Education Bill

Debate between Lord Henley and Lord Young of Norwood Green

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Henley]

I am very grateful to my noble friend for putting it in those terms. That makes it even more important that he talks to the department and to my honourable friend and tries to secure some sort of agreement. We now have a reasonable amount of time. I know the noble Lord will be heading off to wherever the Liberal Democrats hold their conference but, in due course, he will be back and then discussions can take place in the appropriate manner.

I want to deal with a couple of other points. First, the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, raised a question concerning people with disabilities and the offer. I can confirm that disabled people aged 19 to 24 are covered by the offer and that that group will be prescribed in regulations. There is also the commitment given by the previous Government during the passage of the ASCLA—as we now seem to call it—to take on an inclusive approach. They are also being advised on this by external disability experts. No doubt we will be able to let the noble Lord know a little more in due course.

Finally, my noble friend Lady Sharp of Guildford asked about the response to the Wolf report on incentives to employers. We accepted that recommendation in the Wolf report. The National Apprenticeship Service has recently run pilots looking at incentive payments and we need to consider these and other research into employer payments to ensure that we avoid dead weight when implementing this recommendation. That is work in progress.

Before my voice finally gives out, I say that we are all travelling in roughly the same direction. We might be going at different speeds and there might be tensions in how we do it, but I believe that much more can be done through further discussions. I believe that we are all committed to the same outcome, which is seeing increasing numbers of apprentices across both public and private sectors and increasing employer participation in the programme. With those assurances, I hope that all noble Lords who have put forward their amendments and spoken to them so eloquently will feel able to withdraw them and, where appropriate, I hope that conversations can continue between now and Report.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

Perhaps I may make a few brief comments in relation to what has been said. I support the intentions of my noble friend Lord Layard in his amendment. I would like it to go a bit further but we are all travelling in the same direction. I was not exactly sure what the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, meant when he said I had gone off key in the latter part of what I said, but I agree with him on his point about literacy and numeracy skills. Interestingly, if you can get young people involved in the apprenticeship process, it refocuses them on the importance of learning. I share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I would want to do everything I can to assist in that process. We discussed a whole range of disabilities, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, will testify—he always makes sure that we do. I thought we reached some useful agreements. I am glad that the incentive to employers was answered and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, for her support, and likewise my noble friend Lord Monks.

On the status of apprenticeships, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Storey. One thing that we got slightly wrong was that, by focusing on getting 50 per cent of young people to go to university, we gave the impression that the vocational route was a second-class route. We need to do a lot more on that. Gradually, the tide is turning. On a lot of apprenticeship schemes, when the apprentices complete their training there is a graduation ceremony. We need to do more on this.

The noble Lord, Lord Henley, referred to targets. Whether or not we delete “target” and insert “planning assumption”, we will still have to make calculations. Before the Government say that the 2015 commitment is not the right approach, it would be interesting to see the planning assumption for what the demand would be. I say that it could be done, and that it is absolutely the right signal that should be sent to young people and to the country.

The noble Lord said that he preferred a voluntary approach when it came to contracts, and that apprenticeships would place an additional burden. I wish that he would not use that term. Apprenticeships are not a burden on companies. They think that they are, but when they take on apprentices they frequently realise what a good investment they are. I do not see them as a burden. When we worked with the Olympic committee and Crossrail, we found that they understood the value of apprenticeships. The Government should take a long, hard look at making them a key part of government procurement contracts. I do not believe that it would disadvantage SMEs, but I will not go over the debate again. With IiPs, what disturbed me was that again there was no reference to apprenticeships. If we are to say that these companies invest in people, surely apprenticeships ought to be part of the investment. I do not know how we should go about it, but something should be done.

I will of course withdraw the amendment, because that is how we operate in Grand Committee. However, we will return to these issues on Report. I welcome the offer of further discussions because I, too, want to make progress. I thank the Minister, John Hayes, for our previous discussion. It was a worthwhile exchange of views. With those comments and caveats, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Higher Education White Paper

Debate between Lord Henley and Lord Young of Norwood Green

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

Again, I want to leave this as a matter for the higher education institutions themselves. It is up to them; they do not have to charge the same amount for each student if those students are doing different courses. If students are doing a humanities subject, there is no reason why the institutions should not charge less than for other, more expensive subjects. It must be a matter for them.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

I, too, thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I will respond to a couple of points that he made in reply to my noble friend Lord Stevenson. We do not deny the deficit; our counteraccusation to Her Majesty’s Government is that they are dealing with the deficit too far, too fast. Of course, we have not retreated to the position that all funding should come from taxpayers; we recognise the challenge of expanding higher education—indeed, we introduced student fees. This is about the level of them. I share the welcome given by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, to support for part-time students, and I hope that we will see an expansion of sandwich courses—and that response from business.

In the beginning, when the Government responded to the Browne report and put the figure of £9,000, there was a lot of confidence that not all universities would rise to that figure. Yet currently more than 80 per cent of universities have indicated their intention to charge £9,000. I was interested in the response to the previous speaker that there might be a variation, but the current public position is charging £9,000. Will that be a deterrent to potential graduates when they see the potential size of their loan increasing so much—figures of £40,000 are not exaggerated? I know the response will be that there is no upfront payment. Nevertheless, people will see a loan that eventually has to be repaid.

[Lord Henley]

I am very grateful for the noble Lord’s admission on behalf of his party that it does not deny the deficit. I am also grateful that he has recognised that funding must come from the beneficiaries of education as well as from the taxpayer—from both sides.

The noble Lord turned to the Browne report which, as noble Lords will remember, did not recommend a maximum. However, we felt that it was probably right to fix it at £9,000, particularly as the noble Lord, Lord Browne, suggested that he did not see why universities could not provide a good education for a figure of, I think he said, round about £8,000. The noble Lord, Lord Young, says that the reports are that virtually all institutions are going for the maximum of £9,000. We will not know the final figure until it has all been confirmed next month, but I can assure him that although a lot of them are going for £9,000, that does not mean that everything in that university, that institution, will be £9,000. There might be different rates for different courses and, as the noble Lord knows, there are a number of waivers, and they will be offering bursaries and other things that will help to bring the cost down, particularly for some of the less well off.

The noble Lord also asked the very valid question: are we worried that the perceived level of debt might put off a number of individuals because they see themselves ending up with a debt of £27,000-plus? That is a genuine fear and we must address it. That is why only last week my right honourable friends Vince Cable and David Willetts sent a letter setting out what we are doing to get information across. They have set up a new independent task force on student finance information, headed by Martin Lewis and Wes Streeting, a former president of the National Union of Students, to try to get the information over that it should not be looked at as a debt but, in effect, as a sort of graduate tax, except that it is not a graduate tax; you start paying only when you start earning above a certain amount and you pay at quite a low rate over a long period of time. It is not the burden that people have when taking on other forms of debt.