Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

He is right, to the extent that we want massively to improve the quality of apprenticeships, as well as the quantity, and they are not in conflict. But of course, if we are going to do both, we have to have more money to spend. That is why the apprenticeship levy is absolutely critical. It will enable us to take Government spending on apprenticeship training from £1.5 billion a year at the moment to £2.5 billion a year in England by the end of this Parliament, which is essential if we are to get the quality as well as the numbers up.

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

The Minister has tried to construct a reassurance on traineeships, but the facts that have been dragged from the Government tell a different story. Freedom of information figures published in FE Week show that just 9% of 19 to 24-year-olds and just one in five of all 16 to 24-year-olds went from traineeships to apprenticeships. The Labour party has consistently supported traineeships for getting many more young people into quality apprenticeships, so why have the Government wasted three years, failing properly to promote, explain or target them? Ten days ago, the Minister warned about Brexit uncertainties threatening apprenticeship growth and the levy, so will he now spell out new initiatives to tackle the necessary increase in traineeships, including support to further education colleges and providers who are desperate to press ahead with them; or else risk failing the young generation?

[Nick Boles]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on being one of the few people to resist the temptation to resign in the past 48 hours. He and the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), will go down in the history books as brave champions of modern opposition.

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman is an avid reader of FE Week; it is an interesting publication. He will know that traineeships are not only about pre-apprenticeship programmes. The whole point of traineeships is to take people into apprenticeships, jobs or further training—whatever is best for them—and he would seek to narrow this programme, the great strength of which is its versatility.

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[Joseph Johnson]

Certainly. In our manifesto we committed to rolling out our very successful catapult network, which provides shared facilities that companies, on their own, could not afford to construct. That enables our businesses to maximise the value of research coming out of our university system. In this Parliament, we have already delivered new catapults at Alderley Park in Cheshire and in Cambridge, with the precision medicine catapult. This is an expanding and very successful network, and it will continue to be so.

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

The Minister’s higher education White Paper rightly bangs on about how important high-level skills are, but the imminent skills White Paper is not even part of his new Higher Education and Research Bill. With those who teach, manage and work in HE fearful of the consequences of Brexit, should he not be prioritising skills strategies for both our community-based and internationally focused universities and using FE colleges as key HE providers? Why is he instead gambling the bank on allowing unknown, brand-new providers to get degree-awarding powers from day one—probationary degrees from probationary providers—risking our universities’ brand reputation overseas, as well as jobs and productivity at home?

[Joseph Johnson]

I am working closely with my colleague the Skills Minister, whose forthcoming White Paper will have many of the answers to the questions the hon. Gentleman has posed. We are surprised by the tone of scepticism about the potential for new higher education providers to lift quality and enhance the range of high-quality higher education on offer in this country. I am afraid, though, that that is of a piece with the Labour party’s previous opposition to the conversion of polytechnics and to new universities in the 1960s.