The next item on our agenda is a statement by the Minister for Skills and Science on employability. I call on the Minister to make her statement. Julie James.

Diolch, Lywydd. Supporting people to enter, remain and progress within sustained employment is a vital part of ensuring a prosperous and secure future for Wales. ‘Taking Wales Forward’ commits the Welsh Government to reshaping

‘employability support for job‑ready individuals, and those furthest from the labour market, to acquire the skills and experience to gain and maintain sustainable employment.’

The Welsh Government is, therefore, developing an employability plan that I intend to publish in the new year, which will set out how we will create the conditions to deliver this commitment and how we will measure success.

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Ann Jones) took the Chair.

I outlined in July the Welsh Government’s early thinking on the development of a single all-age employability programme, bringing together the activities from our current employability programmes to better meet the needs of those requiring support to enter, remain and progress in the workplace. As I said then, this programme will enable us to better respond to the labour market challenges we now face: the continued challenge of sustaining a low unemployment rate, particularly given the need to address disproportionate levels of unemployment for certain groups and geographical areas, whilst recognising the clear case for sharpening our focus on reducing economic inactivity.

However, we know that it is not enough to focus only on getting people into work. There is a need to ensure that individuals gain decent and sustainable employment and that they progress into, and within, secure jobs. Although entering into employment is a key factor in reducing poverty, it is also important to recognise the growing issue of in-work poverty in Wales. There are now more households living in poverty where someone is working, than not.

Our employability plan will, therefore, set out how our support can be most effectively targeted to progress more individuals from economic inactivity into work, whilst retaining an emphasis on progression in and through sustained employment. The plan will recognise that getting people into sustained and meaningful employment is not just about increasing skills. A holistic approach is required that seeks to identify and address the needs and barriers each individual faces in gaining, retaining and progressing within employment.

We believe in an integrated employability approach, linking skills initiatives with employment services and with other public services tackling employability-related barriers, in particular the integration of work and health services to support people with health conditions at the earliest possible opportunity to access or remain in work. We also recognise the importance of working with employers to fully integrate Welsh Government business support and procurement levers within our wider employability approach in order to ensure that we maximise the potential to target recruitment to new jobs created from low activity groups.

In order to more effectively prioritise and target our employability and skills interventions, we will develop a systematic approach to identifying need and to referral to employability support through a new employment advice service. The employment advice service will strengthen and unify assessment, brokerage, referral and advice services, and will operate entirely independently from the provision of employability support in order to ensure a clear, impartial and absolute focus on the needs of the individual. Ongoing advice and brokerage will be provided through the employment advice service to ensure that individuals are effectively supported in their journey into and within employment.

The employability plan will set out a framework for action drawing on evidence of what works. We will be working across Government and with partners over the coming weeks to develop this framework, building on the key themes from our engagement to date that have set the basis for our overarching approach. This approach will be all-age and all-encompassing. We will move away from a cohort-driven approach, targeting specific groups of unemployed or economically inactive people with specific interventions, and instead focus support around the needs of the individual. Evidence tells us that bespoke and intensive support that is tailored to the needs of individuals in order to increase employability and address barriers is critical. We’ll also remove the boundaries between in-work and out-of-work provision to create a continuum of support to individuals once they access the workplace, particularly for those vulnerable to dropping out of employment.

Our approach will be integrated and incentivised. We will consolidate the number of programmes on offer by bringing interventions together through our all-age and all-encompassing approach and, working through our business support and procurement levers, we will incentivise the creation of more targeted job opportunities for disadvantaged individuals and place premiums on support in particularly disadvantaged areas. Our approach will also be modernised and efficient. We will reach more individuals through the introduction and expansion of digital employability services and we will free up resources through more efficient and innovative delivery models, such as the nationally commissioned, regionally managed and locally delivered approach we will be adopting for the new all-age employability programme.

This approach will require a co-ordinated and focused effort, not only across the Welsh Government but also with UK Government departments, in particular the Department for Work and Pensions, with local authorities, the third sector, the private sector, and with stakeholder groups and delivery partners. This effort will need to embrace flexibility and innovation whilst retaining a relentless focus on improvement and results. Our work with the DWP as a key partner in Wales will continue in order to make every effort to embed their programmes within the wider Welsh employability agenda. The principles of our employability plan underpin the new all-age employability programme and our co-design of the DWP work and health programme in Wales. This represents an opportunity to more effectively align the breadth of employment support on offer to individuals across Wales.

