Yesterday’s Leader’s speech by Ed Milliband talked of punishing ‘predators’ and helping ‘producers’. Autonomy’s (or is that HP’s?) Mike Lynch on the Radio 4 Today programme this morning described this as ‘motherhood and apple pie’. Even senior Labour people described the policy as ‘vague’.
But one point really did resonate with me. Milliband suggested that ‘companies that secure Government contracts will be required to offer apprenticeships to young people’. This is something I have been banging on about, to Government, Intellect, the industry and, indeed, anyone willing to listen to me, for several years now.
A year back we ran a quick survey of about 20 of the top IT services players to the UK market. Nothing very scientific although they were roughly in proportion – UK-owned, Global-owned (US, French, Japan) and the Indian players – to the overall revenues from the UK market. We found that UK-owned and HQed IT services companies provided the highest number of IT entry jobs in the UK proportionate to their UK:global revenues. Global (non Indian players) created 26,000 entry level jobs worldwide of which 1100 were in the UK. If they had recruited proportionate to their UK:Global revenues they should have recruited 3000 here. But the Indian players provided the starkest picture. Out of the 24,000 entry level jobs they created just 6 were in the UK whereas if they had recruited proportionate to their UK:Global revenues they should have recruited 3200 here.
When I suggested that the creation of IT entry level jobs in the UK should be used as one of the criteria in the awarding of government contracts (and why not private sector too?) I was told that this was ‘impossible’ and would break all kinds of EU and other conventions.
I wrote last week in Top Marks for new IT schools curriculum of my joy at the possibly of ditching the current awful IT courses in schools in favour of teaching software development skills. Let’s assume that is successful and we get more youngsters interested in entering the IT sector. That will be useless unless there are the entry level jobs for them and for those that go onto take Computer Sciences degrees.
Anything that might redress the quite appalling job prospects for anyone trying to enter the IT industry in the UK should be examined closely. Maybe one policy the Coalition should adopt too?