Oral Answers to Questions

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

Lord Nash and I are not only great friends but we agree entirely on this issue. It is legally possible under existing provisions for a college to convert to academy status, but there are issues around how the VAT will be dealt with, and how any debt that it has already amassed will be dealt with on its balance sheet. Those issues are tricky, but we are looking at them.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

Successive rounds of cuts to sixth-form and further education colleges are having a devastating effect. One principal of a college in the west country—a college recently judged by Ofsted as outstanding and a beacon college—recently told The Times Educational Supplement that

“cuts have taken us to the edge”,

and added that any further cuts would threaten the services the college offers.

Will the Minister commit to Labour’s pledge to protect the education budget in real terms?

[Nick Boles]

I will not commit to a pledge that is as unfunded as every pledge that Labour has made since 2010. Labour Members think that they will pay for all this out of a tax on bankers’ bonuses that has so far been used about 27 times. There was no money left according to the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and that is because Labour has absolutely no idea how to run a budget.

Careers Advice (14 to 19-Year-Olds)

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) on raising this important topic. I also congratulate all the hon. Members who have spoken; their speeches demonstrate the importance of this subject.

Careers advice is “broken”; it is on “life support”; and the Government show a “reluctance” to take it seriously. Those are not my words as an Opposition Member; they are the words of the CBI and the Skills Commission. Also, the Education Committee has been fairly critical; in 2013, it described

“the worrying deterioration in the overall level of provision”.

That is all pretty damning, because careers advice is absolutely vital, as I think we have heard from everyone who has spoken today.

Young people need to know what the options are—not only which A-levels to take or which university to go to but what training they may need to become an engineer or to work in IT. They also need to know what the emerging jobs market in their area is, and what they need in order to access the full range of education and training options, as the Association of Colleges has said in its excellent report. But what have the Government done? They have pushed the responsibility for careers advice on to schools and colleges.

Schools must provide access to impartial careers advice for young people aged between 14 and 19. They are told that this advice should be independent and involve outside providers. However, the schools have a vested interest in keeping up the number of students studying A-level courses, to ensure a viable number if they have a sixth form of their own; in some cases, the survival of a school’s sixth form depends on the school keeping those students. I have heard from some sixth-form and further education colleges that they are being denied admission to schools, and consequently they are not being allowed to give the full range of options to students.

Many teachers follow the academic route so they do not have experience of the world of work, know the local economic conditions in their area or understand the range of experiences that are offered by going down the “earn and learn” route. Indeed, I have heard from some young people about the pressure they are under to stay on at school and take A-levels, rather than starting apprenticeships. One young person told me that they were ostracised by the school when they said they wanted to do an apprenticeship. Another particularly savvy young person said to me, “I’m just seen as a walking pot of money.”

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising the issue of apprenticeships. The TUC and Unionlearn have said—I think it was in the past few days—that they completely oppose the Labour party policy to abolish level 2 apprenticeships. Will the Labour party look at that policy again? Level 2 apprenticeships, where they transform income and provide high-quality training, should be retained; we must not lose this vital building block in providing support to young people.

[Yvonne Fovargue]

I will not go into that issue too far, but I will say that level 2 will not be branded as apprenticeships, and the training will certainly not be going; it will be a pre-apprenticeship. However, that is a different issue.

It is no wonder, therefore, that careers advice is simply not being provided. Three quarters of schools that Ofsted visited were not providing adequate advice—so far, not so good. And what else has happened? We have heard about the new careers and enterprise company, and a number of questions have been asked about it. I wonder whether the job it will do is already being done. The Chairman of the Education Committee, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), who is here today, has said:

“It is clear that the…new body replicates the very role and remit of the National Careers Service...and only the leadership and governance is different”.

I would like to hear more about what will happen with that situation.

