The Lifelong Learning Commission offers us a roadmap through Covid

Given the unique pressures thrown up by coronavirus, how should we respond quickly but with footprints that also have a lasting afterlife for education, jobs and skills? Talk of ‘new deals’ is in the air, with even Boris Johnson trying – and failing – to channel Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal. Green skills, linked to apprenticeships and an effective industrial strategy, must be key.

Labour is ahead of the curve, as shown by the consultation launched by Ed Miliband and Anneliese Dodds on how a Green New Deal might work. Its starting point is Labour’s 2019 ambition to create around 80,000 climate apprenticeships a year, including ones accessible for small and non-levy paying businesses, with bursaries for disadvantaged groups. Energy and transport, sustainable construction, low-carbon industries and agriculture and forestry initiatives were among the priorities mentioned.

Ed Miliband has talked about a “zero-carbon army” of young people to be recruited. There is a dire need for that: even pre-coronavirus March figures showed 750,000 young people not in education, employment or training. Lost apprenticeships and school leavers unable to get jobs this summer will add to this number. The Shadow Business Secretary has also said that any Green New Deal should include retraining older people. That is absolutely right. The pandemic risks wreaking economic havoc across the generations. Meanwhile, the Treasury has talked only vaguely about a ‘green and resilient recovery’. Not surprising – the record of Tory-led governments on green issues, not to mention their fetishism of fracking, has been dismal.

There are specific initiatives that could quickly put flesh on the bones of any Green New Deal: reducing VAT from 20% to 5% on repairs and renewal could be a significant stimulus if targeted at small businesses and sustainable green tourism in inland and seaside towns. But the big question in any Green New Deal is how can promised jobs, skills and training be delivered, and by whom? This isn’t just about the pandemic. It is about progression in work, training and productivity – all vital to the success of any Green New Deal, not just for employers but for employees and the growing number of self-employed.

These issues were part of the independent Lifelong Learning Commission that I was proud to help set up and coordinate, which reported to the Labour Party last autumn. Our commissioners cut through traditional silos, including advocating a right to paid time off to re-skill, retraining fully funded up to level three, a proper national careers service and embedding progression in flexible structures to accredit a wide range of learning. The commission talked about the importance of locally driven strategies for skills, a radical rethink of the benefits of collaboration across higher and further education in local economies, and how government should be an enabler of these but not a micromanager.

Responses to the pandemic must pay urgent attention to existing geographic cold spots. The City and Guilds report Missing Millions cites a daunting gap in growth since 2011 in high skills jobs between London (23%), Liverpool (9.5%) and Tees Valley (4.5%). It is no surprise that elected mayors and combined authorities are clamouring for more devolution and extended powers over any economic stimulus post-coronavirus. Those general arguments have been repeatedly made by Labour mayors Andy Burnham, Steve Rotheram and others. They now acquire extra force and urgency.

Liam Byrne, Labour’s candidate for West Midlands mayor, has put forward a package of green-centred initiatives for 100,000 new jobs across the region. Dan Jarvis, Labour’s energetic mayor for the Sheffield City region, while welcoming a devolution deal that brings new powers and money, has called on government to learn the lessons of top-down failings. He argued: “What we have across England is still too often delegation, not devolution.” He is right. The asymmetric nature of devolution in England means that any Green New Deal needs far more battalions locally for Ed Miliband’s zero-carbon army – including the TUC, trade unions, local enterprise partnerships, colleges, universities, third and public sectors, businesses, cooperatives and local councils that don’t have the powers of mayors or combined authorities.

Whitehall has too often been lukewarm towards local strategies or trade unions eager to engage with a new green economy. And yet our Lifelong Learning Commission took strong evidence, including from the CWU, GMB and Unite, on this and how the much-lauded but thinly-funded Union Learning Fund (ULF) and its workplace reps could be expanded. We recommended that the ULF funding be fully restored. Now, given the pandemic, both that and its role should be expanded to boost the green agenda locally.

With over 50,000 deaths from coronavirus, we face a multi-faceted UK crisis exceeding the global financial meltdown of 2008 – adding to the challenges of climate change and Brexit. Gordon Brown has written forcefully about the Treasury’s failure to move on from the coronavirus rescue operation to an adequate Budget for recovery. His government’s Future Jobs Fund response to the 2008 economic crisis gave nearly 200,000 18-24 olds six months of experience in jobs that took a number of them into full-time work. A similar – if not greater ambition – is required now.

But it must have a long tail. Glib talk about guarantees will be worthless unless we recognise three things. Firstly, demand matters as much as supply, as we discussed in our Lifelong Learning Commission report, with both a decent job and employer and sustainable skills for the individual at the end of that tail – and local partnerships for delivery on the ground. There should be no conflict between rejuvenating people’s quality of life and their community’s hope with the needs of our economy, locally or nationally. A Green New Deal ticks both sets of boxes. If councils, elected mayors and combined authorities have the capacity, competence and vision to take initiatives forward, they should have the chance to do so.

Let some Green New Deal ideas be tried out as local pilots, just as major changes in national policy have been foreshadowed in the past by Labour council initiatives, with some of the Lifelong Learning Commission proposals acting as levers of delivery. Alongside suggestions from other quarters such as the Civic Universities and College of the Future Commission, these offer a roadmap to get us through the coronavirus shockwaves, to rebuilding our society for the 2020s – in which the green agenda must be central.