Technical and Further Education Bill

Debate between Ian Mearns and Gordon Marsden

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 19th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Marsden]

I am grateful to the Minister. The broader perspective of social mobility is a perfectly reasonable way of going forward. However, to be honest, particularly at a time such as today when we are moving to a general election, I think that most people would be interested in some movement—some jam now rather than a promise of jam possibly in future from the social mobility study. I will come on to talk about other areas where, I am afraid, the Government have moved at, to put it at its kindest, a reasonably glacial pace. That is one of the reasons I am not terribly impressed by the Minister’s argument, although, as I say, I understand and appreciate his commitment to trying to do something.

I want to speak in support of the second part of the amendment, which talks about opening benefits to care leavers by opening up access to a bursary that has traditionally been available only to university students. Young people in local authority care who move into higher education can apply for a one-off bursary of £2,000 from their local authority, and the amendment would enable care leavers who take up apprenticeships to access the same financial support.

I remind the Minister of what the Children’s Society has said. Every year, around 11,000 young people aged 16 or over leave the care of their local authority and begin the difficult transition out of care and into adulthood—to be fair to him, he recognised that in his opening remarks—and my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields tabled an amendment to the Children and Social Work Bill to provide such a local offer to care leavers. The Government have a golden opportunity to follow up on that by focusing on support that could be provided by the DWP. I am at a loss to understand why the Government are ignoring this possibility. They could make provision from the apprenticeship levy for local authorities to administer a £2,000 grant to all care leavers.

When care leavers move into independent living they often begin to manage their own budget fully for the first time, and that move may take place earlier for them than for others in their peer group. Remember that a care leaver in year one of an apprenticeship may be, and often is, earning as little as £3.40 an hour before being able to transition to a higher wage in the second year. Evidence from their services and research has revealed how challenging care leavers may find it to manage that budget, because of a lack of financial support and education. As a result, young carers frequently fall into debt and financial difficulty. The Minister really needs to put himself in their shoes. The Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Edward Timpson), could tell us all, from his own family’s perspective, how vulnerable young people who come from disturbed and difficult family backgrounds can be.

The question remains: why are the Government not prepared to retain this amendment? Fine words are all very well, but you may know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that according to the old Tudor proverb, “Fine words butter no parsnips”. Just what are the bureaucratic arguments for doing nothing to support hard-working young people and their families—and, even more so, those who do not have families to support them—to fulfil their hopes of better times via an apprenticeship? We talk about parity of esteem between HE students and apprentices, but some of these young people, because of their circumstances, struggle to have a strong sense of self-esteem.

Why have the Government not moved on this? Once again, why have the consultations with the DWP not taken place? Was the Minister nobbled by No. 10 trusties or by those in his own Department, in the same way as Department for Education Ministers seem to have led us down the garden path of reforms to GCSE resits only to slam the door shut? I say as gently as I can to the Minister that if the Government do not retain the amendment, people will know that the Government’s rhetoric has been somewhat hollow, and apprentices and their families will suffer.

I join the Minister in supporting amendment 2, which was carried in the Lords, and I also want to talk about amendment 6. The lack of parity of esteem for apprentices starts at an early age, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) illustrated in his useful and constructive exchange with the Minister, the rhetoric on careers advice still does not match the painful reality that faces many young people.

The reality is that careers advice has been devastated over the last Parliament and since 2010, certainly at a local level, and young people who want to take a vocational and apprenticeship route are in danger of being short-changed again in their careers advice. Despite the work of the Careers & Enterprise Company, which is still in its infancy, support in schools remains poor. Careers England—the trade body for careers advice and guidance—and the Career Development Institute have confirmed to me recently that in their view, nothing has greatly changed. They estimate that only a third of schools can adequately deliver careers advice. Taken alongside the shortage of careers advisers and the fact that the remaining advisers earn far less than they used to, it adds up to a very difficult position.

That is one of the reasons why last November the co-chairs of the Sub-Committee on Education, Skills and the Economy, the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), said that the Government had been complacent over careers advice. They said:

“The Government’s lack of action to address failings in careers provision is unacceptable and its response to our report smacks of complacency.”

I know that the Minister challenges that strongly, and I know that he has put on record that the Government are working towards a thorough careers strategy in that respect. But we have to deal with the situation as it is today, not with what it might be under a careers strategy developed by whatever Government are around at the end of the year.

In the survey conducted by the Industry Apprentice Council last year, just 42% of respondents found out about apprenticeships from school or college, and using one’s own initiative remained by far the most common way for a young person to discover apprenticeships. The council also said that there needed to be a change in careers information, advice and guidance because the proportion of respondents who said that theirs had been very poor remained high across the three surveys.

That is why the House of Lords has produced these two quite detailed and comprehensive amendments; those overall issues are not being addressed. Strong careers guidance is critical to promoting apprenticeships in schools. If we are to make a success of the institute, it is crucial that young people are alerted early enough in their school life to the importance and attraction of technical routes. That is one of the things that amendment 2 from the other House, which we supported, makes very clear.

If the Minister does not think that the Lords amendment on careers advice is necessary, perhaps he would like to explain just how and when the Government are going to get a grip on the existing fractured landscape of careers advice revealed by his own Department. Last month—it was not bedtime reading, so I will not be surprised if hon. Members have not read it—the Department for Education published a research report, “An economic evaluation of the National Careers Service”. The report was produced by London Economics, which was originally commissioned by the former Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to evaluate the impact of the National Careers Service.

The National Careers Service has changed considerably during the five years since it was introduced by the Minister’s predecessor, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes). I had the benefit of discussions with him at the time, and he was very clear when it started that the National Careers Service would principally be for the over-24s. That process has changed. I am not necessarily criticising that, but the process has certainly migrated in an unplanned fashion. The National Careers Service website says that anyone aged 13 and over can have access to the data, and that adults aged 19 and over can have access to one-to-one support. The problem is that only 15% to 22% of the customers—again, I am taking statistics from a report that the Government have commissioned—were referred by Jobcentre Plus, while the remainder were self-referring. Does that not speak volumes about the lack of joined-up government between the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions?

[Ian Mearns]

In some respects, my hon. Friend is actually being generous to the Government. I do not believe that the careers service as it existed has been decimated; I believe it has been laid waste by the Government’s policy since 2010. We really need to get back to youngsters having independent and impartial advice and guidance on their future career available to them. Without such independence and impartiality, we could unfortunately get back to having those with vested interests giving advice to young people. I remember the late Malcolm Wicks referring to this in the 1990s, when he said that much of the advice given to young people about their future careers was akin to pensions mis-selling because the service was packed with vested interests.