Should Screwfix take over Labour Policy?
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- in Design
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an Energy Minister in possession of a net zero policy, must be in want of a Clean Energy Engineer. Or so thinks Ed Miliband.
Equally, it is a truth universally acknowledged, that an anyone in possession of a dripping tap, must be in want of a plumber. Or so thinks Screwfix.
It’s possible that only one of those two statements is true, but it’s been an odd few weeks, with two very similar policy documents being published about the need to train more engineers for the future of the UK. One from Ed Miliband, highlighting the need for another 420,000 engineers by 2030 to support his Clean Energy Superpower Mission, which he believes will transform the UK. A few days before that announcement, Screwfix – one of the UK’s largest builder’s merchants published a Voice of the Trade skills survey identifying a similar shortfall of 250,000 tradespeople in the same timescale, who they believe are needed to build and maintain our homes and workplaces. Whilst Ed Miliband’s introduction to the Clean Energy Superpower Mission reads like a Government edict from “1984”, exhorting us to “take back control from petrostates” and an end to “union-free zones” in the industry, the Screwfix manifesto is a lot more pragmatic, calling for the Government to make it easier for young people to take up a career in trade through apprenticeships.
Both talk to the same issue, which is that engineering is not generally seen as an attractive or prestigious career in the UK, which is why we have shortages. As Screwfix points out, we don’t have enough plumbers, electricians and builders for the everyday tasks we need to do. Ed Miliband’s Mission Statement rather belatedly recognises that building a new, net-zero energy supply will need a lot more, with a wider skill set. The question is how do we do that, and also, why is the UK so poor at encouraging people to take these careers.
Within the Miliband’s Mission Statement, there’s an interesting observation, which is that in 2023, Germany had around 3 times as many renewable energy jobs as the UK; Sweden had 4 times as many and Denmark 5 times. Why might that be? Technical organisations around the UK work really hard to encourage STEM careers, but people like Ed Miliband don’t seem to set much of an example. I thought it might be useful to look to see if there’s any correlation between these numbers and the number of MPs in each country who have a background in engineering.
It was surprisingly difficult to find out how many of our MPs have worked in technology. Around 110 currently claim they’ve had STEM related jobs, but a lot of those are in medicine, PR, lobbying and private equity. When you whittle it down to technical jobs where they’ve made something or got their hands dirty, I could only count 21 out of our 650 MPs, which is a very unimpressive 3.2%. That is, however, an improvement over the previous Government, where the “hands dirty” number only appeared to be 13 (2.0%).
It’s even more difficult to do the same calculations for Germany’s Bundestag, Sweden’s Riksdag or Denmark’s Folketing, but my best estimate is that the numbers are 39 out of 630 for the Bundestag (6.25%), 28 of 349 (8.0%) for the Riksdag, and 16 of 179 in the Folketing (8.9%), giving the following comparison.
What’s interesting is that these figures correlate surprising well against the proportion of renewable tech jobs, suggesting that our MP’s background and understanding of technology may filter through to career aspiration of the wider population. In which case, any ambition to make the UK a Global Energy Superpower is probably screwed. We tend to choose MPs with minimal technical knowledge, preferring Oxford graduates in Politics and PE. Our only three Prime Ministers with a technical degree in in living memory have been Margaret Thatcher (the Iron Lady), who studied chemistry, Neville Chamberlain (Metallurgy) and Stanley Balfour (also Metallurgy). There’s a metallic theme here. They’re not necessarily everyone’s choice, but their names have gone down in history because of decisions they’ve made, which is more than is likely to be the case with our more recent crop. It’s also interesting that they’re all Conservative. Labour has never had a Prime Minister with an engineering background, which is a bit surprising, given the party name.
Where the Miliband Mission and the Screwfix manifesto differ is in how to attract new entrants. The Miliband Mission spends a lot of time talking about retraining workers from the North Sea oil and gas industry to take up these new jobs. These will presumably be augmented by 37,000 steel workers, now that the EU tariffs on steel have made our remaining steel industry non-competitive. Whilst these workers will probably be happy to retrain to keep jobs, it’s not really helping create new ones. On this point, the Screwfix report is a lot more interesting, as it asked current workers about their attitude to retraining, which I’ve shown below:
It looks at three key areas of renewable technology and asks whether respondents plan to upskill. The responses are shocking, with only a small minority intending to upskill in the next few years. A further worry is that both reports expect around a quarter of current engineers to retire in the near future, further worsening the crisis. Mr Miliband’s report suggests that they might be a useful resource to train the new influx. Screwfix is quiet on that; I suspect that’s with good reason.
