Draft Industrial Training Levy (Engineering Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2017

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 General Committees

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. Since tomorrow is the Minister’s birthday, I offer him a rare and mild pre-birthday treat by saying that we do not intend to oppose the order—and for very good reasons.

I was about to say that the origin of this levy is lost in the midst of time, but considering I was 10 when it was introduced, perhaps that is not the best way of putting it. I looked at the date—1964—and wondered whether this was a final gasp of the 13 years of Tory misrule, as it was called at the time, or possibly the first fruits of Harold Wilson’s revolutionary white heat. Moving on from history, the point about the order, the ECITB and its associated board, the Construction Industry Training Board, is that they have been an excellent example over more than 50 years of bodies in the industry coming together voluntarily to work with Government to make progress. This arrangement and one or two others survived the potential culls of the Thatcher years, and so it comes back to us today for the latest iteration, reflecting what the ECITB wants to do or feels it needs to do in the context of the introduction of the apprenticeship levy.

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Wokingham for intervening and thereby enabling the Minister to point out that the two levies are complementary. He will know, as I do—I am sure we have both had conversations with the ECITB and the CITB—that after the announcement on the apprenticeship levy, those bodies had certain questions about how the two measures would rub along. Indeed, they had to have fairly significant and useful discussions with their members. The question has been resolved, as far as I am aware, to their satisfaction and to the satisfaction of most of their members, as indicated by the participation rates that the Minister mentioned.

One might say that in some ways this was employer-led avant la lettre. It embodies some of the things the Government want to do to put employers in the driving seat. It is also important because it relates not simply to apprenticeship training but broader training. If there is one little thing that I want to say to the Minister, it is that in the full flush of waiting for the apprenticeship levy to kick off and for the new Institute for Apprenticeships to be launched—I know there is nothing he can do about this, but it is being launched on April fool’s day—it is really important that we do not regard training in this country simply as a one-trick pony that is for apprenticeships. There is all sorts of training to be done. As the Minister knows, and as we have talked about in previous engagements, the needs, particularly in adult skills, are very great indeed.

I welcome the order. As the Minister said, the construction industry has a very good record of taking on people from disadvantaged backgrounds; he gave figures on people with disabilities. I only have two questions. First, I see in the associated explanatory memorandum that the order is paralleled by an order for the CITB in 2015. I assume that both arrangements are triennial. I suppose the obvious question to the Minister is: does he anticipate that the CITB will be coming back in due course to have its levy order renewed? Since I notice that the order extends to England, Wales and Scotland, my second question is simply whether the appropriate and usual consultations with the devolved Administrations have taken place.