INDUSTRIAL TRAINING BILL

HL Deb 06 February 1964 vol 255 cc277-307

4.24 p.m.

Debate on Second Reading resumed.

LORD CHAMPION

My Lords, to get back to the Industrial Training Bill, it seems such a long time since the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, introduced this Bill, that I had nearly forgotten what it was all about, but I have certainly not forgotten the fact that the noble Viscount gave us a clear exposition of the Bill itself. Who better than he to expound the virtues of this Bill, such as they are? I understand, from Mr. Godber's speech in the other place, that the Bill owes its origin to the drive and initiative of the noble Viscount. As a parent, he ought to be able to tell us something about his child, and certainly this afternoon he has clearly expounded his Bill.

Both of the Ministers in charge of the Bill were formerly Government spokesmen on agriculture. It was my task in another place to oppose them from the Opposition Front Bench, and I came to respect the high qualities of both of them. I am sure that we shall follow the progress of this Bill, when it becomes an Act and if by any chance either of the two Ministers remains in a position of power, to see how he carries out its provisions. I notice that, by a coincidence, I am sandwiched between the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, and the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, who also was a Minister of Agriculture and opposite whom I had the pleasure of speaking.

I regard this Bill as another step forward in national economic planning, as another indication of the acceptance, even by a Tory Government, of the hard fact that the future prosperity of Britain necessitates a great deal of guidance, even interference (though we may not like the word), in the affairs of industry. Although I should not have thought it possible twenty years ago, I think it can be said to-day that the whole conception of planning is becoming a diminishing area of controversy. Indeed, in the statement we have just heard about the Channel Tunnel, this word "planning" came out in a number of places. The fault I find with this Government is that, though realising that economic planning is unavoidable, their steps towards it are too hesitant. They are still too afraid of firmly grasping the nettle. The result is that things that were necessary ten years ago are only being done to-day, when they are seen to be clearly inescapable.

The noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, himself admitted that we had been lagging in this matter of skilled manpower for a great number of years. He pointed out, rightly, that there is a need for a vast expansion of our skilled labour force. Newsom, Crowther and Robbins have all pointed to this fact, and they have all made their various recommendations of how to meet it on the educational side. N.E.D.C. assume conclusively that without such an expansion one of the prime conditions necessary to foster economic growth cannot be met. Without it, our competitive position will deteriorate, we shall fall farther and farther behind and our struggle for even the small figure of a 4 per cent. rate of growth will fail, and fail miserably.

I suggest, as the noble Viscount himself admitted, that Government intervention in this matter has been necessitated by the failure of employers, with certain notable exceptions, among whom I am glad to place the nationalised industries, to tackle this serious job of education. That so many of them have failed in the past is perhaps understandable. After all, why should one employer pay for the training of craftsmen if experience has shown him that he can poach the products of another's training expenditure? On the other hand, why should one firm train people only to see them drift away into the employment of a firm not so responsibly minded?

There is, too, the fact that, in all too many instances in the past, employers have regarded their apprentices as a cheap form of labour and have provided all too little in the way of adequate training for the apprentices they took on. In those firms, if the apprentices ever became craftsmen, it was as a result of an almost accidental picking up as they went along or because they happened to have the good luck to find real craftsmen to help them. I am hoping that this Bill will make it impossible for employers to shirk the responsibility which is clearly theirs.

If the employers have a clear responsibility in this matter, I am sure that the trade unions have a matching responsibility. For some of these trade unions, by firmly restricting the number of apprentices in certain crafts—even though it was done out of the fear of unemployment—have kept our skilled labour force very much lower than it ought to be. It is true, too, that all too many of the unions were interested in keeping competition for jobs down, rather than in ensuring proper training for the young apprentices. But, as in the case of the employers, there are some notable exceptions and the general picture of trade union acceptance of better schemes is continually improving.

Our job now, however, is not to wag an admonitory finger at either employers or trade unions for their past deficiencies, but by encouragement, and by the use of the powers contained in this Bill, to get them to co-operate with the State in this great task of meeting our future skilled manpower requirements. Here we have to ask ourselves: how does this Bill face up to the requirements? It is clearly an enabling Bill which with a few strokes gives the outlines and leaves to the Central Training Council, the boards, the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Education the task of filling in the details. To change the metaphor, it is a skeleton which needs (if I may adopt the horrible term used by the noble Earl, Lord Jellicoe, two days ago in this House) "fleshing out". I should have thought that this type of Bill was just about right for the purpose. For we are to some extent in this matter feeling our way; although, of course, the Bill is to a large extent based upon the experience of some of the best firms in this matter of the training of apprentices, of craftsmen and of others.

Starting with the boards, I am bound to say that it appears to me that the task to be given to them is truly a colossal one. For their job is not just the training of apprentices, as apprenticeships have been understood in the past: they are responsible for the training of technicians, craftsmen and operatives. If anyone wants a definition of those terms it is to be found in the White Paper, Better Opportunities for Technical Education. I must admit that in the past I have been a little woolly about them, and, judging by the way they are commonly used, so are many others. I gather, too (although I do not think the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, mentioned this), that they might, and probably will, even have the task of training for management. That possibility was mentioned in another place, and I hope that, with such a vast field to cover and such a great job to be done, the Minister will be able to find the exceptional man required to tackle a job of this nature.

These boards will have to decide the size of the levy to be imposed on employers, satisfy the Minister in this regard and squeeze out of the Ministry the grants and facilities they will require to enable them to carry out their training functions. Despite the explanation of the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, I find the financial provisions in relation to all this a little confusing, and I am certain, even if the provision of money is eventually on a fifty-fifty basis, as between the Ministry of Labour and industry, industry's contribution is going to be a very big one. It will mean a considerable levy on industry as a whole, and I should think it will be the job of the Minister to ensure that it is not a crippling one on some industries. What has the Minister in mind in this connection? Is he thinking in terms of a 50 per cent. grant by the State when these boards get going; or what? Is the £50 million that he talked about a pump-primer, or is it to be a once-and-for-all payment, after which the boards will themselves have to find the money? These are questions that I still feel have not been cleared up.

