Student Loans

Ian Sollom Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)]

I am going to talk about hope and fairness, to which many Members across the House have referred in their speeches. It is important that everyone has hope for the future, but particularly the next generation.

There are many challenges facing younger people at the moment, from youth unemployment, with the graduate jobs market unfortunately in decline, to the uncertain world we live in. The people who will inherit this world from us are concerned about conflict in the middle east, the position of our defence, and the direction in which our country and society are going. It is younger people who have borne the brunt of the decisions made during covid, and it is younger people who will have to deal with and find solutions for the changing demographics in our society, particularly the ageing population. It is important now more than ever that the next generation—the younger generation—has hope for the future, and we Conservatives have a plan to bring that back. The key to that plan is fairness.

Our motion today goes to the heart of fairness. It is fair to say that the repayment system for the people paying back plan 2 loans, with the thresholds and the interest at 3% above RPI, has essentially turned into some form of Ponzi scheme. The Conservatives have a plan to start resolving that. As has been said, it would not be possible to get these loans on a commercial basis; they are fundamentally unfair, and we have a plan to go about fixing it.

When we talk about education more generally, we talk about the fact that all different types of education have intrinsic value. There is no hierarchy between people who go to university or further education, people who do apprenticeships and people who go straight into work. It is about providing the right education for the individual person. Whether someone has gone to university or done an apprenticeship—whatever route they have gone down—it does not make them a better or worse person. The key is that it is the right plan for them. It is only fair that we reverse some of the historic biases against apprenticeships in particular, and that is why I am so pleased that apprenticeships and vocational training are central to the motion that we will be voting on later.

Fairness means fairness both to the taxpayer and to the people taking the courses. I intervened on both the Minister and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom), to ask whether they would at least concede that there are some courses—particular courses at institutions across the country—that are really not worth it because they are not value for money and will not help the student.

[Ian Sollom]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way; I did not cover myself in glory when I responded to his point earlier, and I would like to take another bite of the cherry. The point I was trying to make was that simply basing it on salary value is not the only way to assess value. The right way to do it is through the regulator, the OfS, and to take that as just one element of many. The OfS should drive that. Would the hon. Gentleman make salary value the primary driver for all courses? [Interruption.]

[Dr Spencer]

I think that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), sitting behind me, will give a more extensive answer to that question in a moment. There are lots of ways to measure degrees. An example that I often give is the degree in David Beckham studies, which I think existed. I am a big fan of David Beckham, by the way, but I am not sure how many degrees in David Beckham studies we need, or how it would benefit the economy or the individual. Critically, I am not sure that taxpayers should be subsidising that. All our constituents are contributing to this system, and it is only fair that we ensure that there is value for money for taxpayers, as well as for the people taking the courses, and that there is a broader contribution.

It is absolutely right that, as part of this motion, we look at fairness in the system, particularly to make sure that degrees, which are regulated, give the value that they are purported to give, and that we do not have fake degrees or degrees with a disproportionate difference between the offering—what people think they are going to get—and the outcomes. When people are starting on a degree course, it is important for them to know where they can expect to be in five or 10 years’ time and what their status in society will be, so that they can make informed choices given the substantial cost, in terms of both time and money, of their investment.

On that basis, I wholeheartedly support the motion and look forward to voting for it later tonight. I hope Labour Members do so as well, because this motion brings back a bit more hope and a bit more fairness to the system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Sollom Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Stephen Timms]

Yes, I do agree. As my hon. Friend will know, we have set up a review of personal independence payment, which is under way at the moment. We have a steering group of 12 individuals, almost all of whom are disabled people, plus me and two other co-chairs, and we had our third full-day, in-person meeting last week. The issues that my hon. Friend raises are exactly the ones that we want to work through in the course of the review, which will report to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in the autumn.

[Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

T5. With nearly a million young people not in education, employment or training, the growth and skills levy is due to launch in less than a month, but as few as eight courses have been confirmed, with no funding rates, no duration and no assessment detail published. How is anyone—a young person planning their future, a college planning its provision or an employer planning its workforce—supposed to act on a blank page?

[Pat McFadden]

The hon. Member is right to point to the disparity of information that there sometimes is for apprenticeships compared with university courses. It is something that we need to address by improving the information available and ensuring that young people embarking on an apprenticeship are treated with just as much esteem and respect as those who undertake a university course. Information is very much part of the changes that we are pursuing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Sollom Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Pat McFadden]

My hon. Friend is right to say that purposeful activity, be it training or work, can be an answer to some of the mental health problems that we are seeing in society, so I welcome her endorsement of the youth guarantee and the intentions behind it.

[Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

Employers across the construction, care and manufacturing sectors have warned that Skills England’s dumbed down reforms mean that apprenticeships will not be recognised by professional bodies. Today’s announcement of 50,000 apprenticeships is meaningless if employers will not recognise those standards, so will the Secretary of State guarantee that reformed apprenticeships will still meet those standards? That is a particular concern in the construction industry—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. These are topical questions. I am trying to get everybody in but the hon. Member is not helping me. Hopefully, he asked at least three of his questions.

Neurodivergent People: Employment

Ian Sollom Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

I thank my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane), for securing this important debate. I would like to use my time to focus on some of the great work being carried out by organisations in my constituency and to share some of the practical suggestions they have made to me for improving the current system for those organisations and the people they work with.

One organisation that I have had the good fortune to visit, and whose work I have witnessed at first hand, is Switch Now. It is a qualified alternative education and training provider that supports neurodivergent people—whom it refers to as co-workers—into employment and, importantly, helps to keep them there. Switch Now was formed 10 years ago in St Neots and predominantly works with 18 to 35-year-old neurodiverse people. It works through the British Association of Supported Employment model—the BASE model—which sees it collaborate with the local community and partner organisations to find suitable jobs in inclusive workspaces. To do that, it works closely with employers to support them in hiring neurodiverse people and in making the adaptations that make a difference. Sometimes those can be as simple as swapping from analogue to digital clocks in the workplace. That can make a huge difference to the inclusion of some neurodiverse people.

One of the key elements with alternative providers such as Switch Now is how they look at the individual and their needs, and support them in the learning, skills development and work experience required to get into employment or regular voluntary activity—as others have noted, it is important that we do not take a one-size-fits-all approach to training and skills if we are going to support neurodiverse people into work.

Switch Now’s founder, Catherine, says that its model of looking at and securing an individual’s development and training needs means that, when they do gain employment, they are less reliant on social care and benefits in the long term, and can look forward to a more fulfilling future. At present, Switch Now is working with nearly 30 young people, who are given both on and off-site training and gaining work-based qualifications.

However, there are not nearly enough organisations like Switch Now, and there are barriers to these providers. Changes to the post-16 alternative provision framework have meant that organisations such as Switch Now have less direct contact with the young people they wish to help. They now see referrals on paper, and they do not have the opportunity to meet people in person. That is very slow and makes planning quite difficult.

As always with this type of provision, funding is a challenge, particularly when it comes to best practice. However, Switch Now’s long-term success means that, over the past 10 years, 83% of its co-workers have been supported into full-time, part-time or voluntary work, because it uses that person-centred method. I encourage the Minister to reflect on the BASE approach, and on providers such as Switch Now, and to see how levers in the DWP can be used to support those providers and to support individuals into work.

Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

Ian Sollom Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

Terrified, anxious and angry—these are the words that Citizens Advice Rural Cambridgeshire has heard most since these changes were proposed. I recently hosted an emergency forum in St Neots that brought together those on the frontline—food banks, advice bureaux, charities and social organisations—to discuss the impact of these changes, and every organisation said the same thing: the Government’s proposals, as they stood, should not go ahead. The fact that the Government reached the same conclusion just yesterday does nothing to reassure people that they know what they are doing. Their last-minute changes may protect existing claimants, but they will create a fundamentally unjust two-tier system.

As we have heard from my Liberal Democrat colleagues, we understand that the system needs reform, and we understand concerns that the welfare bill is currently too high. However, we also understand disabled people and their carers, which is a claim the Government cannot possibly make for themselves when they have yet meaningfully to consult those whose lives will be so significantly altered by the proposed changes.

The figures that many Members have mentioned help us to see the scale, but they do not tell the stories of the millions of real people whose lives will be changed by these reforms, so let me share the story of a 23-year-old autistic man on the Switch Now learning programme based in my constituency. Through education, health and care plan funding, he receives a full-time education and would be supported to progress into employment by next summer. Switch Now has a brilliant record of success, and I would welcome the opportunity to talk to the Secretary of State more about its work. However, his PIP was unexpectedly cut a few months ago with little notice, from around £100 a week to just £20. With that reduction, he cannot afford to feed himself through the week, let alone afford the transport to get to his programme every day or the care that he needs elsewhere.