The fact is that we need more than an unenforced duty on schools, which simply leads to buck-passing. One in three teachers say they do not have the right expertise and resources to adequately provide effective information, advice and guidance. We need a complete rethink about how we deliver careers advice to young people, and rebuilding the careers advice service will be an early and vital priority for a Labour Government. Fragmentation and short-term and unsuitable initiatives are absolutely endemic. We need a careers service that is modelled around what provides the best outcomes for the young person and for the country, because young people are our future work force, as we have heard today. We need a careers service that guarantees that face-to-face, one-to-one guidance is available for all young people who need it, and that ensures that businesses and employers are linked in with it, the importance of which we heard about from my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin).

Building closer links with industry is absolutely vital, but I would like to add my support for the face-to-face guidance, as somebody who has worked in providing face-to-face advice, even if it was not in this sector. Websites can help many young people, but many more will need face-to-face contact. The level of contact may well be different: it may just involve initial contact, or there may be contact that takes young people further through the process. As Centrepoint has said, particularly young people who have little parental support, as well as those with poor literacy or who have other support needs, may need more assistance.

Working together is the other watchword. That is why I support the idea of careers hubs, which we have heard about from a number of hon. Members today. I visited the Bristol campus of South Gloucestershire and Stroud college the other month. The college has an excellent careers hub, working with schools across the area—independent schools, academies, state-controlled schools and primary schools—and providing one-to-one advice from professional careers advisers, which it employs. The college is the point of contact for all employers, it works with the local enterprise partnership, and it is considering expanding its service. It is an excellent model for the careers advice of the future. If such hubs were rolled out across the country, they could provide a single point of information about careers advice and career options in each area and employ the professional careers advisers whose work is so valuable.

Careers hubs could also co-ordinate work experience. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) how important work experience is for young people. Currently, however, work experience provision is another postcode lottery.

A taster session of work experience is valued by young people and employers, but not enough employers are incentivised to provide them, even though they can provide real benefits, including introducing the reality of work to young people. My daughter found that out on her first day of work. Horrified, she told me when she came home, “The manager told me what to do, and d’you know what? It wasn’t sensible!” I thought, “That’s a good life experience for you.”

Taster sessions also allow students to consider a wider range of roles than they may have been told about. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool said, young people put their toe in the water and they might not like it. However, they might like it, especially if taster sessions give them a wide range of roles to consider. It is also indisputable that if people have an early experience of work, they are less likely to end up unemployed and more likely to get better jobs and earn more money. However, at the moment less than half of young people have access to high-quality work experience. We have really fallen behind countries such as France in this regard.

We also need to work more with employers to break down some of the barriers faced by young people who are perhaps harder to place than others, including those with disabilities, in order to dispel the preconception that the employers themselves may have that those young people cannot do the jobs that are on offer. A careers hub could help those young people, as well as others who are perhaps more in the mainstream.

We believe that destination tracking is another activity that should be taken further. Schools actually have a responsibility for their pupils that goes beyond simply where they go on leaving school. A young person who goes to university and drops out in the first term because the course is unsuitable for them is not a success; a young person who takes an apprenticeship and completes it is a success, and should be celebrated as such. We therefore need to track destinations for much longer than we do now. Also, there has been a worrying rise in the number of “unknowns” recorded by the local authorities. We not know where those people are, which is a concern from a safeguarding point of view as well.

Our young people are the work force of the future, as we have heard before; we rely on them to pay and look after our pensions, basically. They need to be given every opportunity to have a worthwhile and satisfying career, and to develop their skills throughout their working lives. If we do not give them access to advice at the beginning of their working life, when they are thinking about what work to do, in order to help them navigate the confusing landscape of the world of work, which is becoming ever more confusing, we are failing them. In fact, we are not only doing that but we are jeopardising our future economic success as a country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I agree that we have thrown a lot of money at this. That money will be working hard to ensure our young people are inspired and given the aspirations to aim higher, and that is what our reforms to qualifications standards were about. While I agree that some face-to-face advice and work experience are welcome, I do not want to see work experience that only ticks boxes and means that young people do not really get to see how a workplace or sector works. That is why the careers company and the wide remit we have given it—working with the National Careers Service and excellent projects up and down the country and involving local enterprise partnerships—will be so important.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

I echo hon. Members’ birthday wishes, Mr Speaker.