Somehow there will have to be a marrying of the efforts of the boards with the educational facilities provided by the Ministry of Education. How is this to be done? Is it going to be done through the educational representatives on the board? There will certainly have to be the closest co-operation between the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Labour. Indeed, some of my expert friends are not sure that this whole field of industrial training ought not to be brought within the function of the Ministry of Education, with the Ministry of Labour brought in in the more limited industrial aspects. For my own part, I think the decision here is just about right: that it should be with the Ministry of Labour, because, after all, the Minister of Labour is closely in touch with both trade unions and industry generally, and will, I think, have a greater understanding of them than the Minister of Education, separated, as he is bound to be, from the industrial side of the life of the country.

Is the Minister going to ensure that there is fairness in relation to the matter of the levy as between one industry and another? It may well happen, it seems to me, that one board may seek to spend too little and do too little, while another may seek to spend too much and do too much. That might result in unfairness as between industry and industry, and clearly the Minister, sitting where he does, will have to exercise his function in this connection.

Sitting over the boards in an advisory capacity there is to be the Central Training Council. I take it that it is expected to advise the boards and also the Minister of Labour. Clearly, this Council, like the boards, will need to be composed of men of very high calibre, whose advice will not be lightly disregarded either by the boards or by the Minister. For there will be some pretty knotty problems to be solved in connection with this matter of industrial training. Is this Council going to advise the boards on demarcation problems? It seems to me obvious that there are going to be serious problems as between industry and industry—for example: why should one industry pay for the training of workers who they know full well will, in so many cases, be employed in other industries? If, for example, I.C.I. is attached and pays this levy to a board which trains chemical workers, who is going to train the engineers and electrical craftsmen that I.C.I. must employ? Why should the engineers in electrical industries pay for their training? If anybody is clear about this aspect—and I noted what the noble Lord said in reply to my noble friend Lord Shackleton—certainly I am not.

In this connection, I see that one of my honourable friends in another place, a man who is particularly knowledgeable about technical education, suggested that in the sort of case I have cited it might be advisable to secure that some form of contribution is made by a firm to another board whose task it is to train the skilled workers it requires. In my example, this would mean that I.C.I. would have to make some sort of per capita contribution to the electrical and engineering boards. That is a bit complicated, and I admit it, but it is certainly something that is worth thinking about.

What is to be the function of this Council in relation to the future skilled manpower needs of the nation as a whole? Will it be expected to co-operate closely with the manpower research unit, or whatever body will be entrusted with the task of forecasting the pattern of the nation's need for skilled workers in the various industries, some of which, of course, are already established, and some of which are only just emerging? Such a forecast may well be imprecise, and probably will be, but efforts based on the broad proportions of such a forecast are likely to go nearer to meeting our requirements than a chance working of our existing system. If the Council is to co-operate with some planning body, will it be able to so strongly advise—and I have underlined those words in my notes—the boards that they will feel compelled to arrange for the training of workers far in excess of the immediate requirements of particular industries? Or, will the C.T.C. advise the Minister, who himself would have to use his powers to secure the compliance with the manpower needs as forecast for the country as a whole? Somebody has to exercise the planning function of ensuring that the right amount of skilled manpower resources is available in the sector where they will be most needed.

Yesterday, the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, said that the Manpower Research Unit would have to co-operate very closely with N.E.D.C., and I am sure he was absolutely right about that. But it is absolutely vital also that such a body as the Central Training Council shall have to co-operate closely with N.E.D.C. or the manpower research unit. In this connection, it seems to me that the powers to be given to the boards to enter into contracts of service or apprenticeships with persons might be of great value, and, of course, in other connections, too. This would mean that a boy might be apprenticed to a whole industry. This would be particularly useful in the case of any industry composed of small units, each of which would be unable to secure and maintain adequate training facilities. In the United States of America, I understand that this form of apprenticeship is entered into by the building industry. In addition to building here, I think of agriculture as a possibility, for I would say that agriculture is as much in need of properly trained manpower as any other industry. I sincerely hope that the noble Lord, Lord Walston, will speak and tell us something of his ideas on this subject this afternoon.

Then there is the vital matter of retraining. The Minister rightly stressed this. I say it is vital because the more the pattern of our industry changes under the impact of automation and the rest, the more will the retraining of the redundant workers become necessary. I should like to ask the Minister what part the Central Training Council and the boards will play in this. Or does the Minister still think in terms of this continuing to be a matter solely for Government training centres? If it is to be done by both, or all three, how is it to be apportioned and paid for? Whichever way it is done, the training or retraining of adults must be accelerated enormously if we are to deal with the problem of the declining industries.

I will not weary the House with figures on this point this afternoon, but if Members want some for the purpose of assessing our total efforts, they are to be found in the N.E.D.C. Report on Conditions Favourable to Faster Growth. The figures given there show that in our effort in adult training and retraining, by comparison with the small country of Sweden or the large country of the United States of America our effort is positively derisory. In this matter we are badly dragging our feet.

Most of my remarks this afternoon in the short time I have been speaking have been directed to what is broadly called industry, and I am conscious of the fact that in commerce there is as much need for trained workers as in general industry. In this connection, I sincerely hope that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, will give us the benefit of his firm's experience, for they, I understand, have an excellent training scheme. But there are too few training schemes for workers in commerce, and many of the points that I have tried to make here in relation to industry, as a whole, have equal validity in relation to commerce.

This is a small Bill, but a vast subject. It attempts not merely to face up to the task of making up for past deficiencies in our training methods, but to reach forward to the requirements of industry ten or twenty years hence. It tries to lay the foundations, even though they do not look too solid at this moment. But I think that is to be expected in the circumstances of this difficult matter.

