14:30 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)

The draft order will allow the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board, or ECITB, to raise and collect a levy from employers in the engineering construction industry. Engineering construction touches our lives daily in unseen but vital ways, powering our homes and offices, providing clean water, processing and producing food, and the production of pharmaceuticals. The industry makes up more than one fifth of the total UK economy. Before covid, it directly supported about 190,000 jobs and was due to expand. It delivers crucial infrastructure that allows us to compete globally and has a key role in moving the country ever closer to net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Post covid, the ECITB swiftly introduced, among other measures, a scheme to help employers retain apprentices and graduates, and a new scholarship for trainees embarking on engineering construction careers. Recently, it has also published a report on transferability of skills, which will become increasingly important as we move from our dependency on fossil fuels to green energy. I am sure that our Scottish neighbours will have a keen interest in that, too.

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14:35 Toby Perkins (Labour)

I welcome the commitment from the ECITB in its three-year plan to equip the industry with skills to ensure that relevant sectors are able to deliver the net zero carbon economy by 2050. Does the Minister believe that we are on target? Should we be being more ambitious? In the light of covid, does she have any reservations about our capacity to achieve that? Is there an argument for greater accountability of the ECITB going forward? How does the DFE monitor and evaluate its aims and objectives, and to what extent does she feel that it is a successful model?

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14:42 Gillian Keegan

The hon. Gentleman asked how we will evolve training. A number of conversations have been had about modular training, and enabling people working in one sector, such as oil and gas, to use and transfer their skills into other sectors, such as renewables and renewable energy. The ECITB is very much focused, along with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, on looking at how we can facilitate that transfer of skills and move into green jobs, so the skills in a box—the ability to have more modular upskilling capability to enable our green jobs revolution—is very much at the heart of our strategy.

On overview, a strategy and business plan takes account of what will happen in the three years and how we will facilitate the move to green jobs to facilitate net zero carbon economy and to attract young people, who are probably much more attracted by an industry that has renewables and green jobs than perhaps they would be by an old oil and gas sector, so that is a way to make sure we have a solid pipeline of workers. I have oversight of the strategy and business plan, and I also conduct an annual performance appraisal of the chair of the ECITB. In fact, I completed that just last week. The ECITB is doing a good job, which is borne out by the fact that so many employers still support its overall purpose and aim, and many of the board members are key leaders in the sector.

The ECITB levy is ring-fenced for activities such as training new staff in many different ways or developing the skills of the existing engineering construction workforce. The majority of the engineering construction training would be unlikely to take place without that, and without such investment we would not have the skilled workers that we need and we would not be able to deliver infrastructure projects. Most of that is project-based work which will form part of the country’s recovery as well as support the transition to greener, sustainable energies linked to decarbonisation. That strategy continues to represent the collective view of employers in the engineering construction industry. I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman and his Labour party colleagues also support that policy, because it is right that engineering construction industry training should be funded through a statutory levy system in order to secure a sufficient pool of skilled and talented labour. I commend the order to the Committee.

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