I’d like now to call on the Minister for Science and Skills, Julie James.

Thank you, Acting Deputy Presiding Officer; how nice to see you in the chair. We’ve seen significant improvements in the employment rate in Wales over the last Assembly term. Between February and April 2016, the employment rate was close to a record high figure at 71.9 per cent, and is well above the rate of 65 to 67 per cent experienced in the mid to late 1990s and the early years of the 2000s. To put this in context, there are now nearly 1.5 million people in employment in Wales. This success is the continuation of a longer term trend. The employment level in Wales has increased by 18.7 per cent since devolution, compared to a 16.5 per cent increase for the UK over the same period. That’s an extra 227,000 people in work in Wales since the start of the Assembly.

Whilst employment policy remains a non-devolved area, the Welsh Government’s contribution to this disproportionately strong performance through our skills and employment programmes and our investment in the economy should not be underestimated. Over the last Assembly term, we successfully delivered a number of innovative programmes that responded to the challenges of the economic climate we found ourselves in. Our Jobs Growth Wales programme is one example. Launched in April 2012, it responded quickly to the exceptional recessionary pressures that saw almost a quarter of young people in Wales between the age of 16 and 24 unemployed. The programme sought to offer young people with limited or no experience of work a foot in the door with an employer, and the chance to gain six months’ experience of real work with an expectation that they would be kept on after support from Jobs Growth Wales had finished. Sixteen thousand, three hundred young people in Wales have taken part in Jobs Growth Wales since 2012. For Jobs Growth Wales, 75 per cent of the young people in the private sector strand of the programme that completed a six-month opportunity either sustained their employment or entered further learning. I don’t know of any other similar programmes that can boast such figures.

Since the start of the ReAct II programme in October 2008, over 28,000 workers whose careers were interrupted by redundancy received Welsh Government support to gain new skills and return to work quickly. This good work has continued with the launch of ReAct III last year. However, the economic climate has changed and our suite of employability support needs to adapt to reflect the new environment within which we are operating.

Wales still has significant employment challenges around our skills levels, around the spatial concentration of unemployment and inactivity, and with the ongoing threat of redundancies within some of our key strategic industries. Our employability support needs to modernise to respond effectively to these challenges. A growing body of evidence is suggesting that our current suite of programmes is too complex and fragmented, making it difficult to develop a coherent pathway to employment for a jobseeker and resulting in support that can sometimes be inflexible in responding to individual need.

There are broader changes too to policy at UK level, which will have a significant impact on the delivery of skills training for unemployed people in Wales. The introduction of the Department for Work and Pensions’ new Work and Health Programme in 2017 presents an opportunity to more effectively align the breadth of employment support on offer to individuals across Wales. Our active involvement in the commissioning of this new contract will ensure that lessons are learned from current Work Programme delivery and that the needs of the Welsh labour market as a whole are incorporated in future programme design. This new programme will be significantly smaller than DWP’s existing Work Programme and will mean a greater volume of individuals seeking to access Welsh Government support. We are working with DWP to estimate the impact of these changes both in terms of the number of people to whom we will need to offer support and the type of assistance required. Both of these factors will require changes to our own employability programmes.

We outlined in our manifesto that we would create a new employability programme to support individuals of all ages to find good quality employment. We want this support to be tailored to individual need and, where appropriate, aligned with emerging job opportunities in local communities. Our aim is to bring together the activities from our main employability programmes, Jobs Growth Wales and ReAct, traineeships and our new Employability Skills programme into a single employability support programme that will better meet the needs of those requiring support to gain, retain, and progress within work.

The new programme is being developed using the most recent evidence and research into the delivery of effective labour market programmes. It will be informed by evaluations of the Work Ready, Jobs Growth Wales and ReAct programmes, the Skills Conditionality pilots, which we conducted with DWP, and the traineeships evaluation and review. We have a wealth of evidence available to us on what works.

