English for Speakers of Other Languages

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Heidi Alexander]

I agree that college governors throughout the country are making decisions at this time about how they will fund courses next year and whether to keep staff on or put them on notice of redundancy, so there is a real danger that the ability to provide the courses will simply dry up.

I spoke about the possibility of funds just sitting in bank accounts this year, unable to be used, as the students will not be coming through the door because they would not be able to pay their half of the course fees. I ask myself and the Minister whether that is a good use of public funds in such straitened economic times or whether it is an admission that the Department had not really understood the significance of the changes that it included when it published its strategy document last November. What happens in a year’s time, when money has not been spent and budgets are being set for the subsequent year? Does the Minister recognise that reduced spend by colleges and training providers will be a reflection not of demand for English language courses, but of students’ inability to pay?

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

There is an additional point. If courses cease because of cuts, students who have already made some progress but who cannot afford the fees in the coming year will not be able to study. I know from my appalling French that if people do not focus on the study of a new language and maintain their learning, they go backwards.

[Heidi Alexander]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Later in my speech, I have some testimony from Lewisham college students who make precisely that point—that to improve and, indeed, to make the best progress possible, there needs to be continuity of learning.

I was talking about the latest guidance note from the Skills Funding Agency. While I am on that subject, I would like to ask the Minister a few more questions. In particular, why is the Department treating ESOL differently from other basic skills training and foundation learning? In paragraph 47 of the latest Skills Funding Agency note, the Government state that where a learner has an entitlement to a level 2 qualification, entry or level 1 aims will be fully funded to facilitate progression. However, the note also states that skills for life, including ESOL, are exempt from that provision. Will the Minister tell me why? Simply saying, as guidance note 7 does, that guidance note 6 deals with that is not an answer to my question.

It is remarkable that colleges and training providers may not be able to spend money that has been allocated to address basic skills because of the new co-financing requirements that the Government are introducing. That just does not make sense.

I will turn now to some of the wider arguments about why investment in ESOL courses is so important. In the last few days, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has estimated that eastern European immigration has added £4.9 billon to the UK’s gross domestic product. Surely having more people able to speak the language and able to work is a good thing. The alternative is more dependence on the state and a greater outlay on benefits. That is before we start to think about the knock-on effects of poor language ability on the public purse.

In April, a series of freedom of information requests to London hospitals showed that in the three years from 2007 to 2010, £15 million was spent by seven different hospitals on interpreters and translators. We know that other parts of the public sector, whether councils or the Courts Service, have similarly high bills. Again, I find myself in the strange position of agreeing with a Minister. This time, it is the Minister for Immigration, who is quoted in connection with that story as saying:

“This illustrates very starkly why we need to do more to ensure that those people who are settled in this country can speak basic English.”

Will the Minister responsible for skills tell me what discussions he has had with the Minister for Immigration about the impact of his changes to ESOL? Has he told the Minister for Immigration that his Department’s changes will result in fewer people being able to speak basic English? It is not just the NHS that is affected.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I, too, want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) for initiating this debate. I also want to thank the Minister. Along with representatives of the Refugee Council and the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, I had a meeting with him about this policy. At the end of that meeting, I felt a bit optimistic. I feel slightly foolish about that now; I thought that the Minister had got the point.

That point has been emphasised in speeches today. It is that this policy will affect women in an unfair way and that the women who will be affected are the mothers of children whose future is here in Britain. I do not think that we have heard enough about their children. For a child to succeed in school, the input of their parents is critical and mums who can read in English with their children make a major contribution to their children’s learning.

In my constituency, the evidence is that five times as many women as men are affected by this policy and that it is mums for whom the difference is greatest, because it is mums who quite often find it difficult to get out of their homes. That is not only because they do not have the necessary resources but because there are “gatekeepers” in their family who will not allow them out, except to something safe such as an ESOL class. It is a very liberating experience for mothers to attend such a class.

I urge the Minister to raid not only the translation budgets, which the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) has already referred to, but the interpretation budgets. In our police stations and health service in Slough, we spend a huge amount on Language Line. If we could ensure that patients and criminals alike could speak English, less money would need to be spent on Language Line. The Minister needs to invest to save that money.

The Minister wrote to me after our meeting and said:

“We have therefore prioritised Government investment in training for unemployed people actively seeking work.”

He is being too short-term in his thinking. The people who we are talking about today will be able to work in future, but right now they are not able to seek work actively. Unless we invest in them at this point, they will never be able to seek work actively, because one of the things that I have discovered through speaking to many ESOL teachers is that getting people early, before they have learned to get by with pidgin English, is the key to their achieving success in learning English.

I urge the Minister not only to scoop money out of the interpretation budgets for the Home Office and the NHS and use it to reduce the need for interpretation, but to invest in community provision of ESOL. That provision involves family learning, ESOL with reading and ESOL with basic skills. If he could offer that kind of provision, it would provide some of the things that we need for the mums who I am talking about.

There is another thing that the Minister could do. In his letter to me, he referred to “flexibilities” for colleges. If there were more flexibility for colleges, the risk that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East referred to—of colleges having money that they cannot spend—would be reduced. In my constituency, for example, the percentage of students who will receive fee remission in the council-run courses will fall from 82% at present to 6% under the Minister’s proposals. If he gave complete flexibility to colleges and other providers about how they used the money that he gave them, I think that they would use that flexibility well.

Unless the Minister has community-based ESOL education for free or at affordable prices for the mums I have mentioned, we will create a generation of children who, although they were born in Britain, will speak pidgin English and will not be able to use their learning as well as they ought to. Unless he invests in addressing that problem, we will lose another generation of workers.