Technical and Further Education Bill

David Rutley 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

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

I must declare that I, too, am a comprehensive-educated special adviser from a long time ago, which may be familiar to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. We will move on from that. I spent many years in business, too, and that is why I am pleased to be able to speak in this debate.

Before I get to the meat of my remarks, I want to join my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) in recognising the important work that FE colleges do throughout the country. In Macclesfield, we have a great principal in Rachel Kay, who is moving things forward. That is great.

There have been lots of interesting developments over the past few months. Following on from Brexit, there has been Trexit—we might want to think what is Nexit—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] It took a while. It is not clear what will happen, except that it is clear that there are vital lessons we need to learn. One lesson I took away from the referendum campaign and from Brexit was that there was an underlying concern from many people across the country about the impact of immigration.

As I spoke to people during the referendum campaign, it was clear to me that the concern ran deeper than just that. There was a sense of insecurity and a desire for greater security about jobs, work and prospects for the future. Those concerns will not be addressed by changes to immigration policy alone. That is why the Government are right to take a more comprehensive approach, a more comprehensive response, working to enhance an industrial strategy, continuing with welfare reforms, and pressing ahead with plans to address the skills gap that has been too prevalent for far too long. That is why this Bill is so important.

Since being elected in 2010, I have often spoken in the House on the importance of social mobility. I want to see more first-time entrepreneurs, more first-time employers, more first-time exporters and, crucially for those from the most challenging backgrounds, more first-time employees. A strong focus on those four roles, the four E’s, as I call them, and on motivating people to take on those roles, especially for the first time, delivers the key to economic success.

Progress in technical and further education and in apprenticeships is vital for the life chances of those seeking first-time employment. I therefore strongly support the Bill. I support it because it seeks to open clear, defined, aspirational paths to success, and it has the potential to help create much-needed parity of esteem between academic education and technical education, as has been talked about during the debate. That is further evidence that we on the Government Benches are the real workers party and that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills is at the vanguard of that movement.

[Lucy Powell]

There is nobody behind him, though!

[David Rutley]

Let us move on—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. We cannot have sedentary remarks and remarks from behind the Chair. That is simply impossible.

[David Rutley]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Lucy Powell]

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to put it on the record that it was I who was speaking from a sedentary position. The Minister is indeed at the vanguard, but the only other discernible member of the Government is the Minister for the Armed Forces, who is standing behind the Speaker’s Chair.

[The Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills (Robert Halfon)]

May I make a quick point? As the debate has highlighted today, it is quality, not quantity, that counts.

[David Rutley]

Indeed.

The Bill is timely. After strenuous efforts to stabilise the economy following the financial crisis, the UK faces a new opportunity—and some challenges—in Brexit. If we are to make a success of leaving the EU, it is increasingly urgent that we tackle our long-standing productivity gap compared with other leading economies. The challenge is to upskill the existing and future British workforce. It is interesting that the Chartered Management Institute says that one in four jobs was left vacant in 2015, owing to skills shortages.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The hon. Gentleman is right to focus on our poor productivity level, but poor productivity often results from the availability of cheap labour because employers are not forced to invest in modern technology. That is a factor in the equation. Low productivity and low-priced labour are a problem for us.

[David Rutley]

The Government have already put in place improvements to the national living wage and will do more in that arena. Productivity is about a lot more than wages. From contributions that the hon. Gentleman has made in previous debates, I know that he is fully aware of that, too. The situation is more complicated.

One in four jobs left vacant in 2015 were due to skills shortages. The CBI has found that one in five employers want candidates for jobs who not only have academic qualifications but can demonstrate other skills as well. So the Government must ensure that their efforts to close the skills gap inspire and motivate those who would gain most—those in training and businesses that need their skills. If we are to strive to achieve the greater parity of esteem that we have talked about and to get businesses actively involved in education and training, we need to motivate more young people who are planning to pursue the non-academic track to gain the skills that will transform their lives. Only then will we secure the prize of greater national productivity. Wages have a role to play, but so, increasingly, does motivating young people to want to acquire these skills.

