Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Curry of Kirkharle Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 15th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I too welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Black of Strome, and congratulate her on an impressive maiden speech. I very much welcome this Bill, as it is clearly appropriate to revisit how current legislation is meeting the needs of students, employees, potential employees and employers, in a rapidly changing world. Let me declare my interests: I have been actively involved in encouraging the establishment of the institute for agriculture and horticulture, TIAH, which is under way, to help improve the image of the sector, provide signposting to quality-approved courses and CPD opportunities, and establish a national register. The support of Defra on this has been very welcome. I am also a fellow of City & Guilds.

The key objectives of the Bill are laudable and very welcome. Putting employers at the heart of post-16 skills policy has been the intention of previous policies. That is easily stated but more difficult to apply in practice. To devolve responsibility to local level, to have local skills improvement plans and employer representative bodies, must be the correct approach. What is unclear from the Bill is how this intention links to national skills priorities for each industry sector, how this relates to regional priorities—in particular, the involvement of local enterprise partnerships—and whether local employer representative bodies to be designated by the Secretary of State are intended to represent all industry sectors within a given local area.

Too often in the past, employer representative bodies have been dominated by large industrial employers and new high-tech sectors regarded as sexy and attractive. Other sectors, which are crucial but fragmented and characterised by SME employers, are sometimes not recognised and therefore not included. This is particularly true of the rural sector and agri-food businesses. They are not identified as sectors with skills gaps in the White Paper but are hugely important and provide exciting opportunities for those choosing a career. I hope the Minister can provide reassurance on this point and, in doing so, give a definition of “local”. Is local a county or parish definition, or something else?

The need to facilitate and encourage lifelong learning is vital; even more so as we emerge from the Covid experience, when many who have been furloughed or made redundant may have wished to retrain. A lifelong loan entitlement is an interesting concept and we await the consultation with interest. However, to wait until 2025 before this loan becomes available is regrettable. In my view, we will miss an important window, when such a facility would be very helpful. I hope that the Government have learned lessons from the student loan experience in determining the thresholds and timetables for repayment. I support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, in this respect.

I will now comment on the changes to the regulatory framework proposed in the Bill. In my view, there is potential for significant confusion, as referenced by other Peers in this debate. Government support for vocational training and skills development, with T-levels et cetera, is very welcome. The ability of students to achieve degree-level qualifications as an alternative to attending university, with all its associated costs, must be correct. There is, however, some concerning potential overlap among the regulatory bodies. The Bill must be clear about the relevant roles of the Office for Students, the Education and Skills Funding Agency, Ofqual and the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education—particularly the latter two bodies. Unless I have misinterpreted the wording, it appears that the new roles envisaged would create a two-tier and rather cumbersome regulatory approval system. The last thing we need is confusion, duplication and an additional load of bureaucracy. Within this new framework, it is essential that the authority of Ofqual and its accountability to Parliament are not diluted.

We also need to be aware of the administrative costs of regulatory oversight. I speak as a former chair of the Regulatory Policy Committee. Every new or amended regulator adds a new level of cost. The total cost of the suite of regulators in this space will be substantial.

I fully appreciate the need for nationally recognised industry standards. It is important that statutory control, as proposed in the Bill, particularly the role and influence of the Secretary of State, does not lead to overcentralised control or inhibit competition on skills provision in the marketplace.

I conclude by raising a concern about rural and land-based education. The Minister will be aware of the deep concern in the north of England about the proposed closure of Newton Rigg College in Cumbria. The failure to find a solution so far, and the possible loss of this geographically important college and its unique role in serving the needs of the uplands sector, as well as woodland and forestry management, is, I hope, not a signal that the Government do not regard rural as important. I left school aged 15 and the only formal education I received afterwards was in Northumberland, in what is now called a land-based college, very similar to Newton Rigg. As it was for the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, this was through evening classes and day-release courses.

