A Labour think tank director who tried to unseat Jeremy Corbyn has been appointed as an “expert adviser” on skills to work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden.
Praful Nargund will work alongside civil servants and special advisers to help “make the best use” of the transfer of adult skills policy from the Department for Education to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
The director and founder of think tank The Good Growth Foundation will work on the unpaid advisory role for at least two days per week until July, with an option to extend further.
Nargund was a prominent member of Labour’s council of skills advisers, working alongside former education secretary Lord David Blunkett. The council proposed reforming the apprenticeship levy into what is now known as the growth and skills levy in 2022.
Nargund also ran a failed bid to unseat former Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn in the 2024 general election and has a range of other roles, including as a college governor, a Labour councillor, and a shareholder in a venture capital firm.
According to an announcement this morning, Nargund will work with experts to ensure McFadden has “access to high-quality advice” on growth as the new adult skills policy area is embedded in the department.
His job description says he will seek to: “Drive and support innovative thinking in terms of how adult skills can help the government to increase opportunity and drive economic growth.”
The director was appointed directly by McFadden, FE Week understands.
Praful Nargund said: “I’m delighted to be appointed skills adviser to the secretary of state for DWP, Pat McFadden.
“Whether it’s supporting the nearly one million young people not in education, employment or training into work, or driving economic growth, skills reform is at the heart of making it happen.”
The Good Growth Foundation is a non-profit think tank that says it’s “on a mission to crack the politics of economic growth”.
A recent report by the foundation, ‘Take Back Control’, recommended that the immigration system requires skilled migrants to train British workers to improve public feelings about the issue.
He was previously chief executive of private IVF treatment providers Create Fertility and abc IVF, which were majority owned by his family until their sale for an undisclosed sum in 2021.
He is also a non-executive director at venture capital firm Social Impact Enterprises and a governor at Capital City College Group.
In 2024 he was a director at Executive Pipeline Limited, a leadership training company, alongside high-profile Labour donor Lord Waheed Alli.
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