Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen and Baroness Sherlock

Report stage
Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and all noble Lords who have spoken. In Committee, we had a good debate about universal credit and the various ways in which people are discouraged by the rules from getting the skills that they need. I think the issue is that government policy is not properly joined up. We need to have skills, employment and social security policy fully aligned to make this work.

What is going wrong? I suspect that, at heart, it is an issue of departmental responsibility. DfE basically wants people to get training to increase their skills so that they can engage in productive, sustainable work, but most people cannot afford to train or retrain without financial support. I suspect DfE would quite like them to be able to get benefits while they do it. However, DWP does not think its benefit system is there to support students in education and training; it thinks that is DfE’s job. In general, that works. Most students are supported by loans or grants, and a lot of people on universal credit want to get back into work and universal credit supports them while they do. But there are clearly people who may struggle to get back into sustainable jobs unless they increase, update or change their skills, and it is likely that there will be more of them in the future than there have been in the past.

In Committee, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and other noble Lords identified a number of barriers that get in the way of people wanting to do that. The Minister’s defence was basically twofold. She said, first, that DfE and DWP are working together on it and there is a trial under way for six months. She said that there is flexibility on conditionality, so that if you get universal credit and are part of the intensive work search scheme, you can study full time for 12 weeks, with boot camps and so on—the lot.

Secondly, she said that the benefit system may not be there for education and training for most people, but some people can get help. The Minister mentioned Regulation 14 of the Universal Credit Regulations 2013. I went back and refreshed my memory of that regulation. It lists the exceptions, but the only exceptions are young people doing A-levels or the like who are not living with their parents, those who have kids and some disabled people with limited capacity for work. As I read on—the Minister can correct me—I thought that all Regulation 14 does is remove the blanket requirement that you must not be in education to qualify for universal credit at all. I do not think it stops people—even in those groups—having conditionality requirements placed on them in the way that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham described, which might make it impossible for them to take on a training course. Can the Minister clarify that?

It is really quite hard to work out who can get universal credit for training, at what level and where. To that end, can the Minister tell the House whether any or all people wishing to carry out study necessary for a course leading to the lifetime skills guarantee could get universal credit while they do it, as Amendment 63 suggests? If not, how should they support themselves while they do that?

Amendment 45 from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham makes a broader point about the needs of people who are unemployed and need training to get secure, sustainable employment. There is a balance here. The benefits system is not there to fund everybody wanting to retrain, but this amendment could pick up some of those people who are long-term unemployed or may have gone from one low-paid, insecure job to another, perhaps with periods on benefits in between. Might not they and the taxpayer be better served if they could afford to get trained for a secure and sustainable career? How could they be helped under the Government’s current approach?

I turn now to Amendment 62, which would require the Government to reconsider how long Kickstart runs and who is eligible for it. When we debated Kickstart in Committee on 19 July, the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, said:

“I cannot say that we will extend the duration of the Kickstart scheme or change its eligibility”.—[Official Report, 19/7/21; col. 103.]

A summer is a long time in politics because, as we have heard, a Written Ministerial Statement has now announced that Kickstart is running until the end of March. Who knows? By the time we get to Third Reading, maybe eligibility will have been reviewed as well—you never know.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the decision to extend the timescale was driven less by the rhetorical powers of noble Lords—marvellous though those are—and rather more by the fact that Kickstart is nowhere near hitting its targets. There were meant to be 250,000 placements by December. The latest figures I could find were in a Written Answer to my noble friend Lady Wilcox on 21 September in which the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, said that 69,000 young people had started Kickstart jobs as of 8 September. Does the Minister have more recent figures? That Answer also said that more than 281,000 jobs had been approved. If 281,000 jobs have been approved and only 69,000 people have started work, that is worse.

The regional position, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is really significant. I have raised the positions of the north and north-east before—not just because I live in Durham—but that Written Answer said that in the whole north-east of England only 3,170 people had started Kickstart jobs. Something is going wrong.

Can the Minister tell the House what the Government are doing to rescue this scheme? In particular, why is there this lag between jobs created and jobs filled? What is happening to get young people into these jobs? Do the Government expect to meet their 250,000 target by December, March or another date? I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate, the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Aberdare, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle and Lady Sherlock, for taking part.

Amendments 45 and 63 from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, broadly seek to enable individuals studying at level 3 and below to claim universal credit—an issue debated at some length in Committee. It is of course vital that students feel supported and have the confidence to come forward to upskill. Where we differ is in how that support is financed.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, talked about, there should be a joined-up approach between the Department for Education and the DWP. Important work is already under way on this subject, as she mentioned. Officials at the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions are working closely together to help address and mitigate the barriers to unemployed adults taking advantage of our skills offer.

There is a new DWP train and progress initiative aimed at increasing access to training opportunities for claimants. As part of this, in April 2021 a temporary six-month extension to the flexibility offered by universal credit conditionality was announced. As a result of this change, adults who claim universal credit and are part of the intensive work search programme can now undertake work-related full-time training for up to 12 weeks, or up to 16 weeks as part of a skills boot camp in England. This builds on the eight weeks for which claimants were already able to train full-time. I am pleased to inform your Lordships that this flexibility has now been extended to run through to the end of April 2022. These measures are truly helping to ensure that UC claimants are supported to access training and skills that will improve their ability to gain good, stable and well-paid jobs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

I thank noble Lords for their comments. There is clear support across the House for these amendments and I am glad we have reached an agreeable solution on these important issues.

I will have to write on some of the questions raised, but I am able to answer a couple of them. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, asked whether the legislation will be extended UK-wide. We continue to engage and share our work with the devolved Administrations and would welcome a decision from them to legislate against essay mills in the future.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked if it is one offence or many. If sold 15 times, it is an offence not just once, but every time. I am swamped here; I think she also asked another question.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I will remind the Minister, but I am happy for her to write. My questions were about who commits the offence, what it means for it to be committed in England, the likely number of prosecutions and likely fines.

I ungraciously forgot to put on record my appreciation of the work of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on this over many years, so I take the opportunity to do so now while I am on my feet. I commend him for all his work.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

On how this will work in practice, an enforcement body is not specified on the face of the Bill and therefore any supporting investigations and prosecutions would fall to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service respectively. It is up to them to decide the offence and fine. I will need to write to the noble Baroness on her other questions.

Once again, I thank noble Lords, especially the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Touhig, for their support on these issues. I hope that the House will support these amendments.