As has been stressed a number of times today, we must ensure that young people and those who wish to retrain are well informed on course availability, including rural, land-based and agricultural courses, and have every opportunity to choose a career as a consequence. In the light of climate change, our net-zero ambitions, the importance of food security and opportunities within the rural economy, I hope the Government continue to regard this sector as important. I fully support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, on the need for seasonal workers in the agricultural and horticultural sectors.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Curry of Kirkharle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I was unable to speak at Second Reading, so I must now declare my interests as set out in the register, particularly that I am chair of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership, which provides me with a particular and, I believe, helpful perspective on the Bill. Having heard the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, while I recognise some aspects of what she said, it bears no relationship to the work that is going on in Cumbria.

My remarks around this group of amendments are probing, so I trust that the Minister can straightforwardly and candidly clarify my concerns. While my comments are mine alone, they echo many of my LEP and mayoral combined authorities colleagues’ concerns. We welcome the key principles underlying the ambitions of the Bill and the desire to bring business closer to the process of curriculum development and delivery. Like the noble Lord, Lord Baker, I suggest that this is exactly what LEPs have been doing for some considerable time: ensuring that the needs of the economy and businesses inform the skills system locally, particularly to ensure that these real needs can be met in a useful and constructive way. LEPs command respect, and I know that they are impartial, so businesses and providers equally trust them. To lose this would be a backward step.

The draft legislation which we are considering proposes that employer representative bodies are reasonably representative of employers operating within the specified area, and I do not think that anybody could reasonably object to that, but it excludes local enterprise partnerships. Therefore, I seriously question and thereby challenge the exclusion of LEPs. How can LEPs not be employer-representative bodies, given that each LEP is created specifically to be the voice of business and consistently to represent, not least at the Government’s specific request, hundreds of businesses in our local areas, including on skills-related issues?

Importantly, LEPs do this for all businesses across all sectors and geographies, not just for those who are part of a membership organisation. This is important. We do not do this just for particular constituencies. We have no further specific axe to grind in the matter. Unfortunately, the White Paper and the Bill appear to ignore this excellent long-term business engagement which has been in place for some considerable time. From my perspective, the absence of any role for LEPs in this legislation strikes me as lacking any rationale based on the evidence and the scale of the work that has been done in the past. It is not a matter of reinventing the wheel, but of the Government disinventing the wheel.

The skills advisory panels, funded by the DfE and led by LEPs, have been assured that there is a deep, evidence-based understanding of the needs of their local economy, their sectors, their businesses and, importantly, the skills required in their locality. In my own LEP in Cumbria, we have a comprehensive governance structure, specifically endorsed by the Government, that ensures that the skills system is demand-led, with our business-led sector panels articulating what is needed and our people, employment and skills strategy group bringing together the skills systems to respond to this. That is the skills advisory panel in action. It matches the claims of that well-known brand of beer that reaches the parts others cannot get to.

The current lack of clarity on the future role of the skills advisory panels is accelerating uncertainty, making it extremely difficult to make any medium- to long-term plans. This has left many members—a number of them volunteers—questioning whether there is any future role for them. We therefore risk losing both momentum and expertise at precisely the point when it is most needed, as the nation recovers from Covid-19 and grapples with the now known challenges posed by moving away from the EU.

As we debate the Bill, LEPs are working in their localities to address the immediate needs of businesses as they come out of the pandemic and respond to the significant changes in the labour market. For example, in Cumbria, we are seeing chronic labour shortages—as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, pointed out in an earlier group—which are not merely inhibiting business but actually stalling recovery; we are working directly with our businesses to help address these.

Simultaneously, we continue to make sure that we focus on the medium- and longer-term skills needs to ensure that we have a pipeline for the future, and we are focusing on supporting the priorities identified by the business community itself. It is in this context that the focus on the pipeline is in the forefront of our thinking and where our work with the careers and advisory company comes in to ensure that all our young people understand the economy and the career opportunities available. We are committed to this in Cumbria, and we and other LEPs provide matched funding to underpin the role of enterprise co-ordinators.

In conclusion, I ask the Minister to respond directly to my points and to a number of other powerful points raised in this group to clarify how the Government see matters in these regards so that, based on her remarks, the House will be able to know whether and, if so, in what way this matter will need further consideration on Report.