The key to promoting technical training will be the Government’s drive to provide 15 clear routes to 3 million quality apprenticeships. These routes are set out in the post-16 skills plan, which was published in July. It is a strong plan; my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) deserves real credit for setting it out, and I join the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) in wishing him a speedy and full recovery from his current health challenges. Those routes—or “occupational categories” as they are called in the Bill—will signpost such sectors as construction, catering and hospitality, and vital ones such as engineering and manufacturing. The obvious, recognisable nature of these categories will give young people the assurance they need that apprenticeships are, and will be, focused on delivering identifiable careers and are relevant to their own fields of vocational interest. Relevance is absolutely key.

Confidence in these routes as genuine career paths can be bolstered only by involving businesses in their design. Fostering links between business and schools, and between business and the rightly reconstituted Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, has never been more urgent. The Government have taken the initiative in encouraging businesses to step up to the plate and to deliver employer-led technical education that addresses the skills gap. I hope businesses will now seize this opportunity—it is vital that they do.

The Bill should be seen as part of a process of going further in breaking down the barriers between education and business—between school lessons and work experience. I have talked to my right hon. Friend the Minister about this. We need to get more young people out of school and into business, and more businesses into schools and further education. Indeed, schools themselves need to be made more aware of the options for, and the importance of, motivating young men and women in the classroom about wider opportunities to develop skills and career options.

No one in the House wants schools to feel they are being imposed on by the Bill; we want them to recognise the benefits of the Bill for the futures of the young people in their care. It is important to establish, as set out in part 3 of the Bill, an information-sharing relationship between the Department, schools, academies, colleges and other providers. Businesses, too, will need to find it easy to engage with education providers to be motivated to participate. Those relationships will need to be forged—in some cases, from scratch.

Fortunately, there is good practice—from existing schemes to introduce business skills into schools—to learn from and extend. For example, Young Enterprise and Enabling Enterprise provide teachers with opportunities to link up with business, and supply model exercises in flexible, transferable life and work skills. Young Enterprise already has relationships with over 50% of secondary schools. I shall be interested to hear—although this is not directly relevant to the Bill; it relates to the wider issue of what we can do to engage and motivate people—what role my right hon. Friend believes these schemes will play in this vital area of motivating more people.

There is much more that we need to do to close these skills gaps. In South Korea, for example, there is a clear difference between the skills gap among 55 to 65-year-olds, nearly half of whom are low-skilled, and among 16 to 24-year-olds, who have a much higher skills base. In England, however, about 30% of the 16 to 24-year-old age group and the 55 to 65-year-old age group are classified by the OECD as having low skills. It is clear that we are not closing the gap for the different age cohorts, and the Bill will be fundamental in taking that work forward.

My right hon. Friend is absolutely keen to move things forward on social mobility and to play his part in the party for the workers, which he has helped to articulate in recent years.

[Rob Marris]

The hon. Gentleman is extolling the party for the workers, so does he agree that workers and workers’ representatives, and not simply employers, should be involved in institutions?

[David Rutley]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. The Prime Minister has already talked about how we should look at having workers on the boards of companies. Let us see how we can take that forward, and what role they can play.

My right hon. Friend the Minister has a role to play in taking the Bill forward, and he has helped to articulate it further. I wish him well in the work that he is doing. He has already done important work in securing extra funding for businesses that take on an apprentice who has grown up in care. That shows that he has real credibility in driving this agenda forward.

As Conservative Members seek to build a Britain that works for everyone, we must promote social mobility and open up young people’s horizons to new experiences and aspirations beyond their own backgrounds. The Bill is vital in taking that work forward. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will also take the opportunity to learn ways to bring businesses into the classroom and help more young people get out into the world of work. The Bill is an important start, and I wish him well with it.

Technical and Further Education Bill (First sitting)

David Rutley Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

Q I applaud your desire to reach out to learners and have a conversation with them during the teething process. However, there does not seem to be a specific requirement in the Bill to have learners on the board, talking to you. They are going to be the guinea pigs. This will be up and running very soon; April seems five minutes away. Can you specify how learners are going to be connected to the board?

