International Women’s Day

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow that inspiring speech.

Yesterday, Labour Women made a short film for International Women’s Day. One of the things we were asked to do was to complete the sentence, “I want to live in a world where”. I said I wanted to live in a world where violence against women was eradicated and where rape was no longer used as a weapon of war. However, I wanted to go on to say that I also wanted the statistic that every week two women are murdered by their partner or ex-partner to be eradicated. That figure remains stubbornly the same, and no amount of awareness raising, improving of police handling of complaints and passing of laws, such as Clare’s law, appears to make a dent in it.

As we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), those two women per week are not statistics but real people—colleagues, friends, mothers, sisters and daughters. Leading up to their deaths, there is usually a catalogue of assaults—not reported—with partners pleading that they will change, and a repeat of the cycle of violence.

Imagine the trauma of being a child growing up in that situation, seeing the two most significant adults in their life fighting; going to bed at night wondering whether the night will be broken by yet another argument; worrying all the time; and, sadly, in many cases, thinking that all this is normal because it is all that they have experienced, living in a state of permanent high anxiety.

The fallout from domestic abuse is wide, yet the figure of two deaths per week sticks stubbornly. I was pleased to hear our honorary sister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore), talk about that issue earlier. We need to do something about the funding of women’s refuges. Too many women are turned away, and it is still not a statutory and, therefore, a funded duty of councils to provide domestic abuse services.

As this debate is about International Women’s Day, I want to talk about the plight of women around the world. In any conflict, women often have fewer resources to protect themselves. With children, they frequently make up the majority of displaced and refugee populations. War tactics, such as sexual violence, specifically target women.

However, women are almost completely missing from peace negotiations following conflict. The international community has recognised that women’s contribution is vital to achieving and sustaining peace. In 2000, the UN Security Council passed the historic resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. It calls for women to participate in peacebuilding, to be better protected from human rights violations, and to have access to justice and services to eliminate discrimination. Yet, almost 17 years on, more than half of peace agreements make no mention of women. We face new threats, including climate shocks, global health pandemics and violent extremism directly targeting women’s rights. Now, more than ever, we need the women, peace and security agenda.

I want to finish with these words:

“When you have warfare things happen; people suffer; the noncombatants suffer as well as the combatants. And so it happens in civil war…there is a good deal of warfare for which men take a great deal of glorification which has involved more practical sacrifice on women than it has on any man.”

Those are not the words of our sisters from Nigeria, Iran, Sri Lanka or anywhere else around the world; they are the words of Emmeline Pankhurst in 1913. Yet they still ring true and have relevance to the international community of women today.

This week, it was my pleasure to be able to vote on the design of a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst to be erected in Manchester, as a welcome relief from the many statues of men in our city. In the borough of Rochdale, we recently erected a statue of Gracie Fields, and Bury in Greater Manchester is working on a statue to commemorate the wonderful and much missed Victoria Wood, so I go back to where I started: I want to live in a world where it is no longer unusual to put up a statue of a prominent woman—not just in Greater Manchester, but the world over.

School Funding Formula and Northern Schools

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the school funding formula and Northern schools.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter—it is a first for me. The circumstances of the debate are strange in so far as I originally put in for a one-hour or 90-minute debate, knowing that many parliamentary colleagues were exercised about this topic. I did not win the lottery for an Adjournment debate, but a half-hour slot became available and Mr Speaker offered it to me, so I thought I would go ahead and try to condense this important subject into half an hour. However, I do apologise, Mr Streeter, because you could have had a range of eloquent speakers addressing the subject but unfortunately you will have to listen simply to me droning on. I am sure this will be the first of many such debates for the Minister, because the national funding formula will be contentious in many places, not only in the north, and I dare say he will have an opportunity to rehearse some well-tried Department for Education lines in defence of it.

The Government set themselves a laudable task: to close the north-south gap in educational attainment. I am a little sceptical about the gap because “the north” is often seen from London as an undifferentiated mass. I was brought up on BBC weather forecasts in which the presenters went into great detail about the weather on the south coast and in London, and then they would glibly say, “but in the north it will be” and use that blanket label for the entire area anywhere north of Watford. The tendency is to see the north as a homogenous culture, possibly peopled by men in flat caps with whippets and living with constant drizzle. However, I looked further into what the Government meant by the educational gap—I had to address what the evidence showed—and, if we control for factors such as income and deprivation and exclude pockets of genuine excellence, we see that outcomes for northern secondary schools are inferior to those found in London and the south-east. Primary schools show less evidence of a northern problem.