I have asked a lot of questions. I believe that on this sort of subject it is vital that one should ask questions, because there must be much mind clearing by everyone concerned, including Ministers. Certainly all those concerned with this matter are anxious to know a number of things, and I hope we shall have some of the answers to-day. Clearly, some of the answers cannot possibly emerge until the boards have been set up and the Central Training Council itself has been set up. But having asked the questions and, I hope, put a few worthwhile points, I can assure the noble Viscount in charge of this Bill in this House that although we shall have to examine it further on Committee stage, we will not in any way unduly delay this Bill. We want to see it on the Statute Book as, I am sure, noble Lords on the other side of the House do. Like the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, I commend this Bill to the House.

4.48 p.m.

VISCOUNT AMORY

My Lords, it is a great personal pleasure to me to find myself following the noble Lord, Lord Champion, because, as he implied earlier, some five, six or seven years ago he and I used to cross an occasional sword. Although we used to hurl darts at one another with great eagerness, I think he will agree with me that our darts were not of the poisoned variety. I can assure him to-day that I have no desire whatever to draw any of his blood, because I find myself wholly in agreement with the excellent speech, if I may say so, that he has just made.

I am venturing to speak shortly to your Lordships this afternoon, because in, perhaps, my most respectable days, for nearly twenty years I was actively concerned with the management of a factory. I should like to give a very warm welcome to this Bill. I know how near the heart of my noble friend Lord Blakenham this matter has been, and it is owing to his enthusiasm and tenacity that the Bill is before your Lordships to-day. I should like also to say how much I am looking forward to hearing my noble friend Lord McCorquodale of Newton later in the debate, because he also knows a great deal about these matters.

I own that I should have preferred myself that industry had done this job without the necessity of Government intervention. I was one of those who hoped, after the Carr Committee, that that would happen, but after some improvement, then, for a bit, the rate of progress once more began to falter. Many of the bigger firms have been playing their part, and the difficulty has been concentrated mainly, I think, on the medium and smaller firms.

May I say how fair I thought the noble Lord, Lord Champion, was when I understood him to say, and certainly I would say, too, that the responsibility for our relative lack of success must be shared to some extent by both sides of industry, though the prime responsibility for the actual organisation of the training clearly falls on the employers. But, in any event, surveying the progress, or lack of progress, to date, I am quite clear myself that unless we are going seriously to handicap our efforts for expansion over the years ahead, we must set our sights higher, and it has become a matter of urgency to see that we get progress over a broader front than we have in the past. So I am wholly persuaded that the Government were right in their decision that the circumstances call now for positive action and participation through Government-sponsored agencies.

As regards the need for better training, if we are going to make full use of our national resources of manpower there can be no argument at all. The only question is how it can best be done. Would it be true to say that the kinds of training fall into three main categories? First, craft training; secondly, what one might call technical training—I am thinking of the kind of training for those numerous young men one sees in modern factories nowadays walking about in white coats with mysterious bits of paper in their hands. They know what they are doing, and they are a vital part of modern organisation. The third category is in the broadly managerial field.

I remember years ago, when I was a Minister in the Board of Trade, that we were concerned about the location of a big new industrial development which was foreshadowed, and I remember the chairman coming to see me and my asking him, looking ahead to the completion of the scheme, what sort of proportion he would envisage his manpower would be as between black-coated workers and manual workers. I remember how surprised I was those many years ago when he said, "Well, by the time these plants are completed I would expect that if we included white-coated workers with the black-coated workers we should want about 50 per cent. of each". That was a far higher proportion of black and white-coated workers to manual workers than we envisaged in those days as normal. But it is getting very close to that to-day. The purely manual workers are being replaced more and more by machines, but leaving skilled craftsmen—machine builders, toolmakers, repairers and maintenance men as a vitally important, continuing element in modern industrial organisation. Clearly, it is no good installing complex machines, electronically controlled, unless those machines are properly looked after and serviced by men who are up to the job.

Compared with the United States, I would think that as regards management training we just cannot hold a candle to them at present. As regards technical training, I think in the numbers we are turning out we are not yet as near what is required as they are. When it comes to craft apprenticeship training, in quality I think we beat them hollow. The problem is that we do not turn out enough.

Coming to the machinery of this Bill, it is clearly an enabling Bill, as it should be, and I am very glad to note, running right through the Bill, the theme of flexibility and discretion and the breadth of scope which the Minister is proposing to leave to the boards. I think that must be right. As regards the Central Training Council, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Champion, implied, the information we have as to what it will do is a little vague at present. Perhaps that is inevitable but it is rather difficult to see at this stage whether it will play an important part or, as sometimes has happened with other legislation, will become a body without much power or real influence. I hope that it will be the former and not the latter, because I believe there is an important job of inspiration and co-ordination to be done from the centre if the momentum and impetus is to be maintained. Therefore, I welcome the inclusion of a Central Training Council.

I hope, when it comes to the detailed composition of boards, that the Minister will remember that local government is a very big employer, and that it will not be unrepresented in some way or another on these boards. The real prob lem I should think, however, will arise in practice from the tremendous complexity of industry, a complexity which has often in the past proved the despair of the most able civil servants in trying to divide industry into a number of tidy, separate compartments. I think this is the point which was in the mind of the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, when he intervened just now. I wonder how many boards will turn out ultimately to be necessary if the whole ground is to be covered.

Then, of course, there are the complexities which arise from the overlapping skills. They look very formidable indeed. Thinking back to my own factory days, in that one factory I think we employed about 1,500 people and we really covered at least three separate technical industries. The problem now will be, I suppose, how to see that the field is covered without the number of boards becoming unmanageable and how the geographic dispersal of units across the whole country in the same industry will be satisfactorily brought to a focus under the boards.

All those are quite formidable practical difficulties. I think perhaps the anxiety I feel most is the risk lest the administrative organisation may become rather top-heavy and very costly in supervisory manpower. We shall have to be very watchful to see that the real job of practical training is not smothered by a heavy blanket of bureaucracy and that the financial cost is not burdened, as a result, by an excessive overhead expense. I am sure the Minister will be alive to that as one of the practical dangers we must watch against. Clearly, the achievements of these boards will depend on the drive and enthusiasm they will impart to their work. Therefore, the method of recruitment of the members of the boards is going to be important. It will not be an easy task to find a sufficient number of people with the necessary practical experience who will have the time to devote to this important work.

