Gavin Williamson blitzed it but government-backed union training could return under a new guise now Labour holds power.
By the time Gavin Williamson scrapped the Union Learning Fund (ULF) in 2021, over two million people had used it to access training. Labour accused the then education secretary of ditching the £12 million a year scheme “to settle scores with trade unions”.
Now in government, there is growing speculation Labour could revive the fund, which supporters say helped a generation of workers climb the career ladder and delivered proven value for money for taxpayers.
Big employers including Tesco, Tata Steel and Heathrow Airport lined up with unions and MPs to oppose Williamson. It was an “unnecessary and ideological decision” which “defied economic logic” according to TUC northern secretary Liz Blackshaw, and a source close to government claimed the move flew in the face of Treasury advice.
Funding was instead diverted into the National Skills Fund to provide the free courses for jobs and skills bootcamps schemes, both of which are yet to prove themselves worthy of comparison with the ULF.
A University of Leeds evaluation in 2016 found the ULF delivered an economic return of £12.30 for every £1 spent (£7.60 to the individual and £4.70 to the employer).
Now, with the emergence of Skills England, a more flexible growth and skills levy and greater devolution, unions are eyeing opportunities to embark on a new age of union learning.

Blunkett on a mission
Labour grandee David Blunkett began funding the ULF as education secretary in 1998 and is on a mission to bring it back. The peer wants unions to return to being seen “not just as bodies that only get taken seriously when they go on strike but as engines of positive change”.
Trade unions have a long tradition in learning.
England’s early adult education colleges were affiliated with the trade union movement, and union courses were commonly run in FE colleges.
Blunkett was inspired to create the ULF by his own experience of FE teaching in Huddersfield on “TUC-approved courses” when he became “very familiar with the idea of developing learning representatives”.
He was also later influenced by a scheme rolled out by Sheffield City Council – when he was its leader – which provided 10 days of paid learning opportunities for employees who lacked basic skills.
“It created an atmosphere of combined endeavour, so it wasn’t management versus trade unions. I drew down on that,” Blunkett said.

In 2021, Blunkett was tasked by Keir Starmer to form the Council of Skills Advisers to plan how Labour could fix the country’s skills crisis if it won government.
Its top recommendation – to create a ‘national skills taskforce’ of employers and representatives of unions, central and local government and education providers to work cross-government – is now coming to fruition with the creation of Skills England.
The TUC’s learning and skills policy officer Julia Jones is confident that Unionlearn (the skills arm of the TUC that managed the ULF) is on the government’s radar because “we’ve made sure it is”.
It has commissioned Public First to undertake a feasibility study on what a new ULF might look like in light of the devolution agenda, with many areas of the country now gaining control of adult skills budgets.
Proof of concept
Tom Bewick, an advisor to the government on skills policy in the early years of New Labour who “helped devise” the ULF, believes the fund’s “real strength” was “getting to people in the workplace who frankly after bad experiences were mistrusting of school”, but were “more likely to open up” to their union representatives.
Research supports this.

A Learning and Work Institute report in 2020 found it was “particularly effective at engaging workers with lower levels of qualifications”, while the University of Leeds evaluation found the fund “notably engaged older learners and learners from ethnic minority groups”.
The ULF provided not only maths, English and digital skills, but also more niche provision. Blunkett cited how the Transport and General Workers Union, working with colleges in the North West, used “transport cafés to lay on IT courses for road hauliers and coach drivers ….stopping off for half an hour – thus bringing about an entirely new version of ‘chips with everything’”.
Employers benefitted too because “they suddenly got motivated employees who wanted progression. They were recruiting in-house from their own workforce, which saved management in external recruitment costs”.
Blackshaw said that union learning set learners on “career paths they’d never envisioned, whether it was a supermarket checkout worker transitioning into an IT apprenticeship or train drivers learning British Sign Language”.
ULF 2.0
With the nation facing critical skills shortages, a new ULF could be purposefully designed to fill those gaps.
Tom Wilson, the TUC’s Unionlearn director from 2007 to 2015, believes that if funding constraints mean a new ULF “must be smaller”, then “priorities should be agreed, for example, social care where there is a desperate shortage of trained staff”.
Dr Benjamin Silverstone, a former union learning rep and now head of skills policy and strategy at the University of Warwickshire, believes a new ULF should focus on “developing the additional technical capabilities that workers need to remain relevant in markets that are rapidly shifting”, highlighting the example of an engineering motor vehicle lecturer who requires “EV competencies”. But he is unsure “how well unions fully understand that”.
Chris Gurdev, who was a union learning rep between 2016 and 2019 tasked with advising people about the union learning courses available, believes the programme lacked the publicity it deserved, and that if reintroduced it should be “linked into education providers and local community groups such as libraries and citizens advice centres”.
But Wilson believes that nowadays, online learning is “often much preferred” by union members. He calls for a future ULF to be designed to support long-term capacity, which the previous scheme did not; annual funding meant unions could only employ union learning staff on annual contracts, which were “fatally vulnerable”.

