4. Statement by the Minister for Welsh Language and Lifelong Learning: Progress Report on the Employability Plan

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:22 pm on 18 September 2018.

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Photo of Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Labour 4:22, 18 September 2018

Thank you. First of all, we have had quite an extensive discussion with further education colleges in relation to the funding formula. They have now responded to that consultation. I'm expecting to hear the results of that in the next few weeks, because we know that it'll take—we need to give further education colleges probably a year to prepare for any funding changes that may come their way. So that, I'm very confident, is in hand.

In terms of the response on regional skills, you'll be aware that there are three regional skills partnerships. They are specific to the region, so they are responding to what happens in their area. We are hoping—we are expecting and we encourage local businesses to feed into that and to tell us what their skills needs are. There is a panel—there are lots of people on that regional skills partnership board, and they then produce a report that is given to colleges so that they can respond. How many apprenticeships? Well, we produced about 24,000 apprenticeships in 2016, and about 16,000 in the first half of this year. So, I think we are ahead of target, actually, in terms of our 100,000 apprenticeships.

How many disabled people are we going to help? Well, it's a very interesting question, because this, again, is not something that we can do by ourselves. The discussions I've had with employers—I had a very interesting meeting last week with the human resources group the CIPD. Just listening to them—we created a workshop to find out what it is that they can do to help. What's clear is that, actually, we do probably need to think about switching the emphasis so that we're giving more support to businesses and to industry so that we can help them to adapt. They want to help us, and one of the things we've done now is we've created a new portal on Business Wales so that all of the information is in one place. So, Access to Work, for example, is a programme that the Department for Work and Pensions produces. We need to make sure that all of that information, and things we do in Welsh Government, is in one place.

Do we expect employers to train staff? Yes, we do. It's their staff—it's in their interest to employ them. I think part of the problem we've had in Wales—we've had a lot of European funding in this area and we are going to have to start weaning them off an assumption that the Welsh Government will be constantly training some of their employees. So, we need to get a better relationship and a better understanding that it's in their interests to invest in their employees. The 10-year goals are pretty clear; I think they've been set out. The important thing here is that we keep the pressure on, so that's why I'm determined that we're going to have an annual report to make sure that we are going to hit these targets.