Skills Strategy

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 8th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered progress on the Government’s skills strategy.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. One thing that has remained remarkably consistent as I have spoken to business leaders in my constituency over many years is that, when I ask them what they look for in their future workforce, their answer does not often focus on exam certificates. They want individuals who have a good attitude and are good communicators, excellent problem solvers and strong team players. Yet, barely a day goes by without a story in the news about skills shortages in one sector or another.

It is a drain on our economy and our society that job vacancies cannot be filled because employers are unable to find the right skilled individuals. That is not just a challenge to productivity and prosperity; skills are a social justice issue too—perhaps the central one. When we look at the overwhelming number of senior leaders who were privately educated—I am lucky to be one of them—it is not so much their exam results that got them where they are today, but the connections they were able to make and the networks and team-working skills they developed. If we are serious about social justice, it is our duty to afford those opportunities to all young people.

Since the closure of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, no single organisation has had responsibility for monitoring skills shortages and sharing information about them, so I was delighted when the Edge Foundation stepped forward to form an analysis group, bringing together key organisations in the area. I pay tribute to the foundation’s chair, Lord Baker. The first in a regular series of its bulletin is published today, and it makes for challenging reading—I will happily ensure that copies are available to Members.

The British Chambers of Commerce report says that 60% of services firms and 69% of manufacturing firms experience recruitment difficulties.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating the Culham Science Centre in my constituency? It has got together an apprenticeship hub that specialises in providing high-tech engineering apprenticeships for local people, and it has transformed how local firms react to those skills.

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend is a champion of skills and apprenticeships, and the Culham laboratory is exactly what we need to build up our skills base and address our skills deficit. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and to the organisation he mentions.

Shortages of skilled manual labour in manufacturing remain at their highest level since records began. That concern is echoed by the CBI, whose education and skills survey last year showed that the number of businesses that are not confident about being able to hire enough skilled labour is twice that of those that are confident. Reducing the skills shortages must be a key aim of our skills strategy and a barometer of its success.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills (Anne Milton)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on securing the debate. I am grateful for the opportunity to talk in broader terms. I have a great pile of briefings from my wonderful officials, which I will not refer to at all, because I would be telling him things that he probably already knows. He makes a wider point about why skills matter, and he is absolutely right that we have a significant skills shortage in this country.

I was at the WorldSkills competition in Abu Dhabi last year, and there was also a conference where I met many Ministers from Germany and Singapore—there were a whole host of them there. It is clear that we have a world skills shortage; it is not just in this country, although some countries are perhaps doing slightly better. One of the Ministers I talked to attributed their success in technical education, particularly at levels 4 and 5, largely to embedding maths and English so well in the curriculum. When young people came out of that skills system, it was a given that they had reached a high standard, so they could get on and take the academic or technical route that they wanted.

As my right hon. Friend rightly said, surrounding all that is this country’s economic need for a skilled workforce, but it is also about social justice. I did not go to private school and I did not have the networks that my right hon. Friend referred to, which many people have. In fact, I entered politics knowing almost nothing and absolutely nobody. I had to make it up on my own, which was fine for me—I chose politics as a second career—but it is not all right for a young person leaving school at whatever age. It should not be about who someone knows or actually about what they know, or where they live or where they come from; it should be about what skills they have.

My right hon. Friend talked about what employers are looking for. Like him, I have heard that reiterated to me time and again. It is about resilience, attitude, team playing, problem solving and aptitude. Those will not be learned only in the classroom. He also talked about the narrow focus of the curriculum. In some ways, there has been a focus on some of those academic subjects for exactly the reason a Minister from another country pointed out to me: a good foundation in certain key subjects, such as English, maths and digital skills, is important. However, it is also important to widen young people’s eyes to the opportunities that are out there.

My right hon. Friend talked about employer experience, which is critical, particularly for children who are not doing particularly well at school, who are bored in lessons and who do not understand the point of it. Contact with employers demonstrates to them why they are learning those things. It gives them a goal and an aim; it makes it all make sense. Without that it is much harder, particularly for people who, for whatever reason—not necessarily to do with how bright they are—find school slightly more challenging.

Experience of the working world also prepares children to go on to the next stage. I am a mother of four children, and all four worked weekend jobs when they could, and certainly during the holidays. That gave them invaluable experience, because the errors they made will have stood them in very good stead when they went to university or into a job after leaving school.

My right hon. Friend is quite right that the glue around that is the provision of careers advice. Ever since I was at school, which was a very long time ago, I do not think we have got that right. The careers strategy that we published last year is a step in exactly the right direction. It is not necessarily particularly tidy, but the way to reach young people these days is not simply an hour-long lesson with a careers teacher; it has to be much more than that. At the end of the previous Parliament, he was responsible for changes to the Bill that meant that providers of technical education and of apprenticeships must be allowed into schools, which opens young people’s eyes to other possibilities.

[John Howell]

A difficulty in my constituency is that the sixth-form colleges do apprenticeships and skills training very well but ordinary schools do not; they are still wedded to an academic view of life. Does my right hon. Friend share my view?

[Anne Milton]

Yes. My hon. Friend mentioned an organisation in his constituency and its apprenticeship hub, and I commend that local initiative. I have seen something similar down in Gosport that showed an absolutely groundbreaking attitude. He is right that careers advice in schools has traditionally not always been very good.