TRAINING IN INDUSTRY

HL Deb 19 December 1979 vol 403 cc1681-8

3.22 p.m.

Lord MOTTISTONE rose to call attention to the present statutory arrangements for encouraging training in industry; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have pleasure in introducing the Motion standing in my name. I only hope that this debate can be as enlightened as the one we have just had, which was unscheduled. There were more speakers in that debate than there are going to be in ours. I am going to confine my remarks—because there is so much one could say on this subject —to the question of the industrial training boards which were established under the 1964 Industrial Training Act. I am limiting my remarks to those boards for reasons which will become obvious, and partly because it is those boards which are concerned with the training of the majority of people in employment in this country. It is those boards which have pioneered in this field in a remarkable way.

In an earlier speech, to which I shall be referring, I described the 1964 Act as one of the most enlightened Acts in the previous 10 years. It was remarkable in that it brought together representatives of the employers and the employees and the educational clement for the first time to study the problem of training in industry. In this role they did a first-class job. Apart from those training boards, I will not say very much about the 1973 Act, because in my humble opinion that was a bit of a disaster. It was unfortunate for the training boards that that Act had to come before Parliament at all. It came about only as a result of pressures from outside Parliament by people who were offended at any sort of interference in their activities and who made these complaints before the training boards had had time to get going. One might even say, from the point of view of the training boards but of course not from any other, that it was unfortunate that my noble friends and I got into power in 1970; it would have been much better if we had got into power in 1974. At that stage the boards were established and attitudes to them would have been much more balanced and sensible.

My Lords, having said that by way of introduction, I should now like to make some reference to a speech I made in your Lordships' House on 21st January 1970. That is nearly 10 years ago, and, most surprisingly—because I am sure most noble Lords, like myself, often regret what we have said 10 years before—in this particular case I do not regret it one little bit. In fact, I think that that speech represents my views very well now, though there are some remarks which I have made on this subject in the intervening years of which I am not so proud.

In this particular case there were three points I made which I am going to ask the Government to consider once again. Your Lordships must remember that this speech was made before there was any thought of a Manpower Services Commission. I suggested that it would take 10 to 15 years before we could tell whether the training board concept was a good one. It is now roughly 15 years since the Act was passed and the first boards were being set up, and it is just about 10 years since the board on which I had the honour to serve, the Distributive Industry Training Board, was set up in 1969. For that reason, this is an appropriate time to have this debate. That is why I put down this Motion and hoped to have an opportunity of presenting the argument to your Lordships.

Another point that I made in my speech at that time was that I recommended that boards should be inspected at intervals of five or six years. I thought that they should be left alone to get on with the job in the meantime but that there should be an inspectorate set up to examine them and to see whether they were doing the job properly. I shall return later to consider what the inspectorate should do. I also suggested in that speech that perhaps some 20 years after their establishment the boards might well be reorganised; some of them might be merged, some of them might be closed down. I shall return to that later. The reason why I chose time intervals of that sort was because training boards are in the attitude changing business and attitudes change very slowly. I am sure that any of your Lordships who have had occasion to try to persuade people to change their attitudes on a large scale, or even on a small one for that matter, will have found that it takes a long time for it to come about. Fifteen years is roughly half a generation, and it is roughly that sort of time that is required for what I call essential truths to sink in.

My Lords, I should like to invite the Government to consider two special measures. I should hope—though I am fearful that it is not the case—that they could do this without primary legislation. If not, I can see that it may take time, and I do not think that we have much time. We must get on with what has to be done in this area.

The first matter that I would request the Government to consider is relaxing what I call the "iron grip" of the Manpower Services Commission on the industrial training boards. I shall consider later how that iron grip is, in my opinion, misplaced and should not have come about. I should also like to suggest to the Government that the Department of Employment should resume responsibility for the money, and that the money should be controlled by the Department of State concerned and not through an extra outstanding commission.

I should like to invite the Government, in taking responsibility for the money, to take account of industrial training boards' net income from levy in deciding on a variable block grant to them. The problem is that some training boards have a great deal of money from the levy —indeed, it is still flowing in—while others do not have nearly enough. There is an imbalance. There are complications in what I suggest, because what I am effectively saying is that the amount of money from the Exchequer, if any, should be given to the boards which need it, but not to the ones which do not. It might be thought unfair by industries if Government money was given to some boards but not to others. However, the present situation is a nonsense.

I suggest that there should be a block grant for the money, rather than the very carefully controlled system that presently applies, because I believe that the boards would do a very much better job—and certainly would get on much better with the industries which they are trying to persuade to do good training—if they were freed from too much organisational control from above. So, let there be a block grant and then let them get on with the job.

Finally, as regards money, if there are any restraints perhaps they could be removed. However, there is quite a lot of evidence that many of the people who have the services of the training boards would be very happy to pay for them. If that is the case, I suggest that it is wholly sensible and suitable that those services should be paid for. The problem as regards allocating the services of the boards satisfactorily is that the people who really need the services—that is, the smaller companies—cannot afford to pay for them, but in many cases the bigger ones can and would do so.

I turn to the Manpower Services Commission. I suggest to the Government that it would be better employed getting on with the jobs which are not connected with industrial training boards, rather than spending an enormous amount of its time trying to direct training boards which are very well equipped and in all cases have very capable staff and do not require the backseat driving that they receive. The Manpower Services Commission, after all, has very important jobs to do that are not connected with training boards. For example, something like 25 per cent. of employees in this country are in nationalised industries or Government bodies of one sort or another and they need to be encouraged more definitely to introduce good training practices themselves. Some of them are good, but some are not so good.

