Hansard

That intervention from the Deputy First Minister ignores the fact that the number of people who are economically inactive is higher in Scotland than in the UK. Let us have that full and frank conversation—the Government, however, simply refuses to be full and frank.

At the previous election, the Scottish National Party promised 30,000 modern apprenticeship starts per year by the end of this parliamentary session, but it has failed. Only 25,500 places were funded this year, which is a shortfall of 4,500 and is 8,500 short of the 34,000 places that industry says that it needs to meet demand.

We have growing sectors in our economy that are crying out for more apprentices. Scottish Engineering has said:

“Scotland needs an additional 58% of new engineers across 31 key roles by the end of 2027, over three quarters of which are delivered by apprenticeship programmes.”

According to the Construction Industry Training Board, the construction workforce in the south-east of Scotland alone is 20,000 people short of industry demand. Those two sectors are critical to Scotland’s economy. The construction sector is the literal source when it comes to building the growth that we need, but it is being hamstrung by a system that fails to prioritise according to its needs.

It is not about money; it is about choices. We know that the money that Scottish businesses pay through the apprenticeship levy far exceeds what the Scottish Government chooses to spend on skills. Scottish firms pay a payroll tax on the premise that the funds will go into workforce development, only for the Scottish National Party Government to plunder that money to spend it on mitigating its financial incompetence. Last year, the shortfall between what the Scottish Government was granted through the block grant and what it actually spent was £62 million. That is an estimate, because the Scottish Government will not publish the figure, and I note that the Conservatives have a different figure. We simply need that clarity. If we want a full and frank discussion, let us have transparency on the funding that is being delivered through the levy.

Confidence in the Government is low, and apprenticeship numbers are not keeping up with demand. The Government has scrapped the flexible workforce development fund and dismantled industry-facing bodies such as the Scottish Apprenticeship Advisory Board and Skills Development Scotland. We need a new and genuinely lifelong skills system that starts at school, opens up routes to work for young people in education and helps to retrain and upskill experienced workers so that they can take advantage of new and developing opportunities and industries.

Evidence suggests that between the ages of six and eight, children begin to form occupational aspirations. From the age of nine to 13, they begin to dismiss potential roles on the bases of gender, esteem or competence. As things stand, more than half of all young Scots who do not go to university do not have a clear line of sight to good jobs and training. By the time they arrive at the point at which they make choices about their future, they are disempowered by an education system that is decoupled from the world of work.

It does not have to be like that. In Greater Manchester, Mayor Andy Burnham is developing the Greater Manchester baccalaureate, which involves partnering with industry to deliver the combination of subjects and work experience that will set young people on a pathway to good work and training. In my constituency, Liberton high school has, despite the system, partnered with employers such as Balfour Beatty to pioneer a small-scale construction pathway that gives young people early hands-on experience in construction. With a clear vision that everyone matters, Liberton high school is doing its bit to get more young people into well-paying construction jobs, but it is the exception, and the programme is in doubt because of a lack of funding.

We need to get every part of the education system thinking about skills and the world of work. That is why, by working with industry to introduce clear pathways from school into jobs, training and education, a Scottish Labour Government would give every pupil the opportunity to fulfil their potential. Rapid changes in our economy—in technology, the climate and, imperatively, demographics—mean that we must stop viewing skills as a thing that people do once at the start of their careers.

Our modern apprenticeships programme is genuinely first class, but it is slow to adapt to economic changes and is inaccessible to learners who are already in the workforce. That is why we need to give learners who look to upskill or retrain the ability to do so while in work through a modular system that is all underwritten by student finance and that supports them in the same way that it supports those who do a university degree.

It has been eight years since the Scottish Government’s enterprise and skills review outlined serious deficiencies in the skills system and three years since James Withers published his review, but instead of fixing the problems that users are experiencing, the Government’s only foray into the skills base has been the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill, the only function of which is to shift responsibilities from one agency to another. That simply will not meet the challenges that we face over the next three to five years, as outlined at the beginning of my speech.

I move,

That the Parliament believes that Scotland’s skills system is letting down young people and holding back economic growth, and further believes that there needs to be a new partnership between education and industry, with better careers advice in schools central to it, and new Scottish industrial pathways to link school subjects to future careers, guaranteed industrial placements for secondary school pupils including in industry and a clearing system for apprenticeships, so that good candidates do not fall out of the system.