Denham urges government departments to ensure suppliers sign skills pledge

Skills secretary John Denham will today tell all government departments to ensure their suppliers sign the skills pledge.

Denham will tell delegates at the Civil Service Live event in Westminster that the move is essential to achieving the aims set out in the Leitch Review.

Leitch warned that if not enough organisations had signed the pledge to train all their employees to Level 2 by 2010, such training should be made compulsory.

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Denham will say: “All central government departments have signed the skills pledge, but that is not enough. Private companies with good training records look beyond their own workforce and understand that their suppliers are as important to their success as their own staff.

“The public sector employs one-quarter of this country’s workforce. Add those who supply the public sector and we are talking about a real opportunity to build the skills base.”