range of witnesses repeatedly spoke of the problematic lack of integration between social care and the National Health Service, even though social care was not within the remit of the report.

For all this, I have heard noble Lords describe the Government’s response to this report as delayed, disappointing and failing to match words with the necessary focus and action. I welcome the principles behind the report’s key recommendations. I trust that the Minister will do likewise and tell your Lordships’ House what more the Government will be doing than is currently the case.

I am sure that many noble Lords will, like me, remember the ambitions articulated during the passage of what is now the Health and Care Act to formalise the integration of primary and community services. However, NHS leaders are telling us that this is not supported by the current commissioning and contracting arrangements. The policy continues, they say, to be developed in silos from the centre, both at NHS England and at the department. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response to this observation.

For many of us, being treated at home, or as close to home as possible, is best for our health. It is how we want to be cared for. It is also the most efficient and cost-effective for the National Health Service. Nobody wants to be left waiting until hospital treatment is needed; that makes no sense at all. As envisaged in the Health and Care Act, integrated care systems still have the potential to create more joined-up health and care, with primary care being integrated into broader NHS services in the community, through schemes such as Pharmacy First and through the extension of access to services, such as by evening appointments to fit around the needs of local populations.

There is no appetite for further structural reform, but we need to know what is working and what is not. What assessment have the Government made of the effectiveness of ICSs? What are the obstacles to success and how will they be overcome? Is everything in place to ensure that ICSs can make the best possible use of their allocated funds to plan and innovate?

The report highlights the need for a seamlessly integrated patient-centric healthcare sector where patients are given the type of care that they need, when, where and how they need it, whether that be through access to a GP, a pharmacist or a district or mental health nurse. I can tell the House from these Benches that if the next Government are a Labour one, we are committed to making change so that more people get care at home in their community—shifting services out of hospitals and into the community, so that the NHS becomes as much a neighbourhood health service as it is a National Health Service.

The report also says that the Government should focus more on preventive rather than reactive care to tackle the needs of an ageing population, many of whom are coping with complex health issues which require intricate and continuous care. We share that view and are committed to change: we will focus on prevention, shifting the focus to embedding long-term planning, tackling the social inequalities that influence health, ensuring children have the best start possible, empowering people to take responsibility for their health, improving screening programmes and boosting capacity in local public health teams.

I was struck by the observation articulated by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, that the committee heard more frustration expressed by witnesses on the inadequacy of digital connectivity than almost anything else. They identified technical issues, cultural attitudes and misunderstandings about GDPR. The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, put it well: that currently, the co-ordination of patients’ data is no one’s responsibility. How do the Government intend to address that point?

What is the Minister’s view as to whether legislation and guidance need to be reviewed to ensure that the tension, whether real or unjustified, between data privacy and effective healthcare planning and provision is overcome? As the noble Lord, Lord Allan, raised, does the Minister consider that appropriate training has been and is being given?

Turning to the workforce, dealing with the problems of its recruitment, retention, numbers, training, morale and well-being will support the integration of services, as spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Redfern. What plans are there to include integration in training, and how will NHS and local government staff be made aware of other services and how to work closely with them? Does the Minister consider that the social care workforce should be a component of the NHS long-term workforce plan?

Putting patients at the centre is, as my noble friend Lady Armstrong wisely observed, far from outlandish. Wrapping the NHS around the patient, instead of the patient having to wrap themselves around the NHS, is how it should be. I hope that this report will contribute to that outcome.

18:13

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)]

I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, and all the committee, for their work on this report. I hope that noble Lords will see from my speech that this report is appreciated. Directly on the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay: the recommendations are welcome, and I hope that my speech will set out how we are acting on them.

Before I get into the detail, like other noble Lords, I want to acknowledge my noble friend Lord Jamieson’s maiden speech. He brings a wealth of experience to this, both professionally and from local government. I was particularly struck by his passion for housing. I must admit it is one that I share: it is core to so many people’s lives, in terms of well-being, their sense of happiness, security and stability, and, of course, their health. I look forward to discussing further how we can make that the core of so many things. As the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, rightly said, the noble Lord’s mother would be proud of him today.

I will start by recognising the points made by all noble Lords about the importance of primary care and community care integration. The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, said that nearly all of the four former Ministers strongly made the point that we see more and more resources going to hospitals, and we also know that there are more and more patients who do not need to go there. Around 50% of the people who go to A&E do not really need to be there. We see a lot of children under 12 going in with tooth decay, when better primary care and dental services would avoid that. Unless we change things, we will see the situation set out by the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson: staff levels in healthcare will go from one in seven of the population to one in four, and then one in three.

I think we all agree that we have to get upstream of the problem. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, rightly set out the need for prevention. I have seen some excellent examples of that, and Redhill is just one. The noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, and others described the excellent examples we have seen in the work of Professor Sam Everington in east London: making primary care central to care in the community, and assessing how many services can be taken out of acute settings.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, said, centring the service around the needs of the individual, in contrast to the existing set-up, needs a shift in resources towards primary care. Our belief is that that can occur only if the ICBs, ICPs and ICSs are equipped with the information and have that helicopter view and the ability to shift resources from one to the other.

