NEET no more?

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1:04BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Wake Up To Money from BBC Five Live. Hello, welcome. It is Wake Up To Money. The wildfires continue to rage in France and Spain. We're going to be speaking to a wine producer in Bordeaux whose land has been covered in smoke. The very latest from there. Also, what can we learn from the Dutch and their lower youth unemployment? As Andy Burnham looks to ramp up vocational qualifications, a former Dutch education minister joins us on the show. Johnson & Johnson has offered up$5.5 billion to settle baby powder lawsuits. We'll get all the detail on that. And... Oh, my God!

1:49It's just like York and Solskjaer all those years ago. There have been countless famous moments at Old Trafford, but we are now one step further to that historic ground being replaced. Wake Up To Money with Sean Farrington. Good morning to you. Wake Up To Money on this Tuesday morning, the 28th of July. We're just after five o 'clock. Thank you for being with us. Fascinated in your thoughts this morning on Andy Burnham's latest proposals to shake up the education system. This is one we know very close to many people who listen to Wake Up To Money. You get in touch with us about this. We've talked to many bosses over the years about what should be done to link up those going through the school system and the workers that we need around the country.

2:36What needs to change? What's worked so far? What really hasn't worked? Is there a nervousness about moving away from the traditional academic qualification university route that we've heard so much about for so many decades? Is it the way to be going as Andy Burnham unveils these reforms that will allow pupils in England to study subjects like manufacturing and AI alongside the core academic learning and being more involved with what local areas need in their workforce at that time. So we'll get into the detail of that. We'll look at what Andy Burnham and his team, Pat McFadden, the working pension secretary, might well have learned from the Dutch system where they have a much lower youth unemployment rate than we do here in the UK.

3:24So what is it they've been doing right? Your thoughts, please. If you've got kids going through the system, about to go through the system, they've gone through the system, you've gone through the system yourself. You might be in the middle of the system yourself, just getting up, doing your teeth, getting ready for your day at work, bit of work experience, off to your apprenticeship scheme, whatever that might be. Get in touch. Join us on the show, 85058, because there's going to be big changes afoot, it seems. Front pages of pretty much every single paper this morning, apart from the sun, which has a lookalike of Andy Burnham on the front.

3:57I'm Mandy Burnham. But apart from that, there's lots of serious chat to be had about the world of work and how all of this links up. I've got Piers Linney, MBE, with me this morning. Fascinated to get Piers' thoughts on this. You may, of course, know him from his time as an investor on Dragon's Den. He's the co-founder of Implement AI, an artificial intelligence startup. And of course, like any dragon worth his salt, has a range of other business interests as well. Piers, very good morning to you. Good morning. Thank you very much for your time this morning, Piers. If somebody, I'm sure you've been asked this question many a time, whether it's by governments or businesses or places where you're linking up with the educational system.

4:39If you look at the educational system, there is in England, let's say, but the conversation goes, Andy Burnham's talking about England because that's what he can change today. But the conversation goes right across the UK. Somebody said to you, what is the thing that needs to change so that we're producing the workforce we need out of the schools that we have? So I've got teenage children, and I've been having this conversation with them the last two years. And the main thing is, let's give you a real world example. So my son, he's at college. He went to a nice school. He went to college. And he was doing business and IT.

