College Funding

Debate between Gordon Marsden and Peter Bone

Monday 21st January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is an enormous pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone, and that of your predecessor in this debate, the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker). It has been an absolute joy—to echo the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes)—to be in this debate and to hear the unanimous view about what needs to happen in this sector. The Minister has been showered not only with an avalanche of statistics but, more importantly, with evidence of the life-enhancing chances that further education and skills can bring.

The case has been made with an eloquence and urgency that demands a response not only from the Minister—I am sure it will be good—but from the Secretary of State for Education, because he needs to put his shoulder to the wheel in the discussions with the Treasury. I know that the Minister will do her best in that area, but if the Secretary of State for Education does not get that money through and if the Chancellor does not come back and respond to the abject failure in his Budget, none of them will be forgiven. That is the crux of what we have been talking about.

I do not have the ability to praise all the hon. Members who made speeches, but I certainly praise the 70,000 people who signed the petition. I praise all the excellent briefings from the Association of Colleges, the Sixth Form Colleges Association, Unison and the UCU, and all the individual colleges, principals and staff, as well as the many individual students, whom hon. Members have quoted. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), who spelled out to the Minister in simple, cogent and thoughtful terms the challenge of a divided country that has been left behind; the challenge to make this a newsworthy crusade, which it has not been in the past; and the challenge simply to understand and to question why this has happened.

When EMA was abolished in 2010, £555 a year was being spent; why do we now have 16 to 19 bursaries at only a third of that value? Why, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said, has the concept of night schools been left behind? Why has this funding been frozen at £4,000? Those issues have not just dropped into the Minister’s tray; they have been in the trays of the four Skills Ministers that I have shadowed since 2011.

I cannot touch on everything that has been said, but I would like to highlight some points. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) talked about the issues with T-levels, as have many other people. If I had more time, I would talk more about T-levels, not to attack them, but to say that they are doing a very different job, and even that job is being hampered by a series of things.

The right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who is the respected Chair of the Education Committee, was absolutely right to talk about the different ages at which people get second chances and to challenge the Government on building new colleges. I absolutely agree with him: what is the point of building new colleges or new institutes of this, that or the other, if there are inadequate staff to take those courses through and inadequate funding to sustain them? That is the challenge for the Government. This requires a long-term strategy and a 10-year plan.

My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith) gave a fantastic speech lauding her own FE college. She also pointed out the dire problems for smaller towns—she was absolutely right to talk about the tragic situation of Manchester Metropolitan University—which were expressed by many hon. Members. My hon. Friends also mentioned the 24,000 FE teachers who have left the sector. The Minister and the Department have to focus on those things.

The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, whom I am proud to call my collaborator in the joy of further education, was absolutely right to point out that the role of adult learning is in jeopardy because of the sheer volume of funding cuts. The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) talked about the yawning gap between schools funding and FE teachers’ funding.

My hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) talked about the importance of Winstanley College in her constituency, which reminded me that it is named after Gerrard Winstanley, who was one of the group of Levellers to become known as the Diggers. Thomas Rainsborough, another Leveller, said to Cromwell that the “poorest he”—sorry about the sexism of the 17th century—should have the same opportunities as the “greatest he”. That is the watchword of further education and schools, time after time: people should be allowed to have this opportunity.

My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) put his finger on the button when he talked about the message needing to go to the Secretary of State for Education and to the Treasury, regarding the underspend on 16 to 19 education and advanced learner loans. It is a tragedy that this Government have not only failed to put money in the right places, but introduced systems and structures, such as the advanced learner loans, of which 50% of the money has been returned to the Treasury year after year and nothing has been done about it. That is one of the real problems in this area.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) talked about how valuable further education is to the north Staffordshire economy. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), who serves so strongly on the Education Committee, talked about the social capital in that area. We also heard a number of good points from my hon. Friends the Members for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West), for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) and for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins).

My right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) talked about the over-complex system. My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) quite rightly pointed to the achievements of the last Labour Government in this area and how those have not been replicated so far by this Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) praised the principal of a college in his constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) summed up further education as a beacon of hope and opportunity.

Those are the sorts of questions that come to this Chamber. It is sad that we have to revisit these voices of challenge and hope, because we were all led to believe—as the Minister said in perfectly good faith—that the unprecedented campaign in the autumn would produce a result. That is why, in October last year, I wrote to the Chancellor to request an urgent uplift in this area.

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the shadow Minister, but there is a Division in the House. If there is one Division, we will suspend for 15 minutes. If there is more than one Division, please try to return as soon as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

Order. The debate will resume with the shadow Minister, and we will now conclude at 7.55 pm.

[Gordon Marsden]

As I was saying, these cuts have been very severe. There has been a real-terms cut of anything between 50% and 60% in the budget for adult education, as well as cuts in the budgets for further education and sixth-form funding—which, of course, is why the “Raise the Rate” campaign has been doing what it has been doing. The truth of the matter is that, as Amanda Spielman said,

“I am firmly of the view that the government should increase the base rate for 16 to 19 funding in the forthcoming spending review.”

We really do have to go down that route. We cannot repeat the situation of being marched up to the top of the hill and down again, as we were with the Chancellor.

There are so many aspects of tonight’s debate that I could talk about, but I do not have the time to do so. However, I particularly want to ask the Minister whether she is going to do anything to make sure that the Augar review rebalances the rates between students in FE and HE, and whether that will be a priority in the spending review. We also know about the issues with the financial health of colleges and insolvency; what is the Minister going to be doing in that area? We know that policy makers have not looked holistically at that area, and we need to have that holistic approach.

Because this Government have failed to take a holistic approach, because they have not looked at human capital as well as physical capital, and because the advanced learner loans have been a continuing disaster, we need to have a transformation. We need to have parity of esteem, and that can only be achieved through the sorts of structures that the Labour party are proposing: the national education service and the lifelong learning commission. Having spent 20 years as a lecturer in the adult learning sector, and having seen the powerful effect of FE in my own college in Blackpool, I believe that there is no better way of dealing with this issue than having that step change, not just of funding, but of vision and structure.