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

Lord Storey Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all the organisations that sent excellent briefings. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, on his maiden speech. I was fascinated by his final comment about traditional skills, which we often forget. I know that Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral is desperate for masons to repair the sandstone blocks. When I drive round Cumbria, I always wonder where we are going to get the skills to repair those dry walls.

The Minister kicked off this Second Reading by referring to harnessing opportunities for our young people. I thought we would all be agreeing with each other and was quite surprised that that was not the case. However, on reflection, we did in our own ways agree with each other, albeit from different angles. My noble friend Lord Addington talked about what to do when things go wrong and how to make sure that they are put right. The buck will stop with the department that takes all these powers.

The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, referred to things being rather cosy, with Skills England, the director-general and the Civil Service, which does not have any public profile and operates behind closed doors. Where is the grit in this figurative oyster? That was also picked up by the noble Baroness, Lady Evans. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds talked about apprenticeship levies and how it was difficult to navigate around them. I shall come back to that in a moment.

The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, was very sure that Skills England needed the independence, the force and the fundamental clout to make things happen, although there are two powerful Ministers in charge of delivery—a Minister in this House and a Secretary of State.

I am always fascinated when the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, talks, with his knowledge of state education. He went off-script a little bit and rightly asked where we were going to get these 1,000 new teachers from. My mantra has always been that one thing that is holding back the creative industries has been the wretched EBacc. We were promised that T-levels would be a practical opportunity for some young people, and perhaps they are too technical.

I, too, pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady McGregor-Smith. Perhaps the title IfATE, given what its fate was to be, was a bit ironic. She talked about apprentices being passionate about what they do, but foundations are being put in place there that are going to be hugely important to the future and where we go.

My noble friend Lady Garden was, as usual, in her own inimitable style, very direct. She talked about the potential power of Ministers in this regard, and rightly raised the issue of lifelong learning, which matters now more than ever, and what will happen to lifelong learning entitlements.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, started off by saying that, like me, he thought this was one of those few uncontroversial Bills, and like me he was quite surprised by the tenor of some of the comments made. I thank the noble Lord for raising the issue of Scotland and Wales. I scratched my head about that and thought, “Is this yet again a purely English thing?” But I did not know about Clause 10 of the Bill—so I thank him for raising that.

The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, talked about the jobs that we need. Not just in his sector but in all sorts of sectors across the UK, there is a huge skills shortage and jobs shortage. He wanted to know how Skills England would operate at a regional level.

I was absolutely fascinated by the point that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made that the Government need to set up metrics for how well we are doing so that we can evaluate progress. I want to come to that at the end of my contribution. I hope that, if they do that, that metrics or evaluation will be published on a regular basis.

As a nation, we develop and prosper by nurturing, educating and training our young people. We have been very successful at developing those young people of an academic disposition but less so for those young people who want or need to follow a vocational route. At a time when we need people with particular skills and have skill gaps in many industries and businesses, we seem constantly to wrestle with the problem, slow in identifying the skills needed and even slower in providing the training and opportunities for those skills.

I am still scarred by Objective 1 in Merseyside in the 1970s. Merseyside was one of the poorest regions in Europe, measured by its GDP, and as a result it received literally millions of pounds from the EU. But in terms of training, Objective 1 money was spent on hairdressing and beauty courses. Why? Because those courses could easily attract and enrol students and give a much-needed income stream to the FE college. The college that needed the revenue did not have the financial security to develop courses that would provide the skills for the developing industries. That is, I hope, a lesson that we have now learned. I relate that historic situation because it shows that FE needs to have resources, finance and flexibility to provide skills not just for today but also for tomorrow.

We are probably not aware of the skills that are required for the future. We were not aware of AI five or 10 years ago. We probably thought that it was a Geordie expression, “Wey aye, man”. That did not go down well—I shall refrain from doing jokes; it is not my forte. We are not opposed to the Bill, but we have concerns and we would like reassurances. We also have ambitions that could be picked up by this Bill.

Currently the institute is responsible for bringing employers together to develop the apprenticeship standard and what apprentices need to learn—in short, the apprenticeship plan. They are good at this and the employer input is very important to ensure that consistency in training, assessment and outcomes. I ask the Minister: who will set the apprenticeship standard and who will regulate assessment plans developed by awarding bodies?

We need to avoid inconsistencies of outcome. We need to be reassured that Skills England develops a partnership with business skills bodies to secure that quality and consistency of apprenticeships and that there is a partnership involving employees, giving industry skills bodies a formal role in the skills system, to set standards and assessment requirements.

We were getting to the position of seeing the regions working with FE, understanding the needs of industry and understanding SMEs. We have to be sure that the new arrangements do not lead to unintended consequences and that the progress and working relationships that are beginning to be successful are not lost.

The Government need to invest in skills and training. Any business will tell you that the apprenticeship levy does not work. They often cannot get the funding they need to train staff and the ridiculous situation whereby hundreds of millions of pounds of training funding goes back to the Treasury at the end of the year if it is not spent is absolutely crazy.