The noble Baroness, Lady Merron, asked a very direct and correct question about why we are increasing hospital care resources. I have some lived-in experience of that. It is a gutsy move to say that we will shift resources away from the hospitals. To make the whole equation work, you are often talking about reducing hospital services and the number of hospital beds, and putting them in the community instead, which we all agree is absolutely the right way to go. But we all know the reaction you get from local groups as soon as you try to do something like that. I completely agree that “neighbourhood health service” should be the name. It takes cross-party work to do that, regardless of who is in government after the next election. Speaking candidly, we need to provide each other with air cover during some of those difficult conversations, including with the ICBs and ICSs. For my part, I pledge to play that role, whether I am sitting on this Bench, the Bench opposite or any other bench after the election.

I am sorry that the government response was seen as disappointing. I hope we can address a lot of the issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley. We agree with the whole emphasis of the report and its recommendations, the analysis of the problems and the need to focus resources on primary care and prevention. We also agree with the substance of most of the recommendations.

Our main difference is whether we should be mandating the recommendations on the ICBs, ICPs and ICSs, versus enabling them to adopt them. For want of a better word, this is a bet that we are putting on the ICBs, that they are the right bodies to do this, giving them the time and the space to try to do that. I admit that I am naturally resistant—and that is likely to show in the emphasis in many of my replies—on whether we should be mandating them, when we want to give them the flexibilities to do those things at a local level. We should be enabling them to do it, and we should be encouraging them to do it, but where we stop earlier is on whether we should be insisting and mandating them.

I hope that that gives a general sense, but I shall turn to each part, starting with structure and organisation. I agree with the committee’s recommendations to allow the ICSs the appropriate time to mature before introducing any wholesale system reforms. I hear the point of the noble Lord, Lord Allan, that three years is a long time. We need to make sure that we get some of those early indicators as we go along, but at the same time we need to give them time to bed down and accept that some will do a better job than others, which of course is the inevitable consequence of giving people the ability to manage their own local systems.

On the integration, we are giving these bodies the ability to bring together the NHS, the councils, the voluntary sector and the others, with the focus on prevention and better outcomes. The noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, emphasised the importance of prevention, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, addressed the raising of life expectancy and quality of life. I am pleased to inform the House that we see the NHS health check as a flagship cardiovascular disease prevention programme. As mentioned, using the app is a key way in which people can engage with that, book their services and have a lot of those type of tests at home.

With respect to the committee’s recommendation relating to a single accountable officer and coterminosity, ICSs have the flexibility to develop accountability arrangements that best meets the need of their local population. We have various successful models of accountability implemented, including as partnerships and committees. Again, where an ICS identifies that its boundary is not meeting local needs, it can request a review. Local authorities are a critical partner here. The NHS has recently published a process for boundary change requests that requires support from all local authority partners in this. At the same time, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, mentioned in her speech some of the challenges around being coterminous with borders, and how that can cut across some of the things that we want to see happening in terms of choice. It is not always a straightforward question. Again, that shows that this should not be something we are mandating, but we are enabling the ICBs to address that, if it is the right thing for their area.

On the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, on elected officials chairing ICBs, NHS England has set criteria prohibiting all ICB chairs and non-exec members from holding a public office role, or a role in the healthcare organisation within the ICB area. However, the elected local authority, the local government officials, are able to chair the ICP—the partnership—which of course is a very important committee that sets the health and care strategy.

The committee recommends that the CQC pilot ICS assessments are widely disseminated—a point the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, also raised. I can confirm that the CQC will publish the pilot findings as narrative reports that will be available to the public. The CQC assessments will consider how well health and social care are working together to deliver high-quality care, and the assessment will also score each ICS against the three themes of leadership, integration, quality and safety—I think that is four themes, actually; that is what happens when you try to adjust the brief.

On primary care contracts and funding, as the noble Baroness, Lady Redfern, also mentioned, the primary care contracts are kept under review and we will consult the profession on any proposed changes. As I think noble Lords know, we launched a public consultation in December 2023 on inclusive schemes and expect to publish a government response later this year.

On the co-location point which the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, raised, the Government agree with the benefits of co-location and multiple disciplinary teams for promoting integration, and we expect the different models of integration to be implemented across the country based on local needs and the availability of estates.

The noble Baroness, Lady Merron, mentioned investing in primary care. We want GPs to deliver the best care to patients, which is why we are backing the NHS with this significant capital investment in this space. That includes the £4.2 billion this year in operational capital for integrated care boards to allocate locally, including to primary care.