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, whose experience of chairing a LEP is extremely valuable; I believe that he has a lot to offer to the consideration of the Bill.

I will comment briefly on Amendments 13, 16, 32 and 35 in this grouping. Much has been said already during this debate that overlaps with other amendments, so I want to reinforce some of the messages that have already been made very strongly by other Peers. To reinforce what I said at Second Reading, I still think that there is a risk of confusion between the various bodies involved and a potential overlap between the agencies. Clarity is essential, and I hope that the Minister will take that on board.

I have two overriding concerns, one of which has been stressed a number of times already this afternoon; that is, in devolving responsibility at a local level to local groups, there is consistency with the national skills strategy and regional priorities. It seems obvious that there should be a very strong conduit between the regional bodies, the LEPs, the combined authorities and the mayoral authorities. I hope that the Minister has recognised the strength of feeling there is on this now. As reinforced by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, to leave out the mayoral authorities and not work with the LEPs, with the experience they have and the networks they have established—to throw that away and not build on it—would seem foolish. So I hope that the Government will take those messages into account.

I am also slightly concerned that if this does not happen, we will see a patchwork of disconnected skills groups paddling their own independent canoes. Co-ordination is vital for skills providers to develop appropriate courses to meet regional and local demand. The Minister was reassuring on that point earlier this afternoon, so I hope that is the case.

The critical balance is to achieve local ownership within a framework of national and regional priorities. I restate that regional involvement is essential. My second concern with this grouping is highlighted in Amendment 32, and in Amendment 35 from the noble Lord, Lord Patel. Too often, SMEs and, in particular, rural interests are ignored in designing skills strategies. The SME sector has a weak voice.

Large industrial employers have the resources to engage in consultation exercises. They can devote personnel to sit on boards and, in doing so, influence outcomes. It is a good thing that they do. However, SMEs have difficulty in devoting the time to engage in what, to them, seems like numerous consultations and time-consuming exercises. They do not have the time to sit on boards but their voice is essential. Too often, one has a willing volunteer within an area or region; they get overloaded and do not necessarily represent the SME sector. I am really concerned about the influence of the SME sector in helping to design policies that will work for all.

I conclude by highlighting the importance of the rural sector, which has been mentioned once or twice. There is clear evidence that economic success in rural areas has been hampered, held back and constrained by skills gaps. This will be perpetuated if it is not addressed. The gap between rural and urban will continue to grow. Skills provision is critical, if levelling up is to be achieved even in a modest way, to reduce this rural/urban divide. Too often, government policy has been focused on cities. The large industrial areas are the ones that influence skills strategies. The SME sector, and particularly the rural sector, are the ones that get neglected. As was said by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, the Government are going to have to work really hard to engage with this sector and make sure that the local skills bodies embrace this challenge, and do not once more neglect the rural sector.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, my name was initially omitted from the list for this group. My reaction when I found I had been reinserted at number 17 was, “be careful what you wish for”. I am not sure I have a lot to add to what has been said. I very much welcome the amendments that seek to ensure that the voices of independent training providers, SMEs and the self-employed are heard in the LSIP process. I particularly await the Minister’s response to Amendment 40 from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, which would require the Secretary of State to report annually

“on the performance of employer representative bodies.”

This seems to raise important questions of the accountability of ERBs, and indeed LSIPs. I hope the Minister might tell us what sort of reporting will be required for LSIPs and how their performance will be measured—against what criteria and by whom. What will happen if they are seen not to deliver the results expected? Much more fundamentally, I strongly echo the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Baker, about how the system will actually work in the real world, as described by both those noble Lords.

I also notice that the Bill includes quite a few duties and requirements for colleges and other education providers to meet—there are all sorts of things that they have to do—but these seem somewhat less prominent when it comes to LSIPs and employer representative bodies. I also welcome the paragraph (b) proposed in the Amendment 36 of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, which goes a little way to redressing the balance by enabling colleges and other providers to challenge LSIPs if they are not happy with them.