5:18He thought that'd be interesting. and he got frustrated because at home he sees me, you know, vibe modeling in Microsoft Excel and various other softwares. And then he goes to college and they won't let him use AI at all to do the work. Now they all do because, you know, it's like an arm's race in terms of using and detecting it. And then they didn't mention it once in any of the courses. And they're teaching him really old-fashioned kind of databases instead of, you know, AI sort of semantic and sort of 3D databases. and he got frustrated and he left and he said to me you know what do you think and now five years ago i would have been i went to university you know i was sort of pushed to go to university i would have been quite dismayed whereas now i kind of said to him you know what i think you're probably doing the right thing so i think to answer your question directly which i haven't done yet no so we've got a whole show here don't worry no rush so the key is speed and i actually wrote to the college and said look what's going on this is just it's unacceptable and they said look the curriculum was designed i think it's five six seven years ago and that's just not good enough now so i think what andy burnham's trying to do i think is um change the system to be more reflective of what's required but i still think it's quite difficult to work out what are the skills that people entering the labor market need now and i do this i know i'm involved in it obviously but it's not just about that it's about just a changing changing demand for skills and I struggle myself to have this conversation with my children is there a nervousness to to well I've seen the quote in one of the papers this morning when when I think it might have been the financial times when when sort of asking and checking in with previous departments of education where you know when Michael Gove was in charge and and seeing you know what what they did then that there was a nervousness to use the phrase use is narrow the pathway as a parent do you have that nervousness anything that focuses on a quite a specific industry or job at an earlier stage in a child's education so i think the key is still always going to be is my advice is do something you you enjoy because otherwise you know it's quite hard work and do something you're good at and what I find quite frustrating actually and worrying is the response I get from young people I talk to and I'm engaged with young people and various things I do is the kind of oh well AI is going to do it anyways what's the point and I think that is that is troubling actually and you've still got to look at your your interest what you're good at what the labor market needs I've got other members of the family you know they're you know they're Oxford studying languages and I think well you know his language is a good thing but then again you might go into diplomatic service or something else so you still got to look at what you enjoy what you're good at and focus on that and the other difficulty is is I always say in the world today you've got to play where you think the puck is going because it's going there very quickly it never used to you know the world you know my my education looked very very similar to my father's education he was he went to Cambridge in the 60s and probably his grandfather's education actually whereas now education today is going to look very different to education in 5 years and 10 years and that's the thing is what actually do they need to learn because it's going to keep on changing and the issue with technology and this is not just about AI it's technology generally, robotics robots are coming for physical labour pretty soon that they're getting there is I think it was like a pyramid and this pyramid of human work has been filled over this since the first industrial revolution.

9:06And it's been filled with the second industrial revolution, the third, and the third was the internet and telecommunications networks and PCs and mobiles, all that good stuff. And the issue now is with the fourth industrial revolution, probably the last, because it's not going to be epochs anymore, it's going to be incremental all the time, is it's been filled with more tech. But previously the pyramid got bigger, GDP, world populations, whereas now the pyramid's not. It's actually shrinking in many places unless you're in Africa. And it's been filled with technology but now the technology can now use the tools that we've created over the last 150 years.

9:41Computers, machines, robots. So that's a difficulty. We've got to move to the top of that pyramid and add value. The big question is how much space is there there for the people that are being not just into labour market now but being born now. Yeah. Yeah, 85058 appears has teed us up delightfully. The array of issues, debates to be had on this topic. Jane, Jane Sidnam, who's with us this morning, Senior Investment Director at Rathbones. Good morning, Jane. Good morning. This issue that we have, particularly in the UK, we'll be talking about the Dutch system a bit later, where they don't quite have the same problem with youth unemployment we have here.

10:22Many countries in the Western world do have this issue. But in the UK, we've talked a lot about those one million young people, more than a million young people who aren't in education, aren't in employment, aren't in training. So the acronym that's used is NEAT for people in that bracket. But, you know, a million people not in one of those systems. That's the highest level in more than 12 years. It's become a real serious part of our labour market troubles, hasn't it? Yes, it certainly has. I mean, it's never good when your next workforce are, you know, really not in the position to sort of take up jobs.

11:03And I think some of the points that Pierce was making, I think the education system is struggling to know which direction to go in, what skills to give young people. But equally, you know, it is interesting that apprenticeships have become much, much more popular. I think people are worried about accumulating lots of debt while they're at university. and then actually in many ways because organisations are working out what the future of work looks like. Sometimes I think the apprentices are almost in a better place. It's a really difficult time, a period of huge change and it's not working well for quite a few people.

11:4485058, join in the chat. Thank you for your messages already on this. Somebody saying, as an ex-worker of 50 years, started working early in engineering has given me a very good life. Alan in Bedfisher says, to produce the workforce we need from schools, businesses need to get involved. They need to fund the qualifications they want. They need to talk to students and tell them what career paths will look like in five to 10 years. Students go to university with a career in mind, having no clue if that will be in demand when they graduate. Another saying, I'm a chef and the college training new chefs is so outdated.

12:21They don't teach on new techniques or equipment. It's frustrating. It's like teaching IT students on typewriters. Interesting similar story, Piers is describing with his kids as well. One of them who's had a similar experience with a very different course, 85058. Join in the chat about how you get from school to work and the link between them and what the system needs to be like these days with so many people not in education or employment or training at the moment at a young age. Something needs to change. What is it that needs to change? Is this the right direction? We'll talk more about Andy Burnham's proposals and the ideas that he has that will allow pupils in England to study specific subjects like manufacturing and AI alongside core academic learning available from year 10.

