HC Deb 27 June 2000 vol 352 cc837-45

  1. '.—(1) The Council must make a plan for each of its financial years.
  2. (2) The Council must send its plan for its first financial year to the National Assembly as soon as is reasonably practicable after the year starts.
  3. (3) The Council must send its plan for any subsequent financial year of the Council to the National Assembly before the year starts.
  4. (4) A plan for a financial year must include—
    1. (a) proposals as to how the Council intends to achieve in the financial year any objectives which should be achieved in the year in conformity with directions of the National Assembly or with conditions imposed under section 47;
    2. (b) the Council's financial proposals for the year;
    3. (c) such other matters as the National Assembly specifies.
  5. (5) The National Assembly must approve the plan or require the Council to make specified alterations of it; and if alterations are required the Council must make them.
  6. (6) The Council must publish the plan as approved by the National Assembly or as altered in accordance with the National Assembly's requirements; and publication must be made at such time and in such manner as the National Assembly specifies.
  7. (7) The Council may make and publish such other plans as it thinks fit; but any such plan must not conflict with a plan for a financial year.'.—[Mr. Hanson.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. David Hanson)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Government new clause 7—Strategy: Wales.

New clause 2—Delegation of training programmes: Wales— '. The National Council for Educational Training for Wales may, in discharging its duties under sections 30 to 34, delegate to the Employment Service in Wales the contracting and management of work—based training programmes of the kind hitherto within the responsibility of the training and enterprise councils.'. New clause 3—National training opportunities network: Wales— '.The National Council for Education and Training for Wales must, in fulfilling its duties under sections 31 and 32, establish a national training opportunities information and placement network for persons aged 16 or above.'. Amendment No. 6, in clause 30, page 14, line 1, leave out from "appointing" to end of line 3 and insert— 'members to the Council the National Assembly must appoint at least one third from the private sector and at least one other member who is a training provider in Wales.'. Government amendment No. 92.

Amendment No. 2, in clause 46, page 21, line 19, at beginning insert— '. The National Assembly shall appoint regional committees in accordance with the provisions of'. Amendment No. 3, in page 21, line 19, leave out from "5" to end.

Government amendments Nos. 45 and 46.

Amendment No. 4, in schedule 5, page 80, line 5, leave out "may" and insert "shall".

Amendment No. 5, in page 80, line 5, at end insert— 'and at least half the appointments to such committees must be from the private sector, with at least one other member appointed from training providers in Wales.'. Government amendments Nos. 47 and 52.

Mr. Hanson

I will speak briefly to the Government amendments and new clauses, which I hope are largely self-explanatory. New clause 6 arises from a request from the National Assembly and from discussions with my hon. Friends for the Bill to include more explicit provisions on the planning functions for the council in Wales. It sets out the duty of the council to formulate a plan that must be approved by the National Assembly, which will have powers to require alterations to the plan. Any such alterations must be made by the council.

Amendment No. 52 arises from new clause 6, and I hope that it is acceptable to the House. New clause 7 places a duty on the council to prepare a strategy relating to its functions and to keep that strategy under review. The strategy must contain proposals as to how the council intends to achieve the objectives contained in any directions from the National Assembly. Again, I hope that those provisions are acceptable to the House.

The remaining Government amendments in the group have already been extensively debated; they relate to the Learning and Skills Council for England and give similar powers to the council in Wales. I hope they are acceptable to the Opposition, because several of them—amendments Nos. 45 to 47—relate to points made by the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) in Committee. I undertook to return to those matters on Report and have done so today. I commend the Government amendments and new clauses to the House.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) and my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) tabled new clauses and amendments that are included in the group. I shall listen to the points they make and respond in due course.

Mr. Ted Rowlands (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)

My right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) and I tabled new clauses 2 and 3 and four amendments. Although I shall try to deal with each provision as briefly as possible, they relate to matters of considerable relevance to training needs in Wales, so it is essential that I make some vital points.

New clause 2 aims to make it possible for the Employment Service to be the contracting and management agency for some of the work-based training programmes that are currently under the governance of the training and enterprise councils. We had in mind especially work-based training programmes for the creation of adult employability: the pre-vocational training, occupational skills and recruitment and training programmes for the over-25s that are currently contracted to and delivered through the TECs and training providers.

Such training programmes will better suit adults if they are linked closely to the new deal. Unlike Conservative Members, I believe that the new deal has been a great success story in our communities. It has broken with the fatalism and resignation that were left by the previous Administration and felt by many people—and not only by youngsters. They were left on the scrap-heap and were not offered meaningful training or employment opportunities.

