New Labour's Skills Policy at the Intersection of Business and Politics

Abstract

This article offers a critical analysis of the New Labour government's skills policy, with special reference to its impact on higher education in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is argued that, as developed by the Leitch Review of Skills, and by advocates of the discourse of ‘Knowledge Exchange’, the policy engages in the ‘skillification’ of higher education. The concept of skillification refers to the reduction of education to a matter of economically valuable skills. This reduction is the equivalent, in the sphere of adult education, of Margaret Thatcher's famous claim that ‘there is no society’. As such, it is likely to undermine the New Labour government's objective of using the policy ‘to maximise economic prosperity, productivity and to improve social justice’.