College Funding

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Robert Halfon

Monday 21st January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I welcome the Minister, who is my successor in the role. I know that she has a passion for further education.

We know that FE is vital for our economy. Done well, it can tackle three huge deficits: our skills deficit, our social justice deficit and our social capital deficit. Our colleges are vital assets. They are institutes that should be at the heart of every community. Although we are talking about funding today, I will take this chance to praise my local college, Harlow College, which is one of the finest colleges in the country. It has had a significant amount of funds to develop an advanced manufacturing centre, a new maths school and an aircraft college at Stansted airport, one of the first of its kind in the United Kingdom. I know that some funds are coming to our colleges, and that is one reason why I have visited Harlow College more than 65 times since I became a Member of Parliament. Nevertheless, the chasm in funding for education either side of a student’s 16th birthday has now widened to 24%.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has given FE the dubious accolade of “biggest loser” in education, noting that it is the only area to fall in real terms, year on year, for more than 10 years. By 2020, we will be spending the same amount in real terms on educating and training 16 to 18-year-olds as we were in 1990. People might be forgiven for thinking that that is an accidental failure of policy making; the truth is that it is much worse. On 31 January 2017, the Minister for Schools told the Education Committee that in 2010 the Government decided to prioritise spending on five to 16-year-olds—on the grounds that it had a more demonstrable impact on life chances—than on post-16 education, when presumably it would be “too late”. But people develop at different points on the education ladder of opportunity and, for some, FE can be the chrysalis stage between the caterpillar and the butterfly.

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

A recent report by the Centre for Social Justice showed that only 15% of people in the UK who start work at entry level will ever rise above that level, and that is one of the lowest percentages in the developed world. Does my right hon. Friend agree that colleges such the excellent Waltham Forest College are key if people are to upskill and change skills, and that we should not, therefore, write people off at the age of 16, 17 or 18, or even 35 or 40? Colleges such as the ones that he and I have mentioned are in a real position to help people to achieve that, and therefore, in some senses, they are more important even than universities.

[Robert Halfon]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Colleges are very important for social justice because they help to give people from disadvantaged backgrounds the chance to climb the education ladder of opportunity, even though we know that life chances are largely influenced during the time before a child starts school. The Education Committee, which I chair, will soon be producing a report on that subject.

FE colleges are the economic trampoline that our country badly needs. With one in 10 degrees now achieved in colleges, there is huge potential for FE to drive the revolution in degree apprenticeships that the Education Committee called for in our recent report on value for money in higher education. The introduction of T-levels is a good sign that the Government are getting behind FE rather than perpetuating its status as a poor relation of secondary and higher education, but the excellent investment in T-levels is not the same as core investment in FE. The £500 million provided for T-levels is additional funding for a new initiative. T-levels are of a scale and seriousness far beyond those of the relatively small-scale targeted funds, which are eye-catching in a Budget but will not lead to lasting long-term change.

Before embarking on costly new projects, such as national colleges and institutes of technology, the Government need to consider whether existing providers could deliver their policy objectives. We often announce new initiatives when we should really bring together and strengthen what we already have. On 10 October last year, as part of the “Love Our Colleges” campaign, we held a special session with the Association of Colleges, the National Union of Students and the Sixth Form Colleges Association. James Kewin from the SFCA told us:

“Too much of what we see in 16 to 19 now starts with the press release and works back...policy by press release is quite damaging and the much more mundane reality is we just need a higher rate of funding.”

That is exactly what the Education Committee wants to see, and it is why last April we launched our inquiry into school and college funding to examine where the truth lay in the polarised debate between those who say that education funding has been subject to swingeing cuts and those who claim it has gone up in recent years. Yes, our colleges need more money—starting with the core funding rate of £4,000 per student—but it is even more important that the Department for Education comes up with a long-term strategy for schools and colleges. If the NHS can have a 10-year plan and £20 billion extra, why can education and our colleges not have a 10-year plan and the money they need?