I am not sure whether the difference we see would be so stark if we excluded those areas that have benefited from schemes such as the London challenge, which has been a successful concentration of money and resources. I met recently with Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner, whom the Government charged with testing some of the assumptions underlying the project. The principal one seems to be the belief that if we have an educational problem, it is capable of an educational fix. The commission has suggested that other things could be taken into account: for example, parents in the north could be a bit pushier.

In a report for the previous Chancellor, Sir Nick Weller, who works for an academy chain, suggested unsurprisingly that the north could do better with more academy chains—and, incidentally, better teaching. Proponents of grammar schools have not been slow to suggest that what we need in the north is more grammar schools. The Minister will be aware of the study done by ResPublica in Knowsley, which suggested that grammar schools might be a panacea. However, to my certain knowledge, Knowsley has had grammar schools since 1544—I was once a pupil at Prescot grammar school.

The harsh reality is that, in order to change aspiration in the north, we need to do more than change school structures, because the reality that dawns on adolescents in the north is that opportunities are more limited compared with those they might face in the south, regardless of the education they receive. That is why so many young people gravitate to the south, particularly after their degrees; why there are more start-ups in the south; why the south is a magnet; and why the south has critical mass. Young people’s aspirations are simply less when there is less around them to aspire to—it is a chicken and egg dilemma. If we factor in limited parental optimism based on a degree of experience in the north and the limited opportunities available to those who are industrious but not especially talented, is it surprising that the optimism of childhood dwindles as schooling progresses and aspiration and attainment falls? I suggest that correcting that is beyond the scope of the school system alone; it involves regeneration of the whole community to which the child belongs.

That said, we all recognise that education plays a key part in regeneration. It is worth funding, and it is worth funding properly. I am far from believing that good funding is a sufficient condition of educational progress. Were that so, many schemes in the past would have worked far better than they have done. If we think about the money spent over the years in places such as Knowsley to provoke better educational outcomes, we would expect far superior outcomes to those we got. I do, though, note that, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research, £900 less is spent per primary school pupil in the north and at secondary schools that figure goes up to £1,300. That could go part of the way to explaining the significant difference in outcome. However, it is probably fairer to regard good funding as a necessary rather than a sufficient condition. In that respect, the Government’s revision of the school funding formula leaves a little to be desired. Indeed, its effects in some places will probably be catastrophic.

I recognise that no one will oppose a national school formula in principle because it sounds fair on paper, given that we have the effective nationalisation of school funding anyway through the dedicated schools grant. The current situation looks unfair and anomalous partly because of national decisions, but also because of the history of local decisions. We must look at that and see where that has led us.

When local education authorities were important—I do not suggest that they are not important at the moment—some bravely took decisions to sustain or increase budgets while others, less concerned about education, cut school funding to appease ratepayers and council tax payers. A feature of the new system is that that degree of discretion has simply gone, and councils charged with regeneration have lost all real leverage over the educational system. That is regretted by councils now, and clearly it will be also be regretted later on by city region cabinets and by Mayors as they get their hands on the levers of power, because they will want to prompt regeneration but they will lack some of the active levers that would enable them to do that.

I was a council leader in Sefton borough, and during tough years in the 1990s and so on we put money into school funding, sometimes at the cost of other services, because we regarded that as a high priority, and schools were therefore well funded—in fact, they were so well funded that sometimes the council dealt with its financial problems by borrowing from the schools’ balances. However, that was something we could do locally; it was a way in which we could emphasise our commitment to education in the area.

