Industrial Training Levy (Engineering Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2007

I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, got the letter that I sent him yesterday. I want to raise a specific point, and he may not have an answer, but I hope that I am not too late. I am very sad, because I tried to give him notice yesterday, and if the letter has not arrived it is a great pity. It is not a constituency point because we do not have constituencies in this House. Anyone who lives in north Norfolk, as I do, cannot fail to know about the Bircham Newton national college. That is what I wrote to the Minister about. The press said that it was going to be closed down today; I hope that the press is wrong. It is an old RAF airfield that has been converted into the National Construction College; it is not the only one, but it is the main one. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, surely at this point in time we need all the skilled people in the construction industry that we can get, not only in the basic trades, but crane drivers and people who can deal with heights and that sort of thing. The college does all that. The difficulty about it is this; it still houses the students in the World War Two-era staff accommodation for the RAF, which is extremely unsatisfactory from the students’ point of view. People might not be there for very long, but possibly one of the reasons that it is not used to the extent that it should be is that employers do not want to send their trainees to a place where the facilities are not up to the standard that one would expect. It needs a bit of money. The noble Lord told us that the levy, which I know is an annual event, will raise a certain amount of money this year. Is there any hope that the board might spend a bit of that money on bringing up to date the residential accommodation for the people who go to that college? If it did, it would be very much more attractive. All the other facilities are there; the skills are there, the equipment is there and all the machinery is there. It would be the greatest possible tragedy if all those facilities and skills were lost. After all, it provides alternative tertiary education for those who want to learn manual skills as opposed to academic skills. I am told by the cabinet member for Norfolk County Council that the college employs 200 people. In that part of north Norfolk, that is no small thing, because there are not very many other sources of employment. There is a bit of fishing, there is agriculture, if anyone ever employs anyone in agriculture any more, and there is tourism. There is that large college, and there are presumably highly skilled people who are there to train the students. It would be a tragedy if that were lost. The reason why there is a doubt about the future of this place is because of the standard of accommodation. I suppose the Minister cannot tell me whether a decision has been taken today to close the college down? I hope not. If it has not, could minds be applied to the point I made about the standard of accommodation, because it would be a real tragedy if a place of such significance was to disappear for the sake of not very many millions of pounds for refurbishment of the accommodation. The noble Lord cannot be expected to answer the question today, because if he did not get my letter he will not know what I am talking about. Nevertheless, perhaps he will look into it; I am sure that he will. It is important that a place of this calibre should not be lost to the CITB.