1: Clause 4, page 2, line 6, at end insert—
“(3B) A group of persons under subsection (3) must include a representative from an organisation that is the representative body for a sector.”
My Lords, in moving Amendment 1 I will speak also to Amendments 2, 4 and 5 standing in my name. Amendments 1 and 4 in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, mirror the amendment put down by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, in Committee, which I also put my name to. They seek to bring the expertise of sector representative bodies to the preparation of standards and assessment plans and distribute the workload so that Skills England is not drowned in the preparation and updating of standards.
I note that there is a reference to employer representative bodies in the section of the draft framework document that covers the purposes of Skills England, although it is used merely as an example. Can the Minister articulate what the block is to the Government committing to work with employer representative bodies? The Government stress the breadth of their ambition for their industrial strategy and for Skills England’s part in delivering this, so why not bring in the wider expertise capacity of employer representative bodies, both in more traditional and more modern sectors?
I turn to Amendments 2 and 5, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, has also given his support. These amendments seek to give the Government one last chance to be absolutely explicit in their commitment to employers and to those undertaking training. The text of the amendment comes from the original IfATE legislation and so has been thoroughly tested not just in debate in both Houses but also in real life.
I am told by those who have been involved in the governance of IfATE that the duty to
“have regard to the reasonable requirements of … industry, commerce, finance, professions and other employers regarding education and training, and … persons who …. wish to undertake education and training”
has been a very serious duty in relation to the approval of a standard under new subsections (3) or (6).
My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 1 and 4 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. Before speaking to them, I thank the Minister for her very positive engagement with those of us involved with the Bill. That includes several meetings and her letter last week describing the three amendments that she has tabled—all of which represent welcome improvements, even if they do not go quite as far as I might like—and including a draft of the proposed framework document for Skills England. Having said that, I remain concerned about what impact the transfer of IfATE into the DfE will have on the vital engagement of employers in standards and assessment processes, and about the proposed status of Skills England as an executive agency, albeit an arm’s-length body within the DfE.
Amendments 1 and 2 relate to the organisations which should be involved or taken into account by the Secretary of State when preparing apprenticeship standards. Amendment 1 requires that a group of persons preparing such standards should include a person from the representative body for the relevant sector; it would be even better to spell out that this should be the representative skills body. Many industry sector skills bodies have played a crucial and leading role in working with IfATE to prepare standards and assessment plans for their sectors. It will be important to continue this under the new regime, not least because of the positive effect it could have in leveraging valuable support for Skills England from such bodies.
Recognised sector skills bodies, such as Energy & Utility Skills for the energy and utilities sector, already work closely with employers in their sectors to identify needs and translate them into standards and training pathways in England and across the devolved Administrations, ensuring UK-wide consistency. Through their links with employers, they can respond with speed and agility to the developing skills needs of their sectors, while ensuring consistency with existing qualifications and apprenticeships across the whole UK. They work closely and effectively with IfATE, thereby ensuring that employer views are properly represented in standards and assessment plans approved by IfATE while minimising its workload.
My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendments 2 and 5, to which I have added my name. I declare the fact that I am a teacher. I join other noble Lords in thanking the Minister and her team very much for our collegiate and friendly meetings and for their letters on the draft framework. They have gone a long way in calming a lot of the fears that I had about this Bill and about the lack of information. There is still a lot that has not been said, but I am an optimist. I genuinely believe that the Government are going in the right direction but, rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, I would like to hear a little more.
My Lords, when a framework Bill comes before the House, you expect to have a series of amendments such as these, asking for more information. I thank the Minister for answering some of those questions, but the fact of the matter is that this is still a framework Bill. I hope that we will get a little more detail when she responds to this group, but we really need a bit more information before we assess a piece of legislation. I thank her for what she has done, but I hope she will take back to her department that the original approach on this really was not good enough.
My Lords, I echo much of what has been said already, including appreciating everything the Minister has done to meet some of the points and criticisms raised in Committee. However, Amendments 1, 2, 4 and 5 are important because it is very important to have employers and representative bodies in the Bill.
I would like to look back in history to the period in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, when apprenticeships in this country were in raging decline and the quality of much of what was being called an apprenticeship was very low. All three major parties have been involved in turning that around, and we are in a much better place than we were in the early 2000s, let alone the 1990s.
