Technical and Further Education Bill

Debate between Lord Coaker and Kelvin Hopkins

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 9th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am sure the Minister is right in the majority of cases, but for some there is pressure to move on—for instance as a result of what is happening with house prices at the moment, as one can imagine. Certainly in Luton I know of companies, such as small motor repair firms, that employ apprentices who are under pressure to get a home, and if they can earn a few thousand pounds more at a larger company nearby to help them get on the housing ladder, they will do that. I agree that loyalty is important and many of them want to be loyal, but if the financial pressures on their lives are such that they have to move, they will in the end move.

I particularly want to support the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South about the need for a strategy for improving career education and new clause 4. We must ensure that when young people are at school or in further education they are aware of the enormous range of opportunities out there and they do not just look at a narrow field. In Luton too high a proportion of students want to get into the legal profession, for example; they want to be professionals and do not appreciate that there are highly paid, highly skilled jobs in manufacturing industry.

Vauxhall Motors still has a plant in Luton, and almost all its senior executives started as apprentices, leaving school, doing apprenticeships and going up the ladder, eventually doing higher qualifications such as higher national certificates and higher national diplomas and becoming highly paid senior executives in the company. Those opportunities are out there, and young people must be made aware of them. We must have a careers strategy making sure that every young person knows about all the thousands of different roles they could assume in life, rather than just going into the professions, or, indeed, just going into a local company; there are lots of things young people can do.

Life can be very exciting, and it is important that all of us do something we enjoy. I am very fortunate in that I was fascinated by politics in my early life and I finished up in Parliament where I wanted to be; I do not regret a moment of it. But sometimes people are not aware of the enormous range of possibilities in life. Having a powerful careers advice strategy is vital not just for young people’s lives, but for the economy. If people are happy in their work, they will work better and the economy will work better, and the world will be a much better place.

I have one more story that explains something tragic that has happened in Luton. We were a town that trained thousands of apprentices, and I know many of them personally. Recently I visited a small manufacturing company that makes components for Formula 1 and Jaguar. It could not find one toolmaker; it wanted one toolmaker from a town of over 200,000 people that used to be dominated by manufacturing, but could not find one. It is a disgrace that we have failed to train sufficient numbers of people in these areas.

There are many other things I would like to say—I could speak for an hour unaided, I am sure—but as others want to contribute, I will leave it there. I hope the points I have made are of interest.

[Vernon Coaker]

I was not a member of the Committee, but I know that the Technical and Further Education Bill has generated a lot of really good debate and positive views on how we might achieve what we all want, which is an improvement in the technical and vocational education in this country and in apprenticeships. The fact that there is no division between us on that was illustrated by the contributions from the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Gordon Marsden), among others.