Economic headwinds
The economic landscape is very different in 2024 to when New Labour took power in 1997.
Skills consultant Aidan Relf questions whether the government could afford to fund union learning, given the urgent need for the Treasury to service the government’s debt.
Blunkett believes a new ULF could be funded if the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Business and Trade share the financial burden with the Department for Education.
He concedes the government will also need to channel greater amounts of skills funding into targeting the growing numbers of people not in education, employment or training. But he believes a new ULF does not require “massive expenditure” if employers are “prepared to play ball with the unions”.
There are also concerns about whether unions are strategically placed in the right workplaces to make an impact.
Bewick believes scrapping the ULF was an “outrageous piece of skills vandalism” but points out that when the fund was launched, the country had a bigger manufacturing industry and those unions had a “powerful impact”.
A report last year by the British Chambers of Commerce found larger firms and the public sector were already “far more likely” to provide such training initiatives.

Silverstone has positive memories of his time as a ULR at Pembrokeshire College. But he has “difficulty” embracing the idea of reviving union learning funding as he is no longer a union member.
“I feel like the appeal of unions is dropping in certain respects, because they don’t seem to be achieving much. Maybe having a stronger learning component might help to reverse that. But shouldn’t training be the employer’s responsibility, rather than a union’s?”
After the ULF was axed in England, the number of Unionlearn staff employed by unions in England fell sharply despite efforts to maintain programmes.
But they survived where devolved governments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland continued funding their work.
The unions could use their seat at the table of the new body Skills England (which skills minister Jacqui Smith pledged would “bring in trade unions in a way that was perhaps not the case previously”), to make their case for union programmes to plug skills shortages.
The devolved nations already have similar arms-length bodies to Skills England tasked with identifying skills gaps, and Unite officer Siobhan Endean says this means these nations “identify the skills needs of the local economy, so as a union we’re able to reach out to the right cohort of workers to encourage them to develop their skills.”
For example, Unite’s Scotland union learning team is working with the construction industry to address “the absolute need for retrofitting of properties”.
Union learning in devolved areas
The devolution of adult skills funding to mayoral combined authorities in England is also slowly helping unions grow their learning provision.
The TUC’s 2024 report says it is “reinvigorating” staff learning with the election of more union learning reps. It is also “exploring new ways of encouraging learning and development, including the offer of individual learning accounts”.
Unison attracted a record 209,000 new members in 2023, including 4,097 union learning representatives, stewards, and health and safety reps – a rise of 56 per cent on 2022.

Unions hope the introduction of integrated settlements, giving mayors more freedom to spend their funding as they see fit, could also provide a boost.
They have secured a seat on the West Midlands Combined Authority board, leading to a skills partnership with the TUC which funded workplace learning through the Communication Workers Union in Coventry.
And South Yorkshire Combined Authority is working with Barnsley College and the GMB to teach Sheffield City Council officers digital skills, including its civil enforcement team.
GMB workplace rep Dave Furness, who organised the course, said there was a “massive need for digital skills” within the council and “probably a lot of other local authorities” that have “an ageing workforce”.
The West of England Combined Authority, which is working with unions through its employment and skills panel, recently invited trade unions to fill skills gaps by bidding to deliver training as part of its Union Learn West programme.
Unions can apply for up to £200,000 to“support workers and employers to enhance skills, increase take-up of programmes and simplify access to training”, said mayor Dan Norris.
Meanwhile, in the capital, the TUC last year launched a Greater London Authority-funded union learning project with five unions to provide numeracy and literacy programmes and support migrant workers.
Wilson believes it is “great that some union learning programmes have found local funding”, and believes that a new ULF would “support locally funded learning”.
He said: “Skills should be a priority. History shows that unions can play a crucial role, given the right help.”
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