In the written evidence to our inquiry, the real-terms reduction in post-16 funding was deemed to be inexplicable after the raising of the participation age to 18, especially when one accounted for the fact that, as has been highlighted, the cost of providing education—particularly technical education—between the ages of 16 and 18 is higher. That is evidenced by the fact that charges for post-16 education in the independent sector have gone up rather than down.

In truth, changing all that will involve self-restraint on the part of policy makers and Ministers. We will need to resist the temptation to tweak and fiddle. We will need to focus on the outcomes that we want in 10 to 20 years’ time, not on what might be attractive over a shorter timetable. Yes, the Committee is hearing evidence that is critical of the Government’s approach, but we are trying to help the Minister and to be as supportive as we can of the Department as it enters into negotiations with the Treasury for the next spending review period. A Select Committee trying to help the Department it oversees is certainly swimming against the tide, but I hope that our report will lead to much more investment in FE colleges and a new, long-term approach. For too long, FE has been called the Cinderella of education, but we should remember that Cinderella became a member of the royal family, and she did not crash the carriage. We need to banish the ugly sisters of snobbery and underfunding.

Compulsory Jobs Guarantee

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Robert Halfon

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

I say to colleagues that I will give way, but I am conscious also that, owing to all the pressures earlier on, Back Benchers will want to get their speeches in.

It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), who took a good shot at making a good fist of a bad job. By my calculation, it is over a year since the Opposition initiated a debate on jobs. I wonder why. So much for their being the party of work, which is what they used to say.

The Opposition have repeatedly avoided talking about the labour market, although my colleagues have been dying to intervene. When the Opposition have spoken about the labour market, there has been nothing but talking the economy down and negativity. They have made gloomy forecasts—I recall the Leader of the Opposition talking about

“the disappearance of...a million jobs”.

Then there was the misguided prophecy of

“a long ‘lost decade’...of...high unemployment”.

The Opposition have opposed welfare reform, and most importantly work experience, at every turn. The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) is right: work experience is what young people want, so why have the Opposition opposed our work experience programme, which has been unbelievably successful?

Meanwhile, it is this Government who have delivered 2.2 million more private sector workers, 2 million apprenticeships starts, work experience and training for over a quarter of a million young people, 60,000 businesses through the new enterprise allowance, and the Work programme, helping 600,000 people to get a job—a sustained job that follows. With the election approaching, the Opposition desperately want to sound as though they have anything positive to say about any kind of jobs programme, now that this Government have turned the situation around. Whereas this Government have a record of success, the more one examines the Opposition’s flagship jobs guarantee, the clearer it becomes that that is little more than a no-jobs guarantee, and certainly a guarantee of no jobs in the private sector.

Let me go through the jobs guarantee, as it is the subject of the debate today. We first heard about it in 2011, when it was said to be for young people who had been unemployed for a year. It offered a guaranteed job for 12 months. In 2013, that seemed to morph into a compulsory jobs guarantee for those who had been unemployed for two years, so the objective had already slipped a bit. It guaranteed a job for only six months—half the time previously advertised by the original statement. Yet there remained complete confusion in the Opposition ranks about how long this programme was meant to last. When pressed, the shadow Chancellor said:

“We would have a guarantee of one year for young people, two years for adults. Anybody who is out of work would be guaranteed a job.”

That is not quite what I heard from the Opposition today. How long will it last—one year, two years, six months? What exactly have they costed?

I can understand why the title of this debate was changed. One could almost hear what was going on behind closed doors between the shadow Chancellor and my opposite number, the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), when they were hoping to announce all the details about how long the jobs guarantee would last. One could almost hear the shadow Chancellor saying, because it was in the speech from the right hon. Member for East Ham, “You’re not announcing anything that allows anybody to cost this properly, because that way they will tell us that this does not work.” Even the motion carefully leaves those questions unanswered. Why would not the Opposition put in their motion all the details of this apparently wonderful plan? The answer is that no such wonderful plan exists. They allude to certain other plans out there, but they do not tell us what they mean.