My Lords, I was very glad to hear what my noble friend said about the partnership that is envisaged between the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Education. Clearly that is right, and personally I believe, as I think does the noble Lord, Lord Champion, that the decision that the Minister of Labour should be the predominant authority there is right. I believe that that is the best plan. I hope that the fullest possible use will be made by the boards of the excellent technical colleges which are now growing up fairly rapidly all over the country. I have been amazed and delighted at the success of a technical college in my own local town, covering East Devon, which was built, in a very modest way, four years ago. It was all rather experimental for a rural area and originally catered for, I think, 85 full-time students. It already has about 170. That is a good story.

So far as the content of this Bill goes, I understand that responsibility is to be laid on the boards for training over pretty well the whole field: craft apprenticeship, process workers, technicians, management and retraining. And, like the noble Lord, Lord Champion, I think that the training, or retraining, of adults is a very important matter to-day if we are to get the structure of industry unossified (if there is such a word) and facilitate the growth of industry and, in some cases, the diminution of industries that have had their day. Of these categories, I should imagine that in some ways the training of a process worker or a machine minder is the most difficult. It is sometimes quite difficult in practice to devise a useful content for a worker who will spend his time minding a machine and nothing more. I remember going round a factory where there were some electronically controlled machines—your Lordships will know the sort of thing: a dozen machines all linked together. There was hardly anybody about, but I spotted one man at either end of this tremendous series of machines, and I said to the works manager: "I am glad to see that you still have to have two men there, in spite of your electronic gadgets". He replied: "Ah, but I have got an electronic gadget watching each of those men". It is sometimes rather an alarming picture that is presented. The best hope is that these really soul-destroying jobs are, I think, tending to get proportionately fewer with the growth of the more technical and interesting jobs.

Turning to the craft apprenticeship sector of the field, I would hazard a guess that that is the most straightforward of these branches. Generally, there is tremendous keenness on the part of youngsters going out to their first job when they get the chance of an apprenticeship. The raw material is most promising. In most parts of the country there are generally more of these youngsters seeking apprentices' jobs that there are opportunities for them. I believe there are needs in this sector of the field for shorter courses, more flexibility in the age at which youngsters can start an apprenticeship course that is to say, higher in some cases than has been normal in the past, and less rigidity generally, because youngsters to-day do pick up technical knowledge far quicker in general, I think, than their predecessors did. I am sure what I read somewhere about the importance of the first year of an apprentice's life is true: it is during that period that either the seeds of lasting interest may begin to germinate or they may become sterile for lack of encouragement.

About the capacities of these young people I think there is no doubt whatsoever. Your Lordships will remember the debate we had the other day on the Newsom Report when the point was brought out so strongly that, even in the category we were discussing then, many of these youngsters are clearly capable of greater challenges and skills than are envisaged at present. I think it is very encouraging to note how many of these young people are ready to forgo the easy money of dead-end jobs in favour of learning, at much lower remuneration for a few years, a skilled trade. I saw a survey the other day of the interests and aspirations of a group of apprentices, and it was good to see how many of these youngsters expected and wanted to continue progressive technical training well beyond the end of their normal apprenticeship. There is no doubt that in their minds the possession of skill is regarded as a worthwhile achievement.

That reminds me of an incident—I must say this because of the fact that I am following the noble Lord, Lord Champion. I remember on one occasion at home, in the field of agriculture, a farmer getting a bill for a repair of a machine by a local firm who had mechanics on the staff. The mechanic came and gave the machine one tap and it worked. The bill came in for £20. The farmer was rather angry and sent it back, saying "I want an analysis of this bill". Back came the analysis—"To tapping machine—10s.; to knowing where to tap—£19 10s.". I must not worry your Lordships more because, with the noble Lord, Lord Champion, there, I might be led away into all kinds of memories of other days.

This Bill inevitably deals with machinery. But we must not be misled—and I know the Minister will not be—into thinking that the creation of machinery is the same as the solution of the problem or the attainment of our targets. We must not shut our eyes to the fact that, though many firms in industry, and many trade unionists, have done an absolutely first-rate job in this field, there is a great deal of evidence that there are still many who, in their hearts, do not believe in the need for training; who are too ready to believe that the old ways will suffice, or that they can get by by attracting apprentices who have been trained by other firms. What I feel is needed, more than anything else, is first faith in the importance of this task, and then the will to make a combined effort to get far more ambitious results. As we agreed when we were debating the Newsom Report, we are at present wasting a valuable human asset in not providing full opportunities to our young people.

I referred when I was speaking to your Lordships the other day, to the experience we are getting in the field of Voluntary Service Overseas. Under this scheme we have a number of apprentices and ex-apprentices who are doing the most remarkable things in various countries; and they are showing that, presented with an opportunity, they have the initiative, the enterprise and the devotion to produce really remarkable results of which we all have every reason to be proud. Here, surely, my Lords, is a tremendous opportunity for positive co-operation by both sides of industry in a very practical field, a field free from political dogma or differences. I am sure all your Lordships will agree that we want to support in any way we can a measure which is clearly designed to increase the efficiency and the prosperity of our national industry and which also, as I think, by improving opportunities for individual skill and pride in the job, will add to the happiness and the satisfaction of all those who earn their livelihoods in industry.

5.10 p.m.

LORD BOWDEN

My Lords, on this, the first occasion on which I have had the privilege of addressing your Lordships' House, I find myself in a very difficult position. The Bill which is before us is concerned, I believe, with some of the most important issues with which this country has ever been faced. It is supported on both sides of the House and it has been enthusiastically welcomed in another place. It is supported, too, by industry and the trade unions; but, despite this, I view it with the greatest misgivings, for I do not feel that the remedies proposed in the Bill match the problems which the Bill purports to solve. This may seem heretical, and I ask your Lordships' forgiveness for saying this so quickly. I should like, if I may, to justify some of my fears and ask whether it is possible that some of the problems can, in fact, be solved, perhaps by minor Amendments to the Bill or in some other way. It is difficult to know where best to start, so I will begin with one of the problems which have already been mentioned by noble Lords on both sides of the House: the problem of what has been called adult training.

