Clause 43 - Union learning representatives
Employment Bill
10:30 am
Mr John Healey (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Education and Skills; Wentworth, Labour)
I accept that there is a difference between training and qualification and I shall come to that when I come to amendment No. 221. Equally, I expect the hon. Gentleman to accept that some forms of training and learning include learning on the job. During the six-month start-up period, new union learning reps will gain important experience in doing the job as part of their development in the role.
Subsection (5) ensures that a disqualified person—a union learning rep who did not take up the initial training within the six-month period—could not immediately requalify for time off by starting a second six-month period. Thus, there is a real incentive for the new union learning rep to undertake the initial training at the earliest opportunity.
If there is to be a training condition, we must give all union members an opportunity to meet it. The two subsections are vital if we are not to exclude many people from the opportunity to undertake this role in the workplace in future.
Amendment No. 221 seeks to define the training condition as the attainment of a nationally recognised qualification relating to a union learning rep's activities, as the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge explained. At present no national vocational qualification covers all aspects of a union learning rep's role. Some units of existing advice and guidance non-vocational qualifications may well be applicable to that aspect of a union learning rep's role. In addition, there are specially designed courses for union learning reps who need them, which are accredited through the Open College network. It may be possible to design a national qualification in this area, but it is a totally different matter to insist rigidly, as the amendment does, that all union learning reps should obtain such a qualification.