Skills and Growth

Debate between Lord Harrington of Watford and Tristram Hunt

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

I do not think that I criticised any jobs. I hope that the hon. Gentleman is making sure that those working in the potato industry in his places of employment are getting the necessary training, support and growth.

We are failing miserably to provide young people with an education that spreads enough opportunity and excellence for all. The long tale of underperformance—the bane of practically every Government for at least the past 30 years—remains a stubborn reality. You will not be surprised to learn, Mr Speaker, that I believe that the Labour party education manifesto contains some excellent measures that could have boosted our education, skills and training system. For a start, we would have protected further education, sixth-form colleges and sixth forms from the round of cuts already heading their way. We would have thought it rather curious that private schools continue to get tax breaks whereas sixth-form colleges have to pay VAT. That is not what we would call fair. The Government chose to spend £45 million on the Westminster academy free school, while we would have supported education and training in the communities that need it most. That is simply the great moral and ethical difference between the Labour party and the Conservative party.

I strongly encourage the Government to match our manifesto investment in dedicated independent careers advice for young people. By reallocating some £50 million from the universities’ widening participation fund, which, as far as I can see, has not done nearly enough to widen participation, we could have funded effective careers guidance. Our labour market is particularly weak in matching skills supply with demand and there is some evidence that misallocation is a component of our productivity challenge. We need to be more ambitious.

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that well-meaning Governments have increased year on year the target for the number of people going to university without giving any real thought to whether there will be suitable jobs for them when they leave?

[Tristram Hunt]

One of the interesting components of both the rise in the popularity of apprenticeships, which I know the hon. Gentleman is doing a great deal to support, and some of the costs associated with university is that we have a much greater insight into the relative success of an apprenticeship compared with a degree. I think there is more realism about what young people can get from each institution. The hon. Gentleman has a point and I would take it right back to the mass conversion of polytechnics to university status. I am not sure that that was necessarily the best initiative introduced by the Conservative party, but we can also think about that 50% target being the best use of some of the human capital.

We need to be more ambitious when it comes to developing an institutional pathway for advanced technical skills, whether they are called national colleges or institutes of technical education. We need far more stringent and demanding apprenticeships, which I know the hon. Gentleman supports. Indeed, I would suggest that what we need on apprenticeships is not dissimilar to the dramatic reduction in the number of semi-vocational, grade-inflating, GCSE-equivalent qualifications following the Wolf report—arguably the Government’s most important achievement in education over the past five years. Far too many children in communities such as Stoke-on-Trent were put on courses with little or even no labour market value, and yet there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that a similar, gallery-pleasing numbers game is developing with the re-badging of short-term, low-quality workplace training as apprenticeships.