It has been said that we are aspiring to a rate of growth in our economic productivity of 4 per cent. a year. It has been computed by Professor Stone, in Cambridge, that if we are to achieve this we shall need by 1970 about 1½ million more skilled men, and we shall have occupations for 1,400,000 fewer unskilled men by that time. This is a large part of the total labour force of this country, which is perhaps 25 million in all. The number of people concerned is, after all, at least ten times as many as go to the universities every year.

How are we to contemplate this question of producing from the working force another 1½ million skilled men; and, at the same time, what are we to do about those whom the present system will leave without occupation? It is obviously impossible to take the men at the bottom, the unemployables, and train them and feed them in at the top. The only possible solution to this problem is that almost everyone in the whole working population shall have training which will fit him for one place higher in the industrial hierarchy than that which he occupies to-day. The whole of the working population of this country must have its standard of skill raised. If this is done, then in 1970 we shall have 1¾ million, or whatever the number is, more skilled men; and the unskilled men whom we now feel we must reject, ignore and cast aside as if they were outworn, will know that they are being fitted to hold a place in industrial society which they could not possibly accept at the moment. Everyone in the whole of the industrial machine will have been educated to one or two places higher in the hierarchy than he now occupies. Unless this is done, it seems to me that we cannot hope to get the force we need. If we lack it we cannot get our 4 per cent. growth; there will be no future in Robbins; there will be no future in Newsom; there will be no future in any of the major reforms which we are so urgently and anxiously awaiting.

Your Lordships may say that it is clearly and palpably impossible to educate 25 million people, but it is my belief that the very technology which made the problem so urgent has, in fact, provided the means for solving it. We have a vast experience in other countries of the ways in which mass education on this scale can be accomplished. I will mention just a few of them. We have in television what is by far the most potent single medium for instruction that the wit of man has yet encompassed. It has been used with tremendous success in America for an enormously large-scale experiment in adult education. The experiment began in the first instance as an attempt to educate people who could not get into universities. It was found that when the appropriate programmes were broadcast they were picked up and listened to by people for whom they had not been intended, and since the universities were prepared to mark the essays of anyone who submitted them, they discovered, to their astonishment, that some of their ablest, best and most anxious pupils were housewives and men and women who were housebound and could not get out and who switched on an educational programme instead of a "soap opera".

There is a vast potential for education in this way if it can be exploited. The time may come, I suspect, when we shall have education for industry as an alternative to "Music While You Work". I believe that this could be done were adequate provision made for it in the Bill and were the broadcasting authorities encouraged to develop the necessary techniques, which are difficult but quite possible, and were the necessary provision made for the use of television as a medium of instruction in this way. I have talked to the people who are going to run the second channel for B.B.C. television. They would most anxiously like to do such work, because they realise—and this is extremely important—that most of the programmes that have been broadcast over television for many years have been designed for people who were fundamentally literate, in the sense that they could enjoy reading books and could have obtained the information that they got from the programmes by reading instead. The majority of the people for whom I am now pleading are people who rarely read books for pleasure, and in any event are people who are studying disciplines which can be taught effectively only by the medium of the picture, and hardly at all through the medium of the written word. So may I plead that some provision be made in the Bill for the use of such a medium of instruction as television?

I now pass to other, similar techniques which have been exploited abroad, but scarcely at home. In America, correspondence courses are used as an extraordinarily important adjunct to the whole educational machine. I know of one university college—one can hardly call it anything else; it is, in fact, a correspondence college—in Washington, which has 25,000 students enrolled for courses in electronics. The courses are good; the organisation is superb. The courses are frequently "re-vamped" and changed and brought up to date. These courses are taken by people within industry who are anxiously struggling to better themselves. The Armed Services make provision for people to take the courses. They will help them with the cost of the courses. They will provide time for people to study; and again we have a medium of instruction capable in principle of handling thousands of people, whereas the ordinary techniques currently available—schools, universities and so on—habitually handle only scores.

There are other techniques as well. There are all kinds of new devices, new teaching machines. All of these are available. They have been intensely cultivated. They are useful, and it is essential that direct provision be made, in any Bill which we have concerned with industrial training, for their development and intensive use in this country. This, then, is perhaps the most important single conclusion I have to make. We now have to deal with 25 million people throughout the whole of their working life. Before we decided what to do at the universities, we had the Robbins Report. The Robbins Report was concerned with the education of perhaps 100,000 or 200,000 people for three years. The problems with which we are now concerned are vastly more complex, more difficult, far less understood and far more important than any that Robbins wrestled with. I hope that after we have passed this Bill the Government will take an early opportunity of appointing a Committee comparable in status, stature and importance and thoroughness to the Robbins Committee, to study the matters with which we are now concerned.

I should now like to pass to another extremely important aspect of this whole subject, which has been wholly neglected, so far as I can make out, by everyone on both sides of the House. I refer to the education of the graduates of the universities within industry, an enterprise commonly known in some cases as graduate apprenticeship. It is most necessary that anyone who has studied engineering should, soon or later, take his part in industry, and it is an essential condition imposed by many of the associations—for instance, the Institutions of Mechanical and of Electrical Engineers—that any man who wishes to become a graduate engineer, a properly authenticated engineer, a member of his professional association, should have practical training under supervision as well as the academic training which the universities provide.