In developing the plan, it is imperative that the Welsh Government works closely with all key players to ensure opportunities are available for all. Our new approach to employability support will be flexible, nationally commissioned, regionally managed, locally delivered and, most importantly, centred around the individual. We believe that this approach will benefit individuals across Wales in gaining, retaining and progressing within work, and will deliver the prosperous and secure future for Wales that we need to take Wales forward. Diolch.

May I thank you for your statement this afternoon, Minister? I welcome the announcement that there is to be an employability programme and the general principle of creating a more accessible, more flexible programme, with the support of the employment advice service in this case, of course, but the statement raises a number of questions because, essentially, it announces that there is to be an employability programme and an employment advice service. Perhaps you can mention who will develop the employability programme. I assume it would be the Government, but it would be good to know, because, if you are going to make a statement or an announcement by January, there isn’t a great deal of time to include various stakeholders in that discussion. When do you anticipate that the programme will become active? Perhaps you could tell us a little about the resources and the costs of implementation. And also, the employment advice service that you mentioned, what sort of capacity will that have? How many people do you anticipate they will be working with on an annual basis? Perhaps you could tell us a little about the cost that you anticipate and from what budget the funding for that will come from.

You mentioned that you want to commission nationally, manage regionally, and deliver locally. Now, I assume—I may be wrong—that you anticipate that the regional skills partnerships will have a role to play. So, what consideration have you given, in considering that model, to perhaps devolving more responsibility to those partnerships, certainly in terms of budgets and so on in relation to this area? I’d be pleased to hear to what extent there is more scope perhaps to do that.

You also mentioned, of course, all-age provision. I assume that we are talking about post-16. Perhaps you could tell us whether you have considered extending that to post-14, because you will be as aware as I am that many people have reached the point where they have made decisions by the time that they reach that age. Perhaps we are catching them too late, or failing to catch them at all perhaps, because it’s too late before they face that kind of situation. The statement does mention that the approach would be all-age and all-encompassing and that you are looking at an approach that is integrated and incentivised.

You mentioned being modernised and efficient, but I don’t see an emphasis on ensuring that the service is effective. I do think that that is an important consideration, and perhaps you could tell us more about how you intent to evaluate the effectiveness of the provision. How will you measure success under these new arrangements that you have set out this afternoon? Much of the success of what you hope to achieve, from what I see from the statement, will depend to some extent on the UK Government and perhaps the record in the past period doesn’t give one much confidence when we look at the way that the apprenticeship levy, for example, has been dealt with. Perhaps, as I am talking about that particular levy, you could tell us how you anticipate that that could strengthen or complement this provision that you have announced today. We heard earlier about the announcement made yesterday on the level of funding that will be allocated by the UK Government. I would suggest that we shouldn’t assume that that is new funding, because it’s been lost from elsewhere. We will lose out elsewhere. But it will be interesting to hear how you see the contribution of that levy playing out in this context.

When we do talk of this area, one crucially important area is the element of marketing and promoting the value of the acquisition of skills for people who aren’t in employment, and even those who are in employment—perhaps more so. I would have thought that we would need a strong marketing campaign to back up programmes such as these. Perhaps you could tell us a little more—because the DWP and local authorities and the provision in terms of health and so on will be generating some demand, but perhaps more specifically for those people in employment—about how and where do we ensure that we sell this to employers, to young people, to parents and all those various groups out there that we want to see taking advantage of the provision. Thank you.

Thank you for those questions, Llyr. I’ll start with the apprenticeship levy, just to be clear. I do feel, deputy Llywydd, that I have made these remarks several times in this Chamber but I’ll just make them again. The figures that have been released by the Treasury do not mean that significant new money is coming to Wales, because they don’t take into account reductions made to comparable English programmes including apprenticeships and, therefore, need to be considered as part of the bigger picture, which shows—you’ll not be surprised to learn—real-terms cuts to the funding available to Wales over the next few years, nor do they show the effect of some £30 million-odd that will be paid back to the Treasury by Welsh public service providers through the levy. So, just to be clear: the levy is nothing more than a UK Government employment tax. It directly conflicts with areas of devolved competence. We have our own distinct and very popular approach to apprenticeships, which the Member knows about and has been very supportive with, and this just cuts directly across it. So, not only do we not have any new money but, clearly, all our public services have to pay the levy and so they’re deprived of funds. So, it makes no sense at all and we’re very cross about it. I don’t think I’m saying anything new: I’ve said that several times before. I’m mystified about how we can be any clearer. There is no new money. We are continuing the programme we had before. I think this has got to be at least the tenth time I’ve said that in public and to everybody else who’s asked me. So, I don’t understand how I can be any more clear, Llywydd. So, that’s the position we’ve found ourselves in. The autumn statement will, of course, clarify the position completely and, if things change, I will, of course, keep Members updated but we’re not expecting a change and this is the position as I understand it to be. So, that’s the apprenticeship levy point.

