Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [Lords]

Debate between Christian Wakeford and Toby Perkins

2nd reading
Monday 15th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to wind up for the Opposition after a good debate on this Bill, with some excellent speeches and important contributions from Members in all parts of the House. I repeat the tribute by my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) to our colleagues in the House of Lords, who adopted a constructive, cross-party approach to the Bill.

I hope that the Minister has taken note of the contributions to this debate, because much of real value was said by Members on the Opposition and Government Benches. Indeed, two contributions from Conservative Members were—I suspect inadvertently—very revealing. The right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) revealed that adult education funding is currently at its lowest level for 23 years. That set me thinking about what might have happened 23 years ago that meant that adult education funding was at such a low level but improved substantially over time, only to reach its nadir now. Of course, a Labour Government happened 23 years ago, and it has taken 11 years to unwind that Labour Government’s investment in adult education to the current nadir.

The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson), also made a revealing contribution: he said that levelling up is all about investment in human beings—people in every area throughout the country. Of course, he was one of the Secretaries of State who was in power while there was a 40% reduction in adult education. He presided over that. I absolutely agree that if levelling up is to mean anything, it has to mean investment in people, which is precisely what we have not seen under this Government.

A number of Members spoke powerfully about the role of BTECs. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) spoke of Lord Baker’s description of the defunding of BTECs as “act of educational vandalism”. My hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) spoke up for her local college and about the number of students at that college who would miss out. My hon. Friends the Members for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) and for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) spoke of the importance of the BTEC pathway, particularly for disadvantaged students. And my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Tahir Ali) spoke passionately and movingly about his own journey as a BTEC engineering student who went on to be the very first person in his family to go to university, and his pride at seeing his son follow in his footsteps.

This question is really important, because the Government have set out to trash the reputation of BTECs and then come back and said, “Actually, we’re only going to get rid of some of them—only the low-quality ones.” The damage is being done already. Students are on those courses now: 230,000 students who are doing level 3 BTECs are being told that those are poor-quality qualifications. Why make that announcement and create all that uncertainty and then say, “Oh, we’re going to do a review and then we’ll look at the evidence.”? This whole approach has been wrong. I welcome the more conciliatory language that we are hearing from the new Secretary of State, but the damage has been done, and we need to quickly hear from him which of those courses will be carrying on, which ones will not and what is the plan for those students who will not be doing T-levels.

The real worry is that this will result in fewer students from more deprived communities achieving vocational qualifications at level 3. Pulling up that drawbridge will, without question, restrict opportunities, particularly for white working class and black, Asian and minority ethnic students from those communities. The Secretary of State repeated the description of BTECs as a low-quality qualification, so if we are hearing a change of tone, we need to know whether we are seeing a change of policy.

There was a lot of discussion about local skills improvement plans. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) spoke about the extent to which special needs students are missing from LSIPs, which is an important point. We very much welcome the Secretary of State’s climbdown on the subject of metro Mayors and their responsibility in terms of LSIPs, but if the responsibility of those elected to local government in metro Mayor areas is accepted, as was said by the hon. Members for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) and for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), what of areas that do not have metro Mayors? Why is there no local democratic accountability for those areas? It occurs to me that the vast majority of my right hon. and hon. Friends represent areas that have metro Mayors, but the majority of Government Members do not, so they will have no democratic accountability whatsoever. The point made by the hon. Member for Ipswich about the variation in chambers of commerce—some are very good and some are much less good—was well made.

[Christian Wakeford]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Perkins]

Let me crack on. If I have time, I would be very happy to hear from the hon. Gentleman.

The Government have indicated that they will seek to overturn Lord Baker’s amendment on careers guidance, which would have allowed a range of educational and training providers access to every student in years 8 to 13. The House will be aware that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) has committed a future Labour Government to guarantee face-to-face professional careers guidance for every pupil, and compulsory two-week work experience. The Government should seek to match that ambition.

The hon. Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) spoke about students considering careers that they had not even heard of previously. That is incredibly important. It is one of the reasons why careers guidance is so crucial. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South spoke about the fact that poorer children do not have the networks on which the more affluent children are able to rely.

