Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has withdrawn from the debate, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, if there was an outbreak of consensus across the Committee on the previous amendments, I am afraid I am going to ruin the party in this group. If the aim of the Bill is to expand opportunities and horizons in terms of training and skills acquisition that will allow wider access to jobs, I think we need to be wary of any attempts at narrowing what is on offer, especially if it is being driven by satisfying political hobby-horses. Surely that is what this series of amendments does, in a way, in trying to limit post-16 technical education and training by aligning them with net-zero, climate change and biodiversity targets. I am opposed to them all.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, I have received no requests to speak after the Minister, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, to conclude the discussion of Amendment 4.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, I thank everyone who has taken part in this very long and extremely important debate. I will carefully look at what the Minister said about this being covered in other ways and not needed in the Bill, but I think the passion and desire, along with the understanding in the House of the need for systems thinking, is clear. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment now, but this is certainly something we will come back to.

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Amendment 3 withdrawn.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, we now move to the group beginning with Amendment 5. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in this group to a Division must make that clear in the debate.

Amendment 5

Moved by

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[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, it is important for the development of these local skills improvement plans that the partners involved are working together. The notion of divorcing, if you like, the employers from those providing the education seems to me to be wrong. The two key players to make a success of this are obviously the employers, who know their needs and can identify the skills that are short, and the colleges that provide the training and education. I do not like the notion that we should separate those two or that, as the Minister’s letter said, we might consider what they say. My Amendment 5 seeks to understand whether the colleges will be joint partners in this venture and make that point.

I say that for other reasons as well, not just in terms of developing the local skills improvement plans but because it helps the colleges themselves. It helps them to work with the employers in their locality at a really close level. It will improve the ethos and standing of colleges in the community, making employers realise what colleges are about and what happens in them: they will be properly engaged with them on a regular basis, not think of them as “some sort of building over there”. That dialogue and, dare I say it, teamwork will bring about genuine and effective plans. This is not an attempt to create more bureaucracy or paperwork; it is about saying that—I reiterate—these two key players must be locked together to make this happen.

My other amendment in this group, Amendment 38, is again about

“effective partnership working between employer representative bodies and local authorities and Mayoral Combined Authorities”.

We now have nine different mayoral authorities in England, and these nine city regions account for 41% of the country’s population and 43% of our economic output. The notion that they are sort of over there and may just be consulted seems wrong; they should be clearly involved in not just the final decisions but the day-to-day decision-making on these plans.

They already have emerging powers in relation to adult education and funding for FE, skills training and learners above the age of 19, so they are already important players in this area of work. In fact, as I said earlier, Liverpool was given a £41.1 million grant of local growth money to support skills and capital investment, and is currently working on a budget of £18 million for this year to make it available. I notice that other noble Lords also have amendments in this group. In particular the noble Lord, Lord Watson, is equally calling for working bodies to work closely together on this.

At the beginning of my contribution, I used the term “teamwork”. We only have to see how this has produced the successful run so far of the England team, which is not about separating a manager from players, and whatever else, but working together as a team. I hope that this amendment will be considered and that the Minister will ensure that there are not just considered but effective working arrangements.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, I must inform the Committee that if Amendment 5 is agreed to, I will not be able to call Amendment 6 by reason of pre-emption.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 35 under my name. The amendment is designed to have a body that will be representative of employers in a specified area. The Secretary of State must consult local education, business and enterprise groups, with the aim of ensuring that local employers are represented on the body. So it is a wide-ranging, all-inclusive probing amendment to ensure that there is a range of employers of different sizes, as well as local education groups. In that respect, I support Amendment 5 from the noble Lord, Lord Storey, which includes educational organisations. They should all be represented on employer representative bodies, which will be tasked with pulling together the local skills improvement plans. There are a number of amendments, already tabled, highlighting the need to expand the types of groups feeding into these plans to ensure that they truly represent the local situation and will be able to address any local skills challenges that there might be.

The concern that I believe all of these amendments share is that the Bill, as it stands, potentially gives too much power to a small group of employers in a local area that are not necessarily representative of the wider business community. The Bill currently also risks limiting the choices of young people as well as adults who want or need to retrain in terms of courses and training opportunities. There may be skills that we need nationally—to achieve, for instance, net-zero—which will not currently be required in the particular locality. As a result, no training opportunities may be available for young people who are keen to move into such careers.

I believe that the Bill should enable a truly collaborative approach to local skills planning, with a range of stakeholders to co-create local skills improvement plans. Taking that approach and making sure that the local policy ambitions link up with the national strategies and vice versa might be the right approach and put us in a good position to ensure that we have the workforce, the scientists and the engineers of the future to make the UK an economic success. With 6 million SMEs, some of them quite small and with very niche skills requirements, it might be appropriate that even their voices are heard.

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It is not that I am opposed that any of these people having a say but, having listened to the debates this afternoon, I am not confident that we have, first, the power relationship right, and I am now not confident that we have the lead provider right, either, and these amendments give us the opportunity to explore that.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who is next on the list, has withdrawn from the debate. Sadly, I am not able to call the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, because she was not here for the speech moving the amendment. The noble Lords, Lord Liddle and Lord Adonis, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, have also withdrawn from the debate, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Addington.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this is a little sooner than I expected. I put my name down to speak on this because, as the Government have said, this is a framework Bill. Governments like framework Bills because they give them a chance to develop and change as they are going along, with a little bit of freedom and a hint of Henry VII and a half. It is there and they like that. The price they pay is the fact that we want to know exactly what they are aiming at initially.