I passionately believe that we should link training programmes for adult employability to the new deal. That is exactly what will happen in England. As I understand it, the new deal will be re-engineered in England for those aged over 25 to include what were the training and enterprise councils' training programmes. However, in Wales, the matter will remain with the National Assembly and be covered by its budget, so the programmes will not be a part of Employment Service provision. I hate to tell hon. Members and my colleagues in the National Assembly that I believe they have got it wrong in this respect—and only in this respect. England has got it right. A relationship should be created between the new deal and adult employment programmes as currently provided by the TECs, but that will disappear when the TECs disappear.

I have made this point before and the correspondence that I have received suggests there will be a new type of demarcation dispute. Because TEC budgets will go to the National Assembly and because employment services do not form an integral part of its role, the Assembly is jealously guarding its budget and the provisions for such programmes. I hope that such a petty demarcation dispute will not interfere with the best and most sensible way to deliver the programmes.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will accept new clause 2, but if he does not, will he assure us that there is nothing in the Bill to make it impossible for the Employment Service to deliver work-based training programmes in Wales? It is vital that we have that option. I fear that the National Assembly will not exercise it, which is why I seek a statutory basis for it in the Bill.

New clause 3 raises a separate and vital issue that I mentioned on Second Reading. Then, I explained that the catch-22 situation in our communities is that many employers do not offer training provision beyond NVQ 2. Many young people do not have the opportunity to train beyond that level, because work-based training programmes are not available. However, every survey that I have read suggests that we cannot have a new-tech or 21st century economy without such additional provision. How do we break through that catch-22? Because employers do not offer NVQ 3 training opportunities, how will young people in communities such as mine obtain such opportunities?

I draw an analogy with the position of a pupil in a sixth form studying A-levels and looking for a place a university. In such a case, a huge administration—the Universities Central Council on Admissions—ensures that a person with two Cs and a D can find a place at university anywhere in the country. A huge organisation is designed to find a place for a person who wishes to pursue the academic route. However, there is no equivalent for vocational training. As so often, it is a Cinderella subject.

New clause 3 suggests that the new National Council for Education and Training for Wales would have a duty to set up a network to provide a vocational equivalent of the UCCA system for people who want to pursue vocational training opportunities that are not available in their local community or that are not provided by companies in their immediate vicinity. However, those opportunities may be available elsewhere—and, in my area, along the M4 at Sony, in Bridgend. How does a youngster find out what opportunities might be available in places other than in his immediate vicinity?

11 pm

Mr. Dafydd Wigley (Caernarfon)

Information is necessary, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that if young people have to travel considerable distances in the more rural areas, there will be a need for financial assistance to enable them to do so?

Mr. Rowlands

I agree that we should expand opportunity, and that will require additional financial provision. If anything should be the subject of an objective 1-type funding scheme, it should be the proposal that I am putting forward. We need to train the infrastructure of minds and skills as well as developing the physical infrastructure in our community. Objective 1 funding could assist, promote and deliver greater training opportunities. Financial provision for travel and access is extremely important.

Many of the young people in the community of the right hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley) or in mine do not know where these opportunities lie. If they were taking A-levels and wanted a place in a university, a huge organisation would help them find that place. There is not an equivalent for those with training needs. I am trying to place a duty and responsibility on the new Welsh council, but it might be an English point, too. There is a case for establishing a training network.

Amendments Nos. 2 to 5 relate to the composition of the national council and the issue of regional committees and their composition. As for the Welsh provision, we have nothing more than a skeleton. We do not know what the structures will be below the national council. This is the new post-devolution flexi-legislation. The issue will be left to the National Assembly to determine. Hon. Members, certainly those of us who represent Welsh constituencies and know something about training, have a perfect right to prescribe ideas and views on the nature and character of the council and the structures below it.

Amendments Nos. 2 and 3 suggest that employers should constitute a third of the appointments and training providers. Those who provide training should serve on the national council. I do not know who will be the chairman. I understand, however, that the English council chairman has been announced. In Wales, there is a powerful need for a total commitment to the scheme by employers. The TECs have failed in many respects because there was not an employer commitment. By giving employers a significant role to play at national council level and in regional committees, we hope to bind Welsh employers into the entire process. By giving them the privilege of belonging, serving and being an essential part of it, we hope that that will lead to commitment, involvement and obligation.

Mr. Alun Michael (Cardiff, South and Penarth)

Does my hon. Friend accept that this matter has been debated a great length, and that there is a danger in making a test of a percentage the touchstone for the involvement of business? If the amendment were not carried, I would not want my hon. Friend to imply that the involvement of business would be any less important. Proportions can become a straitjacket. I think that everyone who has spoken on this topic over recent months has agreed with my hon. Friend's point that there is a need for business to be fully engaged and an important part of the council.

