Technical and Further Education Bill

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Money resolution: House of Commons & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 14th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I am going to talk about the local experience of further education in Kent. I welcome the independent report of the panel, chaired by Lord Sainsbury, that conducted an important review into the post-16 skills system. The panel was right to advise on improvements that could be made, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) has just said. Improvements were needed after flaws were spotted following changes made in the last Parliament. The system is over-complex, with a confusing array of courses and qualifications that are insufficiently linked to the world of work and the needs of employers. Lord Sainsbury and the Government were right to accept the panel’s recommendations in July 2016 and publish a post-16 skills plan setting out their vision.

The proposals are about boosting technical education to make sure that it is of high quality and responds to employer needs, and the introduction of a new insolvency regime to protect students’ interests. Such things matter. In Kent, we have long had a problem with an institution that has variously been called K College and South Kent College. It suffered from debt problems and, frankly, ate principals. The problems were so deep-set that every now and again the principal would be sacked and the college would be renamed, but the whole thing would continue. The fundamental problems were the big debt overhang and the teaching of courses that employers did not want—courses that did not have the relevance to learners that is completely necessary. That is why the focus on good-quality technical education and information sharing between colleges and local authorities is so important. It is important for everyone—local authorities, employers and educationists—to work together and make a good job of it, because when they do so, learners benefit.

K College finally collapsed in a heap of debt, and it had to be sorted out during the last Parliament. It basically had to be broken up. Part of it was taken over by Hadlow College and part of it by East Kent College. We were able to reset and restabilise the whole situation, but doing so was difficult and took a long time. There was no real process for doing so, because there was no proper insolvency reconstruction mechanism. That is why this Bill is important. It will put in place a proper process, rather than haphazardly trying to make everything work and gluing it all together, and it will ensure that there is a focus on the kinds of skills that learners need.

In my constituency, the East Kent College campus in Dover was threatened with closure as part of the reconstruction. I fought against that for the very simple reason that many people have a low capital base, low household wealth and low aspiration, and they simply would not travel further out of Dover for skills education. That is a real concern, and we made the case for keeping the Dover campus because the skills it taught were more in keeping with the jobs available in the local economy.

The most important thing we can all do for our young people and our learners is to provide ladders in life—to raise the bar of aspiration and to tell people, “You can succeed and achieve, and you can do really well in life. If you go to college and learn some skills, you will do better, and you will achieve and succeed.” The most important thing to do, particularly for this Conservative Government who are so committed to the new meritocracy, is to allow people to climb ladders in life at any time.

Much has been said about whether we should have skills education from 14, 16 or 19, but we need skills education to be available at any point in life. We need the ladder to descend at any time. Many people with a difficult home life are not able to achieve and succeed in the usual exams—in school at 16, with A-levels at 18 or for a degree course at 21—and many people who have simply been slow to grow up have spent their teenage years less formatively than they might have done and with people who have not necessarily been a good influence on them. For those who have had such a life, but who suddenly wake up at 21 and 25, a ladder should descend for them to climb. Skills education is not just about the teenage years, but about lifelong learning because everyone should be able to climb the ladder of prosperity and success at any time.

For me, it was important to make sure that we kept the Dover campus of K College, which is now part of East Kent College, and to make the case for a new FE college in Deal—I also represent Deal—which suffers from so many of the same issues of low aspiration. In such ways, we can raise the bar and give people greater aspiration and life chances. That will enable them to find it easier to climb the ladders in their home communities —to get more skills and get better-paid jobs in the areas in which they live—without having to move away, as so many do. I am very passionate about such things, because we need more further and technical education in our towns, particularly coastal towns such as Dover and Deal, which too often suffer from less aspiration than they should.

I feel very strongly that we must focus on and do more about building an aspiration nation, with such ladders in life and life chances, and with proper processes for when things go wrong. That is why I think the Bill is fundamentally a good thing.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 19th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for his considered exposition of the Government’s position, particularly regarding the amendments, with which we are not in dispute. I shall say something about Lords amendment 2 after turning to Lords amendment 1. We welcome the Government’s changes, particularly those to the technical parts of the Bill. The devil is in the detail, and we do not always get these things right first time around. I am grateful to the Government for reflecting on that.

I particularly take on board what the Minister said about care leavers and local authorities. Without straying outside the narrow confines of today’s discussions, may I say that I hope that the recent debates in the House on the Children and Social Work Bill, in which my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) played a strong, positive and constructive part, have been a useful focus for the Minister and his Department in tabling the amendments that he has spoken to today. I am grateful to him for that.

I am also grateful for the widened information sharing in schedule 1. As the Minister knows, I have described the present structure as a bit of an alphabet soup. To strain the analogy, I hope that this change will enable us to fish some of the letters out of the soup and make them work together a little easier than they would otherwise have done.

