This book includes a plain text version that is designed for high accessibility. To use this version please follow this link.
on training which leads to accreditation. This would be very popular with Mr Osborne as it would mean a saving of about £4.5 billion. But this saving could be put to better use by using it to allow businesses to claim tax relief on National Insurance contributions for employees who undertake training. This would provide financial support for training for all employers, including public sector and voluntary sector organisations as well as private-sector companies which do not earn enough net profits to pay corporation tax. And this is where unionlearn and trade


unions come in. By sitting down with employers, unions can discuss and agree an employee training scheme which collectively meets both short- and long-term needs, developing skills directly related to work and broader developmental learning. Union learning reps are ideally placed to make sure that those who most need training and are missing out are able to participate. One of the main difficulties for Howard


Reed in investigating tax relief and training was the paucity of government statistics on the value of tax relief. He said:


If corporation tax and income tax returns were amended so that businesses had to provide an estimate for the total amount of training undertaken by their employees (or themselves if self-employed) over the tax year, this would make it possible to produce a very accurate aggregate measure of the value of tax relief. Alternatively, a question could be added to the National Employer Skills Survey on the extent to which each employer’s training activities reduced their corporation or income tax payments, which would enable a survey-based estimate of the same statistic. Finding a way to produce reliable estimates on the value of tax relief on training to businesses and self-employed people would be


an important contribution to debates around the reform of government policies to promote workplace training.


The report was unable to make ‘an unequivocally positive’ recommendation on extending tax relief to employees who fund their own training because the data was not good enough, but this is something that the government should investigate further. In these financially straitened times it is


vital that sums such as £5 billion are used to make a real difference to the training of employers and the productivity of businesses. It should also be a requirement of employers to publish details of their training investment in their annual reports so that shareholders can see to what extent the company is investing in its most precious commodity: its staff. We are happy to work with ministers to


make this money work. Tom Wilson is Director of unionlearn


APRIL 2011 ADULTS LEARNING 15


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32