Employment: Young People

Baroness Turner of Camden Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to my noble friend for his words. I know that he has been terribly actively involved in driving the UTC programme, and we should all be incredibly grateful to him for that.

[Baroness Turner of Camden (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope that the Government have not overlooked the role that the trade union movement can play in providing and insisting on education, particularly for older children. The TUC has its own department, Unionlearn, which is highly respected and was formed deliberately to try to encourage education among people who somehow or other, during the course of their earlier career, missed out on it. It has worked consistently to try to improve and make available apprenticeship schemes right across manufacturing industry. My union, Unite, has done a great deal of work on manufacturing industry to ensure that there are proper educational arrangements for younger people and to encourage them—in particular, women—into training for engineering and manufacturing, which is vital for this country. I hope that the role which the trade union movement can play in this area, which can be assessed via the TUC, is not overlooked, because it is very important in encouraging people who have missed out on education earlier in their career.

[Lord Nash]

I could not agree more with what the noble Baroness says. The involvement of the unions on this side of the piece is extremely important. I am delighted to be able to say that the careers company will have an advisory board, which will help it to design and implement itself, and Askel will sit on that board. I note the very good work that the NAHT has done in relation to Primary Futures. I was visiting a Primary Futures event at a school in Oxfordshire on Friday and noticed that one of the ex-presidents of the NAHT sits on the Primary Futures board. The noble Baroness’s points are very well made.