In terms of all the rest of it, what I’m announcing today is the start of a policy programme to develop this programme and I’m really asking Members for their input into the framework of the programme. I’m not yet in a position to tell you how much it costs and all the rest of it because we haven’t got the policy completely put to bed. There has been a process of consultation. They are very welcome, all AMs who want to input into that personally on behalf of their constituents, and I will come back in the new year with a proper proposal for the overarching policy. But the fundamentals of it are that, at the point of contact, the individual should not have to wrestle with what kind of funding that they’re getting. So, rather than now having to say, ‘Well, you haven’t applied—you applied for Jobs Growth Wales but, unfortunately, you’re 25 and you should have applied for something else’, we’ll do away with that. What we’ll have is this employment advice service, which will broker the individual’s ability to say what they need and then help them to get what they need.

I’ve been extremely clear that that has to be completely divorced from the actual support that they get, because I frankly—and I’ll be absolutely clear about this—do not want any links at all with the kind of assessment that has been associated with benefits sanctioning and so on, which I think is abhorrent and really only drives desperate people into more desperation. So, what we’re looking to do is broker for the individual a way for them to express their own needs to Government, and for us to provide them with the services they require. That might be skills and it might be training—employment training or in-employment training—but it also might be health provision or childcare or travel or whatever. So, I will be convening a cross-Government group to look at this, and we will be looking to see how we can seriously holistically look at the barriers that an individual faces towards sustained employment, or indeed towards the steps towards employment, which might include volunteering and community work and so on, to get them along that path, because we know that it drives people out of poverty and into health to have that kind of connection.

So, this is really a very early update for the Assembly in terms of our policy direction, because I very much wanted to know what Members thought about that policy direction, and then I’ll revert to you once we’ve got the thing in a more comprehensive form.

I thank the Minister for her statement today. The Minister said she plans to reshape employability support for job-ready individuals to gain decent and sustainable employment. Vital to this is ensuring that students leaving education have the right skills to help them in the world of work. The Minister says that she recognises the importance of working with employers to maximise the potential of helping low-activity groups into employment. So, could I ask the Minister what plans she has to strengthen ties with the business community to make this happen in Wales?

I welcome the confirmation that this approach will be for all ages and all-encompassing. How will the Minister ensure that her approach reduces the gender imbalance in our workforce, and what specific measures will she be taking to assist older people back into the workforce in Wales?

The Minister says that employment is not just about increasing skills. Increasing skills does, however, play a key role in getting people into sustainable employment. I regret, therefore, that there has been a significant lack of commitment from the Welsh Labour Government to reinvest this funding into improved apprenticeship training. This is the money given by the businesses—[Interruption.] This is the money given by the businesses, and it is vital that this is reinvested into training. Does the Minister appreciate the disappointment of groups such as the Welsh retail consortium that the Welsh Government is viewing the levy consequentials as a revenue stream and are not linking this to those who have contributed to it? Why does the Welsh Government refuse to ring-fence this money to support businesses? The Welsh Government has made much of its Valleys taskforce. [Interruption.] The Welsh Government has made much of its Valleys taskforce. Could not these funds be used to provide skills training for people in the most deprived communities in our Valleys?

The funding certainty provided by the UK Government is most welcome, and employers will feel let down by the Labour-led Government if it refuses to invest this cash into training and apprenticeships in Wales, although, overall, I do appreciate what the Minister is doing here.

At the risk of appearing like groundhog day, there isn’t any extra money. The Member will be familiar with how the Barnett formula works. So, what the Treasury has done is announce a consequential of one part without showing you what the disconsequential of another part is. So, for example, there’s a 17 per cent cut in the base funding, which is matched against the apprenticeship funding. That’s just one of them; there are several others. So, you will know that a fundamental principle of devolution is that the money comes to the Welsh Government for the Welsh Government to set its priorities. The idea that you can change general taxation for a specific employment tax and then bemoan the fact that it isn’t being ring-fenced is just extremely—well, laughable, quite frankly. It’s not clear either how it will be spent in England. So, whilst it’s true that there will be a voucher system for some employers that pay the levy, it’s not at all clear to me how SMEs who don’t pay the levy will get funding, nor is it clear how public sector bodies paying the levy will be able to spend that funding. So, it’s nothing more than a cut in general taxation, replaced by a specific tax. And I’m afraid, Dirprwy Lywydd, I have no other words to express it. I feel I’ve really said it until it’s been said to death.