We absolutely support the Government’s intention to introduce a lifetime skills guarantee. It is a return to what students would have been able to enjoy under a previous Labour Government. However, as has been said, there are currently 9 million jobs in our economy that will be excluded. Anyone who has a level 3 qualification already and wants to retrain in the future will be excluded from doing so. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) and the right hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), who is growing very nicely into his beard—[Interruption.] It is always a pleasure to see someone who has aged almost as much as I have in the past 11 years. He made what I thought was a mature point, bestowing on us his status as a greybeard, that this is not actually a guarantee. The fact that it is not on a statutory footing means that it is only an aspiration. It is an aspiration that we welcome, but the word “guarantee” means something. If we cannot guarantee that this will be available to so many students, as I have already laid out, it is not a guarantee at all.

We welcome the funding changes that the Secretary of State announced, but one of our key criticisms of the Bill is that much of it is ill-defined and not fully thought through. The fact that we have an announcement that there will be an extension while the Government work out which courses are needed and which ones are not is exactly why these announcements should not have been made until the Government had done their research.

[Christian Wakeford]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Perkins]

The hon. Gentleman is so persistent that I will—very briefly.

[Christian Wakeford]

T-levels are obviously a fantastic idea. We have already heard from the Secretary of State that there are more than 12,000 qualifications. Does the hon. Member agree that that is far too many and that, based on international comparisons, fewer than 1,000 would be really sensible?

[Mr Perkins]

It is an interesting point. The Government have said that there are too many qualifications. They have spoken about scrapping BTECs and are undermining them by saying that they are low-quality qualifications. Now they are going to go away and find out which ones they want to get rid of. That approach seems like it is the wrong way around. Why do the Government not identify the poor-quality qualifications and then start announcing their policy? That is where they have got it wrong.

Let me turn to the need to have maths and English as an exit-level qualification for T-levels. The Secretary of State is right to change his approach to the issue, as we have been calling for, but given that maths and English were an entry requirement for all students who are currently doing T-levels, the pilot is going to be misleading. The people who are doing T-levels currently—we will be investigating their outcomes in the pilot—will be different from those who will be able to study T-levels after this change. It is important that that is carefully considered.

The hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) was absolutely right to speak about the universal credit amendment. We keep hearing the Government talk about the importance of people on universal credit being able to get into work. If we want universal credit to be a pathway towards helping the country to solve the skills crisis, people need to be able to afford to develop their skills. The hon. Gentleman was therefore right to say that the amendment should seriously be considered.

There were a couple of other very relevant contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) raised the important issue of FE lecturers’ pay. So many really good-quality FE lecturers have been forced to leave the profession because of real-terms pay cuts over many years. The skills drain has had a massive impact on our further education sector.

The hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) told us that he has been racing around employers in his constituency and telling them that there is an oven-ready Bill that will address all their skills needs. Well, he might be well advised to move office and not tell people where his new one is, because they might end up disappointed that he has slightly overpromised in that regard.

The hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) blamed the Labour Government for the fact that she was made to feel bad when she left school at the age of 15. I notice that she was 15 in 1996, so it was a Conservative Government who made her feel bad. I am sorry that she had that experience, but she is knocking at the wrong door.

The hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) addressed the problem faced by many hon. Members—a reduction in the time limit—by doing a seven-minute speech in three minutes. In the event that he ever loses his current job, he might want to consider being a horse racing commentator. But he had a lot to say and it was important.

My hon. Friends the Members for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) and for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) spoke about the scale of the cuts, and the collapse in investment in further education and adult education.

This is a small Bill, which is limited in scope. It leaves out apprenticeships and is silent on the role of independent training providers, which provide the majority of workplace learning. It lacks strategic vision, and is undermined by its lack of scale and urgency. There are some aspects that will make small improvements—we are not hostile to all that is in there—but it lacks the scale of reform and investment required to deliver the promised skills revolution.

The skills Bill is in danger of going down as an historic missed opportunity. The Government should recognise that the amendments introduced by their lordships strengthen the Bill; recognise that apprenticeships are central to skills in this country, and do more to increase the numbers studying and offering them; encourage a collaborative approach that recognises a role for all communities, whether they happen to have a metro Mayor or not; and address the chronic underfunding that has characterised the last 11 years in further education. If this Government took the approach that Labour is calling for today, they would have a chance of enabling England to compete with the very best skills systems in the world. It is the very least that English workers and employers deserve.