Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Ashton of Hyde

Committee stage
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I am also slightly uncertain about the order of speakers; I thought it was in the same order as the amendments.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Non-Afl)]

It can be in any order.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

It can be in any order. I rise to speak to my Amendments 35 and 36 and to support Amendment 31 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. Before I talk to the amendments in detail, I will reflect briefly on some of the important points that were raised earlier in Committee and that have a bearing on the groups that we will be debating today.

In addition to the fundamental concerns raised about the abolition of IfATE, which we have heard again from your Lordships today, and the absorption of its powers by the Secretary of State, we heard concerns from my noble friend Lady McGregor-Smith about how long it takes for a new body to bed in and gain the trust of employers and, again from her, from my noble friend Lord Johnson and from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, about the risk that we lose momentum in implementing the Government’s skills reforms. Similarly, the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf of Dulwich, and the noble Lords, Lord Aberdare and Lord Knight of Weymouth, among others, expressed their doubts about the Government’s approach.

In particular, there was a real sense, as we have heard again today, that everybody wants Skills England to succeed but there is a worry that it will be swamped by the volume of technical work that it will have to do, which could prevent it from delivering on the changes that the nation needs to see. I absolutely echo the earlier words of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, in hoping that the Government will bring forward their own amendments to address these concerns on Report.

My Amendments 35 and 36 seek to bring some focus and clarity to the work of Skills England by requiring regular reporting to Parliament. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, on the 12 different versions that he tracked in the Marshalled List. Without this, Skills England might disappear from view, buried under a mountain of technical processes. Importantly, critical accountability disappears with that; we will not be able to name who is accountable for different decisions.

I will first explain my Amendment 35. There are many people in the sector who are concerned by the uncertainty that the Bill creates surrounding previously established processes, such as the granting of new technical education qualifications. As your Lordships know, IfATE was an independent body and new qualifications were decided with the help of employers and businesses, informing them what skills were needed in the economy. However, with the arrival of Skills England we need to understand two things: first, how will the Government decide on its strategic priorities and, secondly, how will this be operationalised in the creation of new technical qualifications? With this transition, it is likely that the processes to decide which sectors receive new qualifications could change, so my Amendment 35 seeks to clarify how these decisions will be made and what will guide this decision-making. We need a level of transparency that retains the confidence of employers, training providers and, crucially, students for this approach to have a chance of success.

Next, I will give details on my Amendment 36, which seeks to place a duty on the Secretary of State to produce an annual report on various skills metrics. Your Lordships will have noted that this is a long list that reflects the complexity of this area. There may of course be better metrics and, ideally, a shorter list, but this is our starter for 10—or perhaps I should say 12, since the list stretches from paragraphs (a) to (l). I will go through these points individually—I apologise to your Lordships for the length of this, but it underlines how many areas we do not have clarity on where we need clarity.

Paragraph (a) in the proposed new clause seeks clarity on the level of need or skills gaps by sector, level of qualification and region. Without this, I fear we will get a generic report with broad-brush headings that might well reflect the national averages but does not give any actionable insight about where to focus or prioritise, or about the amount of progress made from year to year.

Paragraph (b) aims finally to bring some consistency to different qualifications across the sector, particularly as they apply to key core competencies. At the moment, we have a long and varied list of qualifications, and they are not really interoperable. For example, the standard of generic digital skills is not the same in two digital skills qualifications at the same level, and this contributes to the complexity of our system and is a blocker to streamlining it. This would be a key step to achieving the aims also mentioned in paragraph (i).

Paragraph (c) intends to give visibility to the earnings impact of completing different qualifications at different levels and in different regions. I do not think that we could answer that question today with solid data.

Paragraphs (d), (e) and (f) follow the same structure as paragraph (c) but in relation to how the Government are spending their budget in the area and how the landscape is evolving in terms of new qualifications, as well as the impact of both of these on trainees.

Paragraph (g) intends to explore whether the system is still meeting employer needs. We keep hearing from employers an urgent need for more clarity on what would happen if there were a gap in, say, engineers on Teesside, and what the Government, through Skills England, would do about it.

Paragraph (h) turns to the funding of skills training by employers. I thank my noble friend Lord Johnson for his comments on this. As he said, this is an area that we all know has declined significantly in real terms over the past 20 years, and we now lag badly behind other industrialised nations. We hope that there is some way that this can be measured annually to shine a light on this important area, both in financial terms and in relation to take-up by employers of new qualifications. Of course, this will be impacted by changes to the apprenticeship levy that the Government have proposed.

All these elements intend to create a far clearer picture of the impact of technical education qualifications on the people who take them, and the differences that happen through their learning. It also seeks to explore the way in which Skills England will work differently to IfATE and to provide an outcome-based framework by which its efficacy can be judged and adapted if necessary.

The letters after that intend to provide a framework to evaluate Skills England more generally, judged on the factors that matter to both employers and students. As noted above, paragraph (i) intends to ensure that this new system is created in a manner that is easy to understand for employers and students. For example, it is unclear how and where the Secretary of State will get advice on the content, accessibility, assessment and rigour of T-levels. This has much in common with Amendment 30 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett.

Paragraph (j) seeks to get regular updates on the impact of changes in the post-16 education strategy that the Government have committed to delivering, and its inclusion would commit the Government to detailing how they are delivering the objectives of the new strategy and what difference it is making on the ground.

I hope that, if my noble friend Lord Lucas reads the Hansard of this debate, he will be pleased to see paragraph (k), which looks at careers advice and seeks to ensure that there is a sufficiency—to be clear, I mean quality rather than just volume—of careers information, advice and guidance.

Paragraph (l) mirrors the wording in paragraphs (a) to (c) in subsection (1) of the proposed new clause to be inserted by Amendment 31 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. This would ensure that the Government’s reforms focus on the areas where there is the most urgent need for increased participation.

Finally, I want to touch briefly on Amendment 31 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, which I support; I have already spoken about its proposed subsection (1). The second subsection seeks to get a clearer sense of how the skills and growth levy will operate in practice and to build on the promising start that we have already seen from the local skills improvement partnerships.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments on this, but I hope that she has heard the message from all noble Lords who have spoken this afternoon: there is a pressing need to build confidence in the Government’s approach. A commitment to putting Skills England on a statutory footing, linked to a rigorous reporting regime, would be a helpful step in that direction.