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

I thank my noble friend the Minister for his comprehensive remarks when he spoke to the orders. We also heard concerned speeches from the other side of the Committee regarding training and employment. Do these orders signal that Her Majesty’s Government believe that they will be of great help to Britain’s manufacturing industries? Are the orders designed to support, enhance and encourage what now remains of Britain’s manufacturing? I would like to think that the orders will bring forth more and better quality apprenticeships and that there will be more effective skills training, which will enable our manufacturing industries, such as remain, to cope with very severe global competition. Our percentage of GDP with regard to manufacturing is slipping each year. I note that in the Explanatory Notes, reference is made to the Industrial Training Act 1982. As it happens, in another place I had responsibility in the then-Opposition for employment and training. Opposite me was the Minister, the late Peter Morrison, Member of Parliament for Chester, and speaking for the Liberal Democrats was the rather famous Cyril Smith. In our debates on that Act and on the orders for the amalgamation of various training boards, great concern was expressed for the future of skills training, apprenticeships and manufacturing. Here we are, a quarter of a century later, telling each other of our concern for skills training and apprenticeships and of the need for Britain to have those skills to cope. I dare say I shall be able to hear the Minister tell me that it is a priority of our Government that Britain should retain and develop a manufacturing base. The Minister may recollect my references in a Second Reading debate not too long ago to the great British aerospace industry, which is arguably the last sizable industry of skills remaining in our country. I assume that the orders are designed to promote that great industry, which earns billions of pounds by exports every year, now some £6 billion. It is not for me to detail the difficulties of Airbus and BAE. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on that matter. Lastly, we have heard the plea from north Norfolk for Bircham Newton college. It was not a constituency speech; there was not one. The noble Lord will recollect that that college is but a mile, as the crow—or the buzzard of north Norfolk, for that matter—flies from Bircham Windmill, which is a notable tourist spot in the rather empty and beautiful north Norfolk. I wish him well in his objectives, and I look forward to hearing a strong voice of commitment to British manufacturing.