The committee outlined a suggestion to better utilise the better care fund and pooling of budgets. The Government encourage local areas to maximise the full potential of the better care fund and to pool budgets. We have seen local areas committing additional money to their better care fund to support joint commissioning and integration. Place-level committees are crucial to delivering integration, and the Government published a toolkit in October 2023 to support the development of shared outcomes as a powerful means of promoting joint working.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, raised, proactive care involves providing personalised and co-ordinated care and support for people living with complex health and care needs. A good example of where this works well is the Jean Bishop Integrated Care Centre in Hull, a geriatric-led multidisciplinary service. Measured outcomes show that, between April 2019 and September 2022, the service contributed to a 13.6% reduction in emergency hospital attendance for patients aged over 80. Over the same time, there was a 17.6% reduction in emergency department attendances for patients in care homes. However—this also relates to the point on training later on—where we have fantastic examples such as that one, we need to make sure that that is disseminated and understood as part of the integration sharing.

On systems and data sharing, I have to admit that, like the noble Lord, Lord Allan—this will not be a surprise to many people—I am a fellow data anorak. I understand the importance of the NHS number and common place references in that. I learned about fuzzy data matching the hard way in one of my earlier jobs. You need only to look at what happened to the local Laura Ashley store in Kyiv, funnily enough, to see the consequences of fuzzy data matching and having a misallocation of dress sizes, shapes and colours because I did not fully understand the skew references in terms of fully data matching. Therefore I understood the hard way and the consequences of that.

I think we all understand the point the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, made about the frustration that many people increasingly express.

The DHSC was called by the report to

“publish high level guidance to standardise the collection of data and portability requirements in commercial data-sharing software, especially for social determinants of health”,

and mandate how clinicians “code” information. The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, raised a key point on responsible handling of data. We already set standards of coding for data and set national standards for data systems to ensure interoperability. The Government have published a plan for digital health and social care that includes milestones for setting standards on interoperability and systems architecture, enabling all relevant health and care data to be accessed by those with a legitimate right to access it at the point of need, no matter where it is held. We are also moving to a system of data access by default for secondary users of NHS data, which will be supported by the implementation of the secure data environments—SDEs—which mean that data from NHS and related services can be used for research without identifying information needing to be shared.

The report also calls for one or more interoperable data systems to be centrally procured, as was rightly flagged as a key issue by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. We do not believe that the solution lies in the purchase of a single system for the NHS—we have all seen the past problems that has led to—but we believe it involves the need for a common set of standards and cloud-based architecture to ensure that digital records can be shared electronically, that services are interoperable, and that you can connect information based on the NHS number of the individual rather than one organisation. That will improve the provision of safe and personalised care as patients move between different parts of the health service and the social care system. The approach taken seeks to strike an effective balance between central and local initiatives.

On the question from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, about sharing one prescription record, I say that this is where we see that Pharmacy First has been a vital enabler. Making sure that we have the systems right so that the pharmacy can write into the GP records to show what it is prescribing the patient gives a blueprint that we can repeat across all the systems—it gives the writing capability to do that, so to speak. All 42 ICBs have had a connecting care record solution since March 2022, which is fundamental to how services can share their information.

I am coming up to time. I will quickly say that I agree with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, on workforce and training, and that integration of training should be part of all that. I conclude by saying that I will follow up in writing, as ever, to make sure I pick up any questions that have not been answered. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, once more on his maiden speech.

18:33

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, it is the end of a long day, and I will be brief. I thank everybody who has spoken. It was a particular pleasure to hear the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, and I look forward to hearing from him a great deal more in the future. I said that I remain to be convinced by the Minister, and I must say that he has made a good fist of it: I feel a bit more convinced now than I did by the Government’s response about the commitment to integration.

What I do not think that he or the Government, or perhaps many other people, have yet done is make this crucial leap of thinking: integration is not an end in itself but only a means to give patients a better experience. If that sounds a bit vague, let us also remember the practical outcomes which come from giving patients a better experience: you prevent unnecessary hospital admissions, as noble Lords have heard; you head off at the pass preventable illnesses, so you save money, and it is a very good investment; and you make use of the most precious of all resources, the patient’s own experience. Nobody knows better about their health than the patient, but they so often feel disempowered because no one listens to them. I hope my colleagues on the committee will remember the nameless professional who said to us that it really did not matter if patients had to tell their story lots of times to lots of different people, because it helped them get their story straight—come on. Those are the kinds of attitudes that we have to overcome. Integrated working in productive teams helps staff retention because staff are happier and more satisfied; integrated training spreads skills and knowledge in a very cost-effective way. I hope the Minister and his colleagues will keep our recommendations under review. Many of them are, as we have emphasised, easily done and at low cost.

We have talked about integration for so many years—for too long. As one of my colleagues said, it is not rocket science but it does require changes. These are not only changes in the way we distribute resources but changes in the mindsets of professionals at all levels in ICBs, in NHSE, in the DHSC and in political parties. The matter is urgent: with every day that goes past, the health of our nation becomes worse. The rewards are great for everyone, but most of all for patients, if we really do manage to put them at the centre.

Motion agreed.

House adjourned at 6.36 pm.