Peter Lauener: I cannot specify that in detail at the moment, because that is, properly, something that the board should discuss. With my deputy chief executive, Mike Keoghan, I am making a plan of board activities during January, February and March, to allow the board to focus on all the aspects of its remit and to think about the governance as well. I mentioned earlier that we expect to consult on a draft strategic plan for the institute for 2017-18, and I am sure that that will be an occasion to raise the question and get lots of views back. The board can then discuss it in the January to March period before coming out with its final plan, I hope right at the beginning of April, so that it is clear from the start of the institute’s operation exactly how it will operate across a broad range of activities, certainly including the one that you have mentioned.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

Q The Bill supports the occupational categories of quality apprenticeships set out in that excellent document, the “Post-16 Skills Plan”; they include construction, and engineering and manufacturing. That is fantastic and a real step forward. Do you both believe that the Bill provides an effective ability to redefine those categories as economic sectors evolve? Secondly, do you believe that the mechanisms are in place to enable businesses and employers to have a meaningful role in redefining those categories as things progress?

Lord Sainsbury: It comes back to the original question. You have to have a certain amount of flexibility. As far as I can make out, that flexibility is there, and it is important. Of course, it is also important that we do not let the system degenerate, whereby everyone goes back to saying, “I want something specifically for my business or a very small group of businesses.” It is very important that one keeps down the number of routes, but exactly what categories they include will have to be for the people running those routes to say. I think we have made quite a good stab at doing that, but there are one or two cases where you can certainly argue about whether we got the right job in the right route.

Peter Lauener: It is absolutely vital that the institute actively manages the system of apprenticeship standards. For the past couple of years, while new standards have been developed by trailblazer groups, we have not had that picture of what the overall system would look like. Lord Sainsbury’s report helps enormously with that. An early priority for the institute is to develop that map, communicate it, review it actively and spot areas that need updating. I imagine that one or two of the early standards will, with hindsight, look a little bit narrow, so they ought to be reviewed. Every standard has a review date anyway, but the institute, through its route committees, will need to actively manage that.

One of the great virtues of the German system is its absolute clarity about the number of apprenticeships, routes into apprenticeships and things like that. If you talk to people in Germany, they often say, “We’d like the system to be more flexible.” I think the institute has the opportunity from the start to build in that flexibility and responsiveness to the changing labour market.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

Q I have a quick question about the idea that this is going to turn into another 11-plus. What reassurance can you give us about what you have put in place to ensure that the technical route will be as prestigious as the academic route?

Lord Sainsbury: There has been a very long-running argument about this. It is useful to look at the experience of other countries. If you do that, you see that pretty well every developed country has a system of two routes: an academic route and a technical education route. There is quite a variation in the point at which people choose between the two routes, but most of them have it. In most of the successful countries you find the two routes are equally well valued, so there is not a problem of the technical education route being considered inferior. You can have these two routes and both of them be highly valued.

The question we have to ask ourselves is why in our system the technical route is undervalued. I think the answer is because it is a very bad system that does not deliver what people want on the system. What they want above all is to be able to take a qualification and for that qualification to work in the marketplace. What that means is that you can go along to an employer and say, “I have got this qualification,” and the employer will give priority to you over somebody who has not got the qualification. That is not true of our system. The first thing you have to do to make the technical education route valued is to make it deliver for young people something of value to them, which is the ability to get a better job with security. That is the issue. It is not about age of selection or the fact that you have two routes.

Peter Lauener: I agree 100%.

Technical and Further Education Bill (Second sitting)

David Rutley Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Q Both really: management and Government. Do you think there should be something specific in the Bill saying the sort of things I have said about having qualifications among governors and an inspection regime that works—as it did not in that case—to ensure that financial arrangements are not being abused?

Richard Robinson: I am not a governance expert, so I do not know if there is a clause that can be put in to help that. I do agree that the sector can always improve management and governance. No business can say it has perfect management and governance, so constant improvement in those is a good thing.

Richard Meddelton: I think the insertion of a clause in the Bill along the lines you have suggested would certainly help and be welcome, although, like the other Richard, I am no legal expert.