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However, the statutes that set up what was originally the IfA then IfATE were important. If something is buried deep inside the Department for Education and there is no statutory responsibility or declaration that employers are at the heart of apprenticeships and need to be there, and if you do not take explicit account of professional bodies and unions—all the major institutional players that determine whether a vocational training system will work—then you are laying out trouble for the future.
On the whole, I am not a huge enthusiast for putting everything in primary legislation, but on this occasion these amendments are correct. We should have these commitments in the Bill and not merely buried in later framework documents. I therefore support them.
My Lords, I thank all Members who have been involved in the consideration of this Bill for being willing to meet with me and share concerns. I am glad that people have recognised that we have made progress as a result of that process.
I think that we all agree that effective skills provision is critical to boosting growth and spreading opportunity to all parts of the country. Through this Bill, the Government are taking steps to enable the rapid development and delivery of high-quality training aligned to current and future skills needs. For this to be possible, we need to ensure that the processes for developing and approving training are sufficiently flexible to respond to diverse and changing skills needs across the economy and the wide range of different occupational specialisms. This Bill, therefore, introduces specific flexibilities intended to make the system more responsive and more focused on the needs of employers and other key stakeholders.
For those who argue, quite rightly, that we should listen to employers, I say that it is precisely because of what employers have told us about the need for speed and flexibility that we have introduced the provisions in this Bill. As I tried to do in Committee, I also reassure noble Lords about the absolutely central role that employers will play in the work of Skills England. Building on the work of IfATE, employers will continue to play a critical role in the design and delivery of apprenticeships and technical education. It is crucial that those reflect the needs of employers and that employers have confidence in them. Skills England will ensure that there is a comprehensive suite of apprenticeships, training and technical qualifications for individuals and employers to access, all of which will be informed by what employers and other partners tell us that they need.
I thank Minister for her remarks and thank all noble Lords who spoke in this short debate. I followed some of her argument but not all of it, so I will ask for a little clarification. First, on my comments about the framework being a draft, it is clearly a long document, and thought has gone into it. I was just trying to make the point that, when you look at the CEO responsibilities, it talks about responsibilities to other groups but not employers. The fact that it is a draft—I hope the Minister might give a little here—is also an opportunity to use some of these amendments, which could be woven into a final draft.
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The Minister talked about the importance of flexibility and quality, which I think we are supportive of across the House, and the need for the Government to be as responsive as possible. I also heard her say that the approach will mirror how IfATE works in terms of engagement with employers. But where I got slightly lost is that there is a distinction in relation to Amendments 1 and 4, which, one could argue, would put additional burdens on the Secretary of State and the department: will they really make things less agile or will they give a national perspective and agility, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said? We can argue about that. But I do not understand why the Minister argues that Amendments 2 and 5 add burdens, because those were in the existing IfATE legislation. Can she clarify that? Clearly, none of us wants to slow things down or put in bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake, but it would be helpful to have in the next draft of the framework document those explicit references to having regard to that range of employers, which gives the Secretary of State infinite flexibility. I would be grateful if the Minister commented on that.
If I remember rightly from my previous reading of the framework document, the first or second page of the current draft explicitly mentions employers. Although the noble Baroness is right that that is not necessarily reiterated in the formal functions of the chief executive, their role is of course running the organisation and delivering the aims and objectives. Obviously, there will be reiterations in the framework document. I am sure that Skills England itself, and the board when it is set up, will want to ensure, as will those with whom they are agreeing the nature of the framework document, that the explicit role of employers is properly demonstrated within that. The framework document will then be a public document that people will be able to look at and hold Skills England to account on—through myself as the Minister and through the CEO and others—in its delivery and its relationship with employers.
On the point about the other amendments, my argument was that they duplicate in a narrower way duties that already lie with the Secretary of State by virtue of her public law duty, and therefore there is already a requirement that those functions would be executed and that the Secretary of State would need to consider and balance those factors in making decisions. I hope that the noble Baroness feels that that is sufficient assurance and feels able to withdraw her amendment.