Two weeks ago, the Chair of the Education Select Committee said:

“It is clear that the role of the new body replicates the very role and remit of the National Careers Service…and only the leadership and governance is different”.

Under pressure, the Secretary of State agreed that the new body delivered the same goal. Is creating yet another quango really the answer to the massive problems with careers guidance?

[Nicky Morgan]

For a third time, we get the typical response from the Opposition on whether this is welcome. I will not take lectures from Labour about the creation of quangos. This is an employer-led body involving businesses, and I do not agree with the remark the hon. Lady quoted. The National Careers Service will work closely with the new body, but they are different things that serve different age groups. They will achieve different outcomes, because of the involvement of businesses and employers in the new body and the talented leadership of Christine Hodgson.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I worked actively and closely with my colleague in the Department of Health on this issue. There are two issues involved: minimum wage enforcement and ensuring that we have tougher legislation to deal with some of the practices that operate in that sector, such as zero-hours contracts. At the moment, we are looking more widely at employment rights for groups of people who are classified as workers but who do not currently enjoy those rights. The care sector is one such group.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

2. What recent assessment he has made of the effect of copycat websites on consumers.

[The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

Copycat websites con people out of hard-earned cash. They undermine trust in online services and we are committed to stopping them. We need to work with search engines, to take enforcement action, to improve the consistency of Government websites and to educate consumers.

[Yvonne Fovargue]

The top advertised search result for the European health insurance card if someone searches for “health card” or “national health card” is a site that charges £49 for its so-called services. Will the Minister act to put a stop to that practice by giving similar powers to those of Transport for London and blocking transactions from that site, tackling the problem at source?

[Mr Vaizey]

We have taken a lot of action. We have worked closely with the search engines to ensure that they implement their terms and conditions on copycat website advertising, and the click-through to Government websites has increased by 30%. There is a problem with blocking transactions for websites that charge. A lot of Government services are free and we would not necessarily know whether other websites were charging. We know what Transport for London has done and we continue to keep the issue under review.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I entirely agree with what my hon. Friend says. At the base of his question is the point that there is no such thing as a career for life any more and that we are all going to have to think about the skills we need to take the first job and then the next job, be it in the armed services, the public services, in business or through being self-employed. There are many examples of excellent schemes across the country where businesses and schools are working together, and our task is to make sure that that good practice is replicated throughout the country.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

Quality careers advice is essential to support young people in making the right choice, be it academic or vocational. However, recent figures on youth apprenticeships confirm the concerns we have been raising for some time that Government policy is damaging the apprenticeship brand and leaving young people behind. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) is right to call out the Government on their failure to deliver for young people. Will the Minister explain why they have failed to deliver on apprenticeships as a quality route for young people entering the work force?

[Nicky Morgan]

That is an extremely disappointing question because it bears absolutely no relation to the facts. We have the lowest number of NEETs—those not in education, employment or training—ever on record; and we have more 16 to 18-year-olds starting apprenticeships. The hon. Lady should not be talking down our young people and their opportunities—she should be talking them up. Our young people are learning fantastic skills. I do agree with her that the links between vocational and academic education should be treated completely equally. That is exactly what this Government have done with the delivery of almost 2 million more apprenticeships.

PISA Results

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. I am afraid that in Wales, a country for which I have enormous affection, the Welsh Labour Government chose to abandon league tables and external accountability. The current Welsh Administration are unfortunately not matching our commitment to spending in schools. The conclusion that we can draw is that if people want to know what our education system would be like if the country were foolishly to vote Labour at the next election, they need only look over the Severn to see a country going backwards.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

Can the Secretary of State explain how the appointment of an unqualified maths teacher will help to design and deliver a course with a more stretching mathematical content?

