Lord Ravensdale (CB)

My Lords, I declare my interest as a chief engineer for AtkinsRéalis and as a director of Peers for the Planet. My two amendments in this group address the two issues I raised in Committee. I will first cover the need for a duty on Skills England regarding the critical area of green skills, which is covered by Amendment 11. Given the scale of the skills needed to address the challenge of turning the UK into a clean energy superpower, and the challenging targets that we have—the national strategic goals of climate mitigation and adaptation—many Peers have been pressing for a long time to put in place a national strategy for responding to these skills needs. We had some welcome progress with the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022, when the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, agreed an amendment with the Government for a climate duty on the development of local skills improvement plans. What was missing was that overarching strategy. We all welcomed the formation of Skills England to begin plugging those gaps. I am very grateful to the Minister and her team for their collaborative approach in response to this amendment, which we raised in Committee, to include the delivery of our climate and nature targets within Skills England’s remit. Having this in the framework document for Skills England, given the constraints of the legislation, will ensure that this national strategic goal is woven into Skills England’s approach and that the good work already going on at local level through the LSIPs can be knitted together. We have had some really good feedback on the LSIPs and how they are working, but the missing piece is that integration. What the Government are doing with the framework document will help to address that. It will take things to that next step of integration, so I am very grateful to the Minister. Amendment 12 is based on an amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, in Committee. I recall the noble Lord saying that we all support devolution and its goals but that we start to create joins that did not exist previously and that we have somehow to find a way of joining those bits back together, whether with a regional or sectoral approach. The key point of the amendment is to ensure that Skills England delivers for areas without a devolution deal. This is based on my experience in the Midlands, which I set out in detail in Committee and will not repeat here. I thank the Minister and her team for committing to include within the framework document that Skills England will address those regional skills gaps. This is important for ensuring that Skills England delivers for all areas across the UK. I look forward to further detail on how that will be implemented. As the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, said, the policy is the easy bit; the implementation is the challenge. On a related point, this highlights the importance of a regional view for skills to ensure that there is that coherent delivery of skills for key priorities. The regions are the right level to do that. In my industry, the nuclear industry, we could in the Midlands consider, for example, just what Derby needs for submarine nuclear reactors and small modular reactors. We could consider separately what West Burton needs for STEP fusion and what Birmingham needs for nuclear components. However, we can do so much more with a regionally integrated skills picture to avoid that duplication and to ensure that we share that knowledge and expertise on skills development. That is why we have set up Midlands Nuclear and the Midlands hub for nuclear skills to take that regional view.