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The Minister will understand very well the influence that government policy has on employers. Recently, the Government announced that level 7 apprenticeships would no longer be eligible for the levy and there are question marks over the funding of some level 6 apprenticeships. This policy had been trailed for some time. If we look at the impact on recent apprenticeship starts, levels 6 and 7 saw starts rise by 10.9% as employers scramble to lock in funding ahead of the proposed changes. However, starts at levels 2 and 3 and the absolute level of under-19s participating in apprenticeships declined. So, while the Secretary of State celebrated the overall increase in apprenticeship starts of 1.3%, the building blocks of this rise are exactly the ones that the Government are removing. There is a real risk that the changes they propose, with the move to a growth and skills levy, will result in a drop in the number of people undertaking these qualifications, as funding for existing high-quality qualifications is removed and newer ones are perhaps not made the immediate priority for employers, particularly given the likely impact of employers’ national insurance contribution increases on recruitment into lower-paid roles.
All of this matters because the framework document is, at best, vague and, at worst, silent on the involvement of employers. There are some statements in the section on aims, saying that employers will be engaged in the preparation of occupational standards, but it does not say how. The rest of the document, particularly the section on the responsibilities of the chief executive, does not refer to this. It focuses rather on their role as accounting officer in relation to the board and the department, with no mention of employers.
There are broad references in the section on the purposes of the new agency and the reference I mentioned earlier in brackets to employer representative bodies but, if I were an employer, I would be concerned and would want an explicit reassurance from the Minister about my role going forward. I urge the Minister either to explain why employers are so much less visible in the framework document or to agree that this amendment would fit best within the Bill or, at the very least, in the next draft of the framework document. I hope that she can commit to that today. If I may, I will speak to her Amendments 3 and 6 after she has spoken to them. I beg to move.
I also support Amendment 2, which broadens the range of bodies to whose interests the Secretary of State must have regard. Both amendments seek to ensure that the central role of employers and other relevant bodies is properly and fully reflected in the Bill.
Amendment 3 in the Minister’s name—I will speak to it briefly now rather than standing up again later—addresses the issue that I and others raised in Committee about spelling out the circumstances in which the Secretary of State might herself prepare a standard, rather than a group of persons. The amendment requires the publication only of matters to be taken into account in deciding whether to make such a decision rather than specific criteria, but I welcome it as far as it goes.
Amendments 4 to 6 raise essentially—almost exactly—the same issues as the previous three but in relation to the preparation of apprenticeship assessment plans rather than occupational standards. All I will say is: ditto. Again, I support all three of them, particularly Amendment 4, which requires a person from the representative skills body for a sector to be included in the group of persons developing a standard for that sector, for the same reasons as I have given for Amendments 1 to 3.
As I have said on several occasions about the functions that are being transferred, and in response to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, the default position will continue to be that groups of persons, including employers, are responsible for preparing standards and apprenticeship assessment plans. In other words, what is proposed in this Bill maintains the same focus on employers as in the original Act setting up IfATE.
What is more, we have the experience of how Skills England has been operating in shadow form. We have Skills England’s first report, which provided a very important springboard for Skills England to engage in further dialogue between employers, unions, providers, experts, regional bodies and the Government to interrogate, corroborate and build our shared understanding of what skills the economy needs. The assessment of skills needs, including the needs of employers in different sectors, will be continued in Skills England’s second report, which is due in early 2025. In every case that noble Lords have talked about, I am absolutely clear—and we have already seen evidence from Skills England—that employers, representatives of sector skills groups and employer representative bodies should be, will be, and are already being, engaged by Skills England.
The question is whether these amendments act against the wish of the Government, and, I believe, of other noble Lords, to ensure that we are doing this in the most speedy and appropriate way. It is vital that the Bill does not lose its ability to deliver this change—the change to be more responsive and more focused on the needs of employers and key stakeholders—by taking on amendments which will slow down Skills England and, in some cases, make it slower and more cumbersome, with more prior requirements than IfATE’s current processes. Any such burden would impact the wider skills system and hinder its contribution to the growth and opportunity missions that are important to this Government.
In Committee, during the debates on Clauses 4 and 5, noble Lords raised concerns about the membership of groups of persons formed to create standards and assessment plans, as has been repeated today. I outlined how, at present, there are no statutory criteria that prescribe the make-up of these groups. In other words, it is not the case that IfATE already has in legislation specific named representatives that need to form these groups. However, IfATE is under a duty to publish information about matters it will consider when deciding whether to approve groups of persons to develop occupational standards and apprenticeship assessment plans. In this legislation, that duty is being transferred to the Secretary of State unchanged. That level of transparency, because of this Bill and the transfer of functions, will be part of the functioning of Skills England.