13:09They'll be linked to local jobs and industries, key parts of his pitch. to the country about where education should go next. So let us know your thoughts. 85058. Got Jane Sydenham with us from Rathburns. Piers Linney, MBE with us as well. Dragon's Den fame, of course. Co-founder of Implement AI. Piers, always interested to know what is going on in the businesses people are running that we have on this show. And given, you know, we're talking this morning about, you know, what jobs could kids in our schools be going on into and potentially in the world of AI that's unsurprisingly come up. What is it that you do at Implement AI?

13:50What's your sort of niche in this huge global market? We started them three years ago doing, you had Chachi Petit 3.5 and I thought this, I keep trying to retire, I'm failing miserably. And I thought this is going to be huge. So we started a business and we started talking to companies about what is AI, what can it do, and doing sort of pilots and showing them. And the insight we had was that organizations need kind of, think of it like a horizontal solution. Because if you've got one AI doing one thing, like a sales AI or PA, whatever it might be, you're going to need lots of them. So how do they all work together, talk together?

14:29So we basically built a platform. We call it Workforce. And essentially we provide, think of it as AI workers. So Workforce as a Service. And what we do really is a couple of things. One is we augment existing human teams to do things. We're better at doing things. We do things that humans can't do because of scale, make 5 ,000 phone calls in a couple of hours, things like that, and data analysis. So they're the key and really expand. So our strapline is grow your workforce, not your payroll. A lot of companies, especially in the UK, as we all know, productivity is an issue. So we focus on helping you grow revenue and detaching your cost base from that revenue growth because often it's linear.

15:10and most companies don't grow because they can't afford that additional cost or it steps up too quickly. Whereas now you can grow your top line using artificial intelligence. It's very good at doing data analysis. We do phone calls, emails, WhatsApps and they're getting very good at that. But the key is you can now grow but without your cost-based stepping up. And that can be all types of different resources and which often require funding in advance. So it's really about helping companies just understand the technology and deploy it and to be honest with you our job we we orchestrate all the technology but it's really about working with companies to implement it actually deliver and deploy it in a business because businesses that they're messy you know you don't just turn up there and switch switch ai on off it goes you've got to understand what's the workflow what's the objective what's the return on investment how does it work with humans in the loop that's really important and then implement it and make it work so it's about configuring the agents deploying them, testing them, optimizing them.

16:10And the point here, if anyone listening to this is, we often hear, oh, we're not doing IT projects this year, right? It's not an IT project, okay? This is a fundamental change, the way you're going to operate your business forever. And you're going to be doing this forever because the technology is going to continue changing and you're going to want to implement it. And the main thing that amazes me, you see more in the US, they're kind of desperate to get the technology and expand. Whereas in the UK, a lot of companies are not worried about it, just reticent or it's not a priority. Whereas this is a huge opportunity to fix productivity, competitive advantage.

16:49Every company should be looking at it at least and trying to understand what are the possibilities. And again, play where the puck's going, not where it is because it's moving very quickly. One of the things that jumped out, and you're describing what you do there, when you mentioned the phone calls, the WhatsApps, the emails, that kind of thing. Do you see an actual benefit? Is that working? I think more of us are probably used to getting some of these calls now where there is some more of an automated, not just an automated call to begin with, but almost like an engagement with artificial intelligence from the moment when you pick up your phone.

17:25It can be a bit annoying sometimes. So where does that work? Where does that actually benefit the customer and the business when you're automating 5 ,000 phone calls, as you say? This is my point. It's not just fire and forget. There's a process. So phone calls are really interesting. So sometimes, you know, from a regulated point of view, you've got to say recording the phone call and we call people. But you can cover a lot of ground very quickly. We had a recruitment company. they've got 200 ,000 people in their database. They had five people calling the whole database all year round, quite a soul-destroying job, lots of churn in the team.

18:04And they've only got through 5 ,000 a year. We got through 4 ,500 on a Saturday morning. And they can't call on a Saturday morning because no one works on Saturdays. Whereas the people they're calling, they work on building sites typically, they're at work during the week. So you can do things you can't normally do. And what's interesting is that as long as the caller, like us, as long as you're getting value, where is my order? and it tells you where it is, you don't mind. If someone's calling you annoyingly for something you weren't expecting or don't want, then it doesn't matter who's calling you, it's going to be annoying.

