Skills England

Debate between Antonia Bance and Andrew Pakes

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Antonia Bance (Tipton and Wednesbury) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Skills England.

It is an honour to serve under you as Chair, Sir Christopher. I am so glad to have the opportunity to raise the urgent need to reset our adult skills system in England, to press my case for my constituency and region, and to seek further information about the Government’s plans. The argument I will make today is this: Skills England cannot be just another quango. We need a confident and directive organisation that takes what our economy needs, directs provision, drives learner uptake, and delivers more workers with higher skills ready for better jobs on higher wages. I will also press the case for my constituency, for the Black Country and for the wider west midlands. Judging by the number of people here, there is some interest in this topic, and perhaps we should seek further opportunities to talk about these issues. I am sorry that in my inexperience, I asked only for a 30-minute debate.

We are here today because the Conservatives oversaw a decade of decline in skills, and it has made our country poorer. Employers are unable to fill job vacancies, more than a third of vacancies are down to skills shortages, learners cannot get the training they need and industry is left without the skills to tackle the challenges of the future. That is why Labour have pledged to overhaul our skills system and set up a new body for skills: Skills England. Skills England is a central part of our plan for growth, good jobs and prosperity. It will have three key jobs: to assess skills needs, to oversee the suite of qualifications and courses on offer, and to co-ordinate all the players in the sector, of which there are many. The point is to bring order to the skills system, joining it up and making it more responsive to what employers need.

I want to say a bit more about the nature of Skills England and how it goes about its job. I have five key points. First, Skills England must spot and respond to genuine skills needs through the best available data and intel. We sometimes forget how hard it is, caught up in the day-to-day, for employers to predict the shape of the market for their goods and services in the future, how the supply chains will change and what that means for their workforce, products and quality. I hope that Skills England, alongside our industrial strategy, can help with that.

One of the aspects of Skills England I am most pleased about is that it will be tripartite, with unions on the board as of right. Our movement has always taught working people to read, write, do maths and, more recently, use computers, to help them get on in life. As we face another industrial transition out of energy-intensive and carbon-reliant industries, we need to plan and manage with workers and use their insights too. Workers’ voices need to be around the table on skills, and with this Government, I know that they will be.

Secondly, Skills England must be co-ordinated across Government and, most importantly, with the Migration Advisory Committee and the industrial strategy. I looked at the shortage occupation list this morning and it is frankly an indictment of our skills system that so many vital jobs in manufacturing and construction are listed: bricklaying, welding—something those in my own area are expert in—roofers, carpenters, joiners and retrofitters. No more. Skills England must start to direct support to fill these skills gaps so that we can grow our own. Above all, Skills England must work hand in glove with our new industrial strategy and deliver the skills training that will make the strategy real.

[Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab)]

Let me put on record that I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on apprenticeships. In preparation for your speech, I totted it up and it seemed that Skills England will be the fifth such national quango set up by Westminster since the Manpower Services Commission in 1973. The average tenure of a Skills Minister since 1997 has been 15 months—

[Andrew Pakes]

I apologise, Sir Christopher; this is my first such intervention in one of these debates. Since 1997, the average tenure for a Skills Minister has been 15 months—longer than Liz Truss’s, but shorter than a premier league manager’s. The average life of a skills quango such as Skills England has been only eight years, less time than most people spend in primary school. Does my hon. Friend agree that the only way that Skills England will be a success is if it is linked to industrial strategy, is tripartite and brings together employers and unions? That would mean that we would have a durable system and not a repeat of the failures of the past, which saw short-term interventions that have not delivered for working-class people.

[Antonia Bance]

As my hon. Friend might expect, I agree with him on all those points. I hope very much that our current Skills Minister’s tenure is significantly longer than the average, and that Skills England proves long-lasting and effective in responding to the industrial strategy.

We expect the Green Paper on industrial strategy perhaps as early as next week, but certainly by the Budget. This may be a tangent, but it is important. I want an industrial strategy that makes choices and sets out which sectors are our priorities—yes, clusters where we are already world-beating, or could be, but also places that are our priorities for industrial development and catch-up. Good growth must level the playing field, and national growth cannot be at the expense of left-behind places like the one I represent.

However, Skills England must respond not just to industrial strategy and migration, but to all of Government, as it touches skills such as our agenda for getting people back to work. We want people helped into real jobs that offer a route out and a route up, and not just any job. That means no more jobcentres running their own skills and education programmes separate to the priorities of Skills England.

Third, we need a Skills England that is directive, not hands-off; one that sees its role as supporting training that meets the industrial strategy, not courses that do not. I will give an example: one shortage occupation is lab technicians for our world-leading life sciences sector. If the gap is lab technicians, then it is Skills England’s job to make sure that the courses for lab techs run, are funded, are supported and are filled. If that means that young women in an area cannot do low-level hair and beauty courses that set them on a path to a life on the minimum wage, but are instead channelled into a higher-wage, higher-skilled job that offers a career path, such as being a lab tech, so be it. That is Skills England doing its job.

It may be easier and cheaper to run a business management course in a classroom at a college, but given the shortage occupation list and the industrial strategy, we need bricklayers and welders. Yes, it will cost more to make the facilities available and we may have to pay the lecturers a bit more too, but that is what is needed.