skills « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘skills’

Devolve immigration policy to the nations and regions to answer the demands of Brexit

16/10/2018, 05:45:47 PM

This piece by Atul Hatwal is an updated version of his chapter in the Compass report, Causes and Cures of Brexit

“It’s like this mad riddle.” Thus spake Danny Dyer, the sage of Brexit. Our modern day Zarathustra wasn’t wrong and nowhere are the contradictions thrown up by Brexit more evident than on immigration.

How to ‘take back control’ of migration while not cutting numbers so precipitately that skills gaps cripple public services and drive businesses to the wall? Or that the EU’s red line on freedom of movement is so egregiously breached that the broader Brexit deal is derailed?

At the heart of the riddle is an impossible question on the right number of migrants to be allowed into the UK.

The most significant area of migration is people coming to the UK to work (as opposed to study, family reunion or asylum) and on this, whether Tory or Labour, the government has a choice of two policy options, both a wrong answer.

Option A: Set a numbers target that is so low as to be either unattainable or disastrous for the economy. The past eight years have tested this approach to the point of political destruction. It’s difficult to imagine a scenario more corrosive to trust in politicians on migration than the way the government has stuck to its target of cutting migration to the tens of thousands, while continually missing it by huge margins. It raises migration as an issue and then casts the government as incompetents or liars, not prepared to do what’s required.

Option B: Set a target high enough not to buckle public services or hit economic growth but one that then opens the government to charges of allowing uncontrolled immigration.

Labour’s proposals for an integrated work visa, where the current tiering system with its caps is scrapped, suggest the party is headed towards Option B.

The detail is yet to be fleshed out but this represents a positive move from Labour. However, it’s one that will not be without cost.

It’s inevitable the Conservatives would use this as a dividing line in any election and in the event of a narrow Labour election victory, there is a question as to whether this policy could be carried through the Commons given a significant minority of Labour MPs would likely rebel on the basis that this would not, in their view, honour the Referendum result.

Over the past few months, there’s been some recourse on all sides to try to focus on skilled migration while advocating for restrictions on low skilled migration, as an alternative approach. But this just leads back to the same underlying choices.

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Inequality matters: Labour will shift the balance of power in favour of the consumer, the citizen and the worker

19/12/2014, 04:03:03 PM

by Stephen Timms

Ed Miliband has set out the central challenge his government will need to address: “This country is too unequal. And we need to change it.” Our task is to make this change in a radically different landscape then when Labour took office in 1997.

Ed has acknowledged that inequality will have to be tackled in a period when there won’t be much extra money around. The government’s oft-proclaimed economic plan has fallen disastrously short of its deficit reduction target. We were promised the deficit would be ended in this Parliament. In fact, it won’t even be halved. That means we will be able to shift spending priorities, and to alter regulation, but big new spending programmes – beyond a small number of key priorities with specified funding – will not be on the cards for some years.

With the tools that will be at our disposal, we will need to tackle seriously long term unemployment, especially among the young; to raise real wages; and to tilt the balance of power in favour of the consumer, the citizen and the worker.

Everything points strongly to devolving power. There is, of course, strong impetus in this direction from the Scottish referendum. Powerful economic arguments for devolution were set out in Andrew Adonis’s growth review in July. And the work I have been doing on employment support points to a much more localised approach too.

Andrew Adonis’s review calls for a “bold and simple offer of devolution”, ending the excessive centralisation which has held back economic growth in England. He argues that: “spending on economic development is trapped in departmental siloes that do not sufficiently reflect economic realities”.

His case is well illustrated by the poor performance of the coalition’s approach to employment support. Hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent on the government’s Work Programme, and hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent on skills support – for example by increasing the number of apprenticeships. But there has been a complete disjunction between the policies directing them. The programmes have worked at cross purposes.

They have been overseen by two huge Whitehall departments with different agendas. For example, the criteria set out by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills make it almost impossible for an unemployed person on the DWP’s Work Programme to start an apprenticeship.

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State schools need alumni networks every bit as much as private schools

15/08/2012, 02:55:01 PM

In January, Jake Hayman – Director of Future First – won the” Top of the Policies” vote at Pragmatic Radicalism’s event on skills chaired by Michael White of the Guardian, with the idea of creating an alumni network for every state school in the country.

Future First’s vision is that every state school should be supported by a thriving, engaged alumni community that helps each school to do more for its students.

State school alumni are no less likely to want to “give back” than private school alumni. It’s just that state schools haven’t traditionally been so good at asking. Future First is changing that.

Future First’s own research shows that 39% of 16 to 19 year olds who went to a state school do not know anyone in a job they’d like to do. Yet, there’s an untapped pool of over 10 million UK adults who would be willing to return to their old schools to talk about work or higher education. Future First was founded in 2009 to help reconnect former students with their old school’s community as role models for current students. Successful alumni return to school to raise awareness of the huge range of possibilities for success in the world of work and the key skills needed to achieve it.

We know it works. 75% of students at our in-school alumni events say that hearing from alumni in jobs made them want to work harder in their lessons.

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Posted in Grassroots | 2 Comments »