Mr. Rowlands

I accept my right hon. Friend's point. However, he probably understands and shares the view that we have a cultural tendency not to bind business into education structures. I am being rather modest in my observations in that respect, but let us consider the composition of the original education and training action group for Wales. It was dominated by the education and further education sectors, and its first report reflected that. My right hon. Friend will remember that it was as a result of the protest that followed that amendments were made to quotas to make the group more attuned to the needs of industry and employment. I believe, therefore, that that danger is present. I accept that there is a problem with prescribing, but I believe that we must send a message, loud and clear, that we want business, manufacturers and industry to be passionately and fully involved.

I come to the amendments dealing with regional structure. Once again, there is no structure below the NCETW set out in the Bill. We have no local skills councils, because we are awaiting the National Assembly's view on the role of the regions. No doubt, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Wales will tell me that we must not be prescriptive and that the right word to have is "may", as in "we may set up committees or regional offices". However, the first question asked in a glossy TEC paper that arrived in our post only this morning is: Will the new National Council have Regional Offices? to which the answer is: It is intended that four regional offices will be established across Wales. These will work closely with the local CCETs— that is, Community Consortia for Education and Training. These offices will have committees which will advice the National Council on regional policy issues related to skills, education and training. A TEC document has been issued to all hon. Members stating that there will be regional committees and regional offices, yet my amendment stating that there "shall" be regional committees is apparently not appropriate. Why should we take that from some glossy document, when we are told by Ministers here that we cannot lay down that provision in legislation?

I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will accept my amendments. I am the last person to suggest a new quango, but, a new maxi-quango having been created in the form of the NCETW, I assume that there will have to be mini-quangos below it to deliver its programmes. Maxi-quangos always give rise to mini-quangos, so, if we are to have mini-quangos, I suggest, first, that they encompass the people who have to deliver training—employers—and secondly, that they be regional bodies so that they can serve communities broader than local authority districts, which are often too small to deliver many of the programmes. I believe that there is a case for a regional structure, so why not put it in the Bill, especially as glossy TEC magazines tell us that the decisions have already been taken?

Training is vital to the future economic development of communities such as ours, but it has been the Cinderella of the system. We have to make it work and achieve our aims for the 21st century. I can think of no better way of spending objective 1 money than to make the Bill work and, by so doing, create more opportunities and a more diversely skilled community and society than we have now.

Mr. Ian Bruce (South Dorset)

As I am sure the House will be relieved to hear, I rise to speak only briefly. I wish to ask a couple of questions about new clauses 6 and 7, which will clearly be passed if the Government use their might.

What assessment has been made of the costs to the taxpayer of the plans, both in the Welsh Assembly and in the national council? Recently, hon. Members will have looked over their local council's best value plans. My local authorities appear to spend half their time creating plans, formulating them and ensuring that they are meeting statutory requirements. When the Government, at such a late stage, decide to insert additional plans in the system, they should tell the House what assessment they have made of costs.

I hope that the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) has been told by Ministers that his valuable contribution will be followed up. He has identified a matter that has already been identified by my local colleges. The Government have decided on a unified strategy for skills training. I do not resile from that. In many ways, it could be a good idea, but the Government have decided, as the hon. Member recognised, that the long-term unemployed for whom the new deal provides and who probably have the fewest skills in the entire work force should not be included in the training for which the councils are planning. In deciding how courses should be set up for new deal people and for people who are not on new deal, colleges will have two paymasters and two groups for which to plan.

The point made about Wales is also valid for England, but I shall not stray into that. I support the hon. Gentleman's argument. He was so keen to tell the House that new deal has been successful. He is clearly a man who can pick up on figures, whereas those on the Government Front Bench, even if they do not listen to the speech, seem unable to pick up on their own statistics.

If the hon. Gentleman considers the group aged between 18 and 24 who are long-term unemployed, and who are currently being helped, in the Government's terms, by new deal, he will discover that the Government currently claim to be helping more than 135,000 people in that group. If the hon. Gentleman looks back two years and examines the corresponding statistics, which are provided by the Government and the Office for National Statistics, he will find that, before the benefits of new deal were available, that group numbered 115,000. Surely even those on the Front Bench can understand that the present figure of 135,000 represents a rise.

The hon. Gentleman identified the need to use the new councils, which, after all, are being set up with taxpayers' money, to help people gain the skills that they require, so that they will no longer be long-term unemployed, and so that they will not be in a new deal scheme that creates more long-term unemployed, instead of getting them out of long-term unemployment. Surely that would be a good thing.

I hope that the Government will listen to their hon. Friend, whose valuable argument I support.

