Digital Technology: Skilled Workforce

Debate between Lord Cromwell and Lord Ashton of Hyde

Monday 27th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cromwell]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to boost and sustain the pool of skilled workers from the United Kingdom in the digital technology sector.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)]

My Lords, as set out in the UK Digital Strategy 2017, we are taking steps to develop the digital skills needed for our world-leading digital economy. We have revised the computing science curriculum and are undertaking work to increase advanced digital skills in areas such as cybersecurity and data. We have introduced digital degree apprenticeships and are reforming technical education, including creating a specialist digital route with a clear pathway to employment.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

I thank the Minister for his reply and celebrate the £6.7 billion invested in tech businesses in this country last year, making us the leading European country in this sector, with a tech sector growing at twice the speed of any other in the economy. Nevertheless, I refer him to the government agency Tech City’s own report, which states that the tech sector employs proportionally more non-UK nationals than any other industry, and the report by the Coalition for the Digital Economy, which predicts an 800,000-person shortfall in skilled employees over the next three years in this area, an issue which is made far worse by the delay and difficulty in obtaining visas. I ask the Minister to meet me and others from the sector to discuss how best to plug this current gap in skills and enable the UK to sustain its present advantage in what the Prime Minister has called a key sector in our post-Brexit economy.

National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Cromwell and Lord Ashton of Hyde

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 7th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I will merely say that this seems to me to be an eminently sensible amendment, and if I were the Secretary of State, I would certainly wish to have this information available to me.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising this important topic again. I also echo his thanks for our being able to discuss this in a very constructive way.

As I have said before, the royal charter states that the NCS Trust’s paramount concern is the well-being of its participants. We could not have been more categorical about that. The trust will need to have robust and effective safeguarding policies and processes in place. We see value in the Secretary of State being informed, at a point where it provides obvious benefit, of allegations of criminal behaviour that might have an impact on the NCS Trust’s ability to operate. I have committed to looking at this.

However, as far as safeguarding is concerned, the primary responsibility of the trust must be to inform the police or local authority where there is a suspicion or allegation of abuse, so that action can be taken to safeguard children and any crime can be properly investigated. Informing the Secretary of State is not an appropriate alternative escalation route as they are not able to take action in the same way as the police or local authority.

In this sense, informing the Secretary of State of criminal allegations is different to informing them of serious financial issues, which is already required in the Bill, as the noble Lord said. In the case of financial issues, the Government, as the funder, will often be the appropriate authority to take action. This is not the case for abuse allegations. It may be appropriate for the Secretary of State to be informed where there are systemic failings in the safeguarding practices of NCS organisations, and we have considered how we might specify that.

The Home Office and Department for Education jointly conducted a public consultation earlier this year on possible new measures relating to reporting and acting on child abuse and neglect, including the possible introduction of a new mandatory reporting duty or a new duty to act. The consultation closed on 13 October, and the Home Office is now carefully considering the wide range of responses from practitioners, professionals and the wider public. It will update Parliament on the Government’s conclusions in due course.

We will not attempt in this Bill to pre-empt or replace general law in this area. We have had a number of discussions and I am happy to give the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, the commitment that Her Majesty‘s Government will make good on those discussions and bring back a government amendment at Third Reading. However, as he knows, we cannot agree all of what he wants. If the noble Lord wants to insert this amendment into the Bill, he will need to test the opinion of the House today, as I cannot give him the further assurances he is seeking. In summary, I regret that I have to inform the noble Lord that further discussions will not result in any further concessions. I thank the noble Lord again for his patience and good humour during our exchanges, which I know will leave him disappointed.