There is the problem of the unemployed, which is part of the Manpower Services Commission's responsibility. That is a matter to which one would have thought it ought to devote its most important and capable employees. In another debate on this subject I suggested that it was time we stopped looking upon the unemployed as just statistics—which sadly they are—and turned them into names and involved the local authorities in feeling responsible for reducing the unemployment problem. That sort of situation could well be encouraged by the Manpower Services Commission if it devoted its main efforts in that direction.

The commission also runs the skill centres and the TOPS schemes, and that kind of thing, for people who are not employed in training boards, and it could give its efforts in that direction. It could also give encouragement to schools to prepare children for work—that is a whole area which again brings it into contact with the local authorities in which it could well do development work. As regards the industrial training boards, its role should be a liaison one rather than a controlling one. Of course, there is much they they can do together, but in partnership, not in the role of master and servant.

It might be thought that this debate is mistimed because the Manpower Services Commission is at this moment conducting an inquiry into the whole future of the national training problem or some similar subject. I would beg to differ with that view for two reasons. One reason is that I should have thought that this was the time to air the subject in your Lordships' House. The other reason is that with the best possible will in the world I do not think it quite appropriate for a body to conduct its own inquiry into itself. I should have thought it would have been wiser—and perhaps my noble friend on the Front Bench will take note of this—if some external body could have reviewed the situation, or the Government themselves, but not a party to the process which will presumably come down in its own favour. Indeed, it would be very surprising if it did not do so.

I should like to pass on to what l call "lessons". Some of these lessons may not sound too good, but I shall start with one which might sound better to everyone. I think that we can take a lesson from the organisation of the Manpower Services Commission and its currently subordinate bodies. It is excessively over-organised. Similar bodies which were set up or reorganised at roughly the same time—and sadly they were all done by my noble and right honourable friends—were the Health Service and local government. In all three cases they were over-organised. I am certain that noble Lords opposite, if they found themselves in the same situation, would have made the same mistake in the early 1970s. It was done in what I call the age of the "management consultancy wizards ", who had the answers to every problem. They persuaded my noble and right honourable friends that if we had to have a new Health Service we had to have tons of administrators in all the right slots. They did much the same with the Manpower Services Commission, and that is part of the problem.

Another lesson which is parallel. but which might not be quite so palatable to noble Lords opposite, is what I call the Rolls-Royce and NEB situation. Rolls-Royce says that it does not want to have this body between it and the Government. Why should it not say that? It has perfectly capable people. I am saying the same about the training boards. There can be too many levels of command, and the more levels of command we have the further are the people who ultimately pay the money from those who know what is going on. Intermediate bodies like the Manpower Services Commission, worthy people though they are, are not capable of understanding all the problems at the working level of training in industry.

I turn to action. I would not expect my noble friend to make an immediate comment on what I have to say. Indeed, I would rather that he did not do so, because his remarks would be very much off the cuff. However. I hope that he will give very serious consideration to it.

I should like to see introduced an inspectorate of State-aided training organisations which would inspect the training boards and the Manpower Services Commission at about five-yearly intervals and in the meantime leave them to get on with their work. The present system, with a rolling budget or whatever it is called, means that the Manpower Services Commission is breathing down the necks of the training boards all the time, particularly twice a year. The members of the training boards are all very competent—they were even more competent when they were freer—and should be allowed to get on with their work in the meantime.

This inspectorate would probably best be housed—born for victuals, as one would say in the Navy—in the NEDO organisation so that it was independent. It would strictly be independent and, of course, have a very small staff. I should be happy to tell any noble Lord later how it would conduct its business, but I do not want to waste the time of the House now. Having been set up, in its first inspection its main task would be to assess whether or not boards have done their job and can be wound up. I believe that some boards have, or have jolly nearly, done so, and can be wound up with grateful thanks for a job well done.

The inspectorate should also look at whether some boards might be combined with other boards of roughly similar responsibility, so as to economise in the total effort. For example, in some boards of which I have a knowledge over half the firms that should pay the levy to them are totally exempted from paying it because they train well enough. There is every reason to suppose that they will continue to do so. But there would probably have to be some means of dragging them back if the board was wound up altogether. A possibility would perhaps be a merger. That would be the first thing to be done. It cannot be done by the Manpower Services Commission because it is too bossy. We need an external agency to do that job.

A third point, which would be a continuing one for every inspection—so would the other points but they would become less important as the years went by—is whether the operation of the boards was efficiently carried out. I fear that it is not always. Here I draw the attention of noble Lords to what I thought was a very inspiring article by my right honourable friend Mr. Michael Heseltine published in last Sunday's Sunday Times. He was putting on paper a talk which he gave to the Westminster branch of the British Institute of Management about three weeks ago. In it he drew attention to the fact that it is extremely difficult to find out whether a public body is efficiently run. Where a body does not have the discipline of the market forces, it is extremely difficult to make the right judgment. I commend to your Lordships—and this has nothing to do with politics—the article of my right honourable friend published in last Sunday's Sunday Times, because it sets problems to which he admits he does not have the answer, but to which we must collectively find the answers in dealing with this large number of bodies, which include central Government, local government and what people perhaps unfairly call Quangos.

Finally—and I am sorry that I am taking quite so long—I should like to conclude my remarks by setting out the basic points. We must have flexibility in administration, particularly in relation to the financing of the training boards. We must lessen the levels of authority between the boards and their ultimate paymasters, the Government. We must—and this is very important—restore the boards to their industries. The fact that they have been under the Manpower Services Commission for the last five years has meant that they have had two masters and all too frequently the master who has paid the money—the Commission—has taken more of their loyalties than have the industries which they were set up to serve. That is a fatal, divided control which must be removed. In conclusion, we must grapple with the problem of orderly control of bodies not subject to the market disciplines. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.