18:36What's really interesting, we find is that we, I won't mention names, but we work with some large companies and we're talking to vulnerable customers. They prefer the AI because, and this is what the research has shown that we've done, because they don't feel as though it's judging them. so they can have a conversation about their personal circumstances and they don't feel it judging them. If they do, this is the key to it, if you've got a complicated case and some kind of edge case, someone's vulnerable or they're upset, you're always going to involve a human in that conversation because AIs aren't quite there yet.

19:10So it's that line of where can you use it, where should you use it, and then where do you pass it on to a human? And I think that apart from the bigger point about how much work is there, the work of the humans in the loop, if you want to call it that, becomes more interesting because you're doing the edge cases. You're not doing the repetitive and the mundane. So I would say automate the mundane, right? But we should be doing the meaningful. 85058, people getting in touch with us saying hi, Sean, Jane and Pierce. I would seriously consider getting young people straight into work at the age of 16.

19:41It would help all small independent businesses get young people trained and educated in the art of working by work-minded people, says Brendan. Let me know your thoughts. I see the boss of AstraZeneca, the drug-making giant, has said that AI won't replace many jobs at his firms. It will make workers smarter and faster. Another pharmaceutical giant, another American, well, I say another American, AstraZeneca, British, but he's been making big American moves of late. Johnson & Johnson has said it has agreed to pay up to$5.5 billion to settle lawsuits that claimed its talc products cause ovarian cancer.

20:20So the proposed landmark settlement aims to close a long-running legal battle that has weighed on the US healthcare giant for a fair few years now. It has denied its talc-based products cause cancer and changed the formula of its widely used baby powder. Jane, it's quite a development, quite a big number making headlines, $5.5 billion settlement. It's something that many around the world will have been following the story for some time. Absolutely. I mean, this has been kind of going on and off, really, since almost 2009. So, you know, the company really, really wants to sort of bring it to an end now by settling this$5.5 billion, which you say is a lot of money.

21:03but it's you know it will hopefully bring it's just been ongoing and a real sort of problem and holding the share price back and and so on for quite a long time it stopped stopped selling the baby powder or johnson johnson stopped selling the baby powder in america and in 2020 um so so there's been a long build-up to this and it's been quite a costly exercise over many decades And just reading this morning, we'll see what the latest is around this and where we are in the UK. So there's a case, there's a major legal case in which Johnson & Johnson were accused of knowingly selling baby powder contaminated with asbestos.

21:42That involved over 7 ,000 claimants by the end of April this year when that case opened. and claimants alleging that Johnson & Johnson was aware as early as the 1960s its talcum powder containing contaminants. Johnson & Johnson deny the allegation as well as any claims that it knowingly sold baby powder contaminated with asbestos. So we will see how, as the day develops, this has been breaking news overnight as Johnson & Johnson agreeing to pay up to$5.5 billion to settle lawsuits. We'll see what detail comes out of where that settlement might be put in place and the impact on those cases here in the UK as well.

22:26As Jane says there, it's been going on for quite some time. Let's get the very latest on these awful scenes across France and Spain. More than 300 ,000 people now have been forced to evacuate their homes there as wildfires continue to rage. In France, in particular, multiple fires burning just nine miles from the southwestern city of Bordeaux, with much of the wine-producing region under thick smoke. I've got Andrew Eakin with me, who owns Two Chateaux, or wine-producing estates, six tourist cabins as well near Bordeaux, and joins us from the region. Andrew, thank you so much for your time this morning.

23:04What is the scene now at the moment? Good morning. Lucky enough, we're north of Bordeaux, so on the right bank of the river. But in general for us, it's pretty horrific. There was a fire about four or five kilometres from us, which is contained now with the health of the big plains and dropping water in. But in general, it's pretty smoky. Still a little bit clearer today, I think, for the first time ever. but in general yeah it's pretty bad. And so what has been the immediate consequences on, let's talk about your business particularly and then we can talk about industry more widely around the Bordeaux region.

23:50What has been the impact on you in recent days? So to be fair we're very very lucky, we're north of Bordeaux so it hasn't, we'll say obviously our bit, our vines and all that are safe and for well for now. Immediate effect for us is we have what's called jeats here, our holiday rentals. So we've had a good few cancellations at the start of the year or at the start of the summer, we'll call it. Good few cancellations with people with the heat wave so they didn't really want to come so far. This is before the wildfires. This is before the wildfires. So the heat wave, it causes that issue business-wise.

