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Union Learning Rep as a witness before a Select Committee

Author: Kenneth Aitchison, Created 01/03/2007 22:35:02

Last week I unexpectedly got a call from Sue Ferns, Prospect's Head of Research, asking me if I would like to appear before the Education and Skills Select Committee (at one week's notice).  I thought long and hard for several good microseconds before accepting, and so I have just been to Porticullis House (which is full of young policemen with machine guns) , wearing a lucky red tie and answering questions from backbench MPs about Post-16 Skills Training.

It was very enlightening experience.  I had downloaded the Guide to Giving Evidence, and the previous afternoon went to a briefing session at Congress House - two of the other witnesses were Liz Smith, the Director of UnionLearn, and Hayley Pickles, who is a Union Learning Rep for USDAW, working as a chef at a Tesco in Scarborough.  We were tipped off about the makeup of the committee, with some insightful comments from the TUC's political officer about the characters of the MPs (pretty much all the Labour members had some background in secondary, further or higher education, the Liberals sounded a bit wet and the Tories sounded like they could easily be objectionable white van men).

There were two other witnesses in our session, Ellie Russell from the NUS and Clinton Ritchie from Lewisham College.  We were only in for an hour, so we had to try to make our answers snappy (without sounding like we were coming out with prerehearsed soundbites).

We witnesses sat in a row in front of the MPs, who were arranged around a horseshoe-shaped table facing us with a 'pit' in front of them, in which the two recorders sat, typing away on their very strange shorthand recording machines.  Behind us witnesses were other members of the public - including some people who were going to be witnesses later, colleagues of those of us that were answering questions and a surprising number of others, who I was later told were all probably lobbyists.  In total I would reckon there was more than 30 people there.

I was very impressed with the Committee - they asked smart, appropriate questions and looked genuinely interested.  It is chaired by Barry Sheerman, Labour MP for Huddersfield who was an excellently polite but firm chair; the other MPs that asked questions were Helen Jones (Labour, Warrington North), Gordon Marsden (Labour, Blackpool South), Stephen Williams (Liberal, Bristol West), Jeff Ennis (Labour, Barnsley East & Mexborough), Fiona McTaggart (Labour, Slough; rottweiler reputation seemed completely unjustified) and David Chaytor (Labour, Bury North); Rob Wilson (Conservative, Reading East) sat slightly apart from the other MPs and didn't say a word. The other Tories didn't bother turning up.

It was a little nerve-wracking, but not confrontational in any way - the MPs were all very much on our side, and were actually much more interested in workplace learning than further education - so we Union Learning Reps were asked the bulk of the questions.  And Hayley was an absolute star, telling the committee about her personal experiences as a mother of five who had not achieved greatly ast school but was now a mobile ULR travelling around 16 different supermarkets and helping her members access learning.  The Committee were very impressed with her, as we all were.

I was asked some good questions about the different needs of professional workers, so I was able to talk a fair bit about Continuing Professional Development (emphasising the need for financial support for training at Level 3 and above) rather then Skills For Life. After I explained that archaeology is largely a private sector profession, Gordon Marsden showed how well informed he was by making reference to PPG16 and asking if the introduction of a training levy (such as CITB is funded from in the the construction sector) in the review of that document would be welcomed.  Very much so, I thought (although how realistic it could be is another question). But that's almost the point of the committee asking these questions - they want to get ideas from people with real experiences of issues. 

There were also some good questions from Jeff Ennis about how well Union Learning Reps operated, and I was able to tell him that I thought they had breathed new life into trade unionism, with an upsurge of new activists such as myself contributing to a much more cooperative than confrontational agenda.  So I was a bit soundbitey there.

I was also able to chip in some points about financially stretched microbusiness employers finding it difficult to invest in their staff, and mentioned TORC (although not by name) as the developing central point of all information about training opportunities in archaeology.

The full text of the meeting will be posted at the Committee's website in due course, and subsequently there will be a report. Afterwards, I had a little chat with Stephen Williams (who is actually the Liberal that won Bristol West in 2005 with a big student vote supporting him over student fees - not something that came up at the Committee), who told me he was interested to learn what I had said about private sector archaeology - his assumptions still worked on the pre-1990 model of local museums doing the work.

And as we walked along the corridor after the meeting, I head a vaguely familiar voice, glanced around to see who it was and so found myself holding a door open for William Hague, for which he said 'thank you'. Taller than you would think (as I once heard John Peel say about him), but not as tall as me.

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