Ian Austin: Let’s get fired up for the next revolution

If there was one development that triggered the industrial revolution, it was Dud Dudley and then Abraham Darby learning to use coke to produce enough cast iron for the explosion in manufacturing.

That’s when Dudley lit the spark that fired the industrial revolution, changing not just Britain, but the whole of the world.

Most of the world’s steel was once made here. Fifty years ago Black Country manufacturing made the West Midlands the UK’s richest region. Output in the Midlands outstripped even London and the South-East.

Then came the huge loss of manufacturing of the 1980s and a 40 yyear struggle to replace jobs lost to recessions, technological change and lower wage economies abroad.

Output then lagged behind the national average. Over 35 years when we fell further and further behind.

In the 1970s, manufacturing provided half the region’s jobs. Today, it’s nowhere near that. Instead, we’ve had an above average proportion of jobs in low productivity and slow-growth industries. We had a higher proportion of public sector jobs, a smaller proportion in business or financial services and too few hi-tech jobs.

Unemployment has been a stubborn problem with youth unemployment is still twice the national average.

There are lots of brilliant businesses and we’ve seen major investment at companies like JLR or Goodrich, and a new firm opens every 43 minutes in the West Midlands. That’s great, but Manchester is opening 20 per cent more businesses than we are.

Over the next 20 years there’s going to be huge growth and millions of well-paid jobs in hi-tech industries like advanced manufacturing, engineering, technical testing, low carbon industries and construction, digital media and bio-tech and healthcare technologies – quite literally a new industrial revolution.

Change could be 10 times faster and 300 times the scale of the Industrial Revolution. Technologies that have not yet been developed will create jobs that have not yet been imagined as the pace of change gets faster and faster.

At the same time, there will be many fewer jobs for people with limited skills or no qualifications at all. Many of what we think are regular, jobs-for-life will disappear.

The only way the Black Country will weather this storm and attract new industries is by having the skills they need. The only way young people will prosper is by learning how to acquire new skills and adapt to constant change, but the Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership says a lack of skills is holding businesses back. Along with Stoke on Trent, the Black Country has the highest proportion of companies that fail to train staff at all. We have a very high proportion of people with no qualifications and a low proportion with degrees, technical skills or leadership, management and enterprise training. There aren’t enough young people qualified in STEM (science, technology, manufacturing and engineering) subjects to replace workers retiring in manufacturing and engineering.

Germany has three times as many apprentices as the UK and only a small proportion of the country’s apprenticeships are at level 4 or above which unlocks well-paid technical jobs.

Young people from the Black Country are as good as anyone and we’ve got some great schools, but out of 151 local authorities, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton are among the worst 25 for GCSE results and Dudley doesn’t do much better.

Schools are improving, but not quickly enough. In a few months we’ll have a new regional mayor, a combined authority with devolved budgets for skills and the opportunity to change all this.

Let’s demand the candidates make education and skills the region’s number one priority with plans to boost skills and bring new industries to the region and tackle unemployment. How will they make sure people in the West Midlands have the skills needed to attract the hi-tech industries and jobs of the future?

How will they get businesses, charities, local councils and training organisations working together to help young people with the greatest barriers to employment?

The Black Country gets £50 million a year from the EU for skills programmes so how will they persuade the government to use funds saved on EU membership so that continues after we leave?

How will they bring a university campus to every borough so that every young person can see that higher education is within reach?

How will they be able to get businesses properly engaged with local schools, providing proper work experience for every youngster? How will they use their leadership to get behind heads and teachers working hard to drive up standards?

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to arrest the region’s decline and we can’t afford to miss it. Let’s be inspired by how Dud Dudley, Abraham Darby and other Black Country geniuses triggered the last industrial revolution to make sure we succeed in the next one.