Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [Lords]

Debate between David Pinto-Duschinsky and Gareth Snell

Report stage
Monday 31st March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

If I may, I will start by joining my colleagues on the Government Benches in my opposition to new clause 1, new clause 4 and amendment 6. Well-meaning they may be, but I am impatient for change.

Stoke-on-Trent has one of the highest rates of youth disengagement in education, employment or training in the country. As always, when we look at those heat maps, we see the big yellow splodge in the middle of the midlands, which is Stoke-on-Trent, showing that we have one of the highest numbers of workers in the country with no form of formal qualification whatever. Our young people tend to find themselves unable to access any form of training or support that they need to make a future career for themselves.

I declare my interest as a governor of the City of Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College, as we offer T-levels. Even though I do not have an apprentice in my office like my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), as of next week a T-level student will be in a placement there for the next 18 months, to help their advancement.

My impatience stems from the necessity of identifying the skills that we need in the city I represent and of making sure that the next generation of young people coming through education have them. That is the only way I can see for us to fulfil our desire and ambition to rebuild our economy and attract those higher quality, well-paid and long-term jobs into the city that will mean higher wages and the ability to dig ourselves out of our city’s economic troubles. I do not expect or hope any Government to come over the hill like a cavalry, with a big sack of cash, saying, “Here you go—here is what you need.” It is partly on us to do that, by matching up the skills that we have and the skills that we need in the city to do the jobs of today and the future jobs of tomorrow. That is really important. The local skills improvement plan put together by our chambers of commerce and colleges has gone some way to achieving that. However, as always, it is a bit like wading through treacle, because we get to where we think we are going to be and all of a sudden something appears that makes it more difficult. Then, the people who struggle with that are the young people.

I am afraid that anything that seeks to delay the advancement of this Bill, such as new clause 1, new clause 4 and amendment 6, will not get my support this evening. I do, however, wish to spend a few minutes on my own new clause 2, which is a probing amendment. It is not intended to cause any frustration or Divisions; I say to the Whip that I am not seeking to test the House’s opinion on it. However, when we consider what apprenticeships will look like in the future and what they mean for cities such as Stoke-on-Trent, it is important to understand that level 7 apprenticeships, funded by the apprenticeship levy, are a genuinely important part of the educational offer available to young people in my constituency.

The week before last, I visited DJH accountants in Stoke-on-Trent, which is a significant regional player that is training its own generation of chartered accountants at level 7 using the apprenticeship levy that would otherwise just disappear into the Treasury. People there explained to me quite succinctly, and I agreed, that through their own means they simply would not have the available capital or cash to fund the quantity of training courses that they run. The apprenticeship levy allows them to grow a group of young people into chartered accountants. The people I met were all young. They were not at the mid or tail-end of their careers looking for a final bump before they got to their pension; they were young people who had come in after GCSEs, done their basic accountancy skills and had their eyes firmly set on a chartered accountancy qualification. The levy was allowing them to do that.

I asked the young people where they were all from, expecting them to be from the city, which they were. I then asked them where they wanted to work once they had their chartered accountancy status and, wonderfully, they all wanted to stay in Stoke-on-Trent and practise the craft that they had been learning. The economic benefit of that to my city is that if it were not for the ability of that company to train to level 7 using the apprenticeship levy, it would have to import that labour from neighbouring areas. So somebody who already had the level 7 qualification, or had been trained somewhere else through a company that could afford it, would come into Stoke, do the level 7 job, attract that level 7-equivalent salary and take it back to where they actually lived. That would mean that the level 7 salaries those young people were going to earn and spend in Stoke-on-Trent would end up migrating to other, slightly more affluent places in the midlands—and, candidly, there are many more affluent places in the midlands than Stoke-on-Trent.

The economic damage done by turning off the apprenticeship levy, or even the skills and growth levy, from level 7 apprenticeships could mean that the places such as Stoke-on-Trent that already suffer from ingrained regional inequality see it further ingrained into their local economies, because the people who have those skills travel in to do the work, or work from home, and the money flows out of the city and is spent in those other local communities.

There is also the message that we are sending to young people in the city. If level 7 qualifications are not available to them, they will be unlikely to have the means to pay for a level 7 qualification themselves. Having a level 7 qualification in Stoke-on-Trent is quite a rarity. You are more likely to find somebody with no qualification than with a master’s level qualification. New clause 2 is a hook to allow the Minister to go away and consider this. I do not believe for one second that it is the determination of the Government to artificially stymie or cap the aspirations of young people in Stoke-on-Trent by suggesting to them that those level 7 qualifications are not available to them.

I appreciate that there are concerns in the system about the levy not being used for its intended purpose, but to take people through higher level qualifications who already have a career behind them. There are obviously organisations and companies that have done that because, rather than send that money to the Treasury, they have sought to upskill their own workers. I understand why the Government want to get tough on that, because it is not what the levy was intended for, but the level 7 learners that I have met are all young. They are people who have a clear idea of the path and trajectory of the career they want to take, and the levy simply makes that more viable and likely to be achieved in an economically depressed and deprived place such as Stoke-on-Trent.

The other side of the issue is that 95% of the apprenticeships at the University of Staffordshire are at level 6, and 5% are at level 7. It provides level 7 training for the Ministry of Defence and a number of public services. Some of that is funded by the apprenticeship levy. That is an invaluable income stream for the university to deliver that training for people who then go back into the public sector to make it more efficient, to crack down on waste and to deliver those skills that we as a nation determine that we need.

That will undoubtedly need to be looked at as we have more defence spending, because we will need people with those level 7 qualifications in the defence sector, in the manufacturing companies, and in the electrical and chemical engineering companies. Ordinarily, companies in places such as Stoke-on-Trent will simply not have the capital or the cash to provide that. Only by drawing down from the apprenticeship levy will they be able to train people locally to do those jobs. If we are not training people to do those jobs, the opportunity that comes from that Government investment simply will not be felt in places such as Stoke-on-Trent, and the regional inequality that is already quite clear in my city will become more entrenched.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean) talked about finding people finding career, and that is what all of us want for the young people in our communities. It is certainly what I want for the learners in my city, but that career should take them as far as they want to go. That career should take them, if they want, up to a level 7 qualification that allows them to build a life and a career that they enjoy and are happy doing. My concern is that the unintended consequence of the Government’s decision that level 7 qualifications will no longer be available from the apprenticeship levy will be that in cities such as mine, aspiration and ambition will be capped because the cash and the capital are simply not there to meet those young people’s demands.

I have no truck with or support for the delaying amendments of the Opposition, and I have no intention of doing anything with my new clause other than sitting down in a moment. I hope that the Minister will take back the concerns that I have raised this evening and see whether there is a way, maybe through devolution deals, through reorganisation or through the mayoral strategic authorities, in which certain areas could be able to continue with the levy funding for level 7 qualifications that we so desperately need.

[David Pinto-Duschinsky (Hendon) (Lab)]

I rise to speak against new clauses 1 and 4 and amendment 6. The simple truth is that we cannot have any more dither and delay. Our starting point in this debate must be the fact that we are in a skills crisis, and one that lies at the feet of the Conservatives. Twenty-six years ago, I worked on the new deal taskforce for the Labour Government of the time, clearing up the mess that the Major Government had left in the skills system. Fast-forward over a quarter of a century, and once again we find the Labour Government having to clear up the mess in skills left by Conservatives.