Our new programme is anticipated to begin delivery from April 2018. Between now and then we will conduct a series of pilot activities with further education colleges and our existing network of work-based learning providers to test the capacity and willingness of the sectors to innovate and respond flexibly to the needs of individuals and employers, and with Careers Wales, Jobcentre Plus and local authorities to test assessment, referral and job-matching processes. We also intend making changes to some of our existing programmes to enable us to transition smoothly to delivery of our all-age programme.

Our new Employability Skills programme will reflect a different approach to delivery with a greater focus on a work placement and a continuation of support once an individual secures employment. We will continue to deliver Jobs Growth Wales until March 2018 but at a lower rate of wage subsidy, reflecting the improved economic climate and the findings of the evaluation, whilst continuing to recognise the importance of young people gaining their first foothold in work. This is a demanding timetable and a complex programme of work, but I am confident that it will result in a programme more fit and flexible to respond to the labour market challenges and opportunities we face, both now and in the future. Diolch.

Thank you. I’m going to call Llyr Gruffydd, spokesperson for Plaid Cymru.

Thank you very much, acting Deputy Presiding Officer.

Diolch i chi, Weinidog, am eich datganiad. Rwy’n croesawu'n fras y cyfeiriad teithio yr ydych yn ei amlinellu yma. Byddwn yn dweud, wrth gwrs, er eich bod yn dweud bod diweithdra yng Nghymru wedi gostwng—ac rydych yn creu darlun arbennig yn eich paragraffau agoriadol—rydym yn ymwybodol, wrth gwrs, bod llawer o'r swyddi newydd sydd wedi eu creu yn rhai rhan-amser, yn ail neu'n drydydd swyddi, yn gontractau dim oriau ac ati, a bod diweithdra hirdymor, wrth gwrs, yng Nghymru, yn parhau i fod yn ystyfnig o uchel, sef 32 y cant o'i gymharu â chyfartaledd y DU o 29 y cant. Felly, mae angen inni fod yn ofalus, rwy’n credu, o ran y darlun yr ydym yn ei greu, ein bod yn dweud y stori gyfan.

Nawr, nid yw polisi cyflogaeth, wrth gwrs, wedi’i ddatganoli ac rydych yn dweud wrthym yn eich datganiad na ddylai cyfraniad Llywodraeth Cymru i berfformiad anghymesur o gryf Cymru gael ei ddiystyru. Wel, byddwn yn dweud, wyddoch chi, rhowch y pwerau i ni a gallem wneud yn well fyth. A byddwn yn gofyn i chi a ydych chi’n cytuno â mi yn hynny o beth, Weinidog, ac efallai pa sylwadau yr ydych chi wedi eu gwneud i Lywodraeth y DU ynglŷn â chael mwy o gymhwysedd yn y maes hwn fel y gallwn wneud gwaith gwell na'r hyn sy'n digwydd ar hyn o bryd?

Wrth ddwyn ynghyd Twf Swyddi Cymru a'r rhaglenni eraill yr ydych yn sôn amdanynt mewn un rhaglen, tybed ai'r bwriad yw creu un brand gyda nifer o wahanol gynigion oddi mewn iddo neu nifer o fathau o gynlluniau sy'n gweithredu o fewn y rhaglen honno, neu ai'r bwriad nawr yw symud at un cynnig sydd â'r hyblygrwydd i ddiwallu’r ystod eang o anghenion sydd gennym ni yma yng Nghymru.