What we heard today sounded rather familiar, so I looked it up. Back when Labour was last in government, there was a programme called StepUp. It was piloted by the previous Government, of which the right hon. Gentleman was a member, in 20 areas between 2002 and 2004. I shall not go over the names of the programme, but it was supposed to give paid employment to those failed by the new deal and out of work for two years. StepUp was never rolled out nationally by the previous Government because the evaluation from 2006 exposed its failings: for those nearest the labour market and those under 25, StepUp actually had a negative impact on work prospects, at a massive cost of £10,000 per place.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to the programme in Wales. The hon. Member for Leeds West has been even more explicit that the Opposition’s jobs programme is a rehash of Jobs Growth Wales. She said:

“I went to see a scheme very similar to this in Wales last week and...that’s what we would aim to do across the UK”.

But that is not what was described from the Opposition Front Bench today. A closer look at what has been announced about Jobs Growth Wales reveals that in many senses it is an exercise in cherry-picking. The hardest to help are not eligible; no one on the Work programme, Work Choice or any similar programme is allowed to go for the new programme; and places are given to only one in three of those who have applied, so a place is far from being guaranteed for all. In any case, although Jobs Growth Wales has trumpeted a success rate of 80% of participants in work, an apprenticeship or learning after six months, already 90% of all—not some—young people in Wales move off jobseeker’s allowance within nine months. That has nothing to do with the programme and all to do with what is happening to them through the jobcentres and through the Work programme.

[Robert Halfon]

My right hon. Friend will be aware that general unemployment in Harlow has gone down by 50% since 2010, youth unemployment has gone down by 56% since 2010 and 83% of the jobs created are permanent positions, yet the Labour councillor Emma Toal said last week at a council budget meeting in Harlow that she feels sick to the stomach when I quote the fall in unemployment and the jobs created. Is that not shocking? Is that not a shame? Does that not show that we are the workers’ party and Labour is the party of dependency?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Yes, it is appalling that the councillor is unhappy about the idea that more people are getting work in my hon. Friend’s constituency. The reason why she takes that attitude, I think, is that Labour wants only to be elected. The Opposition do not care about anyone else. They would rather tell bad news to get elected than have a success that they could trumpet. Perhaps that is the real point.

Ninety per cent. of all young people in Wales move off JSA within nine months, so at £6,000 a place, the alleged success that is being trumpeted is nothing like the value for money that the right hon. Member for East Ham mentioned earlier.

Universal Credit

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Robert Halfon

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Do the Opposition want us to rush out universal credit, as they did with tax credits, or do they want us to take our time to implement it correctly? The reason we are not moving the support group and the work-related activity group on from employment and support allowance is that they are very vulnerable. We want to take our time so that those who are on those benefits are brought on to universal credit carefully. It seems that the hon. Lady’s party wants to rush those people on as fast as possible, rather like what it did with tax credits.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Is it not the case that under the last Government, 1.4 million people spent—[Interruption.]

[Robert Halfon]

Is it not the case that under the last Government, 1.4 million people spent a decade out of work on benefits and 2.6 million people spent five years out of work on benefits? Is it not also the case that universal credit will get people out of dependency and back into work, that it will eliminate the poverty trap, and that 90% of people on benefits will be on universal credit by the end of 2016?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Universal credit is worth doing properly because of the benefits it brings to so many people. Just in case he does not remember, although the Opposition say that they support it, they voted against it. We will take no lessons from them because of the chaos, mess and cost that they left for us in the welfare system. We are having to pick up the details of that and put them right. We are doing that every day.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Robert Halfon

