Training and Enterprise Councils (Hansard, 9 May 1991)

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Employment (Viscount Ullswater)
My Lords, the voluntary sector has played and will continue to play an important part in providing training, particularly for people with special needs. We have given training and enterprise councils responsibility for planning and delivery of training locally. They are required to set out in their plans how they will meet special training needs and are bound through contract to carry that forward. It is for training, and enterprise councils to decide with whom they contract to provide training to meet local needs, which may or may not include voluntary organisations.

§ Baroness Fisher of Rednal
My Lords, I am disappointed at the Minister's Answer. Is he aware that the specialist colleges for the deaf, the blind and the physically handicapped are known throughout the country as colleges of excellence? Does he agree that TECs cannot take on that responsibility because the people who attend such colleges come from all over the country and not one particular TEC area? Does he agree that he is preventing those special people from receiving a training which will stand them in good stead for life and can give them a job?

§ Viscount Ullswater
My Lords, I am happy to endorse what the noble Baroness said when she stressed that those colleges are colleges of excellence. The Government agree entirely with that point. I believe that the noble Baroness was referring to residential colleges whose funding at the moment is on a pilot basis with the TECs in their areas. That pilot study is to be reviewed. No decision has been taken about their future funding.

§ Baroness Seear
My Lords, does the Minister agree that as the TECs are being judged on the placements in employment they obtain and the qualifications their trainees acquire, it is improbable that they will view favourably the spending of money on special needs people whom they will find much more difficult to place, and who will find it much more difficult to obtain qualifications? At the same time, the failure to train such people will, in the longer run, place a heavy burden on the community as a whole.

§ Viscount Ullswater
My Lords, the noble Baroness in some ways simplifies the issue. In their corporate and business plans, TECs are required to set out how they will meet special training needs. They are bound through their contract with my department to carry forward that commitment. Their performance in that regard, including the production of regular management information, will be closely monitored. So it is wrong to assume that they will be judged or paid purely on the outcome of the training.

§ Baroness Lockwood
My Lords, is the Minister aware that in a year's time, when those pilot schemes are judged, many of the special schemes for the disabled will have disappeared, because some of them are already having to dispense with staff? Does he agree that it is much more difficult to re-establish something than it is to maintain it?

§ Viscount Ullswater
My Lords, it is the TECs' responsibility to ensure that not only is the training that they provide for the people in their area of a suitable standard, but that the specialist training required by those with special needs is also available in their area. It would be wrong to believe that they would not take into consideration the availability of such trainers with whom they were contracting to provide the special training.

§ Lord Stallard
My Lords, in his first Answer the Minister rightly mentioned the excellent contribution made by voluntary organisations, but he did not say that he shared their concern at the lack of funding. Will he confirm that he shares their concerns and will do something about them?

§ Viscount Ullswater
My Lords, we are talking about employment training. Research has shown that training is not always the most suitable method of helping back into work those who are unemployed. The Government have increased the numbers in job clubs by some 100,000 to help those people, many of them with special needs, to get back into work.

§ Baroness Seear
My Lords, I am deeply suspicious of the phrase "research has shown". Any one of us could produce research to show anything we wanted. Research has shown that people with special needs do not need training. I should have thought by definition that they obviously did. What research has shown that special needs people do not need training?

§ Viscount Ullswater
My Lords, I did not seek to suggest that those with special needs do not need training. I sought to suggest that that was not the only way in which they could be helped back into work. I suggested that the operation of job clubs, in which there has been a large expansion in numbers, is an equally good way of helping many such people back into work.

§ Lord Brain
My Lords, does the Minister realise that, because those specialist training establishments are national rather than local, the structure of TECs militates against their financing? Does he also realise that TECs are geared much more to shorter courses, 1199 and that because of the disabilities involved the training centres provide one and two-year courses which are another cause of the funding problem?

§ Viscount Ullswater
My Lords, the flexibility given to TECs allows them to tailor courses according to the needs of the people for whom they are providing training both in the shorter term, where they believe that better value for money is provided, up to the longer period suggested by the noble Lord for those with disabilities or special training needs.

§ Baroness Turner of Camden
My Lords, does the Minister agree that there is a need for some form of national co-ordination for people with special needs? A number of my noble friends have voiced some anxiety as to whether TECs are suitably equipped and staffed to provide the kind of training that people with special needs require. Should there not be some national policy and national co-ordination?

§ Viscount Ullswater
My Lords, I sought to stress that TECs are a national body. They have to set out their business plans which are monitored nationally by personnel from the Department of Employment. That gives a national overview of the quality of training being delivered by the TECs.

§ Lord Dormand of Easington
My Lords, what action will the Government take on the Audit Commission report published recently—letters from the controller of the Audit Commission have gone to TECs—on the serious mishandling of their financing by TECs? If that is the case, is it not as certain as it can be that those on the training schemes who will suffer more than others will be those with special needs?

§ Viscount Ullswater
My Lords, the department has made it clear that it will investigate any breach of contract that it has with TECs. Any information that comes to the department is acted upon immediately.

§ Baroness Fisher of Rednal
My Lords, will the Minister have discussions with the Royal National College for the Deaf, the Royal National Institute for the Blind at Hereford and Birmingham, and with the Queen Alexandra College for the physically handicapped? They are national colleges for training people with special needs. I feel sure that if the Minister had conversations and consultations with them, he would see what we seek.

§ Viscount Ullswater
My Lords, of course they will be consulted.