However a new formula is dealt with, it will obviously not please everyone. There will be winners and losers; but the background to the present situation is somewhat unpromising. The cost pressures on schools, such as national insurance, pension increases and school-based inflation, significantly outweigh the projected funding settlement for the sector. The Minister knows—and I think that we will all get to know—that the National Audit Office has vividly set that out. Its report will be investigated in greater detail at a hearing of the Public Accounts Committee, probably next week. To give the House a flavour of it, the NAO concludes that despite modest real-terms increases, the cost pressures on schools and increases in pupil numbers will result in a real-terms reduction of something like 8%. That is the NAO’s figure, not mine or that of a think tank or political party.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing this important debate to the Chamber. It is not just the NAO’s figure. I have had letters from headteachers of schools in my constituency who say they appear to be facing an 8% cut in real terms, and that that will lead to schools either going into deficit or having to make devastating cuts, having already made many efficiency savings.

[John Pugh]

Yes; they are mandated to make further efficiency savings.

Interestingly, on page 14 of the document, the NAO states that schools

“have not experienced this level of reduction in spending power since the mid 1990s.”

It may be pure coincidence, Mr Streeter, that there was a Conservative majority Government in the mid-1990s, but I draw your attention to that. Impacts will be worse on secondary schools; the NAO said that the number spending above income has increased from 33% to 59%. Not only has the number gone up but the size of the deficits that are being handled has gone up. If we add to that the disappearance of the education services grant, the fact that—as the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) mentioned—schools are expected to find £3 billion of efficiency savings, and the cost of implementing endless Government initiatives, we have what most of us would describe as a perfect storm, and an absence of financial sustainability.

What is most interesting in the NAO report is what schools appear to be doing to respond to the looming crisis that they can see all too clearly, as the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton suggested. According to the NAO, they are, generally, increasing class sizes, adjusting teacher contact time, reducing supply cover, replacing experienced staff with less qualified temporary staff, and hiring more bureaucrats to manage the finances as heads become not school leaders but accountants. An odd feature of the situation is that schools are spending less in percentage terms on teaching staff than they were. They are shoring up balances to cope with anticipated deficits and potential redundancies. If they are really unlucky, they must also deal with increasing PFI payments, which are the endowment of a Labour Government.

None of that is conducive, most of us would agree, to educational progress. Some areas of the north are already in fairly dire straits. Cumbria is one example. The NAO report was complete before the Government’s new national funding formula went out to consultation, but it has already altered people’s take on the consequences of the new national formula. The realisation is dawning that the formula is not universally good news and that it will do little to offset a particularly bleak outlook.

We must accept that the redistribution of diminishing resources will always have a predictable outcome. In the north the consequences are severe—certainly in the mid to long term. After inner London, the north-west of England benefits least from the general distribution away from London. However, within that regional profile there are significant losers—for no obviously good reason. The worst affected include Manchester, Kirklees, Wigan, Cheshire, Liverpool and Sefton, whether or not we make allowances for floors and ceilings or the 1.5%. Those areas are key components of the northern powerhouse.

When we drill down to the consequences for particular schools, the position is even more frightening. Christ the King school in Sefton in my constituency—the school that my children went to—is scheduled to lose £426,000, or £441 per pupil. Greenbank high school is scheduled to lose £527,000, or £558 per pupil. Down the road in Sefton Central, Formby high school and Range high school are scheduled to lose similar amounts.

I find it ironic that the situation I am now lamenting as an MP is one that I sought assiduously to forfend and prevent as a council leader. Had we in Sefton not, on a cross-party basis, sought to protect the education budget over many years and given schools both enormous financial independence and active support, the shock and the comedown of the national formula would not have been so severe. Paradoxically, a great strength of Sefton has been its tight network of primary schools. A perverse consequence of that is that, under the new formula, handing children on to secondary schools with good prior attainment de facto damages the budgetary position of the secondary schools, and their ability to sustain progress. That is the particular way in which the formula is rejigged. I think the Minister will understand the point I am endeavouring to make.

I hope that the Minister is taking account of what I am saying. I want to put it in a constructive fashion and put my sentiments across in a helpful rather than a wholly negative way. However, the Department for Education is not famous for its listening skills. I speak to many people to whom the Minister and the Department also speak, and I do not hear a constant refrain about the Department being particularly good in that area. At times it has shown an active contempt for those who have brought it messages it did not want to hear, but it is not malicious—I give it credit for that. It wants to help. It offers financial health checks and warnings from school commissioners. It even makes videos to be helpful, because it is genuinely ambitious for schools and genuinely keen on across-the-board improvements in the north.