We don’t have the reasons for these decisions to spurn upskilling, but there is one obvious one, which is that when your services are in demand, why spend time upskilling when you could be earning. But there’s another interesting point here, which is that the responses from plumbers and electricians are quite different. Traditionally, in the UK, we do not put emphasis on broad training:
- Plumbers are trained to be plumbers,
- Electricians are trained to be electricians, and
- Politicians are trained to be irrelevant, reinforcing the one-trick pony paradigm.
If you’ve had a boiler or heat pump fitted you’ll understand why this is a problem. Modern energy products combine multiple disciplines. Every time I’ve had a boiler fitted, I’ve needed to help with the electrical interfacing. As devices become smarter, installers need to understand more about how the full system works.
The same issue is also constraining the equipment we manufacture. A good example of this was with smart meters. The companies who made traditional meters were really good at welding and metalwork, but knew little about communication technology and software security. That’s one reason the roll-out of smart meters has been such a fiasco. That blinkered understanding resulted in poorly designed and expensive meters, which provide few of the benefits that the industry needs. We see the same issues with heat pumps and home heating and control equipment, where innovation is often lacking because successive Governments have given in to lobbying by manufacturers, trade associations and unions who want to maintain the status quo by eschewing new technologies to preserve their current ways of working. From thermostats to boilers, heat pumps to storage heaters, decisions are made on the basis of preserving jobs and working practices, when technology is screaming to move away from what are increasingly obsolete, siloed ways of working and thinking.
All of which brings us back to how we train our future workforce. The Miliband Mission sees a need for more vocational training after the age of sixteen, largely perpetuating the Blair mantra of “education, education, education”, pushing every career to some form of degree entry. The Screwfix report makes an interesting, contrary observation, which is that the single most useful change in attracting apprentices has been the relaxation in English and Maths GCSE requirements. For many students, there is an overwhelming desire for hands-on experience, not a post-16 certificate for staying in school.
Perhaps Ed Miliband and his department should take a look at Masterchef: The Professionals. Every year it attracts millions of TV viewers, watching the progress of cooks, many of whom started their career in their early teens, and learnt their trade in local pubs and restaurant kitchens. The best go on to be inspirational Michelin stars. It’s not just in food. Over the years, I’ve worked with many brilliant engineers who are largely self-taught, some of whom left school in their mid-teens because they wanted to be doing something. If we’re going to promote the excitement of engineers, letting kids do things is vitally important, which is something Screwfix understands, but the Government doesn’t. They are so divorced from reality that they seem to see engineering and design as being in the same category as sex and alcohol – you shouldn’t do it until you’re eighteen.
Rather than collecting certificates, we need to make it possible and exciting for people of any age to learn, if we’re going to attract enough people into engineering. The Screwfix Report says much more about the way forward (in far fewer pages) than the Miliband polemic, not least because it is written by those engaged in engineering, rather than politicians and civil servants pontificating from a point far removed from making things happen.
Nobody questions the need. The Miliband and Screwfix numbers are largely targeting different industry needs, which means we’re really looking for another 670,000 entrants by the time we get to 2030. If we’re going to replace those retiring, it’s probably closer to a million, and there’s no real plan about how to achieve that.
We need to promote the joy of engineering, not shut it into an academic framework or frame it in outdated Socialist rhetoric. If you have views on what we need to do, there is a consultation on the new “vocational pathway” for post-16 education at https://consult.education.gov.uk/technical-education-and-qualifications-reform/post-16-level-3-and-below-pathways/. The headline says “Why your views matter” without explaining why they might, but gives us until 12th January to share our views. I urge you to do so. We need a technically competent workforce. We also need more technically aware politicians. Sadly, there is no consultation for the latter.
There is a sting in the tail. There will certainly be people who want to upskill, but it’s unlikely it will be anywhere close to a million. Outside the redeployments from the North Sea oil and gas industry that the Miliband report envisages, both the clean energy and everyday construction and heating trades will be competing for the same people. The latter is the better known and will often be their first choice. It’s almost impossible to envisage that the Clean Energy industry will be able to recruit enough people to support the current NetZero plans. Whether you agree with the plans or not, they’re not achievable unless we start bringing in hundreds of thousands of skilled workers from around the world. Which creates an interesting dilemma, that even Mr Miliband doesn’t to want to talk about.