Mr. Hanson

I value our short debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) made some valuable points and I hope to reassure him on some of them.

With regard to co-operation between the new council and the Employment Service, under clause 34 the council may, for the purposes of post-16 education and training, disburse funding itself or, by arrangement with others, or by joint arrangement with others, to achieve its objectives. The latter two categories could, where appropriate and desirable, include the Employment Service in Wales in the manner set out in the new clause.

The new deal programme in Wales, which was highly praised by my hon. Friend, has not been devolved to the National Assembly, but I feel confident that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, the Assembly and I have a shared expectation that the new council in Wales and the Employment Service in Wales will work together closely and productively to ensure that we get the utmost benefit from the work of the new council and from the new deal programme.

The hon. Member for South Dorset (Mr. Bruce) showed clearly that the Conservatives still oppose the new deal and still do not recognise that it benefits people in Wales. Whatever the figures he has brought together, there has been a 61 per cent. fall in youth unemployment in Wales because of the new deal. His criticisms are not strictly accurate.

Mr. Ian Bruce

Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Hanson

I will not give way, as time is pressing and the hon. Gentleman has had his opportunity to speak. There has been a 61 per cent. fall in youth unemployment. The hon. Gentleman asked in passing about the figures and the cost of the plans. I cannot give him a specific figure for the plan, which deals with the way in which the council spends the resource, but our total budget in Wales will be in the region of £420 million next year. Obviously, the costs of preparing a plan will fall within that. Again, it is a matter for the National Assembly. The amendments are about the Assembly's powers to deliver those policy objectives in due course.

11.15 pm

I hope that my hon. Friend is reassured by the point on the new deal.

Mr. Rowlands

rose—

Mr. Hanson

I did not give way to the hon. Member for South Dorset.

Hon. Members

Give way.

Mr. Hanson

I give way to my hon. Friend.

Mr. Rowlands

I believe that what my hon. Friend has said is what I want, which is that the TECs' budget money that will now go to the National Assembly after their abolition, and, with the resultant employment problems, will be given to the council, and the council could disburse that money to the Employment Service, although the Employment Service budget is not within the National Assembly. Is that right?

Mr. Hanson

As I have explained to my hon. Friend, the position is that the council in Wales is able, where appropriate and desirable, to include the Employment Service, if it wishes, in the disbursement and undertakings that it wants to make. Where appropriate and desirable, it has the option of working closely with the Employment Service. However, the Employment Service is not devolved. What I am really indicating is more co-operative work rather than disbursements.

My hon. Friend spoke about his new clause 3. The existing careers service in Wales, under contract with the Assembly, is already empowered under the Employment and Training Act 1973 to provide a placement service for young people seeking training opportunities. Under its supervision, the current service will be developed and enhanced as part of an all-age information, advice and guidance service, and there will be a wider Wales careers service launched by the National Assembly from April 2001. I hope that that answers some of the points that my hon. Friend raised.

With regard to membership, my hon. Friend will be aware that, under clause 30, the council is due to be constituted with between 10 and 12 members. I accept his point about the commitment of employers. I hope that employers, and, indeed, other sectors of the community, will get on board and provide strong support for the council in Wales. However, if we reserve places for the private sector and employers we shall be restricting the National Assembly's choice in the matter. I hope that my hon. Friend will accept my belief that there should be a commitment from employers, but that reserving places would be too prescriptive for the National Assembly, which wants to see candidates whose experience and qualities match the needs of the public bodies which they will serve. The scrutiny by the Assembly will be important.

My hon. Friend said that he wished to see regional committees. I draw his attention to the fact that regional committees exist in the National Assembly, looking at a range of issues across the Assembly at large. If my hon. Friend's amendment were passed, he would in a sense be creating two sets of regional committees, each having functions in respect of areas of responsibility within Wales. That would lead to confusion. I hope that he will accept that, within the regional committee structure in Wales, there is an opportunity for regional input into a whole range of policies across the National Assembly, including within the councils.

Mr. Rowlands

Will the National Assembly's regional committees be the watchdogs of the regional offices of the national council? I read out the answer to the question in the TEC brochure, which arrived in the post today, saying that the offices will have committees which advise the national council on regional policies. Are they the regional committees of the Assembly or will they be specially established committees to act as watchdogs over the regional offices of what were the TECs?

Mr. Hanson

The regional committees of the National Assembly can look at any aspect, and obviously can look at the whole range of matters on policy issues. I shall happily meet my hon. Friend, as I have done before, and discuss that point in detail. I hope that, on the basis of that further offer and the assurances I have given, he will be able not to press his amendments and support the Government amendments.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

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