Use of language matters. The devil is in the detail. Input is important – but outcomes matter even more.

These were the phrases going through my head as the government – embellished with Boris Johnson’s idiosyncratic  rhetoric – launched its Lifetime Skills Guarantee yesterday, central to plans it says will "transform the training and skills system, making it fit for the 21st-century economy."

Well, a start is something – even if the boast that "adults without an A level or equivalent qualification will be offered a free, fully funded college course" turns out to be the reinstatement of what prevailed until 2013 when George Osborne scrapped grants and made everyone over 23 take out advanced learner loans. Half of the funding for those loans then went back to the Treasury, year on year, unused.

Background: Boris Johnson to announce 'Lifetime Skills Guarantee'

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Many of the million adult learners lost in the past decade were from FE, put off by this and other changes. As shadow minister for skills at the time, I spoke to dozens of adult college learners countrywide, many of them women who told me they could not have got their qualifications – and subsequent jobs – without their grants, fearful of being laden with loan debt.

Investing in adult education and skills

The government has decked out its proposals by repeating observations from the Augar report (now 16 months old) but echoing the language (and in places filching it) from the Lifelong Learning Commission‘s recommendations made to Labour last November. As the person who coordinated the commission, I might be comforted by the old phrase "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" – if it were true.

But the government’s proposals, as well as being thin on new funding initiatives, are also light on detail. What there is raises more questions than answers. The free college courses come with strings attached  – "skills valued by employers", of which we are told a list of approved courses will "be available shortly".

What does that mean? Who is going to decide what are the skills  employers value? Whitehall? The Education and Skills Funding Agency? Or the minister of the day – with shades of the micromanagement of schools curricula favoured when Michael Gove was education secretary?

If that’s the way it goes, then the "Lifetime Skills Guarantee" will be a very poor substitute for the "universal, publicly funded right to learn through life, with a minimum entitlement to fully funded local level 3 provision, and the equivalent of six years publicly funded credits at level 4 and above" laid out by the Lifelong Learning Commission.

Other elements in this government’s proposals – flexibility in how training is structured, more funding for SMEs on apprenticeships, and promoting higher tech qualifications – may be useful in themselves. But, in reality, there is no overarching strategy for the progression we desperately need now.

There are still no answers as to how the new tech courses at level 4 and 5 that the DfE announced over the summer will work. How will they rub along with T levels? Who will train the trainers for them? And how do you avoid – as the concern has been with degree apprenticeships – learners from disadvantaged backgrounds missing out? How do you link progression to them if there is no pipeline to improve basic skills and level 2 participation (both areas where the government ‘s record is dismal)?

We need to develop short, sharp targeted skills programmes to get people retrained swiftly to face new challenges  – AI, the green agenda on renewables, automation. Rapid action was needed even before Covid-19, and now the pandemic has turbocharged this. But there’s little sense of how to do this in the government‘s proposals. Over 60 per cent of training and apprenticeships starts are carried out by independent providers, but there’s scant recognition of their role.

We also need longer in-depth degree programmes to give older learners the generic enabling skills they will need to navigate rapid changes in their jobs and careers. Employers consistently ask for these but there’s little recognition of how to achieve that in the government’s proposals.

Instead, we are offered a tired, top-down delivery view, with the same old mantras about more capital coming out of the same pots of money. Yes, we do need investment in capital, but not just new buildings that ministers can cut a ribbon for,  but human capital,  for both skills teachers and FE learners in areas and sectors where existing skills are low and have been neglected, and where unemployment is now soaring high. The LLCOM report looked holistically at how those elements can be blended together – but the government’s response seems to be a one-trick pony.

What about the self-employed, not least in service sectors like health, hospitality, the creative sectors, who are losing their jobs by the bucketful? Why is there no engagement with the trade unions, whose learning reps have shown they can play a critical role In encouraging tens of thousands of their members down new routes?

Finally, who is actually going to deliver this so called transformation in skills for adult learners? The failure to engage with sub-regional partners, councils and public and private sector stakeholders, elected mayors and combined authorities to deliver this suggests it will be more of the Whitehall micromanagement that has failed in the past, with (as in previous ministerial initiatives ) little contact or consultation with those groups.

Demand is just as critical as supply to good outcomes for the hundreds of thousands of people needing new skills. But management on the ground is critical for this. The LLCOM report recognised the need for virtuous circles of cooperation locally – and the ability to learn from pilots. There’s little of that thinking here.

In the pandemic that we are now enduring, prioritising and targeting key groups and places left behind is everything. But as with chancellor Rishi Sunak’s autumn statement, there has been no engagement with that strategy.

What will these proposals do for the people of Blackpool, my former constituency, where nearly 10 per cent of the working-age population is now having to exist on benefits, or for the many other coastal and inland towns braced for further job losses?

We need initiatives to stimulate and create demand – like the proposals just put forward for the government’s spending review by City and Guilds, Future Learn and the Prince's Trust. They advocate £60 million investment over the next three years to fast track skills for re-employment using local employment and training hubs countrywide.

City and Guilds say these could upskill 2 million people between 2021 and 2023. They see the ability – like the Open University that I once worked for as a course tutor – to piggyback on a blend of online and face-to-face courses (when circumstances permit)in  evening and weekend settings, sweating the existing assets of schools, colleges and other institutions, without government  spending millions of pounds on new builds that could be better used for support grants, which are key to getting older would-be learners back on track

These are practical steps that could help energise this ragbag of government proposals. Right now, however, those resemble the actors in the absurdist play by the Italian writer Pirandello - "Six Characters in Search of an Author".

Gordon Marsden was shadow minister for FE, HE and skills from 2015-19 and is a former MP for Blackpool South