Mae'r matrics a ddarparwyd gan y Llywodraeth yn ddiweddar o’r rhaglenni a gymeradwywyd ar gyfer y gwahanol lwybrau at gyflogadwyedd, rwy’n credu, yn adrodd ei stori ei hun. Bu pryderon am gymhlethdod a dyblygu hefyd, wrth gwrs, rhwng rhaglenni Llywodraeth Cymru a rhaglenni’r Adran Gwaith a Phensiynau. Rwyf yn gofyn, efallai, i chi ddweud ychydig mwy am sut yr ydych am sicrhau bod y sefyllfa honno'n cael ei gwella. Ond, yr hyn yr wyf yn ei ofyn yw: a yw datganiad heddiw yn gyfaddefiad, mewn gwirionedd, bod y pryderon hynny yn iawn? Rwy’n credu i chi ddweud bod cyfeiriad at ddarnio gwasanaethau. Mae llawer o bobl wedi bod o’r farn eu bod yn eithaf gorniferus, yn eithaf cymhleth i’w defnyddio a bod y symleiddio hwn yn gydnabyddiaeth bod hynny'n gywir. A yw efallai’n awgrymu bod Llywodraeth Cymru wedi lledaenu ei rhaglenni ychydig yn rhy eang yn y gorffennol, o bosibl, hefyd, o ran darparu adnoddau? Mae hwn yn ffactor pwysig yma, wrth gwrs, oherwydd hoffwn eich clywed yn cadarnhau wrthym y bydd y cyllid cyfan—cyfanswm y cyllid yn cyfateb i swm y rhannau o'r cynlluniau presennol. Neu, a ydych chi'n disgwyl, mewn gwirionedd, y bydd rhyw fath o arbedion ariannol trwy ddod â rhai o'r rhaglenni hyn at ei gilydd?

Rydych yn dweud wrthym y bydd y rhaglen newydd sydd wedi ei chynnig yn cael ei llywio gan dystiolaeth ac ymchwil diweddar, gan werthusiadau sydd wedi'u cynnal, ac y byddwch yn cynnal cynlluniau arbrofol a phrofion ar wahanol ddulliau. Nid wyf yn gweld y gair 'ymgynghori'. Byddwn yn tybio ac yn disgwyl mai eich bwriad yw ymgynghori â rhanddeiliaid a chyflogwyr ac eraill.

Rydych yn gobeithio gweld y rhaglen hon yn cael ei chyflwyno o fis Ebrill 2018. Wel, mae angen iddi gael ei chynllunio, mae angen iddi gael ei threialu ac mae angen cynnal profion arni. Rwy’n tybio y bydd proses dendro ar gyfer rhyw fath o gorff darparu, a bydd angen rhywfaint o amser paratoi arno, byddwn yn tybio, er mwyn gallu dechrau gweithredu erbyn mis Ebrill 2018. Felly, efallai y gallech ddweud ychydig wrthym am y broses yr ydych yn gobeithio ymgymryd â hi i gyrraedd y dyddiad dechrau hwnnw ym mis Ebrill 2018, yn enwedig, wrth gwrs, o’i gosod yn erbyn y cefndir o adael yr Undeb Ewropeaidd. Bydd yna effaith enfawr ar y sector hwn yn arbennig—ac yn ariannol yn enwedig, byddwn yn dychmygu—o ystyried ei ddibyniaeth ar gyllid Cronfa Gymdeithasol Ewrop yn y gorffennol. Mewn gwirionedd rwy’n cwestiynu yn y fan yma a ydych chi’n dechrau ar y newid hwn ar y rhagdybiaeth y bydd y cyllid sy'n cael ei ddarparu ar hyn o bryd gan yr UE yn cael ei ddarparu gan Lywodraeth y DU. Fel arall, byddai rhywun yn cwestiynu sut y gallwch ddatblygu a dylunio eich prif raglen cyflogadwyedd newydd i Gymru heb, i fod yn blwmp ac yn blaen, syniad o ba lefel o adnoddau sy’n mynd i fod ar gael i chi.

Thank you for that series of questions. In my usual format, I’m going to answer the last one first and work backwards, just that’s because how my brain works.

In terms of the overall funding programme, yes, we are going to assume, because we’ve been told on many occasions, that the funding shortfall that falls to Wales as a result of the Brexit agenda will be made up by the UK Government. As we heard earlier, in First Minister’s questions, we have been promised this many times and we’re going to assume that that’s the case until we’re told differently. I will comment this, though, and I said this in my apprenticeship statement a couple of weeks ago: it’s not just money that we get from the EU, we get research opportunities, we get exchange opportunities, our young people have the chance to learn from other people who are undertaking vocational programmes and traineeships and apprenticeships. I very much hope that, in the negotiations that we now embark on with the EU, these cultural and learning opportunities, in which Wales has been very much a leader and a beneficiary of the joint learning that has been undertaken, can continue to happen. It very much isn’t just about the money in these things. It’s very much about what works.

