Apprenticeships and Skills Policy

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, and if it is not too late, I wish you and everyone here a happy new year. We have had a superbly balanced and broad-ranging debate. We must thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) not simply, as she put it, for making this a wide-ranging debate, but for her strong and important points. She gave a powerful critique of the current apprenticeship programme, and outlined the direction in which it needs to go to assist somewhere such as Bradford, which, as many have said, has a fantastic history but needs a powerful future as well.

I was impressed by the huge range of contributions from colleagues across the House. The hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) spoke about the importance of work placements. After a voyage around his witticisms, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) found more fertile ground in horticulture, for which we thank him. The hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) rightly spoke about the need to look to the future and different sorts of skills, and showed an intelligent understanding of where the tensions are between such skill sets. My ever-forceful colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), talked about apprenticeship pathways to get to degree apprenticeships and spoke strongly about the importance of level 2 in terms of progression—I shall come to that later in my remarks.

My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid) raised concerns about how the Government will have a lost generation if they do not properly prepare for apprenticeships, and said that the Institute for Apprenticeships should be focused on outcomes and be supported. My hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Hugh Gaffney) spoke about the importance of ethnic minorities not missing out in Scotland, and he raised some significant concerns. Finally, the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) shared her experiences as a former FE tutor and lecturer and spoke about the need to promote modern apprenticeships. All those contributions have added to this debate.

We know that we are entering a period of extreme uncertainty regarding our skills base because of a cocktail of challenges: Brexit, automation—I take that point from the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire, which is why I said “challenge” rather than “problem”, but it nevertheless focuses our minds strongly—and the damage already done by the neglect of older as well as younger people in adult education, the dramatic fall in take-up by adult learners, and cuts to the adult skills budget. If we are now faced with the impending scenario of a no-deal Brexit, the need for home-grown skills is strengthened yet further.

Despite consistent warnings from ourselves, and the university and FE sectors, the Government have been neglectful of the impending damage—especially through the drift to no deal—that Brexit could cause to our world-class FE colleges and universities, and to skills as a whole. This is an issue for FE in particular, because of the deep engagement of community projects that are funded via the EU. Thousands of UK jobs, and tens of millions of pounds that the UK earns from our EU links with universities, further education colleges and training providers, are in jeopardy as a result. The Government need to get to grips urgently with spelling out how their shared prosperity fund will replace the funding from the European Social Fund and the Research Development Fund, on which our community-focused higher education institutions and colleges so rely.

What is the Department for Education doing—the Minister will have heard me speak about this before—to ensure that the needs of skills and apprenticeships are at the top table? Why have we seen so little proactivity? The Secretary of State seems to have thought that Erasmus was a second-level issue. That is what I have been told, but I hope the Minister will reassure us that it is not a second-level issue, because it is crucial to the skills processes that we need, whether in Bradford or Blackpool.

The already growing skills shortages in areas such as the health service are becoming catastrophic. We heard the national health service plans yesterday. That was all well and good, but the unanimous comment in the media has been about where the 100,000 extra jobs will come from. Where will those people come from if we do not have a progressive, integrated policy? We have a Department—it is new year, so I will try to be charitable to the Minister—that is struggling with the consequences of nursing bursaries being scrapped. I entirely support the Royal College of Nursing’s campaign in this area, and have heard from constituents who have been seconded via the NHS to Blackpool hospital about some of their concerns. We have world-class colleges and providers, but they are being consistently let down by cuts to budgets and funding streams. Unfortunately, apart from the eventual money pledged for the introduction of T-levels, there has been no reversal to those damaging reductions made by the Government.

The Minister urged MPs and the sector to lobby before the Chancellor’s Budget. They did, but they got precisely nowhere. It is imperative that we use apprenticeships and our skills network to help people be trained, but we have to fund them properly. We are being told to look at the spending review, but as the former Minister David Willetts observed on Saturday, when talking about the Augar review, the chances at the moment of the Chancellor focusing his eye on education as opposed to the NHS appear to be minimal.

Fine words we have had plenty of, but they butter no parsnips. That is particularly important in smaller towns and cities, such as Bradford, Blackpool and many of the places that Members who have spoken today represent, the people of which feel that they have been let down. We hear rumours that the Augar recommendations will pin all hopes and money on the cut in university fees. I sincerely hope that the Minister, in whatever capacity she is able to, will raise her voice against the focus simply on higher education, to the detriment of further education.

One of the potential avenues that we need to explore to achieve all that is, of course, the devolved skills and adult education budget implications. There are clear opportunities via those new structures that could be utilised, and should be, if we are to have proper progression in the devolution of adult skills funding. We need a much bigger debate about the devolution of broader apprenticeships than we have had so far.

We need proper infrastructure and long-term thinking. The Government have been poleaxed by Brexit, and are looking only to scrape to 2020 in their funding and policies. While they do that, our new national education service will look at devolving apprenticeships and other skills funding, not just the adult education budget, and our lifelong learning commission will expose and explore new ways of collaborating on the ground with the third sector and the unions to get those skills up and running.

Skills devolution is not just a smart thing to do economically; it is the right thing to do for community growth and cohesion. If apprenticeships are to have strong, positive outcomes for local economies and workforces, far more young people need to get to the starting place to begin with. It is important to grasp the potential for high-quality apprenticeships in the service sector. As others have said, that means supporting our small and medium-sized enterprises and starts at level 2, and ensuring a properly funded and promoted traineeship programme.

We have been banging on about that to a succession of Government Skills Ministers for two years; the current Minister is the third to hear me speak on it. The latest statistics from the Department for Education show a significant drop in level 2 apprenticeships—just 161,000 starts at level 2 in 2017, down from 260,000. The proportion of overall starts has fallen to its lowest level yet. As Mark Dawe of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers said,

“major mistakes in the implementation of the levy have resulted in a serious undermining of the government’s social mobility agenda”.

He also said:

“Level two starts are now the biggest issue we face”.

I can only make reference to the briefing that Members have had from the British Hospitality Association about the importance of progression in that area from level 2 and onwards. Recently I was glad to welcome representatives of Stonegate to Parliament, and a person in my constituency who has gone from being a barperson to running the newly refurbished Manchester hotel, which will be reopened shortly.

Level 2 apprenticeships have fallen, but we have seen a huge rise in management apprenticeships. I do not know what the real story is there. Does the Minister? Has the Government’s failure on level 2 been a market consequence of the way that they sold the levy? I do not know; perhaps the Minister can enlighten us. What we know from the Sutton Trust is that about a third of those apprenticeships are converting existing employees and skills. If that is the case, we are in an even more dire position than the Government’s figures show.

Anything that simply rebadges or validates normal training will not get us where we need to go. To create that step change we must ensure that people can get to the starting point, because level 3 is one of the most telling points for SMEs or self-employment. Whether someone is a hairdresser—I hope that the Minister has managed to get the Secretary of State off the unfortunate prejudices about hairdressing in his Battersea speech—a social care provider, a brickie, an electrician or a plumber, those are the people we need, and the skills that we need. Level 3 is a de facto licence to practise. That is why it is so important that the Government should not neglect traineeships.

There are issues regarding the overspend. The Minister knows that the Institute for Apprenticeship’s chief financial officer recently presented a forecast of a £500 million overspend. Can she tell us whether those figures are accurate? The Education Committee published an all-round critique of the Government’s apprenticeship record, and highlighted the importance of not only apprenticeships, but apprentices. That is a long-overdue priority for the Government. I know that the Minister agrees about the importance of world skills, skills competitions and skills champions. She has banged on about it, and it is very good that she has, but her Department has not always seemed to share the same enthusiasm for taking on board the opinions of apprentices. I urge her to do so, and to utilise the talents of IFA’s panel.

That is the right way to promote the social mobility that we will need in the 2020s, when bespoke skills and enabling ones will have to combine in people’s lives with more traditional qualifications. We need to encourage young people to take up their curiosity for future jobs and apprenticeships at a much earlier age. We have been saying that for some time. It needs hardwiring into careers advice to go beyond the Baker clause and to have a sustained, holistic strategy.

The Government’s consistent failure to support under-represented groups, whether black, Asian and minority ethnic, people with disabilities or care leavers, has to be addressed. We would address it directly by giving it strong positioning in our new national education service. We have been very clear that if we are to get to the right position on T-levels, they cannot be seen simply as a competitor with A-levels. The Sainsbury review pointed in the right direction in that area, but unfortunately the Government have ignored that holistic approach and turned it into a beauty contest.

The concerns that we have heard today about regulations not being fulfilled in key new pathways—employers say they are not currently—and there not being the number of work placements illustrate the point. It is important that we get T-levels going properly, but they must be part of a broader strategy. That is the problem with so much of what the Government have told us. We are not short of potential “ladders of opportunity”, as the Minister’s predecessor, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), put it, but we now need more resources, simplifications and long-term strategies—not the short-term targets that have tied the Government in knots and led to the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South raised in this excellent debate.

[The Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills (Anne Milton)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you today, Sir David. I wish all hon. Members a happy new year. I say to the shadow Minister that I do not feel tied up in knots.

[Gordon Marsden]

Not personally.

[Anne Milton]

Not personally, certainly. I feel quite clear about what I am trying to achieve. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) on securing the debate. I wish I had more time, but I do not. I will debate this matter weekly if that is what Members want, because there could be nothing more important for the productivity and success not just of this country, but of individuals.

I am incredibly fortunate in my job. I get to see so many young people who are passionate and incredibly enthusiastic about the careers that they get through apprenticeships. Their sense of enthusiasm strengthens my faith that we are on the right road. It tells us not only that the direction of travel is right and that parity of esteem between the academic and technical routes is achievable, but that apprenticeships open an alternative door that would not otherwise exist for people—often bright and very gifted young people, but also older people—for whom school and exams did not work.