This kind of training was given many years ago, for example, in Manchester. The first course was devised in 1902 in Trafford Park, and it had quite an extraordinary influence on engineering education for electrical engineers throughout the whole of this country. In fact, in the 'twenties it was true to say that all the electrical engineers in England could be divided into two classes: those who worked at Metropolitan Vickers and those who used to work there. Metropolitan Vickers in those days trained almost all the graduate apprentices for the whole of the electrical engineering industry. It was thanks to the genius of that very great man, Sir Alexander Fleming, who did as much for electrical engineering as Jowett did for Oxford, and perhaps as Arnold did for Rugby—a man whose name should be revered in educational circles, but I am afraid has all too soon been forgotten by most—that this extraordinary contribution was made to education of engineers for industry. At this moment there are, I think, 400 graduate apprentices in Trafford Park. There are nowadays large numbers of graduate apprentices in other big firms. It is probably true to say that the cost of educating these men for the two years which their training lasts must be comparable to the total cost of running all the engineering departments in all the universities in this country. I have never succeeded in getting reliable figures, but the best estimates I can make suggest that this is not far from being the truth.

This problem can no longer be left entirely to the initiative of private industry. In the first place, for many years Metropolitan Vickers used to estimate that they kept not more than 40 per cent. of their products. This is the source of the rather crude jape I made a moment ago. It was perfectly right and proper that they should expect to lose most of them because these were the men who manned the whole of the rest of the electrical engineering of the rest of this country. But now that we are planning, and very rightly, to increase the number of graduates from our universities—and if the Robbins recommendations go through we shall do—I submit that it is unreasonable that the great firms should be asked to carry an even greater burden and share an even greater part of the cost of educating engineers.

Furthermore, the whole enterprise is getting much more complicated because of the greater variety of skills required. It is necessary now, for example, to arrange for courses for graduates in the arts to go into industry and to be trained there. Once again one finds that some people do all the training and others get all the benefit. Furthermore, there are certain types of industry which are made up of smallish firms which have never made any contribution to this kind of operation and for this reason tend rarely or never to be able to recruit graduates in numbers, with the result that they are in some cases lagging behind in the industrial world. A typical case is the machine tool trade. It consists of a large number of fairly small firms, and one or two big ones. They have hardly any proper graduate apprenticeship. In 1956 the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research made a survey and established that in that year the single firm of Schiess, in Dusseldorf, an immense machine tool factory, recruited 137 graduates. The entire British machine tool trade in that same year recruited two.

This kind of thing is inevitable if the operation of a training scheme for graduates within industry is left entirely to the initiative of private enterprise. In my view the Government must assume a certain part of the burden of the total cost, which is enormous; and furthermore, must be prepared to help these large industries to organise themselves. On the Continent this system has been developed very highly and in Aachen, the great technical university of Rhineland Westphalia, the Continental firms are so organised that all the students of Aachen study in some of the big firms or some of the small firms, and all industry plays its proper part in the development of graduate training within industry. It happens to be slightly different because most of the training takes place before the man finally gets his degree; but the principle is the same. In England a man takes five years to become an engineer, three years in a university and two in, say, Metropolitan Vickers. On the Continent it takes five or six years, four at university and a year and a half, or thereabouts, in industry. It is essential that this vastly complex and tremendously important operation should be regularised and organised somehow by a Bill of this kind, yet I see no reference in the Bill to any part of this extremely important problem.

I should now like to pass from this vast, important enterprise to something much smaller, though none the less important, and it is something that, on humanitarian grounds, the House should support. In Sweden there is a proper system of training for those unfortunate people who are called "lone women"—that is to say, women who have children but who have been deprived of their menfolk, either by divorce or widowhood. They have organised an extremely complex system by which these women can be looked after while they are training themselves for such jobs in industry as they are capable of accepting. This is a wholly admirable arrangement. It has never been adopted in this country, and I am sure your Lordships will agree with me when I say that the treatment we in this country mete out to our "lone women" is often mean and miserably inadequate. I think that this might be one way in which these poor souls could be allowed to look after their children with some sense of satisfaction and no sense that they were dependent on the charity of the State. I would commend this idea to your Lordships as a trivial but, to some people, important amendment to this Bill.

I pass next to a consideration of that part of the Bill which has so far received most attention. I refer to the training of apprentices and of the rest of the industrial population. In round figures, it is true to say that a third of all boys take apprenticeships of one kind or another on leaving school. When these youths sign their indentures they do so under conditions which seem to me to be quite deplorably disadvantageous to themselves. They have to accept such training as is given to them; they have no remedy against a firm which uses them effectively as unskilled labour—and cheap unskilled labour at that. Only the other day I heard of an apprentice who had served three years and had never done anything more than put switches into houses. This is no way to train an electrician; and the youth has no remedy against the firm. Furthermore, when he comes out of his time he is as much a craftsman as any craftsman who has been trained in some of the admirable and magnificent schemes which are operated in the same district to which some of his mates have been fortunate enough to go. I hope this Bill will have enough teeth in it to ensure that this quite scandalous misuse of the apprenticeship system is brought abruptly to an end.

There are all sorts of anomalies, too, in the way in which apprentices are accepted usually only up to the age of 16 years and 9 months. For instance, a youth who, having once been indentured, loses out because he has a row with his boss, or is ill, or because the firm goes bankrupt and the apprenticeship is wound up, may, if he cannot get another within a matter of weeks, lose for ever the chance of becoming a skilled man. Further, when he comes out of his time he may find himself a time-served but technically unskilled man. He may find himself a member of a craft which is losing in its importance, and he loses for ever the opportunity of becoming a skilled man in another craft—indeed, he may have lost the opportunity of becoming a skilled man at all. I believe this to be a very great social evil, and it is essential that this whole subject, which is vastly complex—far more complex than anything Robbins had to study—should be studied intensively by a committee with the authority which Lord Robbins so magnificently exercised.

I have said there is much wrong with the apprenticeship system. It is quite monstrously unreasonable that all apprentices should be bound for the same length of time; that they should, when they have completed their five years, be classified as skilled men, regardless of any test of their competence at the end of their time. It is absurd that the whole of a man's future should be based on the assumption that what he learned from the age of 16 to 21 is important and what he learns thereafter makes no difference whatever. This is ridiculously untrue. It may have been true once, but it certainly is not true any longer. So, somehow or other, this particular problem must be solved, and I see little evidence that the Bill proposes the mechanism to do it.

