Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

As the Bill stands, the Government are attempting to introduce legislation that would give employees a right to request time to train. The Explanatory Notes are clear that the employer must then consider this application and it must be accepted unless one of the reasons for refusal allowed by the legislation applies. These reasons are then laid out in new Section 64F(7) on page 20 of this draft of the Bill. We are generally in favour of the principles behind the Government’s intentions in this part of the legislation. We agree that people should be allowed and, indeed, actively encouraged to take advantage of opportunities to gain further training and skills from within their employment. However, there are situations where, perhaps despite the best intentions of employers, these opportunities may not be forthcoming. In some situations a less enlightened employer might prefer to let a talented and hard-working employee continue in an existing role, rather than allow the individual the room to feed ambition and train to a higher level. Such an employer might be reluctant, for example, to let a good waitress or waiter train to be a restaurant manager because of the risk that the replacement waiting staff may not be quite as efficient or effective as the waitress who is looking to equip herself for promotion. Of course, no one can condone this attitude. Nevertheless, we should not overexaggerate this risk. The consultation response, published by the department last year showed that only 57 per cent of employers in England felt that time to train would help skills development in their organisation and that only 28 per cent said that the introduction of the new right would cause them to alter their behaviour at all. The document published by the department stated: ""These relatively low figures are largely explained by organisations’ existing positive attitude and commitment to training rather than because of any particular reservations about the time to train proposals"." We are of the opinion that employees should have the right to a serious conversation with their employer about their skills development, as the consultation document stated, and, as I have said, we support the right to train. However, we would be cautious about extending our full support to all these amendments as it is also important to ensure that the administrative burden on employers should be kept to a minimum. The Institute of Directors—I declare an interest as a member—is increasingly concerned about the regulatory approach the Government are taking to ensure that the UK becomes a world leader in skills. It comments that these proposals add to the pipeline of impending regulations that will add to the administrative burden on employers and that at a time of recession this is spectacularly unhelpful. I would perhaps not go quite that far. We think that the right to request time to train is an important part of increasing skills and of allowing every employee to reach his or her potential. We do however want to ensure that at the same time employers are not disadvantaged by these proposals, especially given the current economic situation. While it is right that employees should be able to request the time to train, it does not seem right that the permissible grounds for refusal should be so narrowed that it becomes very difficult for an employer to refuse at all. Amendments 83 to 85 seem very sensible. If an employee has made a request for time to train, it is right that the employer should at least have to make a decision in response. There may also be situations where a right to appeal is appropriate. Perhaps the Minister will inform us as to whether any research has been carried out into the administrative impact of inserting a right to appeal against the decision. Moreover, the injunction on the employer to act reasonably as regards the grounds for refusing an application is difficult to argue with. However, Amendments 86 to 88 redefine the permissible grounds for refusal by considerably narrowing the ability of employers to find a way to refuse the application, even if they are struggling to meet the demands. I fear that these last amendments assume that all employers will be searching for a way to get out of offering training. I do not accept that that will be the case. Proper training is essential in any business. A business that does not reskill and retrain its staff will not be successful. I very much look forward to the Minister’s response.