Select committee: Environmental Audit Committee
Conclusion 35
Third Report - Green Jobs
Published 25 Oct 2021
Paragraph 144
Environmental Audit Committee Green Jobs All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
Something that has not been considered in the Green Jobs Taskforce report recommendations is the wider enabling infrastructure which allows people to physically access green job opportunities, such as public transport, care and rural broadband connectivity. This will involve co-ordination across the Government. This wider infrastructure needs to be factored into the Government’s green jobs and just transition delivery plans from the outset; if people are unable to physically access green job opportunities, this could undermine not just the Government’s ambitions for the number of people seeking and successfully entering green jobs, but also its ambitions for a just transition and diversity and inclusion in the green workforce.
From: Environmental Audit Committee, Third Report - Green Jobs (HC 75), paragraph 144, 25 October 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 20 January 2022 (deadline 25 December 2021).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government welcomes the Committee's focus on green jobs and skills, points to its Net Zero Strategy and a new Green Jobs Delivery Group, and in places declines to set out the requested plans, costings or measures.
- A Green Jobs Delivery Group will include ministers from BEIS, Defra, DfE, DWP and DfT alongside an industry co-chair, with further detail "in the new year".
- On indicative costings for green jobs actions, it says further allocations depend on ongoing policy development, so "it is not possible to set these out to the Committee at this point".
- On a module on environmental sustainability in every apprenticeship and T Level, it says "we do not believe that a generic sustainability module across every occupational standard is appropriate". Sustainability elements are included "where occupationally relevant".
- On the Careers Strategy, it says it "currently do[es] not plan to update" it, as it has been superseded by the Skills for Jobs white paper.