T-levels and apprenticeships will form the basis of our new technical offer, building the skills of the population. They will be mirror images—one predominantly work-based and the other predominantly study-based, but both leading to skilled employment and opportunities for further study up to and beyond degree level, through apprenticeships or otherwise.

The hon. Member for Bradford South is absolutely right that Bradford is a great city, but 15% with no qualifications is quite a shocking figure in comparison with the national average. She raised the issue of apprenticeships not being worth the paper they were written on, but that was what sat behind all the reforms. We have brought in money from the levy, protected the term, mandated 20% off-the-job training and introduced end-point assessment.

The hon. Lady is right that apprenticeship starts are down, but this is not just about numbers; it is about quality. Before the reforms, a lot of people doing apprenticeships did not even know that they were on them. It was a way of bringing in cheap labour, and we wanted to change that. It is not surprising that the starts went down to begin with, because it was a very big change, but they are now rising, and that rise has been significant at level 4, level 5 and above. I urge the hon. Lady and her businesses in Bradford to contact the National Apprenticeship Service, which I know will be very happy to work with her and with businesses locally.

We are bringing non-levy paying small and medium-sized enterprises into the apprenticeship system. I assure the hon. Lady that I am working closely with the Federation of Small Businesses to ensure that we get it right for SMEs, which often find it quite difficult to navigate the new system. I point out that the money raised by the levy is available for redistribution to non-levy payers, so money raised through the levy in London might well end up being redistributed to smaller employers in Bradford, Hull or anywhere else in the country. From April, large levy payers will be able to transfer 25% of their levy pot without restriction, so the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) might like to have a word with hon. Members for London constituencies to see whether that money can be redistributed.

The hon. Member for Bradford South also mentioned the risk to workers from automation. Some 35% of jobs are set to go in the next 10 years, so the Chancellor has announced the national retraining scheme, a joint venture between the TUC, the CBI and the Government to ensure that we can upskill lower-skilled workers. We are doing much to ensure that this works, especially for workers who may have had a bad experience of education or for whom undertaking more training might cause practical as well as financial problems. We need to ensure that lower-skilled workers get the skills they need and that business gets them as well.

I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) has lots of university degrees to make up for the fact that unfortunately I do not have any. He is right that schools play a critical role, but schools do not work for everyone, and apprenticeships are often a vital route for young and older people to get a second chance.

I praise the role of unionlearn, which I should have mentioned earlier and which often offers excellent in-work training. The Government give it quite a substantial amount of money, and it will be important to the national retraining scheme. I must also mention work experience, because the 45 to 60-day industry placement is a critical part of the new T-levels. The careers strategy has the Gatsby benchmarks at its heart, so that schools can measure their success. Meaningful encounters with the world of work are an important part of that, and the Careers and Enterprise Company is doing a great job of linking schools to local employers.

Doing a school exam or maths homework makes sense if students can see the jobs that will be out there when they leave school—otherwise it is just another exam or another boring class. For those going into a career in STEM—Science, technology, engineering and maths—there is nothing not to like about apprenticeships, which give the skills and work experience needed. Some engineering companies have cut their graduate schemes and are now offering only apprenticeships at level 2 and up to level 3.

The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) made me smile, as he always does, and mentioned horticulture and landscaping. Only today, I saw some fantastic examples of the apprenticeships that the national parks are offering. I would be very happy to work with him and the all-party gardening and horticulture group. Landscaping is one of the disciplines tested at the WorldSkills competition, which I was privileged to see in Abu Dhabi. He might like to visit the WorldSkills website and see the amazing work of landscapers at the competition.

My hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) spoke about the skills gap, which the skills advisory panels will be looking at to give us a clearer picture. The reason why apprenticeships are getting such traction is that employers want more than just knowledge; they want skills as well. Many are moving away from graduate schemes, because a degree apprenticeship, for instance, combines both knowledge and skills.

[Gordon Marsden]

Will the Minister give way?

[Anne Milton]

Yes, but briefly, because the hon. Gentleman is taking my time.

[Gordon Marsden]

I am grateful. The Minister mentions the skills advisory panels; the reason why we need them is that in the previous Parliament the Government abolished the UK Commission for Employment and Skills. Does the Minister regret that the commission is no longer there to give the Department a holistic view?

[Anne Milton]

I do not have regrets. What matters is what we do next, and that we make sure we identify the skills we need. In case I do not have time later, let me note that the hon. Gentleman mentioned devolving skills budgets. In fact, skills budgets are devolved down to the lowest possible level: to local employers. Firms in Bradford and Hull—the levy payers—have the money at their disposal, and we will redistribute it to SMEs.

Time is short, and I do not have time to mention everything, but the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle mentioned nursing, a perfect example of the pathway for progression that I want to see from level 2 right up to level 6. In construction, an employer in Gosport has done a wonderful map that shows young people where they can progress—right up to project manager and beyond. When I was in Bristol, where a lot of work is being done on diversity in apprenticeships, I saw what looked like a tube map, where people can see where they can get on and off their route. Of course, people can go in other directions: they might well do a level 2 in business admin and then go into nursing or end up doing a level 6 in a completely different discipline. That is exactly the area that I want to concentrate on. I spent a lot of time getting business working with the levy and getting the system up and running, but now what matters to me is progression.

With respect to the drop in level 2 apprenticeships, which was mentioned earlier, we are not absolutely sure what is behind the figures. Some 90%[Official Report, 9 January 2019, Vol. 652, c. 6MC.] of starts are still at levels 2 and 3, and of course employment is high, but we need to dig deeper. What matters to me is the people I meet, like the young man I met who got chucked out of college twice, got a level 2 apprenticeship with Virgin Media, skipped level 3, did a level 4—

Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore]

Students who started their courses in the current academic year have had access to the highest ever funding levels to support their living costs. We now have a system of support that targets those from the lowest-income families, who need it the most. A record number of 18-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds went to university this year, 68% more than in 2009.[Official Report, 20 December 2018, Vol. 651, c. 6MC.]

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

As a fellow historian, I warmly congratulate the Minister on his appointment, although I am afraid that he arrives to a perfect storm for students, battered by high tuition fees and extortionate interest, with evidence now piling up from freedom of information requests—the latest in The Huffington Post report that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) has just referred to—that many are unable to cope with spiralling accommodation costs in London and other cities. Yet recent questions I put to the Department on what it is doing about this got the answer that it was not a Government issue. On the day we are told that the London Business School head gets a half a million pound a year package, is it not appalling that students at his and other HE institutions are being brushed off like this? Will the Minister make this a priority for his in-tray?

[Chris Skidmore]

The hon. Gentleman and I have a mutual interest in history, particularly the reign of Henry VII, and I hope that we can continue to be civil in our conversations on HE funding, but I reiterate on the loan package that we have seen not only a 10.3% increase compared with the previous grant system in 2016-17 but in November a further 2.8% increase, which means there is currently a maximum loan of £8,944. On accommodation costs, I am interested in looking in particular at the private rented sector. We have been working with the British Property Federation to develop advice on protocols that will encourage collaborative working between universities and private providers. I do want to go further and I hope that we can work together to look at this issue.

Improving Education Standards

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Neil O'Brien]

I always look for points of agreement, rather than points of disagreement.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

You were caught out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure and privilege not just to follow the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) but to praise the high standard of the speeches from Back Benchers and, indeed, from my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane)—we will come to the Schools Minister shortly.

The hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) gave a thoughtful speech covering a wide range of areas. He was right to talk about the pressure from social media on teachers and students, 16-to-19 funding and soft skills—I prefer to call them enabling skills, because I have found that if we talk to officials and others about soft skills, they put us down the register a bit. However, I entirely agree with everything he said, including about readiness for work, although it would have been easier for many schools if the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when he was Education Secretary, had not scrapped the key stage 4 obligation on work experience as part of the curriculum.

I want to praise my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), who cannot be in her place because she has a meeting with the Children’s Commissioner, but who made a passionate speech about the importance of tackling school violence. She talked about staggering hours in schools and the involvement of the police. From my experience in Blackpool, I can say only that the more we can get the police involved with young people out of school as well as in it, the more we will be doing the right sorts of things. She, too, talked about social media pitfalls.

The hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) rightly referred to the horrific incident in Huddersfield. He then talked about the importance of quick early interventions and I agree with him, but I do not always think that that means reaching for the test; it often means reaching for a decent teacher. I also want to praise—I am sure the whole House will agree—the poignant tribute that he paid to his principal. The hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) said that he did not have a single good teacher, but I think that most of us can remember, from some stage in our life, somebody who got that spark going, so all credit to the hon. Member for Harborough for that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) made a very powerful speech about the strong attachments and perverse incentives for schools to off-roll, and we heard that from others as well. She rightly raised the issue of SEN and disabilities. Incidentally, I have concerns in my constituency about the issue of off-rolling with regard to pupil referral units, as I am sure that many other hon. Members here do. She also mentioned, very importantly, pastoral support for teaching assistants.

The right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) talked about the importance of having opportunities for teaching language skills. She talked about the maintained nurseries sector and mentioned Middlesex University in the context of degree apprenticeships. A couple of weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to go to the Skills Show, at the same time as the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, and I bumped into the people from Middlesex University, who of course brought their robot to the Education Committee. We were told by one or two members of the Committee that he had made more sense than some of the other people who had come before them previously.

[Richard Graham]

Just to go from robots back to excluded pupils for one second, does the hon. Gentleman agree that a really feasible quick fix on this would be to ensure that, if schools exclude pupils, they should be responsible for their results at the end of the year? Does he not agree that that would result in a sharp reduction?

