Economy: Growth

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins]

My Lords, the recent White Paper Trade and Investment for Growth contains one fleeting mention of the shortage of language skills. I declare an interest as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Modern Languages and urge the Government to strengthen their strategy by improving the UK’s language competence. None of the overarching objectives can be fully achieved without it.

UK companies do not seem to understand that the lack of language skills is an important barrier to growth. A survey in 2010 found that, across Europe, 33 per cent of businesses regard foreign language skills as “very important” when recruiting graduates, but the figure for the UK was only 5 per cent, with three-quarters of UK companies saying that they were “not at all important”. Can the Minister say what the Government can do to encourage businesses to invest in language training and to develop a better understanding of the benefits of language skills? We know that export businesses that proactively use language skills and the cultural knowledge that goes with them achieve on average 45 per cent more sales. Other research suggests that improving language skills could add up to £21 billion a year to the UK economy.

Another figure worth quoting, given the explosion in online sales, is that over 70 per cent of consumers require information in their native language in order to make an online purchase, while people who do not have good English are six times less likely to buy from an English-only site. It is self-defeating and inaccurate to think that English is enough. Only 6 per cent of the world’s population are native English speakers and 75 per cent speak no English at all. The relative amount of internet content in English is declining but that in Chinese is rising and there are more blogs in Japanese than in English.

Neither is English enough in the world of scientific research, which will inform commercial innovation. In China, there are 4,600 scientific journals, only 186 of which are published in English. Employers in the UK who are ahead of the game know that they do not just need people who can speak French and German, although these remain the most sought-after languages. Mandarin or Cantonese come next. With markets opening up in central Asia, Latin America and the Far East, employers also need Spanish, Russian and Arabic. If our school leavers and graduates are not able to offer these skills, employers will recruit overseas.

Sadly, our young people have less and less to offer in the way of language skills. Urgent interdepartmental work is needed between the Treasury, BIS and the Department for Education to make sure that the review of the national curriculum results in a better outcome for languages. Most state school pupils study no languages after the age of 14 and an OECD survey put Britain joint bottom of a league table of 39 countries in the developed world for the amount of lesson time spent on languages. This really is an important barrier to our potential for growth.

I ask the Minister also to speak to his colleagues in BIS to ensure that a further barrier is not created by abolishing the fee waiver for students spending a year abroad as part of their degree. This really would be a real own goal. Market reports consistently say that employers prefer to recruit graduates who have spent time living abroad as part of their course, whether they are linguists, engineers, lawyers or anything else.

It is ironic that we should have such a problem with languages when we have a hugely multilingual population. We should make more of this. Companies considering where to locate regard the availability of language skills as absolutely essential. The message about London’s linguistic diversity as an asset for attracting inward investment needs to be heard more loudly and proudly.

Finally, is the Minister aware of the EU report on the language industry itself, which is set to double in value to €16.5 billion by 2015? The report sets out ways for businesses, especially SMEs, to benefit from multilingual competence. Will the Minister encourage British businesses to take advantage of this potential for growth?