Opportunities for the Next Generation

Ed Davey Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Evans]

I apologise for not having caught part of the hon. Gentleman’s question. The point I am getting at is that this problem has come down through the years. Sometimes the problems have not been addressed by any Government. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), who is no longer in his place, said, because of the decline of the manufacturing base, a number of families had no jobs and were on benefits, as there was a benefit culture there. That permeated through the education system. We need to take action now to ensure that when apprenticeships are available, those people can go for them.

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

The hon. Gentleman is making an important point, which is why the Government have introduced the access to apprenticeship schemes—to tackle that very problem.

[Chris Evans]

I agree with that, but I am saying that it needs to go much deeper. I was talking today to a friend, Andrew Whitcombe, who is the director of skills and business development at a local college. He told me that those schemes were fine, but that more needed to be done within the education system; some sort of driving licence was needed.

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[Geraint Davies]

That is complete rubbish. The calculation is that Wales is underpaid by £300 million. We started in the same position. This is about economic choices. There are tough choices; the choice in Wales was to cap investment in the health service. It was a tough choice, but the right choice, to invest in skills for the future and productivity to make Wales strong—

[Mr Davey]

rose—

[Geraint Davies]

What the hon. Gentleman is doing is making England weak.

[Mr Davey]

The hon. Gentleman and his colleague from Wales, the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), have praised the Welsh Government. Can the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) explain why the average spend per school pupil in Wales is £604 less than in England in 2010-11?

[Geraint Davies]

The average spend in Wales is less, but the reality is that the Welsh Government have given an undertaking to increase that spend year on year. In fact, because the Government are cutting local authority funding by 7% a year for four years, there will be less money for education in England. What there is will be funnelled into middle-class free schools, to the cost of poorer communities. Wales will put a cap on health spending, and more money will go into education. It will have a comprehensive system in which there is more money, instead of cuts, and a system in which people are enabled to go to university. That is investing in the skills of the future.

As I have mentioned, UK Trade & Investment has historically been very effective in promoting inward investment and trade in Britain, but crucially, that relied on regional development agencies, which have been abolished. When I spoke to UKTI in Brussels, Belgium, and in Düsseldorf, the same message came back: German companies would come back with a computer platform, saying, “We want to put a factory somewhere.” Where are the RDAs to draw that down? They have been abolished. Well done, the Tories and the Liberals.

On infrastructure and construction, the Government have abolished the scheme to renew schools, which basically means that construction workers are being laid off. As for future markets, we have to look at companies such as Tata Steel near Swansea, and Airbus in north Wales. Those big consumers of energy are being penalised by the Government and their unilateral carbon pricing. The Government forget that we operate in a European market, and do not understand how the markets work at all. Those companies are part of the solution. Tata Steel has a new generation of steel, with seven layers, that generates its own heat and energy; that reduces the carbon footprint by cladding a building. Airbus has a new generation of planes that use 30% less energy. That is part of the solution, and we should be supporting, not penalising, those big employers and companies.

Let me talk about Swansea. I am proud that people in companies such as Amazon are flying the flag and saying, “Come to Swansea.” We are in the premier league, so we are a global brand. What is stopping us are the Government, who are cutting the coastguard, which undermines confidence in tourism and investment in wind farms offshore, and are stopping the electrification of the railway from Cardiff to Swansea, which would link us to the European network. We just need a helping hand so that we can keep going for success, can build on the intellectual clusters in the two universities in Swansea, can build on our team spirit in marketing Swansea, and can make our contribution to a sustainable, inclusive, growth-focused future for the rest of Britain. There is enormous opportunity for Britain to get up off the floor and fight, but it is being held down by the Tories’ and Liberals’ ineptitude.

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

I welcome this debate because I believe that all Members of this House came into politics with the intention of trying to ensure that the next generation has greater opportunities than the current generation. It is a debate that we need to take very seriously because there is a real problem in our country, and there has been for many years, regarding opportunities for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in our society. The UK’s performance in relation to youngsters who have never been in education, employment or training has been lamentable for many years; we have been near the bottom of the OECD table for a very long time. The youngsters who have left school, are not looking for work and are not in training are those we should most worry about because their opportunities are most scarred, and they are out of contact with the many people who could help them. If we do not give opportunities to those groups of young people, the scars will be with them for life, and it will be a big loss to our whole economy and society; we need a national mission to focus on them.

We heard passionate contributions from many Members in all parts of the House. There was a degree of consensus on apprenticeships. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) and my hon. Friends the Members for Harlow, for Worcester (Mr Walker) and for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) talked about the important opportunities provided by the increase in apprenticeships. I was particularly impressed to hear about the apprenticeships fair being organised by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester and the increase in apprenticeships that my hon. Friends the Members for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle) and for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) have managed to achieve by working with businesses in their areas.