I would answer your first question in terms of how we look at the governance and management of a college. From a Lloyds banking perspective, we take a great deal of interest in the make-up of the management of the college. That would include the expertise of the board of governors. That is an ongoing practice in what we do. We have not got down to stipulating how many accountants or lawyers need to be there, but we would certainly look for a good mix, so that they are professionally managed and so that we have a fruitful long-term relationship over many years.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

Q It is interesting to hear your views. It seems as if there is broad support, at least at the right end of the table, for the direction of travel here. One of the proposals in the legal framework is the role of education administrator, ensuring that the quality of educational provision is continued. Could each of the panel members describe whether they are comfortable with this role as being a helpful addition and whether it should be changed or enhanced in any way?

Richard Robinson: Obviously we know what a normal administrator does, in a normal administration situation with companies. We do not know what the education administrator is going to do, beyond what is written in here—the legal, written thing versus the practical reality. For us, the role seems to be broadly balanced between making sure that the interests of learners are put at the front, which is the right thing to do, and making sure that creditors are not forgotten. There are probably two other things that would certainly help, and both have been touched on by other people. The first is some clarity about who funds the administration—who funds the insolvent college during insolvency—because that could be for a number of years. It is very important for us to know that when making lending decisions. The second point is the legal position of secured creditors, which Richard has mentioned. Again, further clarity about that would be helpful. Other than that, I think it is pretty clear in the draft Bill.

Gareth Jones: From Santander’s perspective, overall we were supportive of the draft Bill and of that role as well.

Richard Meddelton: I have got nothing further to add.

Stephen Harris: If I can just clarify, your question was about the role of the insolvency office holder as an education administrator—

[David Rutley]

It is about whether the role would add anything.

Stephen Harris: From an insolvency practitioner’s perspective, it is worth standing back and recognising that insolvency practitioners are not train drivers, or people who spend their life in the railway or the London Underground, when it comes to a special administration regime, nor are they specialist property developers. They come to each situation afresh. One comforting thing that insolvency practitioners bring is recognising when they need to keep in place the existing management structure in a corporate sense, or the workforce in a pastoral sense, recognising that those people have skills and qualifications that they as an office holder do not necessarily have, and also recognising that they can bring outside specialist help to continuing the duties of education administrator, should the need arise. That is all part and parcel of any trading insolvency regime, and I would imagine that any office holder stepping into the role of an education administrator would have that at the forefront of their mind. I do not think it presents a unique challenge; it is very similar to all the other special administration roles. There is an extra dynamic—there is a pastoral element.

[Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

Q Thank you for your candour in your response to the Bill. What are the implications for the future willingness of creditors, given the reluctance you have mentioned of lenders such as yourselves to lend now to colleges? There is a lot of excitement around this Bill because there is an opportunity for money from big business to provide apprentice opportunities. Will that be held back by a reluctance from banks and so on to lend to this community?

Richard Robinson: For the moment, for most creditors, the status quo is the preferred position just because of our experience of what happens when things go wrong. That said, I think the Bill has been carefully considered and, apart from the two points I made before, I do not think this is a sector where you are going to see lenders just disappear altogether. But it is going to be harder to support in the same way that we used to. Banks used to be able to lend for a very long period of time—30 years on an unsecured basis—but that will change. I do not think that it will result in colleges not being able to get funding at all, but the terms and conditions will probably be different from what they were in the past.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tracy Brabin]

Yes—culture and design is one route.

Bev Robinson: Indeed. I was involved in the Lord Sainsbury panel that contributed to the report, so I feel like I have spent a lot of my time and life in looking at that. I feel that there are real opportunities for both. It has to be about career, because it is about a journey. It is really important that we give everyone the opportunity to develop skills, to help them to secure employment for themselves and their families to have strong and healthy lives.

Because the routes are mapped against what the economy needs, it helps with advice and guidance and helps a young person of whatever age to think, “Here’s an opportunity for me. I can see my path and how that fits.” You do not always make decisions and stick to them. It is important that there is enough in there that one can transition across different pathways as well, and this proposal allows for that.