[Gordon Marsden]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman has to say, but the fact is that we know that 10,000 people are off-rolled. At this stage in the proceedings, I think that we need to bell the cat, but I take his point.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) rightly drew attention to the different system in Northern Ireland, including the results in secondary school qualifications, and his concerns about small schools having to buy basic materials.

Finally, the hon. Member for Hendon talked about the diverse nature of his constituency and, very interestingly, about outer-London issues and tier 2 visas. I had the privilege of living in Golders Green for two years as a postgraduate. I am not sure whether that is in his constituency, but it is very near it, so I understand what he said about the difference between the Brent Cross and west Hendon areas, and I know, even after a long period, that those differences remain.

Educational standards are a priority across all ages and all sectors. They are not made in a day, but young people must be able to have a good start in life. That is why we need to focus on those early years, yet this Government have a hugely patchy record in that area. I am afraid that the Schools Minister did not even mention early years in his speech. My colleagues the shadow Education Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), and my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) have tirelessly argued against this Government’s record. Research by the Sutton Trust shows that over 1,000 Sure Start centres have been lost since 2010. More centres are operating on a part-time basis and the number of services has fallen. Parents are paying the price for that and for the Government underfunding the 30-hour offer. According to the Pre-school Learning Alliance, only around one third of childcare providers are delivering 30-hour places completely free.

On Sure Starts, in my constituency in Blackpool, where we have had huge cuts in local government funding, we have had to bear the brunt of this. I remember a Sure Start in Mereside where I met a young woman three times: the first time, she was using the Sure Start; the second time, she had graduated to being an assistant at the Sure Start; and the third time, she was training to be a primary school teacher. That sort of progression has been lost in the hollowing out of Sure Starts by the Government.

[Emma Hardy]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Gordon Marsden]

No, I will not, I am afraid, because I am very short of time. If standards are rising for the cohorts that the Government have talked about, some of that is significantly down to the achievement of the Labour Government before 2010, not to a succession of post-2010 Tory-led Governments that have savaged Sure Starts, while undermining their funding and purpose at every turn. They have done the same with further education colleges.

The financial position of the colleges over the past 10 years, as the Association of Colleges tells us, is that they have had to deal with an average funding cut of 30%, while costs have increased dramatically. Funding for students aged 16 to 18 has been cut by 8% in real terms since 2010. It is entirely right that the chief inspector of Ofsted, writing to the Public Accounts Committee, said the other week:

“My strong view is that the government should use the forthcoming spending review to increase the base rate for 16 to 18 funding.”

Cash has led directly to falling standards in FE.

As we know, the position is similar in other areas. Funding for sixth-form colleges, for example, was subject to deep cuts in 2011 and 2013, and the national funding rate for 16 to 17-year-olds remains frozen at £4,000. I have seen these problems in my own area. The fantastic Blackpool Sixth Form College, which has done brilliant work in the 20-odd years for which I have been the local MP, has also felt the chill wind of the Government’s deliberate policies on austerity. It has had to cut Business and Technology Education Council courses, and wonders, rather sceptically, about T-levels. At the same time, however, it has managed to maintain variety, and outstanding classical civilisation courses are delivered by an outstanding teacher, Peter Wright.

The same applies to higher education. Universities UK says in a briefing that it sent to me for this debate that it estimates from the media reports of the Government’s review that the cut in tuition fees would lead, without replacement, to “significant cuts in universities”. However, this is not just about cuts, but about the other moves that are being suggested. There are concerns about varying fee levels. The Chancellor seems keen to introduce STEM fees, which increase the disincentive for many disadvantaged students, ignoring the fact that many arts and humanities degrees, especially the creative ones, are expensive because of the techniques and equipment required.

The Government have been very negligent in relation to English as a second language, which has not been mentioned much this afternoon. We need ESOL because there are established black and minority ethnic communities in the UK who need it, EU citizens who have come here and who need it and refugees who need it. The Government have talked the talk, but they have not walked the walk. They have not put the funds behind the Casey review, and that is one of the biggest issues that we have.

While all this is going on, we are waiting for details of the Government’s shared prosperity fund, which is supposed to come to the rescue of further and adult education, among other services, following the withdrawal of funds from the European social fund and the European regional development fund. However, there is no sign of it. All that we have are two sentences, one in the Conservative party manifesto and the other in a Tory party conference speech.

Let me touch briefly on adult education, about which I feel very strongly because I taught as a part-time course tutor for the Open University for 20 years. There has been a huge decline in the number of adults accessing education over the past decade and in the number of adults aged 21 and over can access higher education. That is affecting the Open University, Birkbeck and the Workers Educational Association, and, sadly, many higher education institutions have closed, including the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education. Yet we know that we will need the skills of older people—and, indeed, their life chances—post Brexit, given the economic challenges and the fourth industrial revolution.

These warnings are not new—they featured in Sandy Leach’s review in 2008—but they have been made all the more urgent by the Government’s abject failure to help existing workforces to upskill and retrain. The situation demands money, a strategy and a longitudinal vision comparable to that of David Blunkett’s “The Learning Age”. For all their rhetoric and modest initiatives, the Government do not have any of that. We are thinking towards the 2030s with our planned national education service.

I have said on a number of occasions that the worlds of higher and further education—with online and digital lifelong learning, which requires more enabling skills as well as rapidly acquired ones—are converging faster than people in Whitehall expect. That is why we will establish a lifelong learning commission to meet those challenges. That new world will come, but the crucial question is this: will we in the UK be leaders in that process, or the mere recipients of technologies and systems evolved in north America or south-east Asia? We owe it to all our generations, from seven to 70, to rise to that challenge, but unfortunately the Government are not doing that at the moment.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 12th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

As the hon. Lady will have heard, we are looking at the resilience of the sector. I mentioned the £2.5 billion by 2020 and the £500 million for T-levels. There is a lot of work going on to ensure the sector has the resources it needs. Colleges are delivering extraordinarily high-quality training and education—three-quarters of colleges are good or outstanding—and they have high-quality financial management. We put a huge amount of money into restructuring, with exceptional financial support for this sector. A number of pots of money are now being made available to increase the number of teachers in further education.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

The Minister says she has been working very closely with the Treasury, but it seems as though they are close encounters of the failed kind. FE’s financial woes are now at crisis. She knows that the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that spending is down by £3.3 billion since 2011. She knows that a stream of departing principals highlight the problem: 37 colleges on notice to improve their financial health. Now, Ofsted’s chief inspector says funding cuts are affecting FE’s sustainability. Before the Budget, the Minister urged everybody in FE to speak up for funding. They did with one voice through the brilliant Love our Colleges campaign, but the Chancellor ignored them. How is she going to address the crisis now that the Treasury has cold-shouldered FE?

[Anne Milton]

I will not attempt to compete with the hon. Gentleman’s jokes about close encounters. I do not agree that we have been given the cold shoulder. We are looking at the resilience of the sector. I made it quite clear that I am fully aware of the challenges that FE faces. We have been putting in a lot of money, but I know that in the longer term we have to ensure that the core funding allows FE to deliver the high quality education that young people and, indeed, older people need.

Draft Further Education Bodies (Insolvency) Regulations 2018

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2018 General Committees

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. Having taken through the Technical and Further Education Bill with the Minister’s predecessor, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), it is a great pleasure to return to an important part of that Bill and to have the opportunity to raise with her a few points on the insolvency regulations.

The Minister started her speech by providing the context for why the regulations are being brought forward at this time. I want to follow her in that process by quoting a note that the Association of Colleges has produced on the insolvency regulations. It is instructive to remember where we started, and the Minister alluded to the structure of FE colleges that has obtained since 1992. The AOC makes the point that the Minister has made: plans for the statutory college insolvency regime were announced in 2016 to coincide with the area review programme.

It is worth remembering what the AOC said about this situation, because it would seem rather curious to people outside this place—perhaps from time to time it seems rather curious to the Treasury as well, but that is another matter. According to the AOC,

“There are currently no clear rules about what would happen if a college ran out of money and the government did not stand behind it. When the Conservative Government transferred colleges out of local government in 1992, it created a new type of statutory corporation to run colleges but it did not make any rules for cases where a college ran out of money. Instead central government (via a succession of funding agencies) has ended up being the funder of last resort—to protect the college’s students, courses and assets. This has meant that the banks have always been paid in full or been able to replace an old loan with a new one.”

If educational historians of the future were to look at that, they might think that it was a rather curious arrangement to have lasted for such a long time, but we are where we are.

The past two years have just increased the financial pressures faced by the leadership and staff of colleges. As the Association of Colleges has said:

“The outlook for the 266 colleges in England has deteriorated in the last 12 months…despite the widespread agreement that education and skills matter for the country’s future.”

It says that the cost of recruiting and retaining the staff needed for high-quality academic and technical education is rising, but the Government have refused to acknowledge inflation in their funding decisions. As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham said earlier, the funding rates paid to colleges have been fixed since 2013. The relevance of that to the insolvency regulations is that it makes the guesstimate—that is all it can be—by the team in the Department for Education of how often they might be used a bit more dodgy. The hope that apprenticeships would provide more income has not been realised because of the falling numbers of apprentices, and where employers are training their staff, too many focus on older managers and find ways to use the levy to replace other costs.

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

Is it not the case that many colleges that rightly focus on technical education have a lot of up-front capital costs because they have to invest in the specialist equipment that is needed for the courses they offer?

[Gordon Marsden]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point, which illustrates the weaknesses of many of the Government’s initiatives in this area. I will not stray into the institutes of technology, but it is the same principle: the Government think a lot about structures in terms of capital expenditure, but seem less ready to address the issues with equipment that she mentions and—this is, of course, a big bugbear with the sector—the funding of progression and salaries.

The explanatory memorandum states:

“There are currently 37 FE colleges that have a ‘published Notice to Improve for financial health’”.