In terms of some of your other questions, I can assure you there is no question of financial savings in this. This isn’t about the budget overall. This is about the skills tracks programme. I think you held up the paper version of that. It looks a bit like a tube map. The idea is to make it a much more simple thing to navigate as both a recipient of one of the programmes or indeed as an adviser—perhaps a parent if you are at early ages, or a partner, and so on—advising somebody through the programme. So, that’s an interactive map that you’re looking at there. You should be able to click on the node and it should tell you where you are, and you should be able to follow fairly swiftly through to get yourself to the right thing.

You’ve heard me say many times in the previous Assembly that the difficulty with employability programmes is that you do not want, under any circumstances, to arrive at a one-size-fits-all. People are individuals; they require individual support. Often a one-size package doesn’t fit them. So, this is about tailoring those packages. The employability programmes have been very successful, but people who are further away from the job market need a different range of support, both to get them into those employment opportunities and actually to keep them there. It’s not just about getting the job and then walking off; it’s about keeping them in that job and making sure the support mechanisms are in place to maintain them there. From simple things like the fact that your first month in work is sometimes the most expensive month you’ll ever experience—you haven’t had a salary and you’ve got all the expense. So, it’s something simple like that, right through to all of the difficulties of navigating through family life, work and so on if you’ve been unemployed for a considerable period of time. So, this is about tailoring a set of successful programmes to harder-to-reach individuals as the economic emphasis closes.

Now, we don’t know what the outcome of the European Union negotiations might be, so the other thing is to be flexible in the face of uncertainty. So, this is about making the programmes as flexible as possible to respond to an uncertain future. It may be that we have some growth, in which case we need to respond to harder-to-reach individuals; it may be that we have redundancies and so on, in which case we need to respond with, effectively, short-term crisis management, as with ReAct. So, these programmes are being designed to be as flexible as possible within the constraints that they operate in.

The last thing I want to say about that is that it’s not one brand, except that we’re calling it Employability Skills strands. There will be individual programmes in there, but the idea is to make them flexible, allow people to move to and fro. We are having some difficulty in negotiating with the DWP because they themselves have changed the parameters of their programme and the goalposts have moved, to mix my metaphors all over the place. The goalposts have moved quite significantly over the last six months. We are in close negotiation with them and with the various city deals around Wales and with the regional skills partnerships to make sure that we have a coherent offer that matches together with the UK Government’s offer and so on.

To answer your first question last, in terms of devolution, we would like some more powers around how to assess people and how to get them onto the programmes, but you will know that we have long said that we will not accept some of the less—in my opinion—effective results with the DWP’s programmes, like mandation and sanctioning, for example. So, it is around what we can negotiate in order to keep our employment programmes open and acceptable to everybody.

Thank you. We are now halfway through the allocated time, and we’ve got three speakers. I call Dawn Bowden.

Thank you, acting Presiding Officer. It’s a very brief question. Minister, in addition to the support for apprenticeship programmes, European structural funds did provide for discrete training towards vocational skills and qualifications, and such qualification-focused training is currently provided both in our further education colleges in Wales and through private learning providers. This training is clearly an important element in ensuring that there’s a suitably trained and skilled workforce for businesses looking to set up in local communities. A prime example of that would be the Tenneco-Walker arrangement in Merthyr, which required skilled welders when setting up the new factory there, in Merthyr Tydfil. Would the Minister agree with me that, should pressures on funding for such schemes arise in the future, any funding should be prioritised towards further education colleges to deliver this crucial training, rather than being channelled towards private learning providers to maximise the moneys kept within the system?

Well, we have a complex system of contract arrangements in place to provide work-based learning via a system of main contracts and then subcontracts; and actually, it’s quite a complex picture. Sometimes the further education colleges are subcontractors to the main contractor and vice versa. What I am able to confirm to the Member is that we do prioritise very much the needs of qualification-based learning based on particular employment opportunities, as identified through the regional skills partnerships. We keep the way that we fund those very much under review, with a view—as I said on the previous question—to being as flexible as possible, to be as responsible as possible, depending on what happens. It’s a very complex and detailed question and the acting Presiding Officer is going to be very cross with me if I answer it in detail. So, I’m more than happy to have another discussion with you elsewhere.

