Business Investment (Outer-City Estates)

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Thursday 18th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Skills and Equalities (Nick Boles)]

I, too, am delighted to be serving under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, if not for the same reasons as the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins).

I am particularly pleased to be given an opportunity to respond to another debate of my honourable friend, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen)—convention has it that we are not Friends, but we are friends nevertheless and will remain so. The hon. Gentleman had a debate on my first day in the post of skills Minister, so it is particularly interesting for me to return to the subject with some understanding of the problems, the various Government programmes and the history of Government interventions in the area, both successful and unsuccessful.

There are different kinds of Members of Parliament. The basic job is the simple one of representing constituents as Parliament deliberates and makes laws. The best kind of Members of Parliament, however, are themselves community leaders and social entrepreneurs. No one fulfils the latter function better in the hon. Gentleman’s community than he does. I would put him in a category with some of the newly elected Members of my own party, such as my hon. Friends the Members for Harlow (Robert Halfon) and for Bedford (Richard Fuller), who both aspire to fulfil the same sort of role in their communities as the hon. Gentleman does in Nottingham North.

I accept that the fulfilment of such a role by the hon. Member for Nottingham North is a tribute to, yes, his moral purpose, but also to the needs of his constituents. Many of them live difficult lives in a country where much seems to have improved over many decades, although not for them—indeed, for some, things have even got worse. It is extremely welcome that he takes on himself the role of initiating, leading, stimulating, chivvying and prodding local and national Government to get them to act in the interests of his constituents.

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman accepts that his task would be even harder were the broader economic context not one that was improving. The challenges faced by his constituents have stretched over boom times and busts—the challenges are not creations of recent years—none the less, were the economy not growing and creating jobs at an extraordinary rate, one far higher than in the rest of the European Union, his challenge would be far greater. I am sure, without wanting to tempt him into any partisan positions that might sit uncomfortably with him, he would nevertheless agree that the absolute prerequisite for making any progress at all on the issues that he highlights is to have a sustainably growing economy, which of course itself rests on having a Government with a long-term economic plan.

A phrase much used by politicians, in particular those of a glib cast of mind, “the rising tide lifts all boats”, is more revealing in the senses in which it is not true than in those in which it is true. It is clearly true that no boats will be lifted if there is no rising tide. So there has to be a rising economic tide for any progress to be made anywhere in communities that the hon. Gentleman represents or that you, Mr Davies, or I represent. But it is also clear that when we have a rising tide it is easier to identify those boats that stubbornly refuse to rise, and—I am stretching the metaphor to its limits, I feel—those whose structural flaws are so profound that they need direct intervention. That is exactly what he is proposing through his work with the Rebalancing the Outer Estates Foundation and a whole range of other partners.

I will address—briefly and very specifically—the particular schemes that the hon. Gentleman is currently proposing and working on with Government. I hope that I can give him a fairly positive response. He referred to the bid by Rebalancing the Outer Estates and its partners to the youth engagement fund for support for the employment of careers advisers or work-life coaches—whatever one wants to call them—in every secondary school in his constituency. Although he will understand that the rules for such schemes mean that those are not decisions that I can make, I will happily put on the record my support for his bid. So long as it meets the criteria for that fund I would strongly encourage those who are in charge of making those decisions to support that bid. If we are looking for a place where proper engagement with young people is urgently required and where proper advice for them about the different opportunities available to them is desperately needed, it is hard to think of a better example than Nottingham North.

I would make a similar comment about the second project that the hon. Gentleman discussed, the bid to the disadvantaged learners fund for a pilot project.

[Toby Perkins]

Just before the Minister moves on, I welcome what he said a moment ago. Does it reflect a slight softening of the Government’s approach to careers guidance that suggests that they now recognise its value on the ground and face to face? Is he saying that they recognise that that sort of careers guidance should happen, particularly in areas of greater deprivation and, if so, are we likely to see that change of approach more generally across the board?

[Nick Boles]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for asking that question because it allows me to remind him and other hon. Members of the Government’s announcement just last week of a new careers company. That company is specifically charged with identifying those areas of the country—sadly, too many—where, frankly, the headline duty on schools to ensure the provision of independent advice and guidance for young people, to inform their choices both of qualifications and for further progression in the education system and into the world of work, is not being properly met.

Schools need to provide that guidance—it is extremely explicit that they should—although we have tried not to be too prescriptive about how they should do so. When any of us visits a good school, of whatever kind, in whatever community, we find that it provides that guidance. It is not, therefore, something mysterious to those running schools, but unfortunately not all schools do it. There are different ways of doing it; it is not necessarily the case that every school will want to employ its own full-time careers advisers or work-life coaches—it may be that schools will want to work with some of the many social enterprises and charities that do such work. But it is clear that, for schools and communities facing the very particular, deep and deeply entrenched challenges that schools in the constituency of the hon. Member for Nottingham North face, it is right to look to try to support that kind of very specific project to employ work-life coaches; of course, that particular project will have to prove itself and have benchmarks and a data review to see whether it has had an effect. If other schools choose to use their direct schools grant, which we have been able to protect despite the cuts elsewhere in public expenditure, they will not hear any criticism from me.

I turn back now to the disadvantaged learners pilot. I am looking vaguely at the officials in the box to see whether that is something over which I have more influence, as I do not know, but I suspect my influence is still none—one of the great discoveries on becoming a Minister is how little power one has, not how much. However, again, I say that I cannot think of a better place for that money. To be honest, the figures that the hon. Gentleman has shared with us make it quite clear that it is hard to think of a place where learners are more disadvantaged than in Nottingham North. So again, if the project proposed and being worked on by the local economic partnership and Rebalancing the Outer Estates is able to meet the criteria, I will be a strong enthusiast for it.

I want to respond to one final specific point. The hon. Gentleman said that he felt that the reform of qualifications—he himself acknowledged that that was much needed—with its winnowing out of soft and unproductive qualifications, had caught up some courses and qualifications, particularly those related to employability skills, that he thought had value. If he, or indeed anyone else—it is a general invitation—writes to me with specific details about a qualification that they think was valuable, and can provide evidence of how, I am always happy to have another look. The qualifications he is thinking of were probably removed for a reason, but that does not mean that every such decision is always right or was made when all of the evidence was available. Certainly no decision is ever for ever.

Finally—in this season of good will, I do not wish to test anyone’s patience, Mr Davies—I will reflect on the general points that the hon. Gentleman made about the nature of engagement in areas such as his. He referred to his own long-standing support for localism. That was the first thing that brought us together, before I was elected to this place, and I share his support for it. I know that he welcomes the progress the Government have made with local growth deals, city deals, local economic partnerships and, most interestingly of all, the recently announced agreement with Greater Manchester that will see a substantial devolution of powers and budgets to the new combined authority, not least in the areas of skills and employability. I hope that that is just the first of those moves. I know that my colleagues will be looking forward to receiving proposals from other areas of the country and I will certainly be happy to lend my support to any proposal for Nottingham, led by the hon. Gentleman, to be a candidate for receiving further powers of that sort.

[Philip Davies (in the Chair)]

Mr Allen, there is no obligation for you to do so, but if you would like to take a couple of minutes to wind up the debate, I am happy to facilitate that.