However, the Department estimated last month that on “today’s assumptions”, over the first 10 years of the insolvency regime, an additional 63 could—I am not saying that they will—

“meet the current triggers for a notice”.

The Department’s document goes on to say that,

“as a central estimate, we believe 100 colleges will need to fully familiarise themselves with the insolvency procedures.”

Again, I stress that that does not mean that they are in imminent danger of insolvency; it is a precautionary measure.

In Government and in legislation, we have to plan and hope for the best, but have backstops for the worst. That is the purpose of the statutory instrument. The Department states that there could be a best case scenario of 80 colleges and a worst case scenario of 150 colleges being at risk. It is therefore slightly strange that paragraph 7.9 of the explanatory memorandum rather blandly states that

“in reality we expect that FE colleges entering insolvency would be a very rare event.”

That seems to be written more in hope than expectation.

This extremely worrying situation cannot come as a surprise because the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that spending on FE and skills fell by £3.3 billion in real terms between 2010 and 2017. Those cuts have been most severe in adult education. That is extremely relevant to the proposals because it is often forgotten that adult learners are an important part of the FE learner area. If that group no longer attends FE colleges in the numbers that it has historically, that puts additional pressures on courses and on the colleges’ financial structures. The Sixth Form Colleges Association has said similar things about the shortfall for its students.

As David Hughes, the chief executive of the Association of Colleges said, while

“the regime being introduced in itself is not a bad thing, the problem is that it is likely to come into effect at an historic low point in college funding.”

I also agree with the University and College Union, which said in its briefing for this debate that the Government’s focus on college insolvency, without considering some of the broader issues, sends the wrong message about the importance of FE. The focus on facilitating market exit in FE rather than strengthening the sector and investing in the necessary resources to help institutions thrive sends a negative message to the public about the importance that the Government ascribe to the sector.

I want to ask several specific questions and make a number of observations that arise from the explanatory memorandum. Paragraph 10 talks about the consultation outcome. The Minister has already referred to the 30 formal responses that the Government received. Paragraph 10.3 states that in response to a question whether

“any specific modification to normal insolvency legislation were needed to allow it to apply effectively to FE and sixth form corporations”

there was

“strong support for the FE insolvency regime mirroring standard insolvency procedures for companies, which is the approach that we have taken.”

There is then a reference to several respondents saying there should be an interim moratorium.

In cold grey terms, those are of course some of the necessary things that the insolvency regime must include, but the difference between the companies that the memorandum uses for comparison and further education is that at least three groups of people are affected. One is the staff and the second is the creditors. Some of those are likely to be small business suppliers and others in the local supply chain, of which FE colleges are often a significant part. It is likely that they would be negatively affected by the insolvency proceedings. The third group is students and lecturers.

I appreciate that it is not an easy thing to include in a statutory instrument, but I appeal to the Minister and to the Department for Education in general to take account, when they consider how to take the matter forward, of those broader audiences. I ask them not simply to look at the question with the narrow scope that a bank might apply.

Paragraph 11 of the explanatory memorandum deals with guidance. It states:

“The Department will publish two sets of guidance before this instrument comes into force.”

It does not tell us when they will be published, and it would be helpful if the Minister could tell us—if not today, then by a note to members of the Committee. That is important, because she has talked about the support that the Government want to give, so as to have more experienced governors and clerks. She gave some examples, and I am pleased to hear that the Further Education Trust for Leadership will be involved in the process.

I am bound to say—and I think that it is also an issue in school governance—that at the moment, although it may change in future, the support that Governments of all hues have given governors in piling on to them various responsibilities, including difficult responsibilities for finance and insolvency, has not been commensurate with the extra time and effort involved, and the extra knowledge they are supposed to possess. I do not think it would be out of place if I were to ask the Minister what amounts of money or, for that matter, practical support from the Education and Skills Funding Agency or the Department, are going to be forthcoming on this occasion. I say that because the issue is important.

I want to touch on the special administration procedures. Concerns were expressed during the passage of the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 about how long they would take. The Minister might be interested to know that her colleague who had responsibility for the Bill in the House of Lords showed, in Committee in March 2017, that he recognised that:

“Concerns have previously been expressed…about the time a special administration might take. I share these concerns. However speedily the special administration is concluded, it will be too long for those involved. Staff, students and creditors will want certainty about what will happen to them at the earliest opportunity.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 1 March 2017; Vol. 779, c. GC215.]

Again, I ask the Minister whether such certainty, or those timescales, will appear in the sets of guidance. If they will not appear in the guidance, will she give the Committee some idea—perhaps through a note, after consulting her officials—of how long that period is likely to be?

These regulations have been deemed necessary. They would have been necessary under any circumstances, but they are particularly necessary because of the sector’s fragility, which has been caused by the cuts that it has faced. I am sorry to say to the Minister—I know she would like not to be challenged on this today—that that was not helped by the Chancellor’s complete failure on Monday to offer any sort of funding uplift to colleges or their staff. That is not to mention the disastrous advanced learner loans policy, for which more than 50% of the allocated funding has been unused and returned the Treasury. Not much of that has been distributed to the colleges that are in dire need of it.

I appreciate that the Minister feels strongly that FEs should have more funding. She has acknowledged that, and made that point again today. She may say, in attempting to erect an air-raid shelter over her Treasury colleagues, that some relief might come on the back of the Augar post-18 report, as a result of issues to do with the Office for National Statistics investigation on resource accounting and budgeting in higher education, which is expected in the new year. The reality, as the Minister just acknowledged, is that the comprehensive spending review will be the first opportunity to offer significant financial relief if the review recommends financial help to FE. That means, in the normal scheme of things, that none of that money will feed through to FE colleges until the academic year 2020-21.

In the meantime, it is fair to ask how many other colleges will slip into a fragile state that might—I stress the word “might”—produce the need for insolvency regulations. It is instructive, in that respect, to quote the FE commissioner, who has been called upon to look at a number of the country’s biggest colleges, which are facing significant challenges as a result of funding cuts and the loans policy. These are simply examples; they demonstrate by no means the full extent of the fragility that has been exposed over the last 12 to 18 months. According to an intervention report from the FE commissioner, Northumberland College has undergone a cashflow crisis. The report says:

“After several years of growth, the college faces a substantial shortfall in income for 2017-18, which is forecast to fall short of the budget target.”

It warns that income is set to decline even further in the college in 2018-19. In July, the Northumberland Chronicle reported that more than 40 staff had taken voluntary redundancy after the college reduced the number of courses on offer.

That is an inevitable consequence of the drip, drip, drip of funding cuts over recent years. To thrive and survive, most FE colleges rely on a diverse mixture of activities, and on money. Money comes from the adult education budget. If there is a shortfall, there are problems. It comes from apprenticeships. Similarly, if something does not take off, there are problems. There are trading activities, and colleges are increasingly reliant on the European social fund and other funding.

That brings us back to the statutory instruments we have debated over the past few weeks and the issue of replacing the European social fund. The Minister is very active in those areas, so perhaps she will say whether she has had more conversations with the Treasury about that since the Budget or before it.

Let me give another example of a college that is in dire straits. Birmingham Metropolitan College was rated in March last year as requiring improvement for the second time in March last year. It is one of the largest colleges in the country, with an income of £61.3 million, total debt for the year of £23.4 million and 16,000 learners. It has had a notice of concern for financial health since July 2015, when it received a visit from the further education commissioner. My third example has been raised on the Floor of the House and elsewhere by my hon. Friends who represent Hull constituencies. It is the dire financial straits in which Hull College has found itself since November 2016, when it was forced to request exceptional financial support from the Education and Skills Funding Agency after its bank withdrew support.

In the light of the things that I have described, the idea that this insolvency thing will be bedded in and called on fairly sparingly might need to be revisited. The Minister was very clear about the timescale for cutting off exceptional financial support for colleges once the insolvency regime is introduced. To be clear, is she saying that her Department will curtail that funding completely? Is she not concerned that, owing to the number of colleges at risk, withdrawing those funds so quickly could have a significant impact on a large number of colleges? What timescale does she envisage, if one has been envisaged, for a transition period between the implementation of the regime that the order will put into place—we all know that such changes do not take place overnight—and the cut-off of that last-resort funding?

The Minister will be pleased to know that I will not rehearse our long-standing criticisms and concerns about the area-based reviews that took place largely under her two predecessors. However, I was hoping that she might be able to tell us how those reviews had reduced the possibility of future financial failures. The statistics I have listed suggest a different picture. What assessment has she commissioned of the impact of the review or their contribution to reducing the possibility of insolvencies? If she has not commissioned an assessment, will she do so—preferably as an external examination, undertaken outside the Department?

I have talked about guidance. The order alludes to the position of students with special educational needs, about whom we have particular concerns. Given the Government’s keenness to be seen to be doing the right thing on disability and equality issues, how does the Minister intend to ensure that there is no disruption to the particular requirements of students with special educational needs in these circumstances, who often require tailored support?

It seems that, as always in these cases, the devil is in the detail. However, the detail is not always there in the memorandum. I raise with the Minister a fairly fundamental issue that we discussed to some degree during the passage of the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 but which does not, needless to say, find itself in these specifics terms today. A primary concern of the Opposition and other organisations, including the UCU, was that the Act basically allowed for the assets of an insolvent college to be handed over to private companies, as long as they were delivering education. Regulation 15, which deals with section 107—the distribution of a statutory corporation’s property—goes into the detail of that, but it does not specify that the college assets that are taken over by a private company should serve the same cohort as the insolvent provider. The regulation reads as if it might allow a college’s assets to be handed to a school or university, or to a much smaller and narrower education institution, possibly for significant profit, without placing any requirement on them to continue to deliver further education as opposed to initial or higher education.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that given some of the cowboys—for want of a better word—in the training industry, many of whom face allegations of corruption, it would be a dangerous state of affairs were any of those smaller companies to pick up the work of an FE college?