This also goes up to levels 4 and 5—a real engine of the economy in high-value jobs, for want of a better term. We talk a lot about levels 2 and 3 in technical professional education, but we must remember to include levels 4 and 5. I would like to think that this is very much about a journey—a career that enables you to move and develop further as you desire.

Shane Chowen: I welcome that the Bill does not specify that there have to be 15 routes or what those routes are. It leaves that up to the Secretary of State to define the routes and the institute to define what occupations go into those routes. I think there is a clause that says that, if an occupation does not fit into one of the routes, the institute can pop it in somewhere that it sees fit.

I would add that it comes up against this parity with HE argument. In the 24-plus advanced learning loans system at the moment, where you can get funding to go on a course as an individual, in future you would only be able to get an advanced learner loan for a course that would fit in to one of those 15 routes. Most things probably will but the parity issue for me is as follows. No, I do not have a degree. No one will stop me going and doing my first degree in classics and I will get funding for that. If I wanted to do a course that was not within one of those 15 routes—at Bev’s college, for example—I could not get an advanced learner loan for that under the proposals. Sadly, that is the case at the moment—I am involved in the stakeholder group for the 24-plus loans. For me there is also a parity issue around access to funding for individuals. If we are saying in the loan system that the risk is on you—the loan is yours and you are responsible for paying it back—I do not think we can restrict people’s choices into those 15 routes, if there is a course that does not fit neatly within them.

Shakira Martin: The skills plan proposes 15 routes. I have been speaking to my membership already, and this goes back to the reason and importance of why we need them on the board. The 15 routes do not cover qualifications in the retail industry, for example.

My members feel extreme concerns for the arts courses as there is only a route that proposes for arts “Creative and Design”. Those do not cover courses such as performing arts. Learners are already recommending that this route be split into two: applied art and design and performing arts. Again, I would like to reiterate why that is so important. It is this type of stuff we can address if they are around the table in the first instance, instead of learning by trial and error within the sector.

I would also like to draw your attention to how the clause is written. It is under “occupational categories” which, if you are not involved in the sector, you will not understand. That is again another reason why somebody needs to be around the board. The Secretary of State would be given more power to change the routes without consulting students. I would like to put to the Committee that we have an amendment to say that before any of these changes take place, learners should be consulted, as well as information, advice and guidance being part of the process. I agree with what David Hughes said this morning that IAG should be going into key stage 4. I went to the Skills Show this week and that provides an excellent example of IAG in those four days. I strongly recommend you to look into the Skills Show.

Bev Robinson: May I clarify something, please? We are talking about technical professional education. There are other opportunities for learning—A-levels, applied general qualifications—that would cover retail and performing arts. The technical education was not meant to cover absolutely everything. It is meant to cover just technical and professional education, so this would not exclude a learning opportunity because that would be covered by applied general qualifications currently.

[David Rutley]

Q Thank you for your points. Like all of you, I believe this is very important to help people achieve their potential and to improve social mobility—no question. We are all saying this is a positive step forward. Obviously there is more to follow, but this in itself is a positive step forward. I am keen to focus on these categories for a moment. I know that you were involved with helping to create these, Bev. Obviously, they are important not just for learners but for businesses and employers as well. Does the panel believe that there is enough flexibility in that arrangement to have some defined pathways but to be able to evolve, given what will happen in the economy and in those sectors in future?

Shakira Martin: I believe that, with devolution, we do need to be working at a local level, working in partnership with local organisations, such as local enterprise partnerships, local businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises, to make sure that it is relevant to the needs of that community and that area, and to the needs to the students. This is also why it is vitally important that we are training and educating our students not just for a job in a specific area, but giving them transferable skills to enable them to move out of their area and up into a different industry.

Shane Chowen: Whatever the structures put in place within the institute around oversight of those routes, it is important that they have the necessary authority to make those kinds of recommendations, so if a route needs to be modified in any way, they have the authority to do that. The digital sector, for example, is probably one of the fastest moving of those 15 sectors. That will need to change all the time: the kind of occupations that are listed within those will need to be updated all the time. I would hope that the institute would have the flexibility to allow that to happen.

