David Willetts

A speech given on 29th September 2008 to the Conservative Party Conference.

“Birmingham was once the city of a thousand trades, the workshop of the world. It was skills which made this city great.

I know because I was born here. And, for generations, my family were Birmingham craftsmen - glaziers, gunbarrel makers, silversmiths. So I understand how much skills matter. So does my excellent colleague John Hayes and our whole team in the Commons and the Lords.

A hundred and sixty years ago, only a few hundred yards from here, George Stephenson launched the Institute of Mechanical Engineers to provide the skills necessary for building the world’s first railways.

What a contrast with today, when one of the biggest obstacles to building London’s CrossRail is the shortage of 15,000 workers with the necessary skills.

The core of Birmingham University was a college endowed by Josiah Mason. He began as an impoverished bricklayer and ended up a successful businessman and a Knight of the Realm. That’s the kind of human story that makes social mobility real. Mastering a trade should open such opportunities today. It’s the failure to value such skills that lies behind the shocking decline in social mobility.

What happens when you fail to train your people with the right skills? I’ll tell you. In the modern global economy, you import them. Easy, isn’t it? Instead of facing up to the challenge of training our own people, we get them pre-trained from across the world. So the only way the Government can find the 60,000 skilled workers we need to build the next generation of nuclear power stations is by relaxing the immigration rules. That tells us how essential skills are and how far we are behind our international competitors.

The skills gap is bad for business as well. It damages our competitiveness. Our fashion industry can’t get the people who can actually cut the cloth with skill. I visited Pinewood studios to learn that our film industry can’t get the skilled workers to build the film sets. This is what the CBI say:

. … poor basic skills are hampering customer service and acting as a drag on business performance.

So this government’s failure on skills is bad for social mobility and it is bad for business. But above all, the skills shortage is a betrayal of our young people. There are young people out there who have so much to give and are so frustrated because they have not had the opportunity of mastering a skill or enjoying the pride of being a craftsman.

We have had a bubble of prosperity sustained by plumbers from Poland, waiters from the Ukraine, teachers from Australia. They are excellent people who work hard and make a fantastic contribution to this country. But meanwhile, outside the bubble, looking in with bafflement and frustration, are a million young people of our own. They are not in education or employment or training. They are excluded from the benefits of economic growth, hanging around on the streets, loitering and lost.

6% of young people in London; 12% of young people in Liverpool; and 8% of young people here in Birmingham are not in a job, not in education, not in training. So many shattered dreams.

A decade after Labour launched the New Deal, there are actually more young people out of work than before. What a waste of ten years of a Labour government. What a waste for the economy. And above all what a waste for the young people who are our future.

When these young Britons fail, all of Britain fails.

It doesn’t need to be like this. What’s broken can be fixed. It is why reforming schools is so important. It is why welfare reform is essential. Michael Gove and Chris Grayling have put forward excellent policies to tackle the problem. And just as important for our young people is what we do to reform skills and training.

We face nothing less than a skills crisis.

• No wonder that, when the Chief Executive of the Commission for Employment and Skills, was asked how many skills bodies there are in Britain, he said, “I haven’t got the foggiest idea” though he also estimated there are “many hundreds”.

• No wonder that another expert has condemned the Government’s reforms as “a complete dog’s breakfast” and predicted “The whole thing will end in a mess.”

We need to sort the mess out. So two weeks ago, I went to Poland to see how they do their training. I even found some Polish plumbers left in Poland. They were great people - hard working, well trained. What I found there was a combination of the practical and intellectual rigour. They combined theory and practice. So they master a trade. That is what our young people deserve as well.

And let me tell me you something else I learned in Poland. For all of us, 2012 means the Olympics. For Poland, 2012 means hosting the European Football Championships. They are busy planning new stadiums and arenas and expect many of their skilled workers to return to help build them. But we need 182,000 extra skilled workers for the Olympics, including 13,000 bricklayers and 15,000 plumbers. It is a fantastic opportunity to spread apprenticeships and train more young people. But when we asked ministers how many apprentices were on the Olympic site guess what they said. 62. Just 62 young people trainng to help make out 2012 dream come true. What a wasted opportunity. We can do better. And we will.

