Reprieve for training levies but small firms exempt
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from our Parliamentary correspondent
• The Government 'has had second thoughts on the abolition of industrial training board levies, and will retain them for the larger firms.
But under revised plans announced on Tuesday by the Employment Minister, Mr Maurice Macmillan, a substantial number of haulage and coach /bus undertakings will be exempt from the RTITB levy, and no company will pay more than 1 per cent of payroll.
All small firms will be exempt, and the present exemption level — a total payroll of £7500 a year — is to be raised.
Mr Macmillan also announced that after 1973-4 firms will be exempt from the scheme if a training board is satisfied that they are operating satisfactory schemes designed to meet their own needs.
Instead of phasing out the levy completely, however, the Government has decided to continue it for firms above the exemption limit; but no firm will pay more than 1 per cent of its total payroll to the Board.
"This will mean that over the next two years a great number of firms will become free of the levy complications," Mr Macmillan told the House.
Plans for a National Training Agency have been put on ice, pending further talks with the Trade Union Congress and the Confederation of British Industry who want the agency more closely integrated with the Employment Department's own Employment Services Agency.
In the meantime, the Department will run a Training Services Agency, under a chief executive, to match the Employment Services Agency. This TSA will carry out the range of functions which had bee proposed for the National Training Agenc — operating a training opportunitie scheme, financing grants to encourage ke training activities, meeting the administrt tive expenses of the training boards, an providing certain training services n( available from the boards themselves.
Labour MPs attacked the cut in levy an warned the Minister that his decision woul lead to a serious decline in the quantity an quality of training. Mr Orme (Lab, Salfor West) said the Minister was going to pande to the worst employers, and had set bac industrial training by a generation.
But Mr Macmillan asserted that th proposed system provided sufficien sanctions — non-training Arms would no escape levy.