Cable Connects With Samsung Services Academy

Business secretary Vince Cable has toured a newly opened facility in Birmingham which trains engineers in technologies including wireless networking and 3D imaging.

Cable used the visit to the facility this week to talk up the importance the coalition sees in developing the UK’s high tech industries. The  Samsung Digital Service Academy is the result of collaboration with Birmingham Metropolitan College and includes courses in “wireless audio visual technologies”, the company claims.

Cable put a patriotic slant on the importance of beefing up the UK’s tech skills, even though the academy is actually tied closely to the South Korean hardware maker. “Samsung is a leader in employer support training and their example will help UK stay one step ahead,” said Cable.

UK Tech Industry

According to Samsung, the facility will offer its “contracted service partners” the chance to study for a City & Guilds approved NVQ Level 2 in Electrical and Electronic Servicing with “specific Samsung wireless technology endorsements”.

The visit by Cable was presented as an example of the new government’s support of the UK’s tech industry. “It is great to see a college such as Birmingham Metropolitan hosting such hi-tech and productive training centres. Examples like this underline the importance of the government offering it support,” he said. “The growth sectors that require highly specialised skills have to be matched with support for their training needs.”

However the coalition government has made it clear that IT contracts will be one of the biggest victims of drastic public sector spending cuts. In a speech earlier this year, chancellor George Osborne said that IT spending cuts and the cancellation of “wasteful” projects such as ID cards would play a key role in the country’s bid to save £6 billion during the current financial year.

A HM Treasury press release stated that some of the savings would be made “through doubling the current delivery plans for savings in IT spending” and “cancelling wasteful projects like ID cards”. A report by analyst group TechMarketView earlier this year predicted that public sector spending on software and IT services would grow by an average of just 0.8 percent per year under a Tory government, compared to 2.9 percent under a Labour government.

During the run-up to the election Cable was also famously hard-line on dishonesty in politics such as the expenses scandal and the role of bankers in the financial crisis. But while Cable chose to praise Samsung for its support of the training college, it is less clear if he would be as supportive of its recent decision to re-hire former chairman Lee Kun-hee, who stepped down from the firm in 2008 after being charged with tax evasion and breach of trust.

Academic Pay

Although Cable appears to have been welcomed by his hosts at Birmingham Metropolitan College, he is less popular in other academic circles after attacking the pay of academics earlier this year. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph in May, Cable criticised the high salaries of some university bosses.

“There is some gap between reality and expectations in some of those institutions and although it is not our job to control pay – it is an independent mechanism – we want to signal to them that there has got to be some restraint,” he told the paper.