However, I can see from my analysis no obvious reason why schooling in the north would change for the better in the present circumstances. Many of the ingredients for improvement that were seen in the London challenge are missing. The London challenge had sufficient predictable funding, although unfortunately that will go under the new formula, I think, and there will be rather less funding. Another thing it had going for it was collaboration, but the school system is now more fragmented than ever, with schools that are financially and academically weaker fearing takeover. The London challenge had clear, effective leadership, but heads are now stressing over finances and personnel management rather than the main issue, and local authorities are withering away.

The demise of the local authority has acute effects. Its statutory functions are barely affordable at the moment, given the pressure on council budgets, but following the phasing out of the ESG, its other strategic functions will be dependent on funding from schools that cannot afford to meet their own costs, let alone to pay back and hire local authority services. Ironically, back-office services, which are growing in individual schools, are one area in which schools can get good money from a local authority, from collaboration through the sharing of services. We need only look at the increased problem that primary academies are having with meeting back-office costs to realise that.

I have not come here simply to present the Minister with problems to which there are no obvious solutions. The solution is to recognise that we have a problem and to engage in a debate with headteachers, who have no particular political axe to grind but are now looking at a worrying landscape. That headteachers in the north are looking at that worrying landscape should give us no confidence that any attempt, by commissioners or whomever, to raise educational standards in the north and to deal with long-standing problems will be properly and sustainably addressed. With that plea and that degree of pessimism, I will sit down.

Soft Drinks Industry Levy: Funding for Sport in Schools

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the allocation of funding from the soft drinks industry levy for sport in schools.

May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David? This is a subject that I am passionate about. Since becoming an MP, I have spoken in a number of debates on the power of sport to influence good behaviour, create opportunities and provide enjoyment. I must stress that the purpose of the debate is to focus not on whether we are right or wrong to have a sugar tax, but on how we should spend the levy, now that the decision has been taken. With a £500 million pot, that is a significant amount of money that can make a genuine difference.

I must thank all the organisations that have contacted me in recent days ahead of the debate, including: the Sports and Recreation Alliance, which is understandably keen to see sporting opportunities increase; Sustrans, which wants to see more funding for walking and cycling programmes to and from school; Youth Sport Trust, which has also focused on the sports element and the link between greater physical activity and greater academic performance, which I know the Minister for School Standards will welcome; and ukactive, which has done a huge amount of research, highlighting in particular the cliff edge fall in activity during school holidays, which I will come back to. I was also contacted by health organisations such as: Diabetes UK, which is obviously in favour of reducing the amount of sugar being used; Cancer Research UK, on the same principle; and the Royal College of Surgeons, on behalf of dental surgeons, obviously to reduce tooth decay.

This is an important subject, because one third of children are obese or overweight by the time they leave primary school. To me, that was a staggering statistic to read. When I was growing up, it seemed that all of us were active and charging around, so I was staggered by the figure of one third—one in three. That is not only an alarming figure; social norms start to be created. If an increasing number of children are overweight or obese, that becomes acceptable and therefore it starts to increase. On a topical level, through the NHS we currently spend £6 billion a year helping people with illnesses linked to being either overweight or obese. How we could better spend that money if there were fewer obese people. And an obese child is five times more likely to be an obese adult than an adult who was not obese as a child.

The Youth Sport Trust highlights that only 21% of boys and 16% of girls meet the recommended guidelines for physical activity. I recognise that we are competing with video games, shrinking gardens—back gardens are now one third smaller than they were in the 1960s—and cautious parents. When I was growing up, parents did not think anything of children disappearing on long bike rides, playing in distant parks and going to their friends’ houses far afield, whereas nowadays parents are understandably worried if their children are out of sight. Again, that limits the opportunity to be active.

The Government recognise that we have to do something. In August 2016 they published “Childhood obesity: a plan for action” with the aim of reducing significantly the rate of childhood obesity. The plan included the soft drinks levy, which is worth £520 million a year, and clearer food labelling—something I pushed for in the previous Parliament through my work with the British Heart Foundation—because we have a duty to allow consumers to make informed decisions. Another fact that surprised me—I say this as someone who does enjoy drinking sugar-laced fizzy drinks but who wishes to be informed—was that a five-year-old should take in no more than 19 grams of sugar a day, yet one can of Coke contains 35 grams. How many consumers actually know that? If they did, would they change their habits?

