Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [HL]

Lord Johnson of Marylebone Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. Indeed, I express strong support for all the amendments that have managed to get themselves tabled in spite of the language of this Bill, which at this point are just calling for report. It seems quite extraordinary that, at a time when we have a Government who recognise the centrality of skills and have committed to a system-wide approach—as in today’s White Paper, for example—we are being asked to pass legislation that puts everything inside the department, reported to a DfE official, so that under this Bill there is not even a report for other government departments, never mind for the public at large and for Parliament. I cannot believe that this makes sense in terms of the Government’s expressed ambitions for Skills England: that it should be system-wide; that it should do something that goes beyond the remit of individual agencies and quangos; and that it should take in the whole scene effectively. I would very much prefer to see it as a statutory body, but I hope that, between now and Report, the Minister will at the very least take away this widely expressed request for us to have regular public reporting of what is going on, which everybody can use, so that we have documents in the public domain allowing us to see what is happening and how the Secretary of State’s new responsibilities are being carried out.

[Lord Johnson of Marylebone (Con)]

My Lords, I add my support for Amendment 36 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. Like other amendments, it calls for—among other sensible things—a report, in this case on levels of investment in skills by employers.

If you have believed the CBI over the past few days, you would think that the investment climate for business had taken a turn for the worse in recent weeks, with what it is calling the “triple whammy” of increased employers’ national insurance contributions, the higher national minimum wage and various changes in labour market rules. The CBI feels that there is a palpable sense in the business community that the UK is becoming a more difficult environment for investment. Of course, skills are very much part of that picture. There is a clear risk that our levels of investment in skills, which are already running at half the levels of our peer group in the OECD, will suffer further if this climate of paralysis in the UK with respect to business investment is allowed to continue.

On the uncertainty that noble Lords have alluded to with respect to big government policy, notably the development of the growth and skills levy and the future of the LLE, these things may become compounding factors that risk current low levels of investment in skills dipping even further. Clearly, we cannot afford that as a country, so I believe it is vital that the Government take steps as rapidly as possible to lift the policy uncertainty that will potentially blight levels of investment in skills over the current year and accept the amendment, which will provide a healthy baseline against which we can measure progress in this respect in the months to come.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I have a tactic nowadays of speaking towards the end, when everybody else has said it better than I can. I just want to add that I have put my name to Amendment 18, and I agree with Amendment 23 and pretty much everything that includes the word “reporting”.

I am slightly concerned that our positions became entrenched in the last day in Committee, and that nimbleness is seen as being reduced by reporting. There is a lot that we do not know and a lot that we need to know. In my own profession of teaching, we have to teach with the door open and, at any time, somebody senior could come in, observe your lesson and give you formal feedback. At the very least, you get one formal observation a fortnight and—let us face it—we all work better with that kind of incentive. Skills England needs to be held to account; otherwise, we are looking at it being held to account by Henry VIII.