Guest Blog: 'What the Sector Deal means for Life Sciences Skills' - By Dr Malcolm Skingle, SIP Chair

Following the publication of the Government’s Industrial Strategy White Paper in November last year, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced a subsequent “transformational Sector Deal” for the life sciences sector.

The Science Industry Partnership was delighted to contribute to and welcome this joint Industry and Government Deal and associated Action Plan.  The December publication represented the first such Sector Deal, as well as setting out the first phase of what will be an ongoing action plan.

The Deal is a set of joint Industry Government commitments, including those which support and deliver the skills we need for the jobs now and in the future. 

The ground-breaking plan is aligned with the five foundations set out in the Industrial Strategy:

• Ideas
• People
• Infrastructure
• Business Environment
• Places

These all echoed the themes of Sir John Bell’s earlier published Life Sciences Industrial Strategy, a precursor to the Deal, and for which the SIP also inputted the early skills dimension.

The Deal essentially represents the investment by Government and the private sector to strengthen and enhance UK capabilities in life sciences to drive economic growth more rapidly and develop new technologies for patients; it acknowledges the importance of a highly-skilled workforce  - the People foundation.

The SIP is taking responsibility for the delivery of a number of key skills elements, and it will also monitor progress on skills and identify priorities to form part of the ongoing sector deal development.

Current SIP commitments include monitoring the impact of the apprenticeship levy and uptake of apprenticeships across the SIP community, as part of the SIP’s ambition for 20,000 apprentices in the science sector by 2020.

It will also see us developing new Trailblazer Apprenticeship Standards including for example, bioinformatics, regulatory affairs and clinical trials, to address key skills shortages and gaps across the science sector.

And we are piloting a regional skills group - SIP Cambridge, reflecting the importance of “Place” in Industrial Strategy, which states, “every region in the UK has a role to play in boosting the national economy” and rolling this out in other key locations.

For its part, Government will also work with employers to monitor the impact of the levy, analyse all apprenticeship starts and assess the impact on other types of employer investment in skills. The Department for Education (DfE) will work with the Institute for Apprentices (IfA) to prioritise the development of Standards in sectors which are priorities for the Industrial Strategy. The Government also commits to working with the SIP in Cambridgeshire, to ensure that it is connected into the newly formed Skills Advisory Panels.

The SIP is ultimately working to tackle the significant skills challenge the Sector faces – our forecasted scenarios illustrate that overall the science industries cumulative demand for staff between 2015 and 2025 will be in the range of 180,000 to 260,000 professional and technical staff.

A key challenge is increasing this much-needed supply of Apprentices – including at Degree level – into the life sciences industry. Our roles range from technical to specialist, all delivering long term and rewarding careers in a growth industry.

And we need to ensure the new technical education routes – T levels –  deliver access to the high quality skills provision necessary for a highly productive scientific workforce.

Business Secretary Greg Clark summed up the importance of the Sector Deal when he stated that the UK is home to many of the most successful global life sciences businesses and we are also a hotbed of new businesses – springing up to bring new discoveries and techniques to a wider market.

“That is what our Industrial Strategy sets out to support and achieve. So it is appropriate that the first Sector Deal of our Industrial Strategy should be with the Life Sciences sector.”

The Sector Deal will now be implemented via a newly formed “Implementation Board”, which is currently in development. This will be chaired jointly by the Industry and the government, and will meet on a quarterly basis. 

SIP employers, together with the wider sector, are already investing significantly in skills, including apprenticeships, the continuing professional development of the existing workforce and a 250 plus strong SIP Careers Ambassador Network to showcase science-based careers in schools and colleges. Larger companies in the sector are also seeking to transfer part of their unspent levy into their supply chains, which is permissible from April 1.  

The Sector Deal will build on all of this, with the SIP already developing a skills proposition on the next phase.  We look forward to updating you on this and to working with Government on the delivery.

To find out more about SIP, please visit www.scienceindustrypartnership.com