[Gordon Marsden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to flag that up. That would be of considerable concern. I will not mention particular issues, although readers of FE Week and other publications will have seen some of the references out there, but this is a serious issue that may be disadvantageous to local people in terms of choice. Nor is it simply hypothetical—there are examples of such jiggery-pokery. The Minister was not in the Department between 2011 and 2012. If she is not familiar with what happened then with the Apollo Group and various other organisations, I suggest she consults her officials, because those scandals embodied some of the issues to which my hon. Friend refers.

I do not want to take up too much more time, but let me finally discuss the banks. This issue is partly a result of cashflow problems and the banks removing investment from the sector. The 2018 report on college finances by the Association of Colleges provides more information about those issues, and we should be careful to ensure that the new college insolvency regime considers their consequences. There is an old saying that banks are institutions that lend people umbrellas when it is dry but take them away when it is raining. I am afraid that that is increasingly borne out, not just in banks’ cavalier closure of local branches to the public but in their treatment of some FE and other learning institutions. FE is particularly exposed because, on the whole, colleges, for historical and operational reasons, do not have the resources or the reserves that many—although not all—higher education institutions have.

One of the problems with the Technical and Further Education Act and the statutory instruments that flowed from it is that they have little tie-in with the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, which deals with the protection of students in the event of institutional failure. That is a pity, because one in 10 higher education students study in further education colleges.

The Government’s plans are designed to change behaviour among college leaders and lenders. The UCU acknowledges that and does not criticise it, but states that that means colleges will be forced to aim at bigger surpluses, conserve cash, control staff costs and cut capital spending. As abstract things, those are all very prudent, but at a point at which the country faces difficult economic times, that is not really the response anyone wants from colleges—especially when it is not matched by the investment in the sector to which I referred.

Post-Brexit and post-automation, demand among young people for this type of education will rise, as will businesses’ need for skilled staff. The challenge for the Government is to make sure that they match the backstop of the draft regulations with the positive investment that the FE sector desperately needs.

[Anne Milton]

I hope that I can deal with all the issues that the hon. Gentleman has raised. If I miss anything out, I hope that hon. Members will let me know and I will come back to them, but I think I can answer most of the points that were made.

The hon. Gentleman made some important points. He pointed out that the situation colleges are in is due to legislation passed in 1992, when I was not a Member of Parliament. A long time has lapsed before anybody got round to dealing with this. The previous three Governments, one of which was Labour, did not address this. Although I was not in post when the area review process was kicked off, at that time sharp focus was put on the fact that an insolvency regime was needed for FE colleges, to make sure that the process was orderly and, critically, to make sure that learners were protected.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the group of people who would be affected, including the staff. We think of teachers, but there are also ancillary staff and everybody else, and that is why this must be done in an orderly fashion.

Nothing has been more at the forefront of my mind in the time I have been dealing with FE colleges than the insolvency regime that is coming down the tracks. The number of colleges that have problems is not a guesstimate. I meet weekly with the FE team. I meet frequently and regularly with the FE commissioner and a great deal of his work has been directed at colleges that are not in trouble, but where the books suggest that there might be a problem. The idea of the FE commissioner’s team is to get in early and give them the support they need in order to balance the books.

In a debate such as this, the danger is that we forget that there are some excellent colleges, so I asked my officials to obtain two examples. Walsall and York are both outstanding for financial management and quality. I am fully aware of the constraints on colleges and their funding, but it is possible to run a very successful college that is both financially sustainable and has very high-quality teaching. Of course, they need the money at the base, but strong leadership and management, along with strong governance, are critical.

I do not have the figures with me, but I mentioned that the Education and Training Foundation was doing a lot of work with governors. In some of the more successful colleges I have seen, getting in good employers, particularly from the local area, has been important to management success. They have the expertise for managing the finances. That close relationship between employers and colleges is important. I went to a college recently that was very pleased about the levy, as it is an income stream for colleges, but I was slightly distressed to hear the college leader say, “Well, it now means that we are starting to go out and talk to business.” I thought, “You should have been talking to business 10 years ago.” A lot of our reforms are making that relationship closer. In many ways, FE colleges are the anchor for all the reforms that we want to bring in in education and in improving skills and technical education.

I do not have the precise date on when the guidance will be published, but I am happy to let the hon. Gentleman know when I do. He also asked how long special administration will last, which I think will be on a case-by-case basis. Protection of learners is very important, as is staff employment in those colleges, because we do not have huge numbers of people queuing up to teach in FE. Finding them alternative posts will be important to the social and teaching capital of the sector.

The hon. Gentleman asked what will happen in this area, and learner protection is important. I was pleased that he and the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East mentioned young people with special educational needs, who are often taught in colleges and achieve phenomenal results that are well above the original estimates of what they might be able to do at the beginning of their course. They are learners. That is why they will be at the top of the list for protection. The duty to ensure that they have ample and equal opportunity—the word “equal” is important—to go on and have fulfilling lives will be paramount.

The hon. Gentleman asked specifically whether the area reviews have been successful and whether I have commissioned any work. Work is ongoing. In fact, I met the FE commissioner today and our conversation went along those lines. We need to look back and ask what success there has been. Without doubt, there has been success. Of course, we cannot compel colleges to merge or to do anything.

[Gordon Marsden]

The Minister is being fair and looking at this issue in the round, for which I am grateful. I was making a specific point about whether the Department had done any analysis—I realise it may be too early—of the implications financially for the structures of the institutions, as well as asking about the broader aspects of how things were going.

[Anne Milton]

I should reassure the hon. Gentleman that I do not feel the need to erect an air-raid shelter over anybody, and certainly not Her Majesty’s Treasury, which is quite good at looking after itself to be absolutely honest. I am not really in that business. However, it will be important to look back and ask what has worked and why. The problem is that the debate at the moment, not just in this House but among the public, is all about money. That is a mistake; it is not just about money. I know that the hon. Gentleman appreciates that. It is about what you do with the money. Good management and leadership are important in making these institutions work.

The hon. Gentleman quoted the UCU, but it would be unfair to suggest that we have got to this moment without me or any of my predecessors being acutely aware of where FE colleges get their money and of the need to make sure that that is funded in future. We are doing several pieces of work. He referred to Philip Augar’s review of post-18 education funding. FE colleges come into that remit. We are also looking at level 4 and 5 provision. A lot of universities are providing level 4 and 5 provision. Should that happen or would it be better done in FE colleges?

Draft West of England Combined Authority (Adult Education Functions) Order 2018 Draft Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authorthy (Adult Education Functions) Order 2018

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2018 General Committees

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and to face again my colleague the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills across the room. We might be tempted to feel that this is groundhog day, because this is the third such set of statutory instruments, but all SIs have their particularities.

In her peroration, the Minister rightly touched on some of the paradoxes in relatively wealthy—I will not say “absolutely wealthy”—combined authorities, with skills gaps and other things. In the previous SIs, we have talked about some of the tensions—creative tensions, we hope—between the demands of place and sector in relation to moving much more quickly to the devolution of funding for non-adult apprenticeships and other skills, but we are not here today to talk about that in detail.

I want to pick up on some of the particular issues—indeed, the Minister touched on this in her comments—with these two combined authorities. Looking at the explanatory memorandum that we have been given, which must have been provided for all three of the Committees considering these sets of SIs, it is relatively heartening that, while they are varied, each of them refers to consultations that were undertaken by the proto-combined authorities. That is helpful and encouraging.

It is always difficult to get a broader response than from businesses that will be directly affected, but it is important to do so. You and I know, Mr Stringer—you know this only too well from your own personal experience in local government—how important it is to take people with us on a process. We also know what pitfalls can occur if we do not take people with us. The West of England Combined Authority undertook a major consultation in 2016; more than 2,000 individuals responded via survey and 14 organisations provided a response. Just less than half agreed that the WECA would ensure that skills and training provision would be better tailored to meet local needs.

The Minister alluded to the situation in the west of England. I am reliably informed, not least by WECA’s own website, that the west of England has one of the most skilled workforces in the country—42% of graduates choose to remain there and almost 48% of people are educated to degree level—but of course they have all sorts of needs, which the Minister has mentioned. The combined authority will assume responsibility for the apprenticeship grant. When describing how it proposes to handle that, it talks about how it will be used alongside mainstream apprenticeship participation funding to incentivise employers, but the authority has agreed to vary the criteria associated with the grant size to meet local needs. The ability to vary according to local circumstances will obviously be crucial in all the combined authority SIs that have come before us, but as I say, this combined authority has paid particular attention to it.

I was also pleased to see that, in its proposals and preparation for the devolution of adult education funding decisions, the combined authority talks quite strongly about the need to work with the Department for Work and Pensions to focus on those with a health condition or disability and the very long-term unemployed. The Minister, I know, given her own health background in Government, will understand the need for these devolved authorities to work collaboratively with other Departments, particularly in adult education. It is encouraging to see at this stage that that is what the West of England is keen to do.

The Minister also touched on the more difficult challenges in the West of England. She referred to one particular area that was very high on the disadvantaged scale. I was encouraged to see that, in its plans under the heading of apprenticeships and technical education, the West of England wants to develop new projects to support apprenticeships, working with the Careers & Enterprise Company.

Particularly—it does not say so specifically, but I will take a guess that it is Bristol—the area wants to work with the apprenticeship ambassador network, including the youth network and, indeed, the Bristol black and ethnic minority apprenticeships pilots. I am sure that the Minister will be aware of the keen interest that the Mayor of Bristol has taken in those projects; he has spoken on a number of occasions and he spoke very strongly about it at our party conference only a month ago. It is important, although overall we are dealing with a relatively well-off combined authority, that particular areas such as Bristol are looked at.