In terms of the rest of it, the Member made a reasonable point about the need for businesses to be included in our plans, and, of course, they are. I talked a lot about nationally commissioned and regionally focused schemes. The Member will be familiar with the workings of the regional skills partnerships, and, of course, they have been consulted in the way that we have looked at our national policy, and they will continue to be consulted, and, indeed, they’ve worked very hard on putting their own plans together.

Can I thank the Minister for her statement today? It’s been very important to look at where we are going to attack some of the issues that affect some of the most deprived communities. I was going to ask about the levy, but I think you’ve answered that quite clearly. [Interruption]. No, it’s okay.

But the issues we talked about—clearly, you’ve mentioned it a little bit, but I was disappointed to see in the paper, in the statement itself, no mention of transportation. You have mentioned it in your response to Llyr Gruffydd, in one point, but I think the issue of transportation is critical. Because, if you are focusing upon the needs of the individual, it’s about how that individual gets access to some of those services, not just some of the employment opportunities, but also some of the advice that may be available as well. So, I think we need to look at the issue of transportation.

In your statement, you mention that it’s going to be nationally commissioned, regionally managed. Now, does that actually mean there’s a role for regional skills partnerships? What is their role, and can you perhaps focus upon the south Wales partnership, in particular, and the plan they have, and how that fits into the agenda of the employment advice service?

Can you also look at perhaps how this scheme would work with other schemes in operation, particularly in my area, with the steel taskforce, and how that’s going to fit in to this whole picture as well—because, clearly, we have many individuals who need the support and services they are providing—and how that fits in with that?

Minister, it’s important we tackle the challenges faced by our deprived communities—our post-industrial communities—who are facing some tough times ahead of them. I look forward to seeing how this works for those people.

Thank you very much for those questions, David Rees. I think, on the point of transportation, it’s true I didn’t mention it in the statement itself, but that’s only because you end up with a big, long shopping list if you put everything in—that’s not to denigrate its importance. Clearly, what we’re looking at is looking to see what barriers each individual faces, and, if there’s a transportation difficulty, then we need to find a way to counter that.

Indeed, I visited a library up in Blaina, in Abertillery, only the other day, and spoke with a number of people there who were in our digital inclusion groups, and a librarian there, who was a really excellent individual. Nearly everybody there said that transportation was one of the biggest problems they had in accessing the jobs that they were looking for as part of their benefits search. So, I’m very familiar with that, and we will certainly be looking at that. My colleague, Ken Skates, and I are very much part of that proposal.

In terms of how it links to the other initiatives we’ve got, you mentioned the steel taskforce, for example, but we also have the Valleys taskforce, and a number of other initiatives, all of which are really working in the same area, but with specific focus on a particular group of people, with particular problems. The whole point about the employability scheme is that it pulls them together and sets them in an overarching policy framework, so that we can ensure that they’re not working against each other, but are, in fact, working in harmony.

If I could just use the steel taskforce as an example of not having cohort-driven policies, obviously, there’ll be ReAct funding available for anybody who’s made redundant, but you’ll know that that only applies to employees, and that a lot of the people who become displaced when an industry starts to downsize are actually supply chain contractors and self-employed people, and so on. So, we’re looking to have a more global system that allows people who are not inside the specific category to also access support. So, that’s a very good example of how that would work.

And then, lastly, in terms of regional skills partnerships, I’ve been going around Wales, I’ve announced the two plans—for the north and for the south-east—and, very shortly, I’ll be announcing the plan for the regional partnership for the south-west, as all three regional skills partnerships go from their pilot year into their first year of operation. In the south-west, for example, they’ve worked very hard with the city region, and, indeed, with the enterprise zones, to ensure that all of the skills for the growth industries we want for the future are reflected in the plan, and then our funding will follow that, so that we can ensure that, when we’re putting funding in place for skills specifically, we’re funding the skills for the future and not skills for the past.

I welcome the statement today and I particularly welcome the holistic approach that the Minister is adopting, and that issues about transport, healthcare and support for individuals when they gain work are seen as just as important as the skills that are needed.

