Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2021-07-06
Topic: Mixed Topics
William Fletcher-Vane (Non-Affiliated, Unknown): 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.