There was some debate about the numbers involved. This is only the second time that I have been able to address the House on apprenticeships. The first time was towards the beginning of this Government’s time in office, when Labour Front Benchers pressed me on whether our target of 50,000 apprenticeships in our first year would be hit. I was rather nervous about responding to that, and I said that I hoped it would. I could not have told the House then that we would not just hit it but do it twice over, doubling our target with 100,000 new apprenticeships in our first year—a record that we are proud of. There is a lot of enthusiasm among workers and businesses up and down the country for our approach to apprenticeships.

There was also some debate about the quality of apprenticeships—an important issue. We aspire to ensure that the apprenticeship is the gold standard approach to vocational training. We want to ensure that in putting this investment into the apprenticeships scheme, we manage to reshape it. I have talked about the idea of access to apprenticeships to ensure that people who are unable to persuade employers to take them on have the chance to experience that learning. We also want to look at higher apprenticeships.

[Mr Thomas]

If the hon. Gentleman aspires, as he says, to high-quality apprenticeships, why is he part of a Government who have abolished the apprenticeships guarantee?

[Mr Davey]

We are doing a lot better than under the apprenticeships guarantee. The hon. Gentleman should have apologised for his motion, because, as my right hon. Friend the Minister for Universities and Science clearly showed, it does not tell the real story—the success story—about apprenticeships by suggesting that it is a negative story. The truth is that the absolute number of all apprenticeships is up, as is the absolute number of young people on apprenticeships.

I am afraid that there was some misunderstanding of that success story, despite the support for our overall policy. That is not surprising, in a way, because Labour’s record is surprisingly poor in this respect. As my hon. Friends the Members for Wirral West (Esther McVey) and for Solihull (Lorely Burt) said, under Labour youth unemployment increased by 40%, and the number of NEETs increased. One of the most surprising facts is that as the number of NEETs was increasing under the Labour Government, it was falling internationally, so we fell behind Hungary, Greece and the Slovak Republic in what we were doing for the most vulnerable young people in our society. That is not a record for Labour to be proud of.

[Mr Denham]

The hon. Gentleman made a big point about statistics. Does he accept that the size of the cohort of young people rose massively during the years when Labour was in power, and that that is why we are right to say that up until the recession the rate of young people not in education, training or employment fell?

[Mr Davey]

The right hon. Gentleman will not admit that the percentage of unemployed young people increased. That takes account of all the issues that he is trying to wriggle out of.

There were complaints about parts of the coalition’s policies, particularly on education maintenance allowance. We heard impassioned speeches from the hon. Members for North West Durham (Pat Glass) and for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin); they both have a lot of knowledge in this area and I listened to them intently. The hon. Member for North West Durham said that she was particularly concerned, rightly, about the outcomes of the most disadvantaged. However, she failed to recognise that our reforms—our different approach—to EMA will mean that more resources are targeted at the most disadvantaged. The 12,000 most disadvantaged young people will get up to £1,200 in a bursary that will help them more than EMA managed to do. I am afraid that her criticism ought to be of the Labour Government.

Two of the coalition’s policies that are vital for young people did not receive the attention they deserved. The first of those is a policy that we should celebrate across this House because it was introduced by the previous Government—increasing the participation age in education and training. We had to make a difficult decision during the spending review about whether this Government would be able to find the funds to continue with that policy. It was a real challenge, but we found the money despite the problems. The shadow Secretary of State complains that we have somehow targeted young people in our policies, but nothing could be further from the truth. Despite the financial situation, we are going forward with raising the participation age in education and training to 17 in 2013 and to 18 in 2015. We should be proud of that policy. We have gone further than the previous Government did. We have increased the number of trials to ensure that the roll-out of the policy is more effective, and we have freed up local authorities to come up with new, more imaginative ways to deliver on it. These are the sorts of policies that will bring real opportunities for the most disadvantaged in our society.

Secondly, there are the reforms to vocational education that we plan to take forward following the report by Professor Alison Wolf. She shook up the cosy consensus that was allowed to develop under the previous Government and made it clear that things were not all hunky-dory and that we needed to back apprenticeships, which the Government were doing, but also, crucially, to increase the quality of vocational education and ensure that those on such courses still managed to achieve basic skills in maths and English. This Government will take forward her recommendations because we believe that that will make a real difference.

We have discovered a number of things today. We have discovered that there is agreement across the House that issues of youth unemployment and the need to increase opportunities for young people are a challenge and a problem, and have been for many years, and that many of the Government’s policies, particularly on apprenticeships, are a real way forward in tackling them. We have discovered that things got worse under the Labour Government, particularly for the most disadvantaged young people. We have discovered that, despite the rhetoric of Labour Members, this Government are determined really to do something for young people and to put social mobility at the heart of our plans to succeed where the previous Government failed.

Question put.