Technical and Further Education Bill (Third sitting)

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 24th November 2016 Public Bill Committees

[The Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills (Robert Halfon)]

Thank you, Mr Bailey—

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

rose—

[The Chair]

Order. Mr Hopkins, is this in support of the point of order?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

It is further to that point of order, Mr Bailey. I just want to support my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South. I arrived at the House fairly recently and picked up the paper from my office, but I have not had time to read it, and it is clearly lengthy. I entirely support what he said and hope that the Minister will be accommodating.

[Robert Halfon]

The existing policy statement has already been on the gov.uk website for several weeks, as has the delegated powers memorandum. What was provided last night was an expanded refresh, but we have provided information on the policy, and that is the key point.

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[The Chair]

I had not seen the statement either, so I will invite the Minister to explain, but first I call Kelvin Hopkins.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Just for clarification, if it is accepted that we can table amendments to clause 1 and schedule 1 today, does that mean we will not take the stand part debate on clause 1 until later in our sessions?

[The Chair]

The situation is that Members can table amendments if the Committee has not moved on, but if schedule 1 has been taken, they cannot. I call the Minister.

[The Chair]

I will move on to some preliminary announcements. Today we begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill. Members may remove their jackets during Committee meetings. Please ensure that all electronic devices are turned off or switched to silent mode.

The selection list for today’s sittings is available in the room and shows how the selected amendments have been grouped for debate. Grouped amendments are generally on the same or similar issues. The Member who has put their name to the leading amendment in a group will be called first. Other Members will then be free to catch my eye and speak to all or any of the amendments in that group. A Member may speak more than once in a debate. I will work on the assumption that the Minister wishes the Committee to reach a decision on all Government amendments.

Please note that decisions on amendments take place not in the order in which amendments are debated, but in the order in which they appear on the amendment paper. In other words, debate occurs according to the selection list and decisions are taken when we come to the clause that the amendment affects. I hope that explanation is helpful. I will use my discretion to decide whether to allow a separate stand part debate on individual clauses and schedules following the debates on the relevant amendments. If any Member wishes to make a declaration of interest, he or she may do so at this point.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I do not know whether my membership of the governing body of a sixth-form college is relevant, but I declare it anyway.

[The Chair]

Thank you. I remind Committee members that we will consider the clauses and schedules in the order set out in the programme motion that we agreed on Tuesday morning, which is set out at the end of the amendment paper.

Clause 1

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education

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Colleges and providers deserve clarity on these issues, particularly because of the back story. I could go on about the list of things that have not so far been clarified about the institute, but I will not. I merely emphasise that we would like to be positive and enthusiastic about it; but at the end of the day, this is not about whether the Opposition are confident and enthusiastic, but about what the punters out there think. It is about what the providers, the sector skills councils, the further education colleges and the employers—particularly small and medium-sized enterprises—think. And, of course, it is about all the young and older people who the Minister and I hope will fill the ranks of the 3 million apprentices by 2020. We owe it to all those people to get the capacity and the capability right. Frankly, we need a lot more transparency and information about this issue than we have had so far.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

It is a pleasure to speak in this very important debate. I support what my hon. Friend has said. I have long been concerned about the problems with apprenticeships. Many of them are insecure and poor quality, and it has been alleged that they are sometimes simply a disguise for low-paid labour for young people. I would like to think that the institute will challenge that and ensure that we have good-quality, secure apprenticeships in the future, so we can build an economy that will compete effectively with those of other industrialised nations, which approach these things in a more rigorous way than we do.

In the evidence sessions, I drew attention to the research that Professor Sig Prais and others produced at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in the 1980s and early ’90s, which contrasted Britain with Germany, Spain, Italy and other European countries, where the rigour of educating apprentices was so much greater and the quality of the employees who came out of that rigorous experience was much higher. Some documentary television programmes illustrated that, too.

Apprenticeships cannot be done on the cheap. We need much higher teacher-student contact hours, and we should have more rigorous and intensive pedagogic teaching. That is one thing that came out of Germany and other countries, where apprentices get many hours of rigorous teaching, so they must have, first, good teachers and, secondly, enough of them to do the job. I hope that the institute will look at that, too.

The chief executive of the Association of Colleges drew attention to the low funding per student in further education, in contrast with higher education. I made the point that in higher education in my days we would have one or two lectures a day, perhaps, and a couple of seminars or tutorials during the week, but we were left to our own devices to write our essays and do our maths and statistics projects. The intensity of teaching was much more restricted, although it was high quality and we had some very impressive lecturers. It is not like that in further education, where constant attention needs to be paid to the youngsters, who are sometimes not as academic as those of us fortunate enough to go through higher education.

In 1969, I moved to Luton—I now represent it—which was then a major industrial town. General Motors in Luton and Dunstable employed about 38,000 people. Every year, hundreds if not thousands of young people went into genuine secure apprenticeships. They were taken in at the age of 15 or 16, and they were sometimes pretty raw from school, but after five years of experience in industry, they came out with pretty good qualifications and secure jobs. They would be at different levels. Some would go on to take examinations—ordinary national certificate and higher national certificate—and some would even go on to associate membership of the engineering institutions. It depended on their abilities, but they would look forward to a good life of work within General Motors or other companies, with a good pension at the end of it. That kind of secure manufacturing experience has long disappeared for most people in Luton. The incomes of the people who live in my constituency have declined significantly in relative terms.

