Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Careers advice has long been the punchline for a joke, and many people found that the advice that they were given did not make sense to them at all. In our careers strategy, we are focusing on real, practical employer interactions so that the world of work can go into schools, and so that children can see what is out there, have their passions roused, and work out what is best for them.

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

The Minister will be delighted, because he has lost the punchline for his joke. He should go easy on the self-congratulation, given that the Government have presided over the disintegration of careers services for young people. Cuts have decimated council-led youth support and Connexions, and the Department has failed to include work experience in the curriculum. No wonder the CBI told it that the careers service was broken. Young people will need that help from the Careers & Enterprise Company to start repairing five years of damage. Will the Minister tell us what resources will be given to volunteer enterprise advisers—after all, only £17 million a year is going to the company—and just how many of them there will be for the thousands of schools and further education colleges that need them?

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Gentleman talks as though there had once been a golden age of careers advice and service, but anyone could tell him that there has never been such a golden age. The missing piece in careers advice and guidance was employer interaction, and that is what the excellent Careers & Enterprise Company is setting up. As part of its strategy, it is rolling out enterprise advisers, and 30 local enterprise partnerships have signed up to be part of that. Every school will have an enterprise co-ordinator to link it to the world of work.