I would never be cross with you. I’d now like to call Mohammad Asghar, spokesperson for the Conservatives.

I thank the Minister for her statement today. On behalf of the Welsh Conservatives, I give a broad welcome to the aims and objectives contained in this statement today. Improving the skills of the Welsh people will lead to a more prosperous society, with higher rates of employment and a lower level of poverty, and it will reduce inequality in Wales. We know that the skills of the Welsh workforce lag behind not only the more prosperous regions of the United Kingdom, but also the world’s leading advanced countries. So, can I ask the Minister how she will encourage collaborative working between all aspects of the education system and the business community, and promote more choices for learners?

Unemployment rates in our most disadvantaged areas remain stubbornly high. Apprenticeships are best suited to people who learn best in a practical setting. Will the Minister expand on her plans to prioritise investment in our most disadvantaged areas to develop employability and help people into jobs? For the Welsh Government’s strategy to succeed, it must have the confidence of employers. Can the Minister assure this Assembly that the views of businesses were taken into account when formulating her policies, and will she increase support for businesses in Wales? Businesses have expressed concerns in the past about the levels of literacy and numeracy of working-age adults. How will the Minister address this problem here?

Finally, Deputy Presiding Officer, I would like to know how the Minister proposes to monitor progress towards her aims to ensure she delivers the highly trained workforce needed to reduce poverty, encourage businesses to grow, and to regenerate our most deprived communities in the Valleys and Wales.

Thank you very much for that series of questions. I think the issue around employer confidence is an interesting one. We had an extensive consultation over the summer—last summer—with employers on our apprenticeships programmes, which was completely upended by the announcements at UK level of the apprenticeship levy, which cut straight across that. Members who were here in the fourth Assembly will remember my consternation that we had to stop that consultation while we figured out what on earth was going on with the apprenticeship levy, and I’m sad to say that we’re still in a position where we’re not quite sure how much money, if any money, will come to the Welsh Government as a result of that levy. So, that has caused a considerable amount of unease, shall we say, with employers, because it hasn’t been possible to provide certainty, either at the UK level or at the Welsh level. Indeed, we’re in a series of correspondence and meetings with various Ministers, trying to sort that out. So, I agree with him that employer confidence could be higher in that system, but I don’t agree with him that the Welsh Government is in any way responsible for that. Indeed, I would ask him to look to the Government at UK level—controlled by the Conservative Party, I think—and ask what added value this apprenticeship levy has actually wrought into this system, because, frankly, I can’t see it.

In terms of our own programmes, they are highly sought after by our employers. We have one of the highest completion rates in Europe, at 86 per cent. Some of our providers are up in the 90 per cent completion rates. That’s how we monitor progress—by completion rate, and then employment following the frameworks. We also have flexible frameworks so that employers who require—. For example, very recently, we had a shortage of people with long-distance lorry driving skills. We were able to put a framework in place to fill that gap very swiftly, and that’s proved very successful. We have a very flexible programme that allows us to respond to that sort of demand.

In terms of the skills overall, the Member will remember that we have discussed many times in this Chamber our need to move to higher skills, away from base-level skills and apprenticeships, and that our programme now embraces an all-age apprenticeship system, which allows people to progress to higher-level apprenticeships right up to degree and postgraduate level—very much sought after by some of our prestigious employers, such as Airbus, GE Aviation, and so on. A large number of them; those are just two. We’re very proud of that and we’ll be continuing to do that. We’re also looking at the essential skills programme very carefully to ensure that it’s accessible to those people who still need the essential skills that the Member pointed out.

And the final speaker in this debate will be Jenny Rathbone.

Thank you, acting Presiding Officer, and thank you, Minister, for your statement. I think your approach is entirely sensible. If we have less money to work with, then it’s very important that we eliminate duplication of effort. Therefore, I welcome your proposal to create the Employability Skills programme, bringing all these other different programmes together. I particularly pay tribute to the Jobs Growth Wales programme, which has been really significant for many, many of my constituents in really giving them the leg up into successful careers that, without that first taste of work, they might not have made it and they could be not having a successful work life. I welcome your reassurances about the importance of giving individual support depending on individual need.