My Lords, I come to the problem of the two-thirds of the population—and it is absurd that one should come last to the two-thirds—who are in the unskilled, dead-end jobs. What kind of training are we devising for them? These, after all, are the people with whom Newsom was concerned. They are the people—many of them—who were rejected by the system at the age of 11. But many of them have very great talent, and I think it is essential that training should be provided for them. It should be their right to be trained, and they should not have to go and hawk themselves round from place to place, from dead-end job to dead-end job, in an attempt to find someone who will train them to do something useful. This, too, is a very great social evil, and I do not believe from the evidence in the Bill that it will be remedied, unless quite new provisions are brought into this measure which so far have not been mentioned.

I may have given your Lordships the impression that these things are impossible to do. I do not wish to do that at all, because we have before us one extraordinarily successful example in this country where problems as great as this have been tackled and tackled successfully. I refer, of course, to the coal industry. At the time of vesting day it was as backward, technically speaking, as it had been a hundred years before. There was no proper training scheme, the morale of the workers was low, the plant was worn out. To-day we have a complete transformation. One finds pits in which, until a few years ago, every single piece of coal had to be hewn by hand, by the efforts of sweating colliers lying in appallingly difficult conditions underground, but in which there is now no single contact between the coal and the man; everything is hewn, loaded and hauled by machinery. This is a revolution which has taken place in the last ten years and is as dramatic as anything with which this country can ever he concerned, either now or in the future.

This was achieved because of the extraordinary imagination and success with which the training programme was organised. They have now a system by which, first of all, hundreds of their people are sent to university every year, with university scholarships, at their expense. These are the men at the top. Going right down there is an immensely complicated system by which any promising boy or man, at any part of the coal industry, at any stage in his career, can climb the ladder, following what they call the "ladder plan", and better himself and qualify himself for positions of management. We must remember that, when we speak of industrial training, we are involved in the training of management as much as we are involved in the training of unskilled or skilled craftsmen.

So the coal industry has done it; but I ask your Lordships to think of just some of the advantages which it possesses. It was in a perfectly dreadful state, and everyone knew that something had to be done. Whether British industry as a whole shares the same conviction at the moment is more than I can say. But there was only one fundamental manager; there was the Coal Board, representing the industry as a whole. It was therefore able to organise a system of training with complete confidence that it was training people for itself, and if a man moved from one part of the industry to another it was not a net loss to one firm and a net gain to another. This gave it very great power and flexibility. It was dealing only with two or three unions instead of, as some industries have to do, with 20 or 30. It was therefore able to conduct negotiations between relatively few people. Finally—and I think it is only fair to say this—the training scheme was drawn up by an extraordinarily imaginative and versatile man who had, I think, an immense amount to do with the success of the whole operation. So, my Lords, this can be done; but I fear that the organisation which this Bill proposes will not have the advantages which made possible the extraordinary advance of the coal industry over the last decade.

I plead with your Lordships, if you accept this Bill—and we must accept it, for it is a necessary part of our development—not to believe that it will resolve or cope with the basic problems which beset British industry to-day. We still have to consider the implications on the unions of new training techniques. The whole of the trade union movement derives its structure from the training which its members have had. If this Bill does anything, it will change this training completely. How, therefore, is the trade union movement to be involved in it? Some of the trade union members have made most enlightened speeches on the subject; others, of course, are merely fearful. And, after all, why should they not be fearful, because their livelihood is at stake?

I ask your Lordships to imagine how some of you might think were it discovered that a new computer had been invented which would, if fed with appropriate information, work out with complete confidence the answers to legal problems posed to it, and make unnecessary the greater part of the legal machinery of this country. Suppose, therefore, that in the interests of efficiency it were proposed to rationalise the legal profession by dismissing half of the unskilled members, elevating the rest to the Peerage, and amalgamating the solicitors and the barristers. This is a kind of operation comparable in its complexity to that which we are asking the trade unions to accept. I beg your Lordships to believe that the problems are vexatious and difficult, but in my understanding the trade unions are anxious to solve them. But it seems to me that they cannot solve them unless a much more elaborate mechanism is proposed for the purpose than the Bill has yet proposed.

Therefore, I beg your Lordships to accept this Bill, but I beg you also to realise that in doing so you are accepting a system which would bring this country up to date, perhaps, as at 1939. It will not bring us the advantages we seek for the second half of the twentieth century. It might perhaps bring us to the point from which some of the Continental countries are now proposing to depart. They are most anxiously studying how to improve a system which is almost as good as we shall have when this Bill has come into effect. Therefore, I say to your Lordships that this Bill is a necessary first stage; it is no more. We have an immense field to conquer. We demand the help of the most powerful ordnance that the Government have at their disposal. This Bill, my Lords, is not a howitzer; I regard it merely as a small pipsqueak of a rifle.

5.38 p.m.

LORD MCCORQUODALE OF NEWTON

My Lords, it is my privilege, on your behalf, to express our appreciation and congratulation to the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, on his maiden speech in this House—a most informative maiden speech, as I think everybody will agree. I can only express the hope that we shall hear him often in our debates. He will not expect me to argue with him on some of the provocative things he has said this evening. I would just venture to suggest that I think Professor Stone was not entirely accurate, so far as craftsmen were concerned, in the calculations he made which the noble Lord and others have quoted. But I will not pursue that matter further. I will merely say that I think the whole House much enjoyed the noble Lord's speech, though some of us did not agree with some parts of it. We hope to hear him often in the future.

My Lords, I rise unreservedly to welcome this Bill, and I think I may do so not only on my own behalf but also on behalf of my colleagues in the Employers' Confederation. We should also congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, the original author of the whole scheme—the Bill and the White Paper which preceded it. We congratulate him both on his vision as Minister and, if I may say so, on his clarity of exposition to-day. A happy phrase about this Bill was coined in another place by Mr. Gunter, when he described the Bill as one of those measures which translate modernisation into reality. It is a good phrase, I think, but I would add to it that in fact the Bill gives the opportunity for us in industry to take this step, for it is an enabling Bill. It is up to industry and education, and all those who are to work the Bill, to make it reality. It is an enabling Bill. It is also, in my view, an extremely important one at the present time.