My constituent and many others like him are doing exactly what the Government claim they want them to do: working hard, completing training and looking to the future where they can join the workforce with that support. They need that help. Hundreds of thousands like him will still face these barriers, even after yesterday’s changes. A 23-year-old autistic person applying next year will be treated differently from one applying today—not because their needs differ, but because of political timing. If the Government now accept that changes are necessary, why are we voting before the Timms review concludes? Why implement a four-point threshold on criteria that the Government admit need to be reviewed?

The Government’s approach exposes a lack of compassion. How will they encourage the back-to-work culture that I know the Secretary of State wants? Every person who might have a future lifeline taken away by these reforms is a human, but it is difficult to see that the Government are treating them that way.

Yesterday, the Secretary of State dismissed concerns about the two-tier system, but that is patently absurd. The Government are creating different levels of support for identical conditions purely based on application dates. Disabled people should not be shouldering the burden of fixing our public finances. They and the disability groups that represent them must be meaningfully consulted on any changes that will affect them. I will be voting against these changes and I urge anyone who cares about disabled people and fundamental fairness to do the same.

Child Maintenance Service

Ian Sollom Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

This evening I want to address a system that is failing thousands of families across our country: the Child Maintenance Service. In doing so, I hope that this House will send a clear message to every parent struggling with that system and every affected young person that their MPs are listening and that we are determined to act.

I am pleased to see that the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western), is responding for the Government, and I look forward to working with him to achieve the meaningful transformation that families desperately need.

Before my election last July, I confess that the Child Maintenance Service had not been on my radar as such an important issue. That changed almost immediately upon my taking office, as constituents came to me with accounts of their experiences with the CMS, and appeals for help. These were not isolated incidents or minor inconveniences; they revealed systemic failures, enforcement mechanisms that seem to exist in name only, loopholes exploited by those seeking to evade their responsibilities, inadequate protections for survivors of domestic abuse, and an impersonal bureaucracy that overwhelms those it should be there to help. Failures to correct even basic errors grind down those unfortunate enough to be let down by the system.

I want to share one constituent’s story that exemplifies those failings. For nearly two decades, dating back to the days of the old Child Support Agency, she has fought for what her child should have been entitled to. In all that time, her ex-partner has made consistent payments for just six months. After courageously leaving an abusive relationship, she had turned to the CMS for support. Instead, she encountered a system powerless to act when her ex-partner began gaming the system. He claimed to be unemployed while there was evidence that he was working. Missed payments would coincide with birthdays and Christmas, depriving her of the means to make those occasions special for her child. He refused to engage unless she contacted him directly, knowing full well how traumatic that would be given the history of abuse. Her mental health, understandably, deteriorated.

Yet in all her desperate calls to the CMS, rarely did she speak to the same person twice—someone familiar with her case and invested in its resolution. In her words, support consisted of someone

“who read from a screen, then said they will transfer me to someone who can help but really just put me back in the queue.”

She has spent years feeling that she is going around in circles, without receiving all the payment that she should have received for the care of her child. Madam Deputy Speaker, I hope that the Minister agrees that this falls well short of what vulnerable families deserve.

[Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Does he agree that we need more enforcement, more accurate assessment of non-resident parent income, and better joined-up working between His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions? Furthermore, if we saw that, it would help not just his constituents, to whom he has referred so passionately, but parents such as my constituent whose ex-partner is avoiding paying any ongoing child maintenance despite owning multiple properties.

[Ian Sollom]

I absolutely agree; that is exactly the sort of reform we need to see in the system, and I will come to those points later.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward this matter. I spoke to him before the debate. I would love to say that things are better in Northern Ireland, but they are not better one bit. Hon. Members can see that I have no hair, and one reasons for that is that I find this matter incredibly stressful, and he has referred to things that I and my staff deal with regularly. The statistics for Northern Ireland show that in March last year only 54% of parents were paying more than 90% of what they owe. That means that 46% of those who should be paying are not. It is quite clear to me that the system falls down. Single-parent families are struggling. Does he agree that we need a UK-wide overhaul to address such worrying statistics—not just in Northern Ireland, but everywhere in this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

[Ian Sollom]

I will come to the national statistics later in my speech, but those mentioned by the hon. Gentleman absolutely speak to the need for reform.