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I keep reminding the Opposition—and this may be the real reason why they got in such a mess over the economy—that a subsidy is not a tax. They need to understand that a tax is something that the Government take away from people, but this is money that the taxpayers have given to people to subsidise them to have spare rooms. We simply cannot go on like that. I remind the hon. Lady that the Government she was a member of nearly doubled the housing benefit bill in the 10 years they were in power, and that is why we have to take action.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that there are 4,000 people in Harlow on the council house waiting list, many of whom are not on benefits? Does he agree that the single room supplement will free up housing so that some of those people can get the housing that they rightly deserve?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The coalition is concerned about people who have to live in overcrowded accommodation. Never do we hear one single comment from the welfare party about people living desperately in the overcrowded accommodation that they left them in.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Robert Halfon

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I remind the right hon. Gentleman again that we are getting people into work. Unemployment is lower than it was when we took office, youth unemployment is lower and we are getting more people into work. He said that he was in favour of the cap. That is very interesting, because he voted against the cap. He says that he is in favour of a number of issues, but he voted against the Welfare Reform Act 2012. He is against universal credit and the housing benefit changes. He has not agreed to any of the changes that we have made.

The overall bill for welfare rose by 60% between 1997 and 2010—

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Is not the philosophical underpinning of this debate our wish to create a hand-back society, not a hand-out society? Is not cutting taxes on lower earners the best way to help those on low earnings, rather than recycling their hard-earned money through the benefits system?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

That is exactly the point. Labour Members think that helping people is about trapping more and more people in benefits. It is interesting that under the tax credits system, nine out of 10 families with children were eligible for tax credits, in some cases those with more than £70,000 in earnings. What a ridiculous nonsense they created.

Labour’s system was riddled with fraud and error. HMRC had to write off £4 billion in fraud and error payments and will probably have to write off another £4 billion, so £8 billion has been lost. This Bill is about finding savings of £1.9 billion, but as a result of tax credits Labour lost probably nearly £8 billion. That is the record of the last Government. They should apologise for the mess they left us in.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Robert Halfon

Monday 5th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

5. What recent assessment he has made of the barriers that prevent jobseekers getting back into work.

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

Jobseekers can face a number of barriers to work, about which my hon. Friend has spoken to me on a number of occasions. Those include a lack of work experience, a lack of essential computer skills, an incomplete education, which leaves them ill qualified, or coming from a family where worklessness is entrenched across generations. We are taking cross-Government action to tackle all those barriers, and reforming the benefit system so that it more closely resembles life in work, rather than people having to face those huge barriers.

[Robert Halfon]

Since 2011, the Department has through procurement encouraged its private suppliers to hire apprentices, and 2,000 apprenticeships have been created as a result. Will the Secretary of State share his success with other Departments, so that we can roll out this programme across Whitehall and remove barriers to work?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I take this opportunity to congratulate my hon. Friend on the huge work that he has done in encouraging apprenticeship starts. I know that he is particularly keen on that and I take a real steer from him. I also remind him and the House that, since we brought in our changes, over the past two academic years more than 950,000 apprenticeships have been offered by over 100,000 different employers. On top of that, the youth contract offers 160,000 wage incentives for those who wish to start apprenticeships. Therefore, the scheme has been a major success for this Government. The coalition has done far more than the previous Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Robert Halfon

Monday 24th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

It is good to see so many people in the Chamber who have discovered an interest in work and pensions.

Work experience and apprenticeships are central to improving the prospects of young unemployed people. We are making up to 100,000 work experience placements available and strengthening the links between the work experience programme and apprenticeships. We are also providing additional Jobcentre Plus help for 16 and 17-year-old jobseeker’s allowance claimants and offering earlier entry into the Work programme. It is worth reminding ourselves that of the 991,000 16 to 24-year-olds who are unemployed under the International Labour Organisation measure, 270,000 are full-time students. Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) will be aware that Harlow is one of the Government’s new enterprise zones.

