Vocational Training

Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

As we have discussed at some length as the Bill has gone through this House, the intention in shifting the functions is to enable them to be used by Skills England, which will be very much driven by the needs of employers, working alongside trade unions and bringing in the necessary regional and local co-ordination. I hope I provided some reassurance in Committee. There is no intention that we should move away from a system where the occupational standards and assessment plans are determined by employer groups. It is fundamentally important, to build confidence in apprenticeships and other technical qualifications, that they fulfil the requirements of employers. That is the intention for when Skills England takes on that role.

[Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that the legacy of the last Government was nearly 7 million people of working age with little or no qualifications, one in five workers lacking even basic computer skills and the number of apprenticeships falling off a cliff? Does she agree that the remedy, to revitalise vocational training in this country, is in part to have an active industrial strategy involving both employers and unions, and investing in our FE colleges—in kit and equipment but also in staff?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend is absolutely right; we have a skills shortage, and it has worsened over recent years in the way she describes. That means we need the industrial strategy this Government are developing, but we need it linked closely to a much more coherent skills system, led by Skills England, which will identify, with the partnership I outlined previously, current and future skills gaps. Those gaps will then be met by improved opportunities for technical education and apprenticeships. She is also right that a key partner in delivering that will be our FE colleges, for which this Government were of course able to find an additional £300 million of revenue and £300 million of capital in the recent Budget Statement.