Economy: Sustainable Jobs

Lord Cotter Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cotter]

My Lords, this debate is timely and essential, as noble Lords have said, and we thank my noble friend Lady Brinton for introducing it.

We need jobs—at least, many people of all ages need them—but I am particularly concerned about young people’s jobs, and for those we need growth in this country. This is a widely held view. As the CBI said just the other day:

“We believe that the government’s priority must be to protect spending that promotes growth”.

At one time this nation of ours was a great manufacturing country. The tide has changed, but we still have the potential. However, in recent years we went off the rails for many reasons, some of which were in our control, some of which were not. We are a great country when it comes to innovation and imaginative ideas. Many great inventions stemmed from the UK. It is therefore welcome that in the spending round that has just been announced, protecting and thus encouraging investment in science is the right thing to do, and the Government intend to do that.

I welcome the Government’s stance, but can the Minister say as a matter of record what our level of investments in R&D in this country is? Among the G7 at one time we were at the bottom, or second to bottom. Can the Minister clarify that? It is only through growth that we in this country are going to turn the corner and increase jobs. We are living in a time when much is changing in technology. We need to be in the forefront, which means that it is key that we maintain science resources and capital budgets. That is a good story, because the Government intend to do that.

In the struggle that our young people are having to find jobs, there is not such a good story to be told. Time and time again, as noble Lords have already said, when the issue of careers advice and guidance is raised, the message is still that this is just not being done effectively. Only yesterday I was a meeting and was told that once again apprenticeships—this route to jobs—are still not being mentioned in schools. This has been going on for years and years. In many parts of the country, certainly when I have had meetings with educators in the south-west and elsewhere, the message is the same: the advice and preparation for work are just not good enough. I get this from employers as well, who say that sometimes young people are not prepared for the work ethic. This is of great importance.

To go back to the point about manufacturing, we have not been encouraging enough pupils to go for the hands-on vocational jobs over the last few years. If I had a pound for the number of times I have heard the cry, “We need more engineers”, I would be quite well off. It happens time and again, and it is going to take a while correct it, but we must do just that. It is my contention that it is just not adequate to say that our young people can look up the opportunities for jobs on the computer. As has been said already, they need more face-to-face encouragement and help to find jobs.

Incidentally, on the practical side of life, it is welcome that the Government are planning more university technical colleges. Further education is a vibrant and vital sector in many parts of the country, as I can attest. In Weston-super-Mare, for example, our local college, Weston College, is spearheading apprenticeships, which my colleagues have referred to before, is successfully working with local employers to create local partnerships, and is in all senses providing a hub of activity. I know that this is also happening in further education colleges throughout the country.

The Government have a number of schemes to try to help people into jobs, but to assist in this they need to concentrate on growth and on encouraging various sectors to provide the necessary jobs. I will mention one sector in which for a number of reasons I have a personal interest, and which, like other colleagues, I have raised in this Chamber: the hospitality and tourism industry. This offers jobs over a complete range of abilities, from the unskilled to those with top skills. For that reason, and because it is a major source of jobs throughout the country, we look to the Government to encourage people to come to this country as tourists. On a little negative note, I regret to say that it is an area that needs more sharpening up.

I have in my hand Travel GBI, which has the headline:

“Tourists put off from UK visits by ‘wall of tax’”.

The Minister will know that this problem has been raised many times and that the Government say time and again that they are aware of it. I will raise it again, because I think it is so important, particularly because I have an interest as secretary to the All-Party Parliamentary China Group and in the difficulty that Chinese tourists have in coming here. When they come here they spend something like 10 times as much as the average tourist from other countries, yet we lag severely behind even a close neighbour, France, where the tourism level is 10 times higher than it is here. I do not want to end on a negative note, and I hope the Minister will reassure us again that we are looking at this serious issue.

The tremendous increase in apprenticeships is very welcome, and has been mentioned by many colleagues. Apprenticeships are, of course, a direct way into work. My noble friend Lady Sharp and others have said that there are concerns about ensuring that this is the real route to real jobs.

Finally, I know that the Minister shares the view, as we have talked about it before, that we must talk about apprenticeships and training, but I make the plea that in training and for all who are concerned with it in this country we give a very high priority to training for management. Sometimes we do not attain the very best level of management, and we are seeing this increasingly day by day in various spheres of activity. Without good management, we cannot create and keep good jobs.