We also believe that the lower minimum wage for apprentices should be scrapped and that they should be paid the same minimum wage as those other employees of their age. Apprenticeships are critical for social mobility and ensuring that people from a diverse range of backgrounds can access high-quality training. They can tackle skills gaps and help learners of all ages to upskill and reskill. The Open University, interestingly, carried out a survey that found that 72% of apprentices received a pay rise on completion, and 71% gained promotion.

When the apprenticeship scheme was conceived— I think it was by the coalition Government—it was aimed very much at 16 to 18 year-olds. But, over the years, the number of 16 to 18 year-old apprentices dropped dramatically, and they are often the ones in the most vulnerable situations. I hope that the new Government will try to ensure that there are plenty of opportunities for that age group.

To go back to the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, at the end of his contribution he made the point that if the Government got this right and delivered what they said, it could be one of the major successes of this Government, which will be lauded for generations to come. We want this to be successful. We are not here hoping that this will not work, we want it to be successful and, never mind turning around the health service, it would be absolutely amazing if they could turn around the skills sector and the skills shortages. It would be something that would be remembered for years to come.

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

Lord Storey Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Storey]

18: After Clause 8, insert the following new Clause—
“Report: functions transferred to the Secretary of StateWithin six months of the day on which this Act is passed and annually thereafter, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a report, explaining how they have discharged the functions transferred to them by virtue of this Act.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires the Secretary of State to lay a report before Parliament at regular intervals detailing how they have used powers transferred to them by virtue of the Act.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I offer my apologies for not being able to be present at the first day in Committee, but I have read the Hansard of that day.

My amendment is very similar to lots of others in the various groups, and I think they all point to the same thing, really. The Minister talked about the “narrow IfATE model”. I would have thought an executive agency within her department is a very tight model, and I can perhaps see why from her point of view, whereas on these Benches we would prefer a wider, more inclusive model. Having said that, I understand and can see the driving force behind what the Minister wants to achieve from the comments she has made. She said that the Government want

“to move away from the current, narrow IfATE model. Creating any further requirement for parliamentary approval before Skills England operates fully would frustrate the intentions of the Bill to enable a smooth transfer and the delegation of functions to Skills England”.—[Official Report, 21/11/24; col. GC 96.]

I suppose we are all anxious for progress in this area. The skills shortages are frightening. You have only to look at any particular industry. I have spoken to the construction industry, and the number of job vacancies and areas where it just cannot get skilled labour are holding back not just that industry but the country.

Given that we are where we are, and that I, no doubt like my colleagues, trotted along to the Bill office and said, “I’d like to put an amendment down on this”, to be told, “Oh no, it’s not in the scope of the Bill”—the Bill is very tightly written, so we are frustrated in that we cannot talk about or suggest for improvement some of the things in the area of skills that we wanted to—mine is a simple amendment. It simply says that the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament at regular intervals how they have used the powers transferred to them. It is a supportive and helpful amendment because you do not want, in 12 months’ or two years’ time, to say, “Do you know what? I’ve been let down by my executive agency. It has not delivered”. But if you are able to report to Parliament on a regular basis—it does not specify a time—then we can share those successes and concerns and maybe, from time to time, we can make some helpful suggestions.

I should add that I added my name to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, which I also support. I beg to move.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, this is part of a range of amendments all essentially about reporting and, as he accurately described, any number of us were wrestling with how to get something that looks like Skills England into the Bill. A way involved a reporting requirement— I was not allowed to mention Skills England in my amendment—in which I lifted some of the detail in paragraphs (a), (b), (c) and (d) from statements that the Government have made about Skills England and what they want it to be able to focus on and achieve. Hence the amendment lists:

“identification of skills gaps … the provision and funding of training to meet the skills needs of employers; … the development of occupational standards; …work with regional and local bodies to improve the skills of the workforce in England”.

I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, for managing to get in something around the green skills agenda, which I tried to get in in my amendment but failed to draft it as skilfully as he clearly was able to do in order to get that in. I also support having a specific mention of the responsibilities in climate legislation and its relationship to green skills.

As I understand it, IfATE has a requirement to report to Parliament annually. It does so well and has shown its success, so the capacity is there, assuming that IfATE’s capacity will successfully transfer into the executive agency. So I do not see this as onerous, and it is important that we as Parliament should receive a report on the additional things that IfATE does not currently cover that would be covered by Skills England.