When this amendment was tabled and it was said which groups were going to be talked to, I saw that we already had employers down there. There is the danger of a dominant employer in here—a dominant employer who may not be the most foreseeing employer. Surely they should be talking to other people as well. Those with local power—that is, the mayoral authorities and local government—are surely dead certs to be involved in that conversation. These are people with budgets which will affect the local marketplace. We have already had a discussion about the green agenda, how that is implemented and the certain skills that are required there. These will be people who will be talking to you as you go through.

The amendments also mention students’ unions and trade unions. Why not? But I do not think that is the really important bit; that is the idea of what the influence will be, and which group will be having the conversation about what you should be doing and what your plan for training is. If we can get an answer to that from the Minister, at least on what the thinking is, we will all be slightly better informed and able to hone our arguments for the next stage of the Bill.

If we do not, we will be going round in a circle here. We will have to impose something on the Government to get them to come back and give us an answer. If the Government can give us an idea of what they actually require on this occasion, life becomes that little bit more straightforward. I hope that when the Minister comes to answer this, she will be able to provide at least the basis of the Government’s thinking about what goes on, because employers are great, but they occasionally get it wrong. I would just point out that many firms that were there 20 years ago are not here today. Surely that means that their boards—however well intentioned—got something wrong.

[Lord Bradley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to speak to this group of amendments, particularly Amendments 13 and 14. I commend the contribution of my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley. I declare my interests in the register, especially my role as chair of council at the University of Salford.

While I fully support the principle of employers playing a more active role in driving certain aspects of the skills system, as well as the more specialist role for further education colleges in delivering high-level technical skills, this should be taking place within the context of a holistic and objective overview of the whole education, skills and employment support system, to guard against introducing further complexity and fragmentation. One of the best ways to achieve this is to have a formal role for the mayoral combined authorities, where they exist, in the development of local skills improvement plans, reflecting MCAs’ unique position in this area of policy.

As drafted, there is no provision or requirement in the Bill for the Secretary of State or the designated established employer representative bodies to engage with mayoral combined authorities, local authorities or other key stakeholders such as universities in relation to—among other things—the designation or removal of designation of an appropriate ERB to lead activities, the geographical footprint of the local skills improvement plan, and the context and strategic priorities of the area. This omission overlooks the vital roles that MCAs and local authorities play in skills and economic regeneration, as well as MCAs’ devolved functions across adult education and, in the case of Greater Manchester, significant elements of employment support.

Further, the DfE has indicated that while an MCA’s agreement to the proposed local skills improvement plan would assist the Secretary of State’s approval, it is not a prerequisite, so proposals that fail to secure the support of mayoral combined authorities might still receive government approval. Therefore—I agree with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and am grateful for its extensive briefing on this matter—the Bill should make provision for consultation by the Secretary of State and the consent of MCAs in the designation of employer representative bodies and the approval of local skills improvement plans. Without such a provision, there could be a number of potential issues and risks to their success—and success is what we all want.

First, the Bill focuses primarily on higher-level skills and technical specialisms, which I agree have been neglected in policy and funding terms for far too long. However, there is a vital talent pipeline, starting with community-based engagement and entry-level essential skills, that is barely recognised in the Bill. It is unclear to me how this vital progressive pathway will be protected in the face of employer-led plans that will have a legal status not afforded to strategies for other aspects of the system. This could undermine existing partnerships and collaborative approaches to the local labour market.

Secondly, it is unclear how ERBs will be accountable in relation to strategic oversight, long-term vision and resource and capacity issues to ensure co-ordinated and impactful delivery in partnership with all relevant stakeholders. In particular, checks and balances will be required where designated ERBs are membership organisations and/or where they hold contracts as providers in order to ensure that local skills improvement plans are truly reflective of employers’ needs and interests across a locality, rather than solely for those ERB members.

Thirdly, the Government have not specified what constitutes a local area in terms of the geographical footprint of the new local skills improvement plans. Instead, employer representative bodies are being invited to define their own localities for the purpose of skills planning. So, for example, despite Greater Manchester being a well-recognised functional economic area with a long history of collaboration, there is no guarantee that the new local skills improvement plan proposals will follow existing geopolitical and functional economic footprints. This could undermine the alignment of skills and employment support in places such as Greater Manchester, which has used complementary devolved functions, pilots and other resources to support the creation of jobs and the skills to match them.

To address these issues and others, I believe the role of the mayoral combined authority and the local authorities should be properly recognised in the Bill to ensure the successful development of the local skills improvement plan and that all stakeholders feel they are part of the success going forward. I am pleased to support these amendments.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, has withdrawn from the debate, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I was very sorry not to be able to speak at Second Reading, but I was present for some of the debate and was struck by the contributions made by my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach, on the need for localism and the example of horticulture, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley—who is in her place—on local skills improvement plans, which are the subject of this group. I also agree with my noble friend Lord Baker that the strength of the school system is incredibly important and that we need parity of esteem for technical and vocational education in our schools. Indeed, whenever I talk at a school, I always talk about apprenticeships.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Lexden) (Con)]

I have received one request to speak after the Minister. I call the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for taking so much trouble to answer our questions. It is refreshing even if we do not like every answer. She said something very interesting: that the economic area could even be Greater Manchester. Could the proposed area be one that is supported by the combined mayoral authority in the Greater Manchester area or some other combined mayoral authority? Secondly, I do not think she answered my question. Could I see a specimen local skills improvement plan before we move to Report? That would be very helpful in feeling assured that the system was really going to work as intended.