Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)

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I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for Institutes of Technology to apply to receive a Royal Charter; and for connected purposes.

At first blush, this might sound like a somewhat arcane issue involving an unlikely combination. The world of royal charters and the Privy Council approvals process may feel a million miles away from the new institute of technology agenda, but when I explain the reason for this proposal, then all should, and I hope will, become very clear.

One of the greatest challenges facing our country is the so-called skills gap—the shortfall between the demands of modern industry and business for suitably qualified entrants and the supply of people with those very qualifications. For too long, there was a dislocation between what our businesses actually needed and what was being provided educationally. A range of studies have identified the lack of people in our country with higher technical skills and the economy’s growing need for even more skilled technicians. Without change, productivity rates will slow or even fall, which means lower wages and an economy no longer at the cutting edge of innovation.

The policy response was, rightly, the creation of institutes of technology. IOTs are a new type of provider designed specifically to deliver the technical STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—skills, mainly at levels 4 and 5, that employers and our economy need. Their main characteristic is a model of collaborative work involving partnerships between further education providers and higher education providers with a proven track record, and, vitally, employers, this time with employers right at the heart of decision making and the development and delivery of the curriculum.

Following a rigorous competition, 12 wave 1 IOTs were established, supported by £170 million of capital grant funding to invest in state-of-the-art equipment and facilities. My hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) and I pushed the Department for Education hard for Swindon to be selected, and we were delighted when Swindon and Wiltshire Institute of Technology was announced as part of the first wave. It received capital funding of over £17 million and launched last year with a range of new courses based on both campuses in Swindon. My hon. Friend, with whom I have always worked as part of our joint team for Swindon, strongly supports this Bill too. As well as delivering against their own work programmes, I am glad to see that the IOTs are involved in the delivery of key initiatives in the 2021 skills for jobs White Paper, such as the skills accelerator, the in-work skills pilot, and the higher technical qualifications growth fund.

Our 2019 manifesto committed to introducing a further eight IOTs. The Department ran another competition, and I am glad to say that a further nine proposals have now been selected to become new IOTs. These are backed by an additional £120 million of capital grant funding, bringing the total to be invested in IOTs to £290 million. That will mean that there will be 21 IOTs across England comprising over 75 further education providers and 34 universities, and over 100 employers, including Microsoft, Nissan, Bosch, Babcock, Fujitsu and many more. They are delivering a wide range of technical courses in STEM sectors such as construction, advanced manufacturing, digital and cyber- security, agritech, aerospace, automotive engineering, healthcare and laboratory science. Being employer-led, IOTs can tailor their provision to react quickly to the current and evolving technical skills needs of employers in the areas that they serve. There might be a skills shortage in areas such as transport or in supporting the fourth industrial revolution, which requires new skills in artificial intelligence, data and innovative technologies. I believe that IOTs can help to plug that gap.

IOTs also play a vital part in levelling up skills across the country by providing local people with the skills they need to pursue rewarding jobs and local businesses with the skilled workforces that they need; by acting as catalysts of regional growth, helping to halt the draining of talent out of overlooked and undervalued areas of the country by training local people for the jobs of the future today; and by helping to create a workforce that is ready for future and further technological change and changing working practices.

The Government have always rightly seen IOTs as

“the pinnacle of technical training”,

and the next step is to cement that status. Learners and employers alike need to see IOTs as the go-to provider of levels 4 and 5 technical STEM provision, benefiting not just themselves but the economy as a whole. Choosing to study, say, engineering at an IOT must be seen as an equivalent alternative to studying at degree level at one of our best universities.

To firmly establish IOTs as the pre-eminent organisations for technical STEM education, I want to ensure that successful IOTs may apply to receive a royal charter, securing their long-term position as anchor institutions within their region and placing them on the same level as our world-leading historic universities. I am confident that the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), and the Department he represents here today will support this initiative and that a new process for IOTs to apply will—sooner rather than later, I hope—become a reality.

All this comes within an even wider context. I am glad that skills reforms are already well under way, with apprenticeships, T-levels and IOTs, of course, all being part of this and being interlinked as well. At long last, we are building a technical education system that is going to drive prosperity at a local level as well as at a national one. The indicator of success is the Government’s very own target of 200,000 more people successfully completing high-quality training every year by the end of the decade, including 80,000 more people completing courses in areas of England with the lowest skill levels.

Skills have to be part of the levelling-up agenda. That is why I welcome the new future skills unit, which will use data and evidence on where skills gaps exist and in what industries. Data will be our great ally. On top of this, thousands more adults will be able to access free and flexible training, and get the skills needed in sectors that are booming, such as green technologies, digital and construction. This is all part of an additional boost to expand skills bootcamps to support employers across the country, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, to get the skilled people they need to grow. The levelling-up White Paper has the right goal—to support a high-wage, high-skill economy by building skills and human capital, particularly in those places where they are weakest. This includes supporting local people to realise their career aspirations without having to leave their communities, and ensuring that local employers have access to the skills they need to grow and thrive.

The mission for productivity, pay, jobs and living standards also supports the Government’s commitment to employment and ensures that people have the opportunity to access quality jobs and make progress at work. In Swindon, I have seen for myself the excellent facilities being used to teach and train apprentices in the higher-level healthcare and science pathway, with courses delivered by dedicated NHS professionals with continuing frontline experience. The work of important local employers such as Nationwide has helped develop courses in digital skills, and collaboration with local universities such as Oxford Brookes and the University of Gloucestershire is adding even more value to those courses, with full degree qualifications on offer. In short, IOTs are not going to work if they act as remote islands. They have to be part of a mosaic of local provision, giving people choices and clear routes to achieve the qualifications that will serve them well in their chosen careers.

When I was a Law Officer, in conjunction with the Privy Council Office, I used to check and approve royal charters for a range of public and private bodies. The threshold for acceptance is a high one: in essence, they should be conferred only when appropriate, on bodies that are beyond political controversy. I believe that nothing I have said today about IOTs is a matter of political controversy, and that IOTs fall into a suitable category for consideration of the approval of royal charters. As I said at the beginning of my speech, what seems like a dry procedure is in fact the opening of a door to new opportunities and an effective means of ensuring that skills qualifications, which are a vital way of increasing productivity, get the recognition they clearly deserve and that IOTs, which offer life-changing opportunities to thousands of people, will be a permanent part of our educational landscape.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Sir Robert Buckland, Chris Skidmore, Carolyn Harris, Robert Halfon, Richard Graham, Theo Clarke, Sir Robert Neill, Kelly Tolhurst, Mrs Pauline Latham, Jo Gideon, James Daly and Edward Timpson present the Bill.

Sir Robert Buckland accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 18 March, and to be printed (Bill 277).