The orders in respect of Cambridge and Peterborough have also been the subject of the proper consultations and slightly more people responded. More than 4,000 people had their say, according to the Cambridge and Peterborough Combined Authority, or CPCA. This is interesting, because the question about adult education was not asked in quite the same way that the Government are dealing with it, but nevertheless I will give the figures. Asked for their views on giving the CPCA responsibility for adult education and skills training for people aged 19 and over, 74% of respondents to the online survey said they were supportive, and in the independent survey, which consulted a lot of businesses, 78% demonstrated their support. That might be something for the Minister to ponder.

The distinctive characteristic of Cambridge and Peterborough, which the combined authority rightly refers to, is its world-class higher education offering. There is the University of Cambridge, but also Anglia Ruskin University, which I had the privilege of visiting, wearing my other hat, and between them they represent the two thrusts in the area. When we talk about adult education, although we rightly think about the bread and butter things that can be done in skills and further education, we must not forget that such education needs to be—I will not stray beyond the statutory instrument we are considering—a key part of the mix in higher education, not least in view of the retraining and reskilling that we will require in the future, whatever the future may bring.

I had a quick look at the combined authority’s website today and I am glad to see that it has already hosted—last Wednesday—a market engagement workshop, with 33 attendees from 29 providers, some from within and some from outside the county. That makes the point that, although the Government are devolving the support to discrete areas, it is not as if there were a Berlin wall around the area, and the ripples from that part of the country to other areas are important. That is one reason why the CPCA and, I think, the Government, have recognised the importance of the Oxford, Cambridge and Milton Keynes corridor. The CPCA is very ambitious with its strategic spatial framework, which is entitled, “Towards a Sustainable Growth Strategy to 2050”, by which time, if the good Lord spares us, the skills Minister and I may yet be in an emeritus and distinguished third age adviser role on such things—I will not trespass any further on our personal chronologies.

Again, the combined authority makes the point that Cambridgeshire and Peterborough’s surrounding districts have strong functional links with the authority area. As the Minister and I said in a previous Statutory Instrument Committee, both the areas that we are discussing have a mix of areas—small towns, rural areas and cities—and it is important that in the devolution process they work hard on all those aspects.

On skills, not just for younger people but for older people, it is interesting that in its strategic document the CPCA gives an outline of participation in higher education and training across the combined authority area. Although it is perfectly true to say—looking at the hatchings on the map—that the vast majority of the area is doing well, certainly regarding the participation of young people in the so-called POLAR quintile, a number of areas in the north score very low on participation. The paradox is that we will have shortages of certain skills because people are very well trained, and those shortages could be exacerbated after Brexit, whatever its outcome. That is an additional reason for us to press forward with the devolution of skills in these areas.

I conclude by picking up on the implications of the process across the areas covered by all six statutory instruments, including Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and the West of England. The Minister will recall that, when we started on this odyssey with the Greater Manchester and West Midlands combined authorities, I raised the issue of the transitional funding and arrangements, and drew her attention to the particular problems of the Workers’ Educational Association. It is a national body that has worked for many decades—in some cases more than 100 years—in all of the six areas. It finds itself caught between the devil and the deep blue sea in the process of transition and is finding it hard to know where to get funding.

The Minister and I had a brief exchange on that, and I understand the Government’s current position. Since we had that exchange, it has come to my attention that, regrettably, at least one of the existing city regions has said that the WEA will not be prioritised for grant funding because the primary focus will be on residents. I do not want to comment further on that matter and I imagine that the WEA will makes its own representations to the Minister, but it brings us back to the following point. If the Minister and her Department cannot offer transitional funding from their budget, given the rosier news that the Chancellor had this morning about the PSBR and other things, it would be helpful if the Chancellor could recognise this matter in his forthcoming Budget.

With those observations, I will conclude, Mr Stringer. As I have said on previous occasions, we thoroughly support the objectives of this process, including for the two local areas that we are discussing today, and we will not oppose the motions.

Draft Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (Adult Education Functions) Order 2018 Draft Tees Valley Combined Authority (Adult Education Functions) Order 2018

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 General Committees

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson, and it is a particular pleasure to see the Minister in her place, after some of the logistical issues that she must have faced this morning.

I want to take my lead, slightly, from the Minister, but I will not detain the Committee long. The Minister reminded us both—and the Whips—that we were all sitting discussing a similar, but never the same, set of issues yesterday afternoon. The Minister has laid out her stall in that respect and she will be relieved to hear that I do not propose to repeat everything I said yesterday. However, I want to pick out two or three of the issues we raised in respect of the draft orders for Greater Manchester and the West Midlands that are equally pertinent this morning.

Yesterday, I pointed out three areas in which the Opposition would like to see the Government go further and faster. There was, I hope, a broad consensus between the Government and the Opposition on the need for devolution in these areas, but we believe, as I said yesterday, that

“if we want a proper economic plan across these areas…simply looking at devolving the adult skills budget and not considering the broader issue around apprenticeships is…pretty daft in the medium to long term.”—[Official Report, Fourth Delegated Legislation Committee, 15 October 2018; c. 5.]

I will leave it at that.

Importantly, we also talked about ESOL, and the Minister responded well. I shall be careful in what I say this morning about both combined authorities. I am going to say something about their differences in a moment, but I am particularly conscious of the fact—which I think is a good thing—that we have Members on the Committee from both combined authority areas: my hon. Friends the Members for Stockton North and for Liverpool, Riverside, and the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland. Perish the thought that I should attempt to second-guess their thoughts in this area—and the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland will have to forgive me, as I do not have encyclopaedic knowledge of what the ESOL demands in the Tees Valley area might be—but having been born and brought up in the north-west, I have a strong knowledge of the situation in Liverpool. There, as in many of our big cities, there are major challenges in local communities. The Minister and I talked a little about that yesterday, and I was pleased that she confirmed that ESOL will be a significant part of the process of devolution.

The only other point that I touched on yesterday that bears repeating today is that as the orders—which, as I say, we wholeheartedly support—go forward, we must not be too optimistic about the time it will take to transit from the current situation to the future situation. We all sit in a Westminster bubble from time to time. We assume—no doubt this is as true of officials as it is of Members of Parliament—that the moment something is signed on the dotted line, that is the end of it, but of course it is not. The implementation process is as important as passing the orders that we are debating.

Having made those generic comments, I will make one or two comments about the impact in the two areas that we are looking at. The Liverpool City Region covers an area that is historically and geographically diverse. It contains areas that were once part of historic Lancashire and Cheshire. It is at the very cusp of identities, accents and origins in the north-west. It encompasses places like Sefton, where Anthony Gormley’s statues look out to sea; it encompasses the Beatles, and everything we owe to the rich culture of the city of Liverpool—

[The Chair]

Including your Chairman’s birthplace.

[Gordon Marsden]

Including the Chairman’s birthplace. It also encompasses the Wirral, and apart from other things, as a medievalist I have to make the observation that the Wirral is believed to have been the site of the adventures of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, an important Middle English story.

To touch on Liverpool for a moment, the mixture of origins among the people who live in that city—Welsh, Irish, Scottish, Afro-Caribbean, Somali—in itself makes the point about the importance of ESOL and those skills areas. The Mayor, Steve Rotheram, has been champing at the bit on this; I know that because I shared a platform with him at our party conference, where he spoke strongly about the need to take things further forward. I know also that he has, in recent weeks, brought forward measures that will involve taking into account the work of the smaller towns in the Liverpool City Region. We touched on this yesterday, and I am sure that it is also a pertinent point for the Tees Valley: the need to recognise the diversity within city regions or combined authority areas, in terms of both geography and local economics, is paramount. Therefore, it is extremely important that the Mayor is taking such issues further forward.

With regard to the Tees Valley, the Minister has already mentioned the higher levels of unemployment. There, too, we have a pretty diverse collection of boroughs; I think it is fair to say that the mayoral elections in Tees Valley were on a knife-edge. We have five boroughs—I always forget that Redcar and Cleveland are together—that have quite different, quite distinct, profiles. The area has a proud industrial history. It has involved seafaring, rural employment, chemicals—many different things. It is therefore very important that in this process of taking these measures forward, there is strong consultation. I did not mention this specifically in our discussions yesterday about Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, but I would apply it particularly in one sense. Here I take a leaf out of the Minister’s book yesterday, when she spoke, at the end of her peroration, about the need for the Department to keep close, but not be overbearing, with the combined authorities once the orders have been put into effect. I wholeheartedly agree with that. It will be particularly important, if I may say so to the Minister—I would like her to comment on this—in the context of the dread word “Brexit”.

I mention Brexit specifically, and in relation particularly to the Tees Valley, because I have been studying the Tees Valley’s 2016 to 2026 strategic plan for the combined authority, and that plan points particularly to the amount of money that the Tees Valley has received over a long period from the European structural funds. It says:

“Without this support it will be extremely challenging to achieve economic growth”.

That goes to the heart of the process of devolving skills, whether they are adult skills or broader skills, which we would want to see devolved in this process, because, to be blunt, if what is going to be devolved is a husk, without that funding, what will the benefit of it be?

The Government have been, in my view, singularly cavalier and remiss about putting any meat on the bone of the so-called shared prosperity fund, which is supposed to come forward to deliver some of the skills and some of the funding that we will lose if we leave the EU. I am asking the Minister very specifically today about that point. I have picked it up in the particular context of Tees Valley, but it could equally apply to many of the other combined authority and mayoral areas that are getting devolved funding, and to the other two statutory instruments that I understand we shall be considering—in this room or another one—shortly. Without some pressure from the Minister and her colleagues in the Department to get something on the table about just what substitution for the European regional funding and structural funding there will be, they will be handing over a useful process of devolution but one fraught with difficulty.