Electrolux and SKF, which makes bearings for cars, have declined. Some companies kept a nominal presence in the constituency. Electrolux used to make washing machines and vacuum cleaners. Indeed, my first experience on being elected to Parliament in 1997 was Electrolux getting rid of the last of its manufacturing; it was shipped out to Hungary, where labour was cheaper. We fought to oppose that, but we did not win, although Electrolux kept its office headquarters in my constituency, which pleased me. No doubt it still makes very fine equipment, but not in Luton. SKF still has a small number of people making high-quality bearings. They are kept only because they make such high-quality bearings; the mass of thousands of people making large numbers of bearings for industry has long since gone.

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[The Chair]

Order. This is a fascinating discourse, but the hon. Gentleman is straying rather a long way from the purpose of the clause. If he could refocus slightly, that would be helpful to the Committee.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Thank you, Mr Bailey. I was aware that I was straying from the subject. As I said, I taught in further education myself. I have taught a small number of day-release students as well, mainly A-levels in economics, politics and statistics. My experience was not very long—three years or so—but it was a great experience that has coloured my politics ever since. I know the difficulties of training young people.

Another problem that we have had is that, because of the reduction in employer size, there are fewer employees, and it is harder for a small employer to sustain an apprentice without a proper levy system with heavy state subsidy. I think that the levy system is exactly right; I would like it to be more extensive, so that we can give apprentices secure employment with reasonable pay, while they are working and studying. Apprenticeships across the board need to be properly sustained financially and a levy system is the way forward. We are moving in that direction.

I have come across another problem. Small garages, for example, might take on an apprentice as a car mechanic, who might stay there for three years, but then that small garage might suddenly find that its apprentice has been poached by a big garage that does insurance work, which would be very lucrative and much more highly paid. The small garage loses out because it has put a lot of work and finance into training somebody who has been lost to a bigger employer. We ought to be training more people and giving more security to small employers to ensure that they can sustain an apprentice with similar and appropriate pay for a longer period.

There is a lot for the institute to address. I welcome the fact that we are moving in the right direction, but we must ensure that apprenticeships are high quality and secure, not just because our young people should have the right to good training, education and skills, but because our country and its economy needs those people to do well.

[Robert Halfon]

I could listen to the hon. Member for Luton North for a long time on this subject, because he speaks with a lot of wisdom. I have been to the north-east of England to see young people on five-year apprenticeships in companies, doing exactly the things that he talks about.

I will just say that the public and private sectors will be following the same standards. We have exactly the same standards on training and quality, and we are introducing a public sector target from April 2017 in all areas to increase the number of apprenticeships in the public sector: 30,000 by 2020.

I will respond to the points made by the hon. Member for Blackpool South. He is kind about me and it is good to be opposing someone who also cares passionately. I very much enjoyed the visit to Blackpool and the Fylde College. What it is doing is extraordinary, not just for students but for the long-term unemployed.

I will comment on a few things, given that we are about to discuss amendments. The hon. Gentleman said that the levy was an administrative challenge for the IFA. It is important that it has only an advisory role on funding caps. The implementation of the levy is for the Department and the Skills Funding Agency.

The hon. Gentleman talked about the apprenticeship target and how difficult it was. It is worth remembering that there have been 624,000 apprentice starts since May 2015. We have 899,400 apprenticeship participations in the 2015-16 year. That is the highest number on record. Of course, it is a challenge to reach a 3 million target, but we are on the way.

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[Gordon Marsden]

I will refocus to the extent, Mr Bailey, of saying that all the issues I describe have a consequence on the effectiveness of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, which we are being asked to approve to set up as a new body. The Minister has not convinced us that that new body will have the capacity it needs to deliver all this. I have explained some of the reasons for that.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Would it not be intelligent to look at what is done in other countries that are more successful at training people—notably Germany, which would be a good place to start—to compare the quality of apprenticeships and the resource that goes into training apprentices in those countries?

[Gordon Marsden]

Of course my hon. Friend is right, but one would also hope and think that the Department had done that already. There is a healthy industry of comparative studies out there, not just in the public sector but in the private sector. No doubt, the Department takes advantage of that. My point is that, if we want the institute to progress properly and to do everything it needs to do—what it says on the tin—we need more reassurance.

The final area on which we need reassurance is the implications of Brexit. Hon. Members might ask what Brexit has to do with the Institution for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. Well, a lot. If the Government do not manage to get the sort of money from, for example, European structural funds, which have traditionally supported the expansion of apprenticeships and small businesses in areas of the country with strong local enterprise partnerships, the Government’s ability to reach that figure will be affected. That is why we have to ask those questions about capacity, capability and join-up.

I have not even talked, you will be relieved to know, Mr Bailey—