24:30then we've got some with some cancellations then we've got some people which have been displaced through the fire we've got some in the holiday rentals end of it which has been families that have been moved out of say Cap Foray and there are holiday makers that have been in Cap Foray and then they stop by us now instead to wait for maybe a couple of days to hopefully maybe get back in unfortunately they haven't so they've gone on and cancelled their holidays is short. So that has been evident for us, really. And more widely, when you speak to your colleagues and peers across the industry, what has been happening?

25:15Well, I mean, over the last, we'll say, five years, I'm Irish, but we're here 10 years at this stage. I mean, the business aspect of it is climate change is having a massive, massive, massive change for our business. You know, we're planting different types of grapes to withstand 40 degrees. You know, last month it was 47 one day here. So we're harvesting now, well, we're planning to harvest now on the 18th of August, which 10 years ago, the first time we did that was the 18th of September. So it's a month ahead now due to heat and that is purely due to heat. And do you see, you know, Are people thinking twice about the industry in the region because of the changes you've described there?

26:00Massively, yeah. There's a huge drop in the amount of production. There's an awful lot of vines that have been removed in the area. So it's very, very, very challenging. You're not allowed water your vines here, obviously, so you have to adapt that way, whether you change the way you prune your vines. But that's just a change and you just need to adapt to that. Is it as straightforward as that? Can you just adapt to that? I just wonder when you look back to the 10 years ago when you first started there, and I'm guessing you chose that region, did you? You chose your spot where you were. Would you have thought differently if you'd have been a bit more engaged with where temperatures might be heading?

26:51I don't know. it's always been difficult and then and then the process here also is we changed to organic which is or at that 10 years ago with the amount of rain and bits and pieces we were getting an awful lot more mildew and bits and pieces so we adapted that way and the hot weather has helped us as an organic farm because we spray less because we don't have to spray during the during the summer as much so yeah it's it's difficult there's no doubt about it and you can see it's it's quite sad you can see the the massive change in the amount of vines around my area that we are in here. We're in Bly, Cote de Bly, so it's a big, big change.

27:32Would I have changed the region? No. We produce some great wine in this region. We just need to change maybe probably what we make and how we make it in time. And is there then, do you see a ripple effect into the local towns and villages? of the vibrancy. I'm just thinking you would well know that the conversation about the high streets around the UK and Ireland and the changes on community as industries change, is there a similar kind of thing going on as you see fewer vineyards around you? Yeah, I think definitely the town that we're in, which is Bly, which is a small little town it was to do with grain, a huge amount of grain, say in the last 20 years, that's changed now.

28:26I see an awful lot of vineyards beside us have kind of gone down the same route as us. They maybe have two or three houses on their plot. They're now going into a bit more of tourism. We have a newer generation of people coming in, but they're not necessarily going straight into farming. They're more into tourism. So we've got some more nice restaurants moving up and that which is what we're hoping for. It's what the little locals beside us in the little town, there's another little small town beside us, are kind of promoting us because the butchers is getting more business. You know, we've got a good few people from the UK driving down and staying with us.

29:02So they're adapted. I see two people from the UK have opened up language schools in town where they're teaching English now to try and get the French farmers, as we call them, to try and speak so that they can sell their product, not just in France now that they're starting to sell it in the US or they're trying to sell it in different countries that way. And just finally, Andrew, the reflection on the harvest, if that's the way you'd describe it, for this year and the impact all of this will have on your ability to produce and sell and prices further down the line. Will there be any major changes because of these conditions?

29:43Bordeaux's kind of, in some ways, the wine industry is kind of dictated by a tasting, whereas four or five different people kind of decide whether they feel that this harvest is a bad harvest or a good harvest. For us, personally, I think actually it'll be a good harvest. The fact that we're maybe harvesting a little earlier, a good bit earlier, should I say, might hopefully bring down the rate of alcohol in the wine. So I want to try and make wine that is not so potent. So hopefully, honestly, I think it'll be a good harvest. And for us, once we harvest and we adapt, as I said, to maybe harvesting a bit earlier and keep an eye on our own grapes, I think it'll be a good harvest in the end.