At the heart of our approach is the revival of apprenticeships. Gordon Brown claims he has created more apprenticeship places. But, then again, he claims to have a sense of humour. We know what real apprenticeships are - it is when a skilled worker passes on their knowledge to the next generation with some academic study as well. But the number of these real apprenticeships is actually down since 1997. Instead youth training schemes have been renamed as apprenticeships. These days you can be called an apprentice without setting foot on the shop floor.

This party will back real training - apprenticeships worthy of the name. We will refocus the Train to Gain budget to achieve just that. Let me spell out our practical policy commitments. Funds for 100,000 more apprenticeship places. £2,000 for each small business that takes on an apprentice. And fully funded apprenticeships for the over 19s who get a raw deal from Labour.

We will achieve this not just by shifting resources to real training but also by cutting the burdens on companies that take on apprentices.

According to John Stone of the Learning and Skills Network, the current system is like a “Russian supermarket, you can have anything you like as long as it is Level 2, anything as long as it is potatoes, whereas employers, Sector Skills Councils, providers, are all screaming actually ‘This is not what people want.’” For example, one large employer told me they have to pay for four separate certificates for each apprentice which they must send to their Sector Skills Council. After paying a fat fee they are provided with a fifth certificate. And all five certificates have to be kept on file for six years.

Many young people find themselves and discover their self-confidence when they master a skill. But they should be able to go on studying afterwards when they might gain even more. If you start as an apprentice phone engineer and show a real aptitude for the academic side too, surely you should have the chance to go on and study electrical engineering at university? And, if we want vocational skills to gain the respect they deserve, then people need to know they provide a ladder of opportunity and not a glass ceiling. That’s why, for the first time, we are going to introduce proper support for apprentices who wish to study at a higher level.

I can announce here today that we are committing to fund 1,200 new Skills Scholarships for apprentices who want to study at university. Let me be clear: while they are studying part-time and working part-time, they will have all their education costs covered.

This will create a robust, accessible vocational pathway to higher learning for the first time. By the end of a Parliament, over 5,000 people should have benefited. That represents a fivefold increase in the number of apprentices studying at university. Spreading opportunity. Widening access. Changing lives by changing life chances.

Our Skills Scholarships will send a clear message about the quality and the quantity of the opportunities available to people who choose the vocational route. Conservatives again attacking a problem that the Government has ignored year after year.

But it is not just apprenticeships we can transform.

We are going to cut through stifling bureaucracy by giving freedom to Further Education colleges. We want to free them up so that they can be the true community colleges that I know they want to be - responsive and respected by the communities they serve.

Adult learners are a valued part of that community. We recognise people need to carry on learning. The problem with Gordon Brown is that he has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. And now he’s trying to stop every other adult from learning too.

Labour’s cuts to adult and community learning have led to the loss of 1.4 million places - that’s a national scandal. So we’re going to give lifelong learning a new lease of life. That means £100 million of wasted Train to Gain spending redirected to adult learning. Adult learning has economic, as well as social, value. The more that people reskill and upskill, the more the whole country benefits. Learning fuels individual well-being and that feeds democratic citizenship. Under Labour if at first you don’t succeed, you don’t succeed at all. We are the party of opportunity who believe in giving everyone a second chance and beyond.

Our approach to skills, our agenda for change is based on what’s good for our young people and businesses, what’s right for our country. We will be inspired by the greatness of Britain’s past and driven by our ambitions for its future. A nation where all feel proud because each feel valued. A skilled people, fulfilled by their accomplishments, working to build a country that is cohesive, successful, just. Birmingham and Britain, so much greater in the years to come than we have been in Labour’s wasted decade. Only Conservatives can make this vision a reality.”