Bev Robinson: I completely agree: currency is king. We have seen some of the qualifications in the market become terribly out of date. The Bill does allow for flexibility because the institute will be responsible, with those panels, for making sure that it is kept up to date. I really do welcome that.

[David Rutley]

Q Do you believe that businesses are currently engaged enough in helping to define those categories or routes, and are the mechanisms in place to ensure that will happen?

Bev Robinson: I believe it is. The panels are not there to represent a particular business. Shane alluded earlier to the fact that the panels can sometimes be too narrow, as we have seen with the early trailblazers. Lessons learned from that would suggest that you are on that panel because of your engineering expertise, not because you happen to work for AA Engineering Ltd. It is about keeping that currency and making sure that you are representing not your company but the engineering field. Also, because it is co-creation, having educationalists there as well to make sure that pedagogy is also at the heart of the design of these products.

Shane Chowen: I have nothing to add on that.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Q A very important question: what measures should be put in place to protect the quality of education received in a college that is struggling financially?

Shakira Martin: As I said, I welcome the fact that learners are being considered in the insolvency regime. The NUS did put forward some recommendations in the consultation—I think that maybe some of that has not been considered before but, within this process, that is vitally important—of an independent FE ombudsman. When students do go through this process, if they are not satisfied with the end result, what steps do they take in appealing that decision to ensure that they get the best? At the moment there is nothing out there to represent students in that way. I am not really familiar with the HE sector and whether there is the equivalent there, but I am sure that there is probably something in place. After the process has happened and a student has been placed in a college and is not happy with that position—what next? How do they challenge that? I would strongly recommend an independent ombudsman.

Shane Chowen: For me, if it has got to the stage where there are crisis meetings looking at how to recover teachers and get students to a place to learn, at some point along the way the system has already failed. The whole idea behind the commissioner’s office, for example, is to ensure that learners are protected long before a college even starts looking at insolvency as an option. The flags that are highlighted within the Department and the Skills Funding Agency at the moment to trigger a visit from the commissioner, should offer those protections long before an insolvency process.

Bev Robinson: I agree with that; it is about early intervention, not waiting for a failure—it is seeing the signs and making appropriate interventions.

Technical and Further Education Bill (Sixth sitting)

David Rutley Excerpts

Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th November 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Robert Halfon]

I will start with new clause 4 and then go on to the other provisions before answering the general queries of the hon. Member for Blackpool South.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Batley and Spen on a really important contribution to the debate; I mean that genuinely. She knows from the brief conversation we had that I completely agree with much of what she says. I agree that we have a problem with careers in our country. I agree that for so long, careers guidance has pushed people towards universities. Having said that, I can imagine a lot of things, but I could never imagine the hon. Member for Luton North as a banker—I have a broad mind, but it is not that broad.

One reason why we have those problems is that wherever I go around the country, whatever institutes I visit and whatever kids I speak to, it is exactly the same: the chances are, they will not have been given advice on apprenticeships or technical education. It is university, university, university. We need to change that. I would be pleased to have the hon. Lady’s input. Careers guidance used to be fragmented and covered by two Departments, but we have moved it wholly to the Department for Education.

When I was appointed Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, I realised that the title should have been Minister for apprenticeships, skills and careers guidance because careers guidance is perhaps the most important part of everything we are trying to achieve in the Bill. It is the first rung on the ladder of opportunity because without the right careers guidance we will not succeed in what we want to do. That goes back to the arguments of the hon. Member for Luton North on prestige and other things.

The hon. Lady said—this is important—that we need more than just warm words. I accept that and I am looking at the whole issue from the beginning: what we can do in careers guidance, whether it is possible to gear it much more towards skills and starting not in secondary school, but primary school and going all the way through. To be fair, the Government have done substantive work. First, it is now a legislative requirement that schools must give careers advice on apprenticeships. With reference to what the hon. Member for Luton North said, we have also tightened up in legislation the definition of “apprenticeship”.

When I spoke at an hotel recently, I asked someone whether they realised they would be paying the levy and whether they were going to have apprentices. The reply was, “We’ve already got some in the kitchen.” When I said, “You already have apprentices?” they replied, “No, they are interns, or whatever.” We have changed the definition to make sure that an apprenticeship is what it says on the tin.