One of the big issues, of course, is childcare and women’s employability. Does the Minister think that women’s employability is affected by the fact that the leave for childcare still tends to be taken by women? What can we do about that? What does the Minister think we can do about the fact that we want women to access jobs that will be well paid? We all know the figures that 80 per cent of care workers are women and 90 per cent of the workforce in the STEM subjects are men, so how are we going to move ahead and give the support to try and break that down?

The other issue, of course, is prejudice amongst employers and other people in the community. What can we do to remove those prejudices? The Equality and Human Rights Commission has looked at pregnancy related discrimination, which has already been mentioned here in this Chamber today, and shows that there is a considerable amount of discrimination about women who are pregnant or who are likely to be pregnant. So, I really welcome everything that the Minister has said today, but if we’re going to look at it holistically, we’ve somehow got to build all that in, as well.

Amongst some of the policy drivers that we’ve been looking at in putting together the plan, as I was mentioning to Llyr, is looking to see what we can drive by way of other Government investment. So, one of the things we’re only exploring at the moment, but it’s been well received by those I’ve spoken to so far, is that where we support a company, for example, in the engineering or technology sector, where the jobs are better paid, we might be able to provide extra support if they’re prepared to have flexible working practices, flexible hours and so on, to encourage that kind of working, which we know assists women to stay in those careers and return to them after going part-time or, indeed, having a career break to look after their children.

So, we’re very much exploring how we can use Welsh Government funding and investment funding to put hooks, if you like, into the funding to encourage the kinds of behaviours in employers that we’d like to see. That goes also for trying to ensure a more diverse workforce in a number of areas—I see Joyce Watson looking at me—so construction is obviously one of them. You and I attended a very interesting healthcare firm in your constituency only yesterday to talk about their plans, and one of the discussions we had was about how they employ their workforce and what the flexible arrangements might be. So, we’re starting to look at that kind of hook to be attached not just to skills training funding, but actually to our procurement funding and to some of our grant-in-aid funding and some of our investment funding, to see what other things we can drive through as we pursue our agenda to have a diverse workforce.

I’ll just reiterate something I know we all agree with: that all companies that show diversity in their workforces have better bottom lines than those companies that don’t. So, this isn’t about a nice thing that costs you; this is about a thing that drives your bottom line forward, as well as providing good jobs for good people.

Finally, Suzy Davies.

Diolch, Lywydd. Thank you for your statement, Minister, and for some of the reassurance you’ve just given in terms of gender balance in terms of this way forward. I just wanted to know where Welsh language skills might come into your considerations here. Obviously, the new advisory service will be an appropriate place to identify somebody’s latent Welsh language skills, but then so would be the actual providers of employment support. So, I suppose what I’m asking is: can you give us some reassurance today about where exactly the responsibility for identifying and bringing out someone’s Welsh language skills would sit in this? Obviously, the last thing any of us would want would be for this to fall through the gap between the service and the actual providers. Of course, this is particularly relevant when we’ve got poorer areas that are losing their Welsh language skills at the moment.

The Member makes a very good point indeed. We’d expect that to work all the way through the policy. I would very much expect the employment advice service to be able to pick out somebody who has Welsh language skills and assist them to train so that they can do something with the Welsh language that helps their employability, and we very much will be pushing that. But we’ll also be looking to have bilingual advice services, obviously, so that people who want to access the service in Welsh—perhaps those furthest from the job market would be a particular case in point, so if you’re facing particular economic or social difficulties in accessing employment, you might want to do that through the medium of Welsh, because that’s the language you’re comfortable with; we will be making sure that that’s facilitated. Also, we’ll be making sure that employers take proper account in their skills plans of their Welsh language needs. So, again, in reference to the employer Pelican Healthcare that we met with yesterday, they were talking to us about their need for Welsh language customer service people in their work, and obviously that’s a big growth area in Wales and one of our big selling points. So, we will be absolutely certain to be including that. My colleague Alun Davies and myself have been discussing how we can get the best out of our Welsh language features, both to help individuals but also to help employers identify the skills that they need so that we can fund it accordingly through the regional skills plan. So, it’s very much part of the mix, in exactly the same way, actually, as we were talking about diversity. So, it’s very much part of the diversity mix, and we know that it drives the bottom line. Again, I would emphasise to any employers who are listening to this that this isn’t about putting an extra burden on them; it’s actually about driving their bottom line by providing a better service.

Thank you very much, Minister.