I wonder whether I might go back a little in the history of the matter. It is now six years since the Carr Committee—a powerful Committee composed of representatives of employers, trade unions, educationists and the like—issued their paper, the Carr Report. In paragraph 18 of that Report, if I might remind your Lordships, appeared this sentence: The effort of a Government should be directed to the expansion and improvement of the facilities for technical education, while the responsibility for the industrial training of apprentices should rest firmly with industry. I would say that opinions have moved forward since that day and since that expression, but that was a doctrine set forth authoritatively at that time.

In view of this statement, the Employers' Confederation asked the Trades Union Congress, the nationalised industries, various education authorities, the Ministry of Labour and the City and Guilds if they would join them in setting up an Industrial Training Council. This, when set up, undertook two tasks, as the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, will remember. The first immediate task was to urge industry to take advantage of the approaching "bulge" in school-leavers by making more apprenticeship places available, and in this I think we can claim that, after a rather hesitant start, we achieved considerable success; the number of places went up considerably. The second and long-term task that we were set was to make industry more training-conscious, to work out more modern methods of training and to insist that everybody, boy or girl, and not necessarily only the apprentices, should be the better for some systematic training—systematic training of some sort for all entering industry.

We also set up the Training Advisory Service, which under its chief officer, Mr. Meade, has done, I think we may claim, excellent service, and which has been enlarging itself week by week and month by month and is now operating on quite a considerable scale. At the risk of blowing our own trumpets, I would suggest, if I may, that it is at least partly due to the vigorous activities of our Industrial Training Council that the climate of industry, from the point of view of both employer and trade unionist, is now so favourable to, and ready for, a positive, governmental, national lead in this matter.

But I would say this. We in this country are, of course, so apt to run ourselves down and make little of our own accomplishments. We all here understand this: it is a national weakness. But others, and especially others abroad, tend not to understand it. At this moment we all hope to see a very great step forward in industrial training to meet the modern demands, but there are many people, who I feel ought to know better, who have used the introduction of this measure to run down everything that has gone before. Of course there have been black spots in our training; everybody knows that. But there have been—and I was very glad the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, mentioned this—many very bright spots as well. How does anybody think that we could have reached the pre-eminent position in skilled manufactures which we occupy in this country if our training facilities had been as bad as all that?

I would beg people, noble Lords and others, when urging the necessity for a move forward and for great improvements—and, of course, many improvements and adaptations are required to meet the new automative age—not to run down the great efforts of so many on both sides of industry in this matter, for they have produced in this country skilled craftsmen who, I would claim, are second to none anywhere in the world. But what we want is more of them, and also an extension of training to those others, boys and girls, who are not in the skilled category and who are now getting little or no training or opportunity for further education at the technical colleges. This is what we hope this Bill will help us to provide. I believe that it gives a sound and flexible framework within which both sides of industry, the Government and the educational world can work together to modernise our training system. And it is most important that industry and education should co-operate, and that neither should regard the other as of paramount importance. Each has much to offer the other; and I believe that, if we get full co-operation, we shall go forward.

The emphasis of the Bill, of course, is on the new training boards to be set up, and on the Central Training Council. The boards, as I see it, will be of the greatest importance as policy-makers, and will have a wide discretion in their activities, and I am sure that this is right. The quantity of training, the quality of training, the length of training—all these will come under their ægis: and their work must be of cardinal importance to the industry to which they are attached. We all wish them well. But there is one point in their work which I should like to emphasise and which has not, I think, been mentioned to-night. One of the weaknesses of our present position is the lack of forward assessment as to the number and types of workpeople likely to be required in future years, and the sort of training they should receive.

This job of assessing future manpower requirements and identifying training needs for them is of cardinal importance, and I would suggest it is one of the first things to be tackled by the individual boards. Incidentally, these assessments, collected by the Central Training Council from the beards, could be a most reliable basis for the forward planning of manpower requirements which is now largely the responsibility of N.E.D.C.

To do this will mean the collection of reliable statistics by the boards—statistics about the recruitment of apprentices, about those in the semi-skilled trades, about wastage and many other details—if they are to formulate soundly-based training schemes for their industries and for the different categories of workmen in their industries. These schemes will also have to lay down, I would suggest, proper standards of training on a national basis. In conjunction with the Government training centres—and I am very glad that this has been emphasised by all the speakers up to now—the boards will have to make very definite plans for the training of work-people to meet the changing requirements of industry, and this matter will grow of more and more importance with the advent of the new automative and electronic devices in industry.

I trust, too, that much care and attention will be given by the boards, in conjunction with the Youth Advisory Service, to the matter of the induction of young people into industry. I am one of those who think that it is of great importance that boys and girls in their last year at school should be given an insight into the careers that they may possibly be following when they leave school, and not to be thrust without any preparation into industry. There is a very large amount of work to be done in this matter in conjunction with the Youth Advisory Service and I would commend it very much to the boards. I believe that many of the industrial problems of our day and the many industrial anxieties that we see among workpeople and employers will be solved or, at least, made much easier if proper attention is given to all young people on their introduction into industry which will give them a sound start to their industrial life. My Lords, I am sorry to be looking so much at the clock, but I am told that I have to stop at 5.53 for the Royal Commission.

If we really want to see good industrial relations in this country—and I would emphasise this—the start should be made when the boy or girl first enters into industry, because first impressions may last a lifetime. In passing, may I say that I consider the Minister very wise in keeping the appointments to the boards and Council as flexible as possible. There has been much pressure brought on him to put representatives of this body or that body on the boards and on the Council; but I believe that the flexibility of the scheme is of paramount importance and that he should keep his own control over these matters. I believe also that the Minister is quite right in making the Central Training Council an advisory body and not an executive body at the present time. The emphasis must be on the industrial boards; the advisory Council's work should be to help these boards and help the Minister in directing the activities of the boards where possibly they may be falling down.

House adjourned during pleasure.

House resumed.