HC Deb 20 June 1989 vol 155 cc135-6
6. Mr. Lofthouse

To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what steps he is taking to encourage employers to participate in the industrial training boards when these boards no longer raise a statutory levy.

Mr. Nicholls

I have asked the chairman of each ITB to bring forward proposals for future arrangements that command the support of employers in the industry.

Mr. Lofthouse

Is the Minister satisfied that employers will respond to the voluntary levy? Does he realise that many will rely on other firms to pay the levy and then poach their apprentices, as I remember the Central Electricity Generating Board doing in respect of British Coal employees in the 1960s?

Mr. Nicholls

While I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's concern, the evidence is to the contrary, because many non-statutory training organisations have the active support of employers. Over the past couple of years, employers in a number of industries that did not have statutory arrangements before banded together to organise training.

Mr. Sayeed

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is absurd to suggest a uniform training levy regardless of the size or needs of the individual company?

Mr. Nicholls

My hon. Friend is entirely right to harken to a theme of the White Paper "Employment in the 1990s", in which we made the point that the formalised structure of an industrial training board complete with a levy-raising power does not deliver the goods. That is why we made the proposals we did in the White Paper.

Mr. Tony Lloyd

How does the Minister seriously square his assertion that everything in the training garden will be lovely under the voluntary system with the comments of the Federation of Master Builders—hardly a Labour organisation—that the power of ITBs to collect a levy would not have been given at the time that it was had the voluntary system met national training requirements?

If he thinks that that proposition is out of date, how does he square his belief with his own Manpower Services Commission's research showing that 79 per cent. of employers would not contribute more financial resources voluntarily if asked to do so?

Mr. Nicholls

If the hon. Gentleman were entirely right in his observations there would be no cause for increasing the number of skilled personnel within the construction industry, because there would be a full complement of trained people willing and available. Clearly that is not the case. We made the point in the White Paper that special circumstances may apply in respect of the construction and engineering industry training boards. Proposals for all ITBs are being received from employers who wish to make particular points, and they will be borne in mind.