Careers Service (Young People)

Liz Kendall Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman is asking me to provide a critique on the state of careers advice in this country today. I will come to that, because his party’s record is not one of which he should be proud. The Labour party has just been in power for 13 years and the state of careers advice today is a consequence of what happened during those 13 years, not of what has happened during the first 16 months of this Administration. Hon. Members in all parts of the House agree on the importance of pupils receiving good quality advice and guidance to help them make the right choices for their future; that is particularly the case in these difficult economic times. We have recently seen a welcome reduction in the proportion of 16 to 18-year-olds who are not in education, employment or training—it has fallen from 9.4% in 2009 to 7.3% in 2010—and rises in the number of 16 and 17-year-olds in education. The youth labour market is also tightening, with unemployment for 16 to 24-year-olds who are not in full-time education growing each year from about 420,000 in 2004 to its current level of 671,000. The premium on achievement in particular vocational and academic qualifications demanded by employers and universities means that making the right choices becomes ever more important, and the consequences of making the wrong choices are ever more damaging.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

The Minister is talking a lot about 16 to 18-year-olds, but does he agree that if we are going to raise aspirations we need to start young? Will he agree to look at some of the good work that Leicester Connexions has done with Folville primary school in my constituency? Parents and pupils have been brought together when the children are still really young to talk about what careers options might be possible. The events were really well attended—much better attended than many other events involving parents run by the primary school. Does the Minister agree that the new system that his Government are proposing must support and fund initiatives that start at such an early age?

[Mr Gibb]

I could not agree more. We want to promote such best practice and we want schools to be innovative, but to do that they need control of their own funds. We have tried to de-ring-fence funds and to delegate and devolve decision making on funding to schools so that they can engage in such innovative activity. We have also de-ring-fenced the early intervention grant for local authorities, which now stands at £2.2 billion. That means that such initiatives can be undertaken by local authorities to tackle the very vulnerable people about whom the hon. Lady is talking.

[Liz Kendall]

The problem with the early intervention grant is that, in Leicester, it is being cut by £5 million this year. The Minister says that the Government are not ring fencing things, but I am not arguing for that. I am saying that there will be less money for such innovative projects, and I am asking what the Government are going to do about it.

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Lady makes a valid point. We de-ring-fenced all the components that make up the early intervention grants, and that funding is £2.2 billion, rising to £2.3 billion next year. That is a very large sum. I acknowledge that we had to reduce it by 10.9% as we moved into the coming year, but that is a consequence of the many very difficult decisions we have had to make in government as a result of the budget deficit. I am sorry to sound like an over-wound gramophone, but those are the consequences of being in government and of inheriting a budget deficit that had to be tackled if we were to get our economy moving again. Young people suffer more than any other group in society when an economy is floundering, and we are in the middle of a very difficult world economic crisis driven by world debt, so we have to get our budget deficit under control if we are to survive as an economy through such difficult periods. I think the best thing for young people is to get our economy growing as soon as possible. That is why we have had to make those decisions.

Local authorities currently have a duty to provide careers advice, and they fulfil that duty through the Connexions service—a service that has, I am afraid, had mixed reviews. The Education Committee’s report said, in measured terms:

“Connexions services have provided careers guidance to individuals alongside wider support services targeted, in general, at more disadvantaged groups; and some Connexions services have been more successful than others in discharging these two duties equally successfully.”

Alan Milburn, who was referred to by the right hon. Member for Leigh, was a little less circumspect in his report on access to the professions when he reported a number of surveys that suggested low levels of satisfaction among young people with the careers guidance they received from Connexions, showing that 45% of over-14s received either no careers advice or advice that was poor or limited. He went on to say:

“Throughout our work we have barely heard a good word about the careers work of the current Connexions service.”

It is very difficult to listen to the emotional tones of the right hon. Gentleman when that is the legacy of the very careers advice that he is so passionate about providing to young people.