Amendments 1 and 2 would, however, prescribe in legislation that a group of persons that prepares an occupational standard or an assessment plan must include a representative from an organisation that is the representative body for a sector. I spoke in Committee about the risks of introducing new constraints on the structure of these groups with criteria in primary legislation. They would make the process for forming groups slower and more onerous. I do not think it is in anyone’s interest—not least learners or employers—to incur such delays. They could prevent the membership of the group reflecting specific factors important for its work. To specify sector representative bodies or any specific member of the group of persons would prioritise certain people or bodies over the expertise of others.
Clauses 4 and 5 create a power for the Secretary of State to prepare a standard or an apprenticeship assessment plan themselves, where satisfied that it would be more appropriate for them to do so than a group of persons. In Committee, noble Lords expressed concerns about this new power and how it will operate—understandably, given the arguments that have been made. In previous exchanges, I set out why it is important that this additional flexibility is built into the system: to respond to the particular skills needs of different occupations. I also set out that, in practice, it will remain the default for groups of persons to prepare standards and apprenticeship assessment plans.
However, I recognise that this flexibility must also be balanced against transparency. In Committee and today, the noble Baronesses, Lady Barran, Lady Garden and Lady McGregor-Smith, and the noble Lords, Lord Aberdare, Lord Hampton and Lord Addington, all spoke on the clauses about the power for the Secretary of State to prepare a standard or an assessment plan. I listened carefully to the points made. As such, and in recognition of arguments put forward by noble Lords during the passage of the Bill to date, government Amendments 3 and 6 will be proposed today.
The amendments will create new duties on the Secretary of State to publish information about matters they will take into account when deciding whether it would be more appropriate for them, rather than a group of persons, to prepare occupational standards and assessment plans. These amendments will result in powers in the Bill being subject to equivalent transparency as powers being transferred to the Secretary of State from IfATE. To reiterate the point I made earlier, there will not be less statutory requirement for employer engagement in the Bill, but the equivalent to what is in the legislation governing IfATE.
The amended Bill therefore provides for consistent transparency throughout. It will mean that the Secretary of State will be under a duty to publish information on the matters that will be taken into account when making decisions in three areas: first, on whether to approve a group of persons to prepare a standard or assessment plan; secondly, on whether to approve a standard or assessment plan; and, thirdly, as a result of government Amendments 3 and 6, on whether it is more appropriate for the Secretary of State to prepare a standard or assessment plan, rather than a group of persons.
Amendments 4 and 5 would create that statutory duty on the Secretary of State to have due regard to the reasonable requirements of employers and those who may wish to undertake training when considering whether to approve occupational standards and assessment plans, where they have been developed by a group of persons. The Secretary of State is already subject to a general public law duty, which requires them to take into account all relevant considerations before taking decisions relating to the functions for which they are responsible. There is therefore already a requirement that, when executing the functions described in the Bill, the Secretary of State considers and balances factors such as those outlined in the noble Baroness’s amendment. In fact, the public law duty includes, but is broader than, the factors listed in the proposed amendment.
I recognised the concerns of noble Lords that we were more explicit about the aims, objectives and governance of Skills England. That is why I reference again to noble Lords Skills England’s first published report, the documents published and the exchanges made during the passage of the Bill, including the draft framework document that I shared with Members of the Committee who had particularly focused on this. The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, says that it is just a draft; it is, because the framework document itself needs to be approved by the board of Skills England, but it is a pretty full draft and very much aimed at reassuring noble Lords about the approach Skills England will take and the nature of the organisation, which is what I was asked for more information about. We have also been clear that a fundamental part of Skills England’s role is to ensure that technical qualifications and apprenticeships meet the needs of both employers and learners.
The amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, are therefore well considered but, we would argue, duplicative of existing duties on the Secretary of State, commitments made about the purpose of Skills England, and the further evidence in additional information I have provided for noble Lords. The existing duty to take into account all relevant considerations will be fulfilled by Skills England and through the considered approach to create Skills England as an executive agency, which we will return to in the next group of amendments, when I hope I will be able to respond to some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, as well.
I therefore hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and other noble Lords are reassured that her concerns are already addressed. I hope she agrees not to press her amendments, so that we can ensure that flexibility and speed of response to the skills challenges that our country faces and enable Skills England to start doing that as quickly as possible.