[Michael Gove]

The fact that there are more highly qualified teachers in our schools than ever before is a very good thing that I hope the hon. Lady would support. If she is referring to South Leeds academy, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) did, the advertisement was misleading: it was not advertising for unqualified teachers but advertising for classroom assistants who would train in due course, as classroom assistants currently do. If the hon. Gentleman contacted the school, he would know that he has made a mistake. I hope that he will contact the school to apologise for his unfair and inaccurate depiction of the situation and show himself to be big enough to apologise for having got something wrong.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

4. What plans he has to ensure an adequate supply of primary school places; and if he will make a statement.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

13. What plans he has to ensure an adequate supply of primary school places; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

We will spend £5 billion by 2015 on creating new school places across the country—more than double the amount spent by the previous Government in the same time frame. We have worked closely with councils on reforms to school place funding so that it is now more accurate than ever before.

[Mr Laws]

No, the hon. Gentleman has it completely wrong. What has done damage to place planning in large parts of the country is the removal by the last Labour Government of 200,000 primary school places, even after the Office for National Statistics reported the biggest increase in the birth rate since the second world war. I have some figures for the hon. Gentleman about his borough. Basic need funding for Brent in the last four years under Labour was £33.8 million, which I acknowledge is a lot of money. Under this coalition Government that has now risen to £114 million, an increase of 240%.

[Yvonne Fovargue]

The Conservative manifesto promised small schools with smaller class sizes. Will the Minister confirm whether, in the last year, the number of infant classes with more than 30 pupils has more than doubled?

[Mr Laws]

Of course the number has gone up, precisely for the reason that I gave: the Lady’s Government took out 200,000 places in primary education, even over a period when for seven years in a row the birth rate was rising. I also have good news for the hon. Lady. During the last four years of her Government, her area had a £3.1 million investment in basic need. Over a comparable period, that figure now is £11.7 million, an increase of 280%. She should be thanking us for that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

10. What plans he has for the safeguarding of children; and if he will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

The child protection system is not working. That is why we are undertaking reform. We are reforming the social work profession and removing the bureaucracy which holds gifted professionals back, and demanding greater transparency and efficiency from local authorities.

[Yvonne Fovargue]

A recent all-party group inquiry highlighted the vulnerability of children who go missing from care, and the risks of physical and sexual exploitation. Does the Secretary of State therefore agree that local authorities and police forces should offer training to front-line and managerial staff working with children to raise awareness of the risks associated with running away and of the vulnerability of all children, including older children?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady raises an important point. My former colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), responded to that report and made a compelling argument for ensuring better data sharing between local authorities and the police on the location of children within children’s homes to ensure that we can provide yet better protection for them. However, that is only one part of a mosaic of policies we need in order to give those children and young people a better chance.

Financial Education

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I can promise that I will not take too long over my speech.

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), and I congratulate the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) on the all-party group and all Members who have contributed to the report.

I was lucky enough to be involved with a financial education project for 10 years when I worked for Citizens Advice in St Helens, and we started from a very low base, with schools that had never before thought of having such a project. We also worked with tenants’ and residents’ groups and with a wide range of organisations, and I was fortunate to employ a passionate member of staff who gained the first-ever teaching qualification in financial education. That was vital in moving our project forward into schools, because we found that teachers were not confident about teaching the subject. They understood that it needed to be taught, but they did not have the confidence to include it in the curriculum.

I therefore totally support the idea of a financial education champion in schools, because in our work we found that the maths department was not always the one that came forward. In one school in which we worked, the drama department was keen on the idea, and an excellent play, which I think is on a website somewhere, was written about the three little pigs living in their houses. We also offered qualifications, including the ASDAN qualification and open college network qualifications, so schools and organisations involved in the Work programme, with which we also worked, could offer qualifications to young people. That was important in making teachers realise that financial education was an actual subject. It was not an add-on; it was an important part of the curriculum.

However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) mentioned, there was an unexpected side-effect; we had not anticipated the rise in the number of parents coming to us with their debt problems. Students would go home and say, “Today I learned all about annual percentage rates. Let’s have a look at our household finances as an example.” The parents would sit there and think, “We’re beginning to hit a problem here. We are noticing that we cannot pay all our bills and that we’re borrowing on one credit card to pay off another.”