We have also created the Careers & Enterprise Company, to which the hon. Member for Luton North kindly referred, and again I have been around the country to see it working in practice. I have been to east London and the north-east. Of course there is much more to do. Some £90 million, which is a serious amount of money and not just warm words, is being invested over the Parliament not just in the Careers & Enterprise Company, but in careers generally: 1,190 enterprise advisers and 78 enterprise co-ordinators. They have connected 900 schools in about 37 of the 38 local enterprise partnerships, the whole purpose being to build careers links with students and to get them to do work experience.

There is a £5 million careers and enterprise fund to boost provision for nearly 250,000 young people across England in 75% of the areas the Careers & Enterprise Company identified as cold spots. There is a £12 million mentoring fund, because mentoring is incredibly important. This year, £75 million is being spent on the National Careers Service to help its work and £24 million on web kits to support more than 650 people with face-to-face advice. We have started the work.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is setting out some important things the Government are doing and no doubt he will explain what more is to be done. Does he agree with Lord Heseltine who said recently in a Select Committee that industrial policy for the benefit of the country starts in primary school classes if we are to achieve the productivity gains we want?

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. I was in a primary school—it might have been in the constituency of the hon. Member for Blackpool South—where the kids had to guess the career of the individuals there. They included a fire officer, a business person and a pilot, who then went out and returned with their uniforms on. Careers guidance must start in school. We will not achieve what we want unless it starts in primary schools.

I am looking at the matter and there are substantive funds, but we must change the whole argument and gear careers advice towards skills and apprenticeships, although we have no problem with people going to university. I have held roundtables, not just with the great and the good, but with people from up and down the country, to get ideas for how to form our careers strategy. The hon. Member for Batley and Spen is very welcome to take part in them when they carry on next year.

Technical and Further Education Bill

David Rutley Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 9th January 2017 Commons Chamber

During the passage of the Higher Education and Research Bill, Government Members, including the Universities Minister, said, “We can assure you that we will take that on board,” and this, that and the other. However, we are legislating not just for one Minister or one Parliament. With something such as further education, as with the Higher Education Bill, we are legislating, possibly, for something that has to stand for 15 or 20 years. It is no disrespect to the Minister to say that we appreciate his commitment but that we would like the duty to publish the strategy to be in the Bill. As he knows, a whole host of providers, employers and employers organisations have queued up to stress to his Department and to the previous Department—the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills—their exasperation with the way in which the Government have dealt with careers services in recent years. That is why, when I spoke to the Minister during Question Time in November, I said that the Government need to promote strong careers guidance and I referred to the cross-party verdict from two Select Committee Chairs. I think the Minister felt slightly aggrieved by that, but the truth is that if we are to make a success of the institute, these sorts of things have to be in the Bill. There has to be a mechanism for this House to hold to account Ministers of whatever party and whatever Government over the period of time for which the Bill is supposed to work.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

I know the hon. Gentleman feels passionately about the subject, but does he not also agree with the fact that the Government have an overarching approach to careers advice, notwithstanding the Careers & Enterprise Company? It could be difficult to put arrangements that only apply to technical education into this Bill when there is a much broader issue at stake that the Government are tackling at a strategic level.

[Gordon Marsden]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying. It is true, of course—but this is outwith the discussion that we are able to have this evening—that careers advice and education in this Bill does not start at 16 or at the remit of the DFE. It starts much earlier. If the hon. Gentleman is saying that that is an argument for doing nothing within the limited scope of the Bill, I do not agree. We need to do something. I would like to see the overarching structures that he mentioned but, unfortunately, at the moment I would be quite happy to see a limited overarching structure for the area that we are discussing. The challenge for the Minister is to talk about the £90 million that the Government have allocated to the Careers & Enterprise Company over the course of this Parliament, how it will be spent, how it is being distributed and whether it is adequate.

There are some damning statistics in the report produced by the Institute for Apprenticeships under the aegis of Semta. As the Minister knows, the proportion of respondents saying that their careers advice and guidance was poor or very poor has remained high across all sectors in all surveys from 2014 to 2016. The report says:

“Worryingly, this year 94 survey respondents, 6% of the total, said they had not received any careers IAG at all.”

