David Lammy - Leitch and Healthcare
London South Bank University - 2 April 2008

It's a pleasure to have the opportunity to talk to you today. Any occasion devoted to raising awareness of this country's need for skills is an important and worthwhile one.

The emotional links between my Party, this Government and the health service remain just as strong as they were when the NHS was created 50 years ago.

As Professor Fry said in his report on skills in healthcare: "Perhaps more than in any other field of employment, healthcare work is mainly about the effective and continuous development and application of knowledge through people…That has implications for all healthcare staff, and not just those in senior positions exercising the highest level clinical and managerial skills."

I agree. Is there any organisation whose example brings the benefits of having skills of all sorts home to us quite so forcefully? Today's NHS hospitals have more high-tech equipment than ever.
And where once upon a time, many healthcare professionals could go through their entire career without touching a computer, now almost everyone from consultant to cleaner needs basic IT skills. But the skills issues that the health service must constantly address are by no means only technical, either.

The NHS is the largest employer of staff in Europe and third largest in the world.

As you would imagine, those staff come from all sorts of backgrounds and for many, English is their second language.

An inability to read health and safety instructions on equipment, medicine or machinery, poses serious potential health hazards for staff or patients.

So we need to keep pushing the Fry report recommendations that particular attention should centre on foundation skills in literacy, numeracy, English as a Second Language, and basic Information Technology for all healthcare staff.

The Government's regular Labour Force Survey suggests that, overall, four out of ten NHS staff are qualified only at NVQ level two or below. And around a quarter of all NHS employees have no formal qualifications at all.

A back-of-an-envelope calculation shows that that makes more than half a million members of staff in the NHS who don't have level 3. That's not good - level 3 is the 'threshold' that Lord Leitch said was essential for the British workforce.

So Government and our partners need to work hard to really strive to make Level 3 the norm for the staff that we employ; that's what we're asking other employers to do and so it's essential that we do that ourselves.

And we are working together to achieve that - I know my department, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) has been working closely with the Department of Health, the Sector Skills Councils for Health and the LSC in encouraging more people to improve their numeracy and literacy skills.

My department recently launched a numeracy marketing campaign, because there's many people who are muddling by, too embarrassed to admit that they struggle with numbers. Tackling that is essential in any job but especially in medicine, mental health services or social work or any of the other health disciplines.

I want all employers of NHS staff to sign the skills pledge and commit to improving the basic skills of their staff. Overall, 2130 employers have committed to the Skills Pledge but nearly 90% of those are in the private sector.
Of that, 22 employers in the health sector (Strategic Health Authorities, PCTs and Trusts) have committed to the Skills Pledge with some more currently in discussions.
The public sector needs to become more proactive in making a commitment to improve the skills of their workforce and the commitment to the Joint Investment Framework (JIF) is a step in the right direction.
Our ambition is that by this August we'll get at least half of all NHS employers to sign up to the Skills Pledge. And we'll keep on going after that, until everyone has officially recognised their duty as employer to help all their staff improve their basic skills.

I'd like to thank the employers who have led the way by signing the skills pledge early. I know, for example, that all health organisations in the South-West SHA region are now committed and the North East SHA is working closely with NHS partner organisations. I understand that they have gained agreement that all partner organisations will have signed the Skills Pledge by this week. I hope that South-West SHA and other employers who have signed the skills pledge will talk to other partner companies they work with about the benefits they have seen.

The NHS alone spends £5 billion on learning annually; together we can make sure that that is money well spent and promotes the skills of staff at all levels.

Because the people who work in the NHS are the people thanks to whom it is still the envy of the world. And they need to be right at the top of our list of priorities for continuous education and training . That's why our ambitions on skills for the health and social care workforce must be to match the best in the private sector. It is people on the front line - doctors, nurses, carers, social workers, who we depend on to make our national ambitions a local reality.
And it's how we invest in the people who work in these professions that will ultimately determine how successful we are.

Today's conference will take discussion of how we can do that another step forward. I hope that you all have a very enjoyable and productive day. Thanks.