Why do we have a skills shortage in the UK
Speaking at the Battle of Ideas Festival recently I delivered this speech.
It is right to say that there is a skills shortage in the UK, but as much as the remain stream media would have us all believe the HGV driver shortage is entirely due to Brexit, the truth of the matter is far more nuanced, and if anything, the biggest issue is one of short-sightedness. Indeed if Brexit alone were to blame for driver shortages, then how come mainland Europe is short over 400k drivers? Surely they would have a surplus with European drivers going back to Europe? What Brexit has done, what many of us wanted it to do, has cut the options of cheap Labour, which has allowed wage deflation.
According to the road haulage association, pre-pandemic we were short 60k drivers, 18 months later the number is up to around 100k with 50k drivers quitting in the last 2 years. During the first lockdown, these drivers were part of the “front line”, the key workers that would keep the country moving, hero’s if you will. And how did society treat them? Closing services, removing access to toilets, giving them none of the basic facilities that should be taken for granted. Is it any surprise that some had the attitude “sod this?”
40k HGV tests were cancelled due to Covid restrictions, if that wasn’t the epitome of short-sightedness I don’t know what was! And while the DVLA continue to work from home we find they are sat on 54k licence applications! How did we not anticipate that pissing off existing drivers, and stopping new ones coming through would lead to a shortage?
In the construction sector, something I am more familiar with, it is estimated that there will be a shortage of 217k workers by 2025. Like haulage, construction didn’t shut down for Covid, yet many sites closed welfare facilities such as canteens and toilets. Pre Pandemic that would not have been tolerated by the HSE. But a larger problem in construction is an ageing workforce.
During the Blair years, there was a drive to get more people into University, now I am not suggesting for a second that there is anything wrong with a University education, but that drive did, to some degree at least, stigmatise more skills-based qualifications. In a recent piece on GB News, Lecturer Dr Mark Biddis described it as “creating a two-tier society where people look down on those that don’t have degrees”. It’s fair to say that you would expect a Surgeon to be well paid and have good working conditions, after all, when they open you up they are literally holding your life in their hands. But would you consider the same of say your Gas Engineer? Think about it for a moment, if they get their job wrong, they can not only kill you, they can kill your family maybe even your neighbours, don’t they deserve that same respect?
There are more and more barriers popping up in the Construction Industry, qualifications are very much a chicken and egg scenario, where you can’t do the work without the qualifications, but you can’t get the qualifications without doing the work. It’s an understandable dilemma but again short-sighted, it places almost entirely the burden of training on employers, but smaller businesses and one-man bands struggle to meet the financial burdens. The governments’ KickStart scheme goes some way to address that, but what the government gives with one hand it takes away with another curtailing the cash flow of smaller businesses with the CIS tax scheme, IR35 and now Reverse Charge VAT.
Another problem for smaller businesses is that many must diversify their offerings without necessarily being able to increase the size of their workforce. Those that are capable or have the desire to become multi-skilled have the problem of needing to do more and more training (which comes at a cost) when jobs that they have been doing perfectly well for years suddenly requires a new qualification.
Why should someone who has built up their skills and knowledge over years and proved their competence time and again in the real world, now be required to get a qualification? And how do you train an apprentice to do what is covered by several NVQ’s? Why is there not more crossover to NVQ’s allowing people to increase their skills base with short add on modules? Or a more flexible qualification made up of differing modules which have very linked core skills? This could even help with the HGV driver shortage, why not let Class 1 PCV drivers do a short course to gain Class 1 HGV too, after all, don’t PCV drivers carry the most precious cargo of all already?
Construction skills training has become big business in itself, and frankly, some of the offerings that can cost thousands are simply not fit for purpose. “One week wonder” courses are a good example of this, that may teach the very basics, but do not equip someone to go on and actually do the job in the real world. Even the CITB health and safety test which has to be retaken every 5 years is a major insult to the intelligence of many in the industry. For example, when asked “what do you do if you think you have found asbestos” you would be forgiven for thinking that providing the actual answer would be correct. The answer that they are looking for, and the one that will get you a tick is “tell your supervisor”. It’s an egregious example of the test being written by someone who underestimates the intelligence and undervalues the knowledge of those being required to take it. Even in primary school Mathematics, the focus is not can you do the maths, but how you do the maths! Are we in danger of qualification taking precedence over competence?
Skills-based qualifications need a huge shakeup if we are to resolve these skills shortages, and the value of the skills and knowledge of those with them needs to be given the respect it is due, not just in terms of attitude, but in pay scales and working conditions.
In conclusion, It seems to me that a vast number of factors, most of which were foreseeable have finally come together to create a perfect storm that has exposed them all. There is no one thing to blame for all this, and rather than focus on playing the blame game, would it not be far more productive to focus on how we fix this problem long term?