When we discussed the matter in Committee, those were the sorts of statistics that were available to us. I said—perfectly fairly, I thought—that, although the Careers & Enterprise Company was beginning to make progress, I did not believe that it was yet able to do the necessary coverage because it is heavily reliant on volunteers. Early in December, we learnt that the company does not cater to every college in the country, including the whole of London. There are not just a few cold spots, but whole cold areas. There is a postcode lottery for FE coverage, with 15 local enterprise partnerships not covered and London completely absent.

The chief executive of the CEC, Claudia Harris, confirmed that the company did not work with any of the capital’s 44 FE and sixth-form colleges. During an interview with FE Week, she blamed the lack of coverage on “ramp-up”—I think that is what lesser mortals would call the rolling out of pilots, but I await a definition from the Minister. Now, I am not laying the blame at the door of the Careers & Enterprise Company; the Government are expecting it to do too much with too little, and they should probably also think again about having a company that is so heavily reliant on volunteers to carry out these tasks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Halfon]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I want to give my special thanks to all the individuals who have shared their time and knowledge during the Bill’s passage through the House, to the officials who have worked so hard to bring it before Parliament and to those providing written and oral evidence. I would like to thank members of the Committee for their diligent approach and careful consideration of the practical implications of the Bill, and Members who have already spoken today.

I am clear about the priorities that we want to see in apprenticeships, further education and skills, creating a ladder of opportunity for all. These include a transformation of prestige and culture; widespread, high-quality provision; a system that addresses our skills needs; social justice; and job security and prosperity. The Bill seeks to build those priorities into our system, bringing to life the fundamental reforms needed to ensure that we have a skills and education system that rivals the best in the world.

For too long, technical education has been overly complex, overlooked and undervalued. Putting employers at the heart of these changes, as demonstrated through the current apprenticeship reforms and as recommended by Lord Sainsbury’s independent report, we can provide a clear route to employment for our young people. The changes in the Bill will support the achievements of those young people from difficult backgrounds, such as those with special educational needs or disability. In response to what my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) said earlier, we are doing a lot to implement the Maynard reforms, we are spending £2 million to help apprentices with mental health difficulties, and we announced over Christmas that apprentices with severe hearing problems will be able to do sign language instead of English as a functional skill.

We expect individuals with SEND to be over-represented on technical education routes: 23% of those who access technical education routes will have some form of special educational need compared with 7% of those taking level 3 academic qualifications, and 20% of those in the cohort as a whole.

The measures in the Bill will drive up the productivity of our country, turning us into an apprenticeship nation and providing the skills we need for our country to thrive. That is why the CBI has said:

“Businesses have long called for a vocational route…so today’s proposals are a real step forward.”

[David Rutley]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the incredible work he has done in taking the Bill forward and I commend him for his efforts. Does he agree that one of the most important factors is engaging businesses in these apprenticeships and making the route to skills more relevant for business so that this will not only help to address the productivity challenges that he has mentioned, but improve life chances for the young people involved, too?

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend, whom I thank for his work on the Committee, is absolutely right. We introduced the apprenticeship levy to change behaviour and involve businesses in supporting apprenticeships, we have created the institute and the employer panels, and we are giving huge financial incentives to businesses, especially small businesses, to ensure that they hire apprentices.

The Bill also introduces an insolvency regime for the further education sector that will, in the unlikely event of a college insolvency, provide clear-cut protections for learners to minimise disruption to their studies as far as possible, while offering certainty to creditors. During oral evidence, we heard from representatives of the Association of Colleges, Collab and others, who supported the insolvency regime and the protections that it includes for learners. Although there were issues about which the banks had questions, many spoke in support of the clarity provided by the proposed measures. Santander told us that it was keen to lend more to the further education sector, and said:

“On the Bill and the proposed insolvency regime, we are actually supportive of the clarity that they provide.”––[Official Report, Technical and Further Education Public Bill Committee, 22 November 2016; c. 38, Q41.]