There absolutely needs to be a referral mechanism for advice about debt. It has to be sensitive and local. As my hon. Friend also mentioned, it could be the local citizens advice bureau. We were fortunate; somebody from the CAB delivered the financial education classes and they could talk to the parents and refer them to a specialist money adviser.

The only thing that I would like to take issue with is the part of the motion that mentions “irresponsible” debt. I can honestly say that in 24 years of working for a citizens advice bureau, I never saw anyone who had aimed to get into debt. Debt was often caused by irresponsible lending; innumerable people came to us with debt, cut up their credit cards, sent them back and were immediately sent a new credit card. Now, obviously, there is also the rise of the payday lenders, who will roll over debts when people say that they cannot pay them. I really feel that there needs to be regulation on that.

Most people take out loans intending to pay them back, whatever the level of interest. However, anyone’s circumstances can change. One of the most distressing cases that I ever saw involved somebody whose child was born with a disability. They had taken out an awful lot of loans to pay for the conversion of their property and were relying on the disability benefits for the child, who died unexpectedly. They were left with a mountain of debt. That was responsible, not irresponsible, borrowing. We need to look at the causes of debt. I agree with the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole—we should not be moralising. Debt happens. It could happen to any of us. If a person walks down the street and gets hit by a car, they are likely to end up not being able to pay their bills.

I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman), who is no longer in her place, that education is only 25% of the solution. Debt advice has to be available and there has to be regulation on the advertising by payday lenders and debt management companies, which offer to get people out of debt but often push them further into it, to make sure that they do not make a bad problem even worse.

[Lyn Brown]

May I ask my hon. Friend the question that I asked our hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman)? Does she, like me, see more such cases in her surgery week by week? Are there fewer people offering good-quality and independent advice who we can refer constituents to? Is that not the biggest problem that many of our people face at the moment?

[Yvonne Fovargue]

I completely agree. I am extremely concerned for the future, when the transition fund ends. To be honest, I do not know where the advice agencies are transitioning to—some are transitioning to oblivion. There is also the ending of legal aid for debt. The Minister mentioned the importance of early advice. Much of the funding for early advice is going, because legal aid funding is now for advice only at the point of eviction, which is absolutely not cost-effective.

Yes, I totally support the idea of compulsory financial education in school, but it has to be part of a package. Part of the package should be to ensure that people do not get into debt with payday lenders, do not go to the fee-charging debt management agencies but do have access to early advice to help them when they realise that they are getting into debt. They need to be able to realise when the debt is becoming a problem.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have been in another debate in another place, so forgive me for intervening, but when I was Chair of the Select Committee on Education and Skills, we did a lot of work on the issue. We found that many financial institutions put money into CABs. Would my hon. Friend encourage the private sector to carry on with that? There are many demands on its time, but Nationwide particularly was putting money straight into the CAB.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvonne Fovargue]

I would certainly encourage that, but I would like to see a more strategic approach to debt. I would hope that the Money Advice Service provides that. However, it would have to have the money to be able to provide such a service. There is no use having a strategy but no money to give to the organisation. It is no use putting money into debt advice if the generalist advice to support it is not there. The agency depends on all levels of funding and a lot of it is going.

I support the motion and hope that we can look at a package of measures to tackle the rising problem of debt and personal insolvency.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

T4. There are still high numbers of rogue operators in the fee-paying debt management industry and they often charge high amounts and pay not one penny to creditors. Does the Minister agree with the argument advanced in Wednesday’s Daily Mirror by the free advice sector that it is no longer tenable to stand by and fail to protect vulnerable individuals from those companies?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)]

The hon. Lady is right to raise this matter. She will know from her time working in the citizens advice bureau in her area how significant this matter is. Some debt advice agencies out there—frankly—do not act in an acceptable way. We are considering this issue under the consumer credit and personal insolvency review, and will make an announcement after the Easter recess.