Apprenticeships

Baroness Turner of Camden Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Turner of Camden]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for introducing this debate and for the manner in which she did so. It is important that young people realise that apprenticeships provide access to skilled, respected and well paid jobs. Not everyone can go to university—many may not wish to do so—yet improving the skills base is important in securing our economic success. The previous Government understood this, hence their 2009 White Paper, Skills for Growth. Labour's £l.2 billion apprenticeships budget was a result of this.

One of the problems in recent years has been the decline of manufacturing industry in many areas. It is now generally accepted that our economy has become unbalanced, with too much reliance on financial services. Many of us said this at the time—the trade unions said so—but no one was listening then. The image of trade unions, for which the media are largely responsible, is almost entirely negative. That is unfair. Unions have always played a substantial role in the training and further education of their members. I was for many years a union official. My union had always supported education and training for members. We supported Ruskin College in Oxford. I benefited from courses at Ruskin, to which I had been sent by my union, and many years later I became a governor there. Like many unions, we ran our own training college. Much of the collective bargaining in which I was involved was concerned with the training and retraining of employees, a large part of it relating to the introduction of new technology. Our aim was to keep people in employment—no redundancies—through training and reskilling. That was the policy that we followed. The TUC has a learning and skills organisation, supported by all its affiliates. It is called unionlearn and has worked with public and private employers. It believes that a good skills base is good for the economy, vital to the recovery and in the best interests of both business and employees.

It is true that there are considerable challenges. The UK Commission for Employment and Skills concluded that we need significant improvements if the UK is to be world class in productivity, employment or skills. Unionlearn believes that these improvements can be achieved. A union learning fund has been established to set up a network of learning representatives to raise awareness of training, to help build active learning partnerships between unions and employers, and to work on learning and skills.

Of course, young people must be encouraged through the various routes available—many of them have been referred to in some of the very interesting contributions to this debate. However, I would be interested to know what the Government have in mind. It is widely acknowledged that many young men in particular face bleak prospects because of the high level of youth unemployment. Much more should be done to ensure that on-work training is available. The knowledge and experience of unions can be of great assistance in that regard.

I have mentioned young men. However, when I was a member of the Equal Opportunities Commission, one of our campaigns that had some limited success was the WISE campaign—Women into Science, Engineering and Construction. It was led by our then chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Platt, who is herself an engineer. She spent a lot of time persuading schools and parents that this was a suitable career choice for their daughters. Apprenticeship schemes in manufacturing industry should also be available to women; they are no doubt a result of our equality legislation, but encouragement is often required.

The debate about university funding and the Browne report should not sideline the pressure for access to apprenticeships and on-work training. Nor should there be attempts to cut expenditure in that area. We are talking about investment in our future—in all our futures. I await with interest the Government’s response.