The constituent I mentioned is far from alone, and it is not all one way, with paying parents often finding themselves let down by the CMS too. Another constituent has spent months battling the service after experiencing a genuine drop in income. Despite providing every piece of documentation that he has been asked for, he has been left waiting and waiting for an adjustment to his payment schedule. He said:

“I received a letter that said my request was not valid. No explanation was given. The letter said I would be referred to an unnamed team that could help me. Almost two months later, I have received no contact.”

That is just another story that embodies the failures at the CMS.

I recently attended the parliamentary event hosted by Gingerbread, the charity for single-parent families, and the all-party parliamentary group on single-parent families. The testimony shared that day echoed many of the fundamental problems: enforcement failures, dehumanising customer service, the resulting financial hardship and, in too many cases, continued abuse.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing this important debate. I note that I am an officer of the APPG on single-parent families. The recent excellent report from Gingerbread on fixing the CMS noted that where child maintenance is paid, child poverty is 25% lower in those families. Does he agree that Gingerbread’s work is absolutely vital, but that it is also vital, as an important step towards solving the problem of child poverty, that we fix the Child Maintenance Service?

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Sollom]

Gingerbread’s report on fixing the CMS is excellent. It has a lot of pointers and a lot of excellent statistics about how single-parent families are being let down. I will come on to some of those now.

The Government’s own child maintenance statistics paint a damning picture: 31% of all paying parents made no maintenance payments whatsoever, and a further 12% paid less than 60% of what they owed. Those are not just statistics; they represent thousands upon thousands of children going without. I therefore ask the Minister directly: how do the Government intend to strengthen the CMS’s enforcement powers to prevent systemic abuse? Further, following the recent consultation on improving payment collection and transfer, when can we expect to see the Government’s response?

More than a million children nationwide depend on CMS arrangements. Many of those children and their single-parent families lack the financial security they deserve and need. That brings me to the wider issue of child poverty. That is an area that this Government claim to prioritise, yet it is hard not to question the depth of that commitment when they have so far refused to abolish the two-child benefit cap and when reform of the CMS seems barely to have featured in policy discussions.

The evidence is stark. According to Save the Children, almost half of all children in single-parent families live in poverty, compared with one in four children in two-parent households. Gingerbread’s “Fix the CMS” report revealed that over 50% of parents not receiving their entitled maintenance struggle to pay essential bills. Nearly half cannot afford basic necessities for their children, such as clothes, shoes and school uniforms.

It should be self-evident that any serious strategy to tackle child poverty must include fundamental reform of the CMS. What progress has been made on the Government’s child poverty strategy, and have they given appropriate consideration to reform of the CMS? The challenges for the CMS are numerous and complex, and they beg further questions. Will the Government consider reviewing the CMS funding formula to ensure that it truly reflects the cost of raising a child? Will they commit to amending service charges, including the 4% fee for receiving parents who use collect and pay, and the initial £20 enrolment charge? How can the Government improve staff recruitment, retention and training, to ensure that the workforce can properly support those who depend on this vital service?

Those are just some of the questions that the Government must consider if they want to reform the CMS. The answers will not be easy, so I thank the Minister in advance for his response, and Mr Speaker for granting this important debate. Finally, I acknowledge the contributions and presence of all Members who have stayed for this debate. They understand the gravity of the issue. I hope the Minister is about to show us that the Government do too.

“Get Britain Working” White Paper

Ian Sollom Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Liz Kendall]

In the interests of brevity, yes.

[Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

St Neots in my constituency is the largest town in Cambridgeshire, and it does not have a jobcentre; residents have to travel up to Huntingdon each week for their benefits. In the absence of a jobcentre, social enterprise has taken place. Last week I attended the launch of the St Neots citizen hub, which aims to connect individuals with opportunities and employers with talent. It provides a safe space in the heart of the community to address the fundamental issues of skills gaps—including life skills—social isolation and financial insecurity, and it is a great example of the new model for jobcentres. Will the Secretary of State ensure that staff at the jobcentre in Huntingdon can come down for one day a week so that residents do not have to keep making the journey up to Huntingdon?

[Liz Kendall]

That is a really important point. We want to see more of our work coaches going to where people are, rather than always expecting them to come in. If all that help and support is being provided at the St Neots citizen hub, it sounds like exactly the sort of place where our work coaches should be based, and I will certainly bring that up with them.