Of course, it’s really important to recognise that, if people have been outside the labour market for a period of time, some people become agoraphobic and need a lot of work to persuade them to get back into society as well as into the rigours of work. I wondered how well we continue to ensure that our schools and colleges are completely focused on ensuring that all individual needs are met, because I was shocked recently to identify somebody who has clearly been on the autistic spectrum all their life and it was never spotted in either their schools or their colleges—it’s only now being identified. So, we need to make sure that individual learning needs are identified early on, because further education colleges do a fantastic job for people who’ve fallen between the cracks in the school education system and they give new hope to people who’ve not had a successful school career. But we surely ought to be preventing that sort of thing happening overall.

I’ve been to a couple of conferences recently where people have been saying, ‘What’s going to happen to training if we’re going to lose all the money coming from the EU?’ Well, obviously, we have to make sure that the Welsh Government is ensuring that the Westminster Government delivers on the promises made by the ‘leave’ programme, because we continue to need that training. But we also I think we have to ensure that businesses, trainers and Government are saying, ‘Well, we’ve got to keep going in any case’, because we can’t possibly not meet the gaps in skills that we’re going to need for the transformative programmes we must have, like the metro, like the smarter energy programme—tapping into our wealth of sustainable energy—like our sustainable housing programme, so that we build the houses of the future that generate energy rather than leaking energy. For them, we need people with very detailed skills.

So, I think the challenge for us is both to ensure that we create the skills that are required by businesses, both across the public as well as the private sector, but we also retain them for Wales because, otherwise, we’re simply creating the skills that other parts of the UK need and we’re subsidising them and that’s obviously not fair. So, I think it’s a difficult balance, but I welcome your statement and hope that we can continue to make to progress despite less money.

Thank you very much for those questions. I’d just like to say that I’m working very closely with my colleagues, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and the Minister for Lifelong Learning and Welsh Language, in ensuring that the transition stages between all areas of education are as seamless as possible and that we pick up individual learner needs at those times so that we correctly identify them. This is for two reasons: one, to benefit the individual concerned, but also so that we don’t spend money needlessly several times and before somebody gets themselves into the right tracks. That’s a very expensive way of going about it.

We’re also working closely, all of us across Government, on making sure that vocational education takes its rightful place in schools and colleges in order to ensure that people go that right route in the first place and don’t go into higher education and then go back and start an apprenticeship programme where that’s inappropriate. So, we’re doing a lot of work across Government on those two aspects and I have no doubt one of us will be bringing a statement back to say how we got on with that in the autumn term. But it’s a very important point.

The other thing to say is that those companies that train in Wales do a lot of training, but we still have a stubborn number of companies that don’t do any training. We’re doing a little bit of an evangelical programme to make sure that companies that don’t currently train understand the need for it. I want to share what seems like a little bit of a trite saying, but it really says it all. If you say, as you rightly said, ‘What happens if we train people and they leave?’, the question you ought to ask is: ‘What happens if you don’t train people and they stay?’, which is a much more important question for most businesses. That’s the mindset that we want to get into our businesses: that, actually, a well-qualified and engaged workforce is more loyal, more productive and more likely to benefit your business than a low-skilled, unproductive workforce that you’re desperately hanging on to until they can desperately find somewhere else to go—that’s not the picture of the economy we’re trying to paint.

Indeed, we have several companies that are shining beacons of training. I recently visited Admiral, which has a fantastic programme of employability skills, but also just life skills, that they offer to their employees. They have exemplary retention and productivity levels inside the company as a result of that. Dŵr Cymru is another—there are several examples of that. We learn from those experiences all the way through.

So, I think that what I’m really announcing today is a comprehensive programme to pull our things together to make them more easily navigable, to persuade people that training is the right way to go to make sure that we meet the skills needs of the future and to ensure that people who have specific learning difficulties and needs are picked up in that programme as they go by putting the right identifiers in the system.

Thank you very much.