As the Minister says, the issue in Lords amendment 1could be regarded as one of financial privilege. I accept that he has great interest in matters of financial support and the rest of it. I hope that he understands that I have never, in any shape or form, and in any of the Committee sittings in which we have debated, disavowed his good intentions and commitment to issues of equality. But, of course, warm words of themselves do not necessarily carry through the projects that we all want to see. When he says that most apprenticeships have benefits, one has to ask about the fate of people who do not get those benefits. He says that this proposal will cost £200 million but, as he said, we are already committing £60 million to training providers, so I am not sure that that is a strong or powerful argument.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gordon Marsden]

I will give way in a little while. I want to make some progress on the main issue before giving way to the hon. Gentleman.

I am proud of the fact that the noble Lords considered the matter addressed in amendment 1, which I support, in considerable detail. In doing so, they revealed how much further the Government needed to go and, in my view, still need to go. In February, The Times Educational Supplement published an eloquent chart that spelled out in graphic detail the current gap in support between students and apprentices. It showed that apprentices have no access to care to learn grants, and that their families have no access to universal credit and council tax credit. Most trenchant and relevant when it comes to amendment 1, they have no access to child benefit.

Amendment 1 would enable families eligible for child benefit to receive it for children aged under 20 who are undertaking apprenticeships. The Opposition understand, as I am sure Government Members do, that it is not simply about the benefit itself, but the doors that that benefit opens to other benefits.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I have listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s argument, which seems to involve a spending commitment of £200 million. How would he pay for that?

[Gordon Marsden]

First, we do not recognise that figure of £200 million. Secondly, as I have said, the Government are already committing £60 million to training providers, so I really do not know why the hon. Gentleman is raising the issue of £200 million, which would be aggregated over a period of time.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gordon Marsden]

No, I will not give way again. The hon. Gentleman has had one go. I want to make progress.

The amendment calls for the Secretary of State to use regulations to make provision to ensure that apprentices are regarded as being involved in approved education or training. The Government’s apprenticeships programme has seen the introduction of the Institute for Apprenticeships and the apprenticeship levy this month, while setting the target of 3 million apprenticeships by 2020. However, many commentators have continued to raise real question marks about the potential quality of those new apprenticeships. It is really important that in reducing the growing skills gap in this country apprentices are not given a raw deal. My noble Friend Lord Watson spelled this out vividly in the House of Lords when he said:

“Why should families suffer as we seek to train young people desperately needed to fill the skills gaps that I mentioned earlier?”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 27 March 2017; Vol. 782, c. 361.]

We simply ask that question.

I am well aware—we discussed this in Committee in this place and it was also discussed in the other place—that apprenticeships are not currently classed as approved educational training by the Department for Work and Pensions. That is one of the reasons we have raised this issue so many times. The Minister needs to reflect on the situation of apprentices who live with parents and whose families could lose out by more than £1,000 a year through not being able to access child benefit, and could lose more than £3,200 a year under universal credit. If the Government want to reach this target, it cannot be in anyone’s interest for doors to be closed to young people keen to take up and embark on an apprenticeship.

The predecessor Government—perhaps this has not been heard so much under this Government—were very fond of the concept of “nudge” to achieve results, but, as I have said on other occasions, people can be nudged away from things as well as towards them. In some circumstances, parents may prevent young people from taking up apprenticeships because the economic consequences for the family of loss of benefit payments in various forms could be considerable. Their lordships made this point in their debate on 27 February. Baroness Garden noted that

“only 10% of apprenticeships are taken up by young people on free school meals”,

adding that

“the loss of child benefit”

was

“a significant penalty.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 27 February 2017; Vol. 779, c. GC99.]

Baroness Wolf spoke very strongly when she said, echoing the Minister, that there needs to be genuine parity if the Government want to fulfil a holistic vision.

As I have said, the exclusions printed in The Times Educational Supplement justify the anger and disappointment of the National Union of Students and apprenticeship organisations, which feel that they are being treated like second-class citizens. I accept that, as the Minister said, some apprentices are being paid well above the minimum rate, but research has shown that some apprentices earn as little as £3.50 an hour.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Since the hon. Gentleman is talking about financial matters again, will he return to my earlier intervention when he said that he did recognise the figure of £200 million? How much would his policy cost?

[Gordon Marsden]

As I say, those issues would be taken forward over a five-year period. The £200 million figure that the Minister quoted has not been recognised, and I do not intend to engage with it any further because no further detail has been given to us on this point.

[Charlie Elphicke]

rose—

[Gordon Marsden]

No, I am sorry, but I am not going to give way again. The hon. Gentleman has had two shouts and he is out. [Interruption.] I am going to continue, so he can stop chuntering.

This will inevitably have a negative effect on the family income in circumstances where the household budget is not covered by the earnings in an apprentice’s salary, given that the apprentice minimum wage is barely over £3 an hour. The National Society of Apprentices made that point in its submission to the Committee, saying:

“It seems inconsistent that apprentices are continually excluded from definitions of ‘approved’ learners, when apprenticeships are increasingly assuming their place in the government’s holistic view of education and skills”.

If apprenticeships are to be seen as a top-tier option, then the benefits should be top tier too. University students receive assistance from a range of sources, from accessing finance to discounted rates on council tax. Apprentices currently do not receive many of those benefits. Their lordships believe, and we agree, that the system must be changed so that both groups are treated equally.