[Lord Cromwell]

I thank the Minister for his reply. I was so looking forward to calling him a good egg, like the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, but I am afraid I am going to have to disappoint him. I am indeed disappointed. I understand that the Minister will be coming back at Third Reading with a version of this amendment—he is nodding, so I trust that is correct—and I hope I might be more encouraged when I see it; but clearly, seeing will be believing. In the meantime, he is correct that I am disappointed. With reluctance, I do not think it is practical to call a Division at this time of day or with this number of noble Lords, so sadly and with a heavy heart, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Cromwell and Lord Ashton of Hyde

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, before I speak to the amendment, I draw the Committee’s attention to the wonderful painting on the opposite wall, showing Daniel who would, no doubt, have been a graduate of the NCS, had he been able to. Is it my imagination, or is he pointing a rather admonishing finger at the Minister? Noble Lords can be the judge. I thank the Minister for meeting me to discuss the amendment. I give my overall support to the Bill and what it seeks to achieve. Indeed, I have already proposed to my twin sons, who were 16 last Monday, that they should sign up to the programme.

The most obvious feature of the Bill is that it enables the NCS to gain access to very substantial amounts of public money, both to expand its own work with young people and to subcontract a network of other bodies also working with young people. Given the financial implications of the Bill, there is provision for an immediate report to the Secretary of State if the organisation gets into financial difficulties. That is appropriate and seeks to learn the lessons from other bodies that have received substantial public money and ended up in an unhappy situation. One such has been referred to repeatedly in the Committee’s discussions today and previously.

Amendment 40 simply seeks to introduce a similar requirement should allegations or evidence occur of other forms of impropriety or inappropriate behaviour with young people. This would learn the lessons from the distressing cases of other organisations charged with looking after young people and children where abuse and other criminal acts occurred which were tolerated, ignored or, indeed, covered up, sometimes for decades, while wrong behaviour continued unchecked. Although we hope it will never occur, it would be naive to suppose that a network of organisations and people working with children will never give rise to such incidents or allegations, whether well founded or not.

The acid test is whether, should such an allegation or incident occur in one of the organisations being funded, the Secretary of State would want to know immediately. My strong belief is that the Secretary of State would want to know at once. When the Minister and his officials met me recently to discuss the amendment, there was some suggestion that the requirement might already be covered more generically somewhere in the documents of the NCS. I look forward to hearing further from the Minister on that point. My strong view is that, even if there is some clause deep in the NCS text that could be interpreted as enabling the NCS to be held to account post facto if it eventually emerges that something has occurred or been alleged, it would be far more helpful to have in the Bill, in clear, unequivocal terms, a responsibility to report to the Secretary of State as an automatic and immediate action so that the matter is put beyond doubt. This would make it far more likely that such matters would be addressed promptly, rather than emerging painfully and traumatically later. There is a great temptation for any organisation, particularly where funding is at stake, to believe that such matters are better dealt with—or, perhaps, contained—locally rather than shared upwards. As noble Lords will know, there is an inquiry struggling to get under way in the other place into areas where such lapses of judgment in the care of children have occurred in the past.

Finally, I am wary of anything in the Bill which will burden the NCS, or those with whom it works, with any additional administrative burden or cost. The amendment will not do so: it is a simple requirement to notify immediately in the event of an occurrence and not a regular or time-consuming administrative task. There is much to support in the Bill, and I hope that my straightforward amendment will enable a modest but important enhancement. I beg to move.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, makes the case that, in the same way that the Government should be informed in the case of serious financial issues, it should be informed in the event of a criminal allegation or investigation. We absolutely agree that the Government must be informed should an investigation or allegation of this kind occur. It is important to note that the royal charter, the trust’s constitutional document, specifies that it must,

“treat the need to safeguard and promote the wellbeing of participants as the paramount consideration”,

so we are in evident agreement about the importance of the trust’s responsibilities in this area.

I understand that the noble Lord’s intention here is to make these responsibilities explicit. We agree that such important matters must be absolutely clear, so perhaps we might discuss with him later how we may go about doing just that. For example, the noble Lord’s amendment does not distinguish between different types of criminal behaviour; he does not mean safeguarding alone. We would need to give some consideration to proportionality here and to which offences government needs to be informed of. With that commitment to consider this further, I hope the noble Lord is satisfied that he can withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Cromwell]

I thank the Minister for his comments and look forward to a further chat with him and his officials. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.