I understand the difficulties for the Minister and her Department. Brexit is absorbing all, and these issues will not immediately apply between 2018 and 2021, but my goodness, if the Government do not get their act together and put the money into the national prosperity fund or shared prosperity fund—or whatever Orwellian title they choose to give it—those areas that are having this useful amount of devolution delivered today will find that they have inherited a rather moth-eaten set of strategic funding to go with it.

Having said that, I repeat what I said at the start: we welcome this amount of devolution, we think it will be useful and we wish it were more. We would like the Government to do something in the area of strategic funding, particularly as that is at the heart of delivering the skills offer.

Draft Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Adult Education Functions) Order 2018 Draft West Midlands Combined Authority (Adult Education Functions) Order 2018

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 General Committees

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry. We welcome these orders enthusiastically, and I am pleased that we are finally able to have this discussion. Originally, the former Skills Funding Agency said that seven regions were supposed to get devolved AEBs for 2018, but the proposal has been delayed for a year. Still, better late than never.

I welcome the terms in which the Minister concluded her peroration. She talked about the broader aspects of the issue, as well as the technical aspects, which must be discussed on such occasions. We believe it is important that we give the combined authorities the power to start making changes locally as soon as possible. I know from personal contact with the Mayors of Greater Manchester and of Liverpool combined authorities, and from what the Mayor of the West Midlands combined authority, Andy Street, has said, that they are itching to get moving in those areas.

There are clear opportunities via these new structures, but there also needs to be horizontal, not simply vertical, co-operation, and infrastructure projects should be tied up with local delivery and co-operation wherever possible. I do not believe we can micromanage it all from Whitehall. That is why we welcome these proposals. Place and sector are always critical factors in supply and demand.

Tentative progress has been made in the devolution of adult skills funding, but we need a much bigger debate about the devolution of broader apprenticeship and skills funding. That is particularly pressing because of the sharp downturn in apprenticeship starts since the levy was introduced, especially in the 16 to 24 age range. One potential avenue that must be explored is devolved skills and the implications of the adult education budget’s relative narrowness.

Devolving apprenticeships, including for adult apprenticeships and other skills funding, and not just the adult education budget, is the right way to go. As the Minister has made clear, devolution of FE should be the way forward in terms of community growth and cohesion. If we do not see the overall context of that and if we do not use all the levers for delivering the change we need, things could be very narrow. It could be a case of Hamlet without the prince. The reality is that if we want a proper economic plan across these areas—Greater Manchester, which I know very well, having grown up there, and the west midlands, which I know reasonably well—simply looking at devolving the adult skills budget and not considering the broader issue around apprenticeships is, to use a good old-fashioned northern phrase, pretty daft in the medium to long term.

However, we are where we are, and I want to ask the Minister specific questions about the orders before us today. Article 3(2)(b) does not include any functions relating to persons subject to adult detention. I assume that refers to the education of prisoners. The Minister might need to send a note, but will she clarify the role of continuity between the Department for Education and the Home Office when the devolution takes place?

On the memorandum, in terms of the policy background—cited in the context of sections 86 to 88 —the Minister made the point that the measure is subject to an exception in relation to apprenticeship training. I thought the wording was slightly ambiguous, but it is clear from what she said that the Government do not propose moving beyond the parameters in terms of apprenticeships. I want to ask her why, because the argument for that is compelling.

The explanatory memorandum states that

“the Department for Education and the Education and Skills Funding Agency...will agree a collaborative approach through a Memorandum of Understanding”.

Given that the order has been delayed by roughly a year—it is not uncommon to introduce orders when lots of details have already been addressed within a Department—will the Minister tell us where the Department is up to with those memorandums of understanding with the two combined authorities? Related to that is the question of facilitating the alignment, where appropriate, of local and national policy. That plays to the stability of the sector throughout the process of transition. I will come back to that in due course.

At paragraph 10.6, the explanatory memorandum alludes to the fact that the Greater Manchester combined authority

“set out its ambition in response to the consultation and work to integrate the education, skills and employment landscape.”

That is far wider than the Government propose at this stage. I hope that they will reflect on that enthusiasm from Greater Manchester and try their best to accommodate it.

We know what the situation is with the separate skills agreement with the west midlands. It would be interesting if the Minister explained why it was appropriate for the West Midlands combined authority to have the skills deal and not Greater Manchester when the statistics she used showed that both areas are in sore need of that arrangement. In that respect, I can only add to what the metro Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has said. This picks up on what the Minister has said about T-levels—I understand the importance of a collaborative process, but it is curious to have one without involving T-levels at this stage. Andy Burnham said:

“Further devolution to allow a less fragmented post-16 skills system…for young people, including apprenticeships and T-Levels, would go a long way to connecting residents and businesses with the growth of Greater Manchester.”

One important matter for Greater Manchester and West Midlands, and cities and combined authorities that might be affected more generally, is the impact on ESOL funding. I am happy to be corrected by the Minister or officials, but my understanding is that ESOL will be treated as part of the adult education budget. I therefore assume that responsibility for ESOL will be transferred in the same way for Greater Manchester and West Midlands. If so, and on the assumption that DFE is the lead agency for ESOL—obviously, the Home Office and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government contribute to provision for migrants and asylum seekers—what will the Minister do to ensure that the devolution process works smoothly?

The Minister will be aware that ESOL funding has decreased from £203 million in 2010 to £90 million in 2016, a real-terms cut of 60%. Colleges and other providers have had their capacity to deliver vital courses slashed. It is therefore important that ESOL funding is devolved smoothly so that there is no further impact on the people who need that funding.

It is well understood that some adult education budgets are devolved. Some of but not all the areas to which the Government will devolve them will have a significant number of people for whom English is not their first spoken language. In that respect, I cite my county of Lancashire, which is not in a combined authority. In some areas and some ethnic groups, women, and particularly adult women, need that English support for a range of social and cultural reasons with which the Minister may be familiar. I do not expect her to respond in detail, but I hope she reflects on that.

Skills devolution is not just the smart thing to do economically in the community, but the way forward for community growth and cohesion. Labour has made it clear in our party policy that, if we were in government, we would look favourably on local authorities, Mayors and combined authorities if they had the capacity, competence and aptitude to offer those deals. We believe the Government should do the same.

The dramatic decrease in funding since 2010 means that I have to ask the Minister this: as part of this process, and for areas that will not have devolution, will there be additional funding for adult education and FE colleges in the Budget? Will she commit funding to combined authorities for the administration of the education budget? She indicated that that will happen, which I welcome, but is she in a position to say how much money and roughly what staffing support there might be?

I do not want to go into the details of some of the controversies that have characterised what has gone on in Greater London—it would not be appropriate for me do so—but they shine a light on the need for this process to go through as smoothly as possible.

I want to speak about the inevitable concerns over market instability when rolling out AEB devolution. I said that that has been delayed for a year, and there is no point going into the details of why and wherefore. What happens often in government—Governments of all hues—is that when something is delayed for a year and finally moves forward, there is such a collective sigh of relief, not least from the Minister and senior officials, that there is a danger that the implementation timeframe will be rushed. That is not me raising this issue; just last week, FE Week published an article quoting Dr Gareth Thomas, managing director of consultancy firm Skills and Employment Support Ltd, in which he said that

“while the authorities ‘may be able to complete the procurement and contracting’ it was less certain that providers would ‘be able to adapt their delivery models and put appropriate partnership arrangements in place’ in time.”

He said that a lot would depend on how different the delivery requirements were area to area. He added:

“‘Hitting the ground running from August 1 will be a big challenge.’”

The chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, Mark Dawe, with whom the Minister obviously is very familiar, said that providers were generally

“‘facing dramatic changes across…their programmes of delivery. It is the uncertainty as to what is changing when and therefore the ability to plan and vary resource that is and will cause the greatest destabilisation’”.

He said that there should be a

“‘clear plan and commissioning’ of all AEB.”

I want to touch on an issue that is tangential but part and parcel of the overall picture of adult education. The Minister will be fully aware of the particular concern of the Workers Educational Association; it is a national body but, as I understand it, the Minister and her officials have decided it will not have special arrangements. That leaves the WEA in quite a perilous situation on devolution issues such as this. No one is saying that Greater Manchester, the west midlands and the other areas we will discuss tomorrow would not want to come to an agreement in that respect, but the question, as always, is about the transition period and how that funding can be managed in that area. I hope that the Minister will say something about that.

We welcome these arrangements, which are very important. The scale of the challenge and the demands on the AEB in Greater Manchester are significant—the Minister quoted some figures on that. Sometimes, we are all guilty of seeing the top line of Greater Manchester and Liverpool and conflating that with the narrow scope of the cities in there. Greater Manchester, which I know very well, and the west midlands, which I do not know anywhere near as well, both have a common theme: the cities of Manchester and of Birmingham have benefited hugely over the last 20 years, but the economic footprint in the combined authorities that we are looking at has been very fragmented. In many cases, the outer boroughs in Greater Manchester and the west midlands have not experienced the economic impact and have quite different economic and employment structures. Those are among the issues that both the metro Mayors and the combined authorities in those areas will need to get a handle on.

With those comments I shall conclude. As I said, we do not intend to oppose the orders.

[Anne Milton]

The shadow Minister raised a number of points, and I hope I can address them all. To collect the comments together, I suppose that some of the delay was to do with the combined authorities not feeling that they were ready. We felt it was very important that they felt ready to take the functions on, because, as he rightly raised, transition is difficult. Thinking about the providers, he mentioned Mark Dawe and combined authorities getting up to speed. I know that Mark will have raised that point from the providers’ point of view.