It is, incidentally, important for Parliament to have an opportunity to scrutinise the really important work that Skills England will be able to do. The annual report is a common mechanism that we all use when we are trying to get a little more traction for Parliament, but I think it is merited in this case. I hope that, reflecting on this group and the next, which is also about reporting in slightly different ways, the Minister will be able to give some consideration as to whether this is a relatively straightforward crumb of comfort to give some of us who have been slightly anxious about the absence of Skills England in the legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

I hope I have provided sufficient reassurances of the ways in which the Government will ensure, through either Skills England or the Department for Education’s usual business, that information on skills gaps and the steps taken to address them will be made available. I hope I have provided some reassurance to noble Lords about the seriousness with which this Government take the parliamentary and public accountability of Skills England and the measures we will put in place to ensure that this is available to all and accessible for noble Lords rightly to hold Skills England and the Government to account for the delivery that we have set out. I therefore kindly ask the noble Lord, Lord Storey, to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I listened with great interest to what the Minister said and will read Hansard carefully—particularly her comments about accountability and accessibility to all. But, at this stage, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 18 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 30 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, partly because—I remind the Committee of this—I worked for City & Guilds for 20 years. I was working for it when national vocational qualifications were introduced—1990, I think—precisely to reduce the complexity in the qualification system. There are times when one feels that one has been around too long, but that was exactly it.

Those qualifications came in with levels 1 to 5 in order to be a simple way in which people could understand practical qualification levels. Levels 6 and 7, covering managerial and degree-level subjects, were then introduced as well. The qualifications were called “vocational” because we always wanted to include craft qualifications as well as technical ones. I worry now about what is happening to the encouragement of craft qualifications, which are vital to the economy of the country. I am not suggesting that we go back to NVQs again—they had their day and they went—but it worries me that memories are so short on this. It is a complex system because anything as complex as the myriad variations of employment inevitably will be so, but having a simple way in which one can measure levels of expertise seems to have some advantage to it.

This made me wonder how much discussion there has been with the awarding bodies. City & Guilds has been around for well over 100 years, as I say. Obviously, apprenticeships have been around since the Middle Ages, but I am not suggesting that we go back to then to find out what they did with them. The BTEC has been around for at least 50 or 60 years, I think. There is a mass of expertise there, yet they do not seem to be referenced or involved; I wonder why this is because they have some very useful skills to offer to this Bill.

I just felt that I needed to go down memory lane when I saw that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, had referred in his amendment to reducing

“the complexity of the qualifications system”.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I added my name to the important amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. I was fascinated to hear that he actually read the Labour manifesto; that is very impressive. I also support my noble friend Lord Addington’s amendment.

It is quite important that the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, mentioned mayoral combined authorities—the noble Lord called them pan-regional partnerships, which I had not heard before—and local skills improvement partnerships. Can the Minister tell us how those will feed into the department or how she will consult them?

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, my amendment follows on nicely from what the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said earlier. He put it very well: devolution is really good and something that we can all support, but it creates joins that we then have to knit back together. We have to consider carefully how we do that knitting together, which is what my Amendment 36B is aimed at.

I shamelessly copied Amendment 27 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, which I support, in order to do this. However, I made one slight tweak to include the regional perspective, which I mentioned in our debate on the previous group, so that pan-regional partnerships are consulted; that refers to partnerships such as the Midlands engine and the northern powerhouse.

At Second Reading, I set out my concern that local areas that are not part of a combined authority or have other devolution deals could lose out under the proposals that the Government are putting forward. I listened carefully to the Minister’s response at Second Reading, which allayed some of my concerns, but I would like to test this issue in some additional detail.

Taking the Midlands, where I live—I live in Derby—as an example, following welcome devolution in recent years, we are now blessed with two really good combined authorities. We have the West Midlands Combined Authority and, as of recently, the East Midlands Combined County Authority. Although these combined authorities cover areas of the west and east Midlands, they account for less than half the population in the Midlands region, which is around 11 million people.

As I said at the start, this highlights something of a problem with the devolution agenda. The combined authorities have been successful at working with governments to unlock additional funding for their areas, but this has meant that those living outside combined authorities have sometimes been left behind. As an example, for many years, the East Midlands has lagged behind the West Midlands on many indicators, for example when we look at transport spend per head or public investment per head of population. This will be partly remedied by the new East Midlands Combined County Authority, but many areas of the Midlands are not covered. I am concerned that the same pattern will follow with skills, so the question is: how will Skills England ensure that the approximately 6 million people in the Midlands who do not live in a combined authority area are considered?

The Minister has stated that Skills England will consult regional bodies but it would be helpful for her to clarify how that governance structure will operate; that is the subject of my amendment. Pan-regional partnerships such as the Midlands engine are set up to consider these regional issues. They would be well placed to pull together those plans and to co-ordinate combined authorities and other areas of local government in order to ensure that regional skills needs are met; they could also act as a focal point for regional skills needs in working with Skills England.

In this way, the Government can unlock the benefits of an integrated regional skills approach, flowing up from local areas to the regions and to the national view that Skills England will have, and ensure that no areas of the regions are left behind or inadequately represented. The Government could also benefit from the powerful data capabilities of pan-regional partnerships such as the Midlands Engine Observatory. This would align with the approach I set out in the previous group on regional skills hubs and the work already ongoing there. The pan-regional partnerships are helping to facilitate those regional skills efforts. It would also be a means of achieving the join-up of local skills improvement plans that the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, referred to on the previous group.