[Robert Halfon]

I am, of course, delighted that Harlow is an enterprise zone. Does my right hon. Friend agree that one way of cutting youth unemployment is to encourage Government contractors to hire apprentices? Figures from the House of Commons Library show that if just one apprentice was hired for every £1 million of public procurement, it would instantly create 238,000 apprenticeships and cut youth unemployment by a quarter.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend is right. Under the new arrangements, suppliers must provide an apprenticeships and skills report within six months of the contract start date. The idea is that they will periodically show their progress towards meeting a commitment to employ 5% of apprentices in delivering the Department for Work and Pensions contract to which they are entitled. Work programme providers will be paid primarily for the results that they achieve, which means that they will be under pressure to do a similar thing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Robert Halfon

Monday 14th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

At the moment, the vast majority of people—about 98%, I think—receive their benefit payments directly into their bank accounts. There is a small number of people who are still, for various reasons, in receipt of cash payments. A proposal was left to us by the previous Government on how all this can be delivered in the next few years, but we have not made a final decision on it yet. We will announce our decision very shortly.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Government for allowing a pilot scheme for local jobcentres to give out food bank vouchers from the food bank charities. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that the scheme that emerges is as simple and unbureaucratic as possible, so that the jobcentres in Harlow can receive food bank vouchers as soon as possible?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I would not dare do otherwise, with my hon. Friend breathing down my neck on this one. It is due to his hard efforts and pressure that we have made this particular change, and I think that it is for the good. Of course, it is important that it does not become a substitute for anything else, but it will certainly be there if people feel that they need that extra assistance, and there is no reason why we should not do it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Robert Halfon

Monday 10th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

We are moving in that direction. Our changes will abolish the default retirement age, and we will make sure that people can no longer be kicked out of work because they have reached a certain age. By getting rid of that, we will improve the economy and help older people find work for a longer period, which is beneficial to the economy and beneficial for those people.

[Robert Halfon]

In the recession redundancies have been higher among the over-50s than any other age group, including in Harlow. Many people, like my constituent, Kevin Forbes, who applied for more than 4,500 jobs, are worried that employment law is biased against older people. What are the Government doing, apart from what my right hon. Friend has just described, to make work fairer for the over-50s?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The reality for companies and for those who are seeking work is that, because of the need for employment over the next few years, we will need more and more of the skills that are present in the age group to which my hon. Friend refers. Therefore, companies have to reach the sensible solution, which is that people who have those skills and ways of doing their jobs can stay in work much longer. The Work programme will be set up so that they can be helped back into work if they become unemployed. My concern is that companies should recognise that older workers have huge value, well beyond the cost of paying their wages.

Welfare Reform

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Robert Halfon

Thursday 11th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

May I first of all say that I hope Labour Members do not simply continue to hope for the worst and preach? The reality is that even in the past few weeks and months, there have been more than 300,000 new private sector jobs. As I said, more than 1 million jobs went through the jobcentres in the last three months and were found for people. Today’s statement is about making people better off. If I were sitting where the hon. Lady is sitting, I would say, “How wonderful if the bottom three deciles improve their incomes.” The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) may laugh, but in her time in the Government, they spent money and failed and left us with a deficit. Labour Members should apologise for that.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement, particularly as the previous Government’s approach to welfare reform was more Ethelred the Unready than Nixon in China. Is he aware that more than 8,000 people in my constituency are on out-of-work benefits? That is one in 10 people. Will the Minister assure them that the universal credit will protect the most vulnerable and give others a real incentive—more money, not less—as they find jobs?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

The universal credit is about what happens to people as they seek and go back to work. Benefit levels for disabled people—whatever their condition—will continue and be maintained. Those who need support will receive it, but the most beneficial thing for people in my hon. Friend’s constituency is simply this: we are at last going to try to get to that group who have been left behind. More than 5 million people were left behind without jobs in workless households during the high years, with children in poverty. That is what we hope to break. I hope that that is seen as a positive message.