Even if we are doing the right thing, in the end we have to manage the process. We have all seen good ideas fall victim to the baby going out with the bathwater, and we want to ensure that that does not happen. Some of the delay was important in ensuring that everything was in place. All the combined authorities have to have skills plans in place so that local residents can see how their money is being spent and so that the aims of the combined authorities are clear. The shadow Minister is also right to raise the issue of horizontal working and managing the system from Whitehall.

I want to say a word or two about apprenticeships. In some ways, apprenticeships have been devolved down to the smallest point possible, in that they are in the hands of employers. Thinking of the colleges I have been to and the local authority leaders I have met, what has struck me—it is also true of London—is that they can play a significant role not as doers, but as enablers and facilitators in gathering together employers and helping them to understand this new world of apprenticeships.

As a Minister, I am aware of the fact that in some areas, training provision is lacking. There are employers that desperately want training programmes for certain skills and there is not currently a provider. The Mayors can do a great deal more in that area as enablers and facilitators, but also, I hope, by working with us to ensure that employers have all the information they need to take on apprentices.

When things work well—I talk to employers that do well spending their levy, and there now is the facility to pass 25% on to non-levy employers—that is fantastic, but apprenticeships have to become part of workforce planning. There is not a skills budget to devolve, because it is in the hands of employers. I hope that the non-levy employers will soon also benefit from that in a similar way.

The hon. Gentleman specifically asked about adult education for adults in detention. I hope the situation is clear, but I am happy to give more detail. This is obviously a critical area, and there are some imaginative plans and work happening in the construction industry in London, where the Construction Industry Training Board—I know it is familiar to you, Sir Henry—has done some fantastic work with the employment of reoffenders. I will not detain the Committee by going through examples, but previous offenders have got into work and reached senior levels in construction. That sort of joined-up approach is what we want to see.

The memorandums of understanding have been signed and I hope that there will be no more delays, but should there be any that I am not aware of, the hon. Gentleman will perhaps let me know.

Aligning national and local interests is tricky. The hon. Gentleman rightly spoke about the fact that when thinking about combined authorities we think of cities. That disguises the truth. The skills and education needs of individuals in rural areas are complex, as is the need to provide such things in a way that meets their needs. Devolving that to the combined authorities means that there can be a much more granular and locally responsive approach.

I should mention the skills advisory panels; we have been working in seven areas on those. We need to learn how we can best make the panels’ work effective. They were launched at the end of 2017, and we are rightly taking a phased approach, working with local enterprise partnerships and local authorities, and—critically—aligning them with local industrial strategies.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned ESOL, and he will be aware of the rules about its availability to unemployed jobseekers. When I go around the country, I see brilliant examples—as I am sure he does—some of which are quite small, of English delivery being done really well. For instance, I was at a project in the north where they literally grabbed parents—often women—who culturally might not have felt the need to learn English, when they were taking their primary schoolchildren to school, asking them how they get their children ready for the standard assessment tests. That was an effective way of getting to those women, who are sometimes difficult to reach, and of ensuring that they could help and support their children while increasing their ability to speak and get language skills that ideally will get them into the world of work.

Will there be additional funding for FE and the AEB in the Budget? The hon. Gentleman’s comments would be best addressed to the Chancellor.

[Gordon Marsden]

I take any opportunity.

[Anne Milton]

The hon. Gentleman should take any opportunity, as do I. I am an unashamed cheerleader for the sector, because it is hard for further education and adult education to get attention. We hear a lot of noise about schools, which are important, but they are just the start of the story. To take a rough figure, about 50% of the population do not go on to higher education. Often, the education system has not worked for those people—they have often underachieved. We must ensure that further and adult education gets the attention that it rightly deserves. I am sure he will take every opportunity to raise that with the Chancellor and Treasury Ministers.

Money spent on administration is important. I hope that local residents and locally elected Members will examine what the combined authorities are doing and ensure that the administration budget is kept as low as possible. It is surprising what can be delivered without over-burdensome administration.

[Gordon Marsden]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister, who has been very helpful in laying out these things. However, unless I misunderstood her, she said in her first comments that the principle of an administration budget had been agreed, and I asked her whether she was in a position to say anything about what that budget —or indeed logistical support from the Department—might be. If she cannot do so today, I would be happy with a letter to the Committee.

[Anne Milton]

I was referring to start-up money, which has been distributed. We are working closely with the devolved administrations. I did much work on those budgets: we asked them to put in bids and all the rest of it and make sure that it felt as it should for their size of population and so on. From memory, there were wide variations in bids for what one combined authority felt it needed to do the administrative set-up work compared with another. That variation in itself is interesting and of note.

Importantly, the combined authorities will be able to keep any underspend, which will help them to support their administration. The adult education budget—sadly, in some ways—is often underspent: allocations are made, and providers do not use all of their budget. However, we are keen to ensure an open dialogue.

For me, no one has adult education right, because a different approach is needed in different areas, as I said. The work we are doing on the pilots in various areas around the country is complex—how we reach adult learners, how we get them on to courses, how we make them recognise that there is an opportunity for them. We are running the learning pilots at the moment, and those combined authorities that have the adult education project will in a way be another opportunity to see what different areas do.

I have been around the public sector for a long time—well over 40 years—and ever since I started people have been talking about sharing best practice and working more closely together, but the truth of the matter is that we are still saying it and people are not doing it. Why do we not do it? We need to look at the barriers. It is important, and I am keen that, although the Department wishes to devolve those responsibilities, we continue to work with the areas to grab best practice. I also hope that they will work with each other, because they will be greater than the sum total of their individual parts. I hope that they will share what is and is not working, and any ideas, while we will feed into them any intelligence that we get from our learning pilots.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the WEA. It was founded in 1903 and is the largest voluntary sector provider of adult education and has been rated good by Ofsted. Its object is to widen participation. I am aware of its concerns, as the combined authorities will be. I do not underestimate the situation: transition is never easy. However, we have to take that instability head on to get to where I think will be a better place in the future. I am not a believer in change for change’s sake, and I think that the hon. Gentleman recognises that from my time in the Department. I am a great believer, if something is working well, in making it work better incrementally. That is all we need to do; we do not need to change things radically. He and I have enjoyed such conversations, and that is important, because a direction of travel is what matters to the providers.

If I have missed anything, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will write to me. I am happy to answer any questions. To summarise, the orders must be introduced now to allow the Greater Manchester and West Midlands combined authorities to work with providers to tailor adult further education provision in preparation for the academic year of 2019-20; to give their residents the opportunity to reach their potential, improve their earnings and gain progression in their jobs; and to allow the skills system to deliver in flexible and responsive ways, and to have the agility required to sustain a flexible economy. I therefore commend the orders to the Committee.

[Gordon Marsden]

I am grateful to the Minister for the content of what she said and for the tone in which she delivered it. We share a common purpose in wanting to see the matter taken forward as smoothly and as fast as possible. If there are other things along the way, she knows that I will not hesitate to prod her further, but I will leave it there for today. I wish the orders and the combined authorities good speed.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Adult Education Functions) Order 2018.

Draft West Midlands Combined Authority (Adult Education Functions) Order 2018

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft West Midlands Combined Authority (Adult Education Functions) Order 2018.—(Anne Milton.)

Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend is right to suggest that businesses must be at the heart of this, and they are. The design of the qualifications is being done by business, and at every stage we are making sure that the leading players in every sector are involved in the design and the delivery.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

In June, in Education questions, I raised a range of substantial concerns with the Secretary of State about the progress of T-levels, but he pooh-poohed them, saying that he did not recognise the premises. Perhaps he will now recognise the three further reports that came out this summer, including one from his own Department, which show further concerns about the Government’s handling of the T-level process. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development survey showed that only 60% of employers had heard of T-levels, and that two thirds of small enterprises had not done so. Its advisers said there was a “fatal mismatch” between what employers needed and what the Government were offering. The Chartered Management Institute survey showed that two thirds of parents had not heard of T-levels, and the Department for Education’s own report said that employers needed clearer information and would not commit without it. The T-level process is in a mess, like the Secretary of State’s apprenticeship targets. It needs more Government money, more information, more resources and more capacity. What is he doing about that?

[Damian Hinds]

I am pleased to take the hon. Gentleman’s advice to devote more focus, more resourcing and more capacity to T-levels; that is precisely what we are doing. The programme is well on track and, far from what he has just described, it has the support of business and of the colleges that we are bringing in in the earliest stages. At the moment, this will involve only a relatively small number of students who are starting their GCSE courses this year and who will start their T-levels in a small number of colleges in 2020, but we will see the programme grow and grow from there.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

We think the quality requirements for apprenticeships are absolutely central, and that includes the 20% off-the-job training requirement, as well as the minimum 12-month length. We should also bear it in mind that over the last few years there has been further strengthening of the overall employment market, so today the proportion of young people who are unemployed and not in full-time education is down to 5%, as opposed to 8-point-something per cent. at the change of Government. The apprenticeship programme remains absolutely vital to building up the skills level of the nation.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State might be content with T-level progress, but I am afraid that many in the sector are not. There is no clarity on work placements, on bridging options post-16, on the transition years that some need or on where T-levels sit in the post-18 review. The Department’s own research warns that having a single awarding body for T-levels risks system failure, and Ofqual says the same, while his own top civil servant advised a year’s delay, which he rejected. Is he content just agreeing with himself, or would he be happy with a process for T-levels with the wheels coming off—a magical mystery tour for young people that risks becoming a ghost train?

[Damian Hinds]

Dear oh dear! Gordon! I do not quite know where to go with that question, because I do not recognise its premise. I spend a great deal of time talking to employers, providers and others throughout the sector about this programme, and if the hon. Gentleman consults the Sainsbury report, he will see the overall blueprint. It is absolutely clear where T-levels fit in with the overall skills landscape, including levels 4 and 5, which also need improving. T-levels are fundamental to building up the country’s skills base, and I would expect to see him supporting them.