Crucially, the plan was announced as part of a nudge policy, where we gave the industry two years to make changes. I recognise that many of the leading manufacturers and retailers are already making changes—as I said, I am not focusing on whether the levy was right or wrong, but clearly part of the strategy is to influence behaviour—but, as we have recognised that physical activity is good for health and good for improving academic performance, I welcomed that the money would be ring-fenced to spend on activities connected to schools. If we are to have a tax and get extra money, let us ensure that that money is spent in the right way. The best way to do that for children is through schools.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing this important subject to the Chamber. Given his enthusiasm for sport in schools, which I share, would he like to comment on the coalition Government’s decision to scrap the school sport partnerships in 2010, which has had a really detrimental effect on sport in our schools? I do not see the sugar tax as going all the way to replacing the excellent school sport partnership scheme that we had.

[Justin Tomlinson]

Actually, that was the very first time I rebelled—I was rewarded by sitting on some obscure European committees thing for five years to think carefully about my actions. The funding was not scrapped. There was a change and initially a proposal to remove the ring-fencing, but the money was then once again ring-fenced, though schools were allowed to choose how to spend it on sports-related programmes. I supported that because we have got some fantastic school sport partnerships that are still thriving today—including my local one—but there were also some pretty poor ones, which have gone by the wayside, and those schools have now spent that money on individual sports coaches, sports clubs and things like that. We got there in the end, and funding has increased in this area since 2010.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Mc Nally]

I am probably the opposite of pompous, and “Maggie” is easier to say than “Erewash”. Anyway, to be serious, the hon. Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) managed to get representatives of the drinks industry and the British retail industry along to the meeting, and it was fantastic to hear the exchanges between the audience and the drinks industry. There was a bit of honesty, which was great to hear.

I want now to move on to the second thing that is very close to my heart. One of the most striking things about the various meetings hosted by the APPG on adult and childhood obesity is that they are all extremely well attended—any of the other, side events are also extremely well attended. They have involved a huge variety of people with a background in medical knowledge. All the contributions have been superb and worth listening to, and the rooms are always full, but one thing that I find striking every time I hear it is that there are, I believe, only 12 health visitors in the whole United Kingdom who have any in-depth professional knowledge of how to give advice to a mother and child on childhood obesity and how to deal with it. My wife, who is a recently retired health visitor and master of public health, has become extremely interested in pursuing that.

[Liz McInnes]

Does the hon. Gentleman know whether there are any health visitors who are capable of giving advice to a father and child, as opposed to a mother and child?

[John Mc Nally]

That is a great intervention. Being a man, I sometimes miss these things, but my wife has pointed out to me very often that there are—[Laughter.] She is never shy and, being a good husband, I always listen to what she has to tell me—I learned early that that saves an awful lot of grief.

The serious point is that there are not enough health visitors across the UK who are sufficiently well trained and educated on this matter. My wife is now preparing for a correspondence course. To reiterate the point, we need to look seriously at this: could we take some of the money from the sugar tax and apportion it towards training health visitors to a better level and to have a better understanding? That is really the point that I came here to make today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

Yes, indeed—my hon. Friend makes an important point. We have to deal with a context that is very different from anything we have experienced before. It is important for people to understand that social media is not ungoverned space. The law applies there as it does elsewhere. If those using social media engage in behaviour that would otherwise be criminal, they will find it is criminal there, too.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

I thank the Attorney General for outlining protection for vulnerable victims in the criminal courts. What progress has been made in providing special protection measures for vulnerable victims within family courts?

[The Attorney General]

We need to look carefully at how we might read across some of the things that are clearly working well in the criminal courts to other types of court. The hon. Lady is right to highlight that. There is huge scope for us to understand more about how people can give their best evidence. That, after all, is what court systems of all kinds should be looking for.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Dinenage]

I know that 60 countries celebrate International Men’s Day in various ways, focusing on men’s health and wellbeing, discrimination against men and any inequalities that they face, improving gender relations, and promoting gender equality. That creates a safer world for everyone, and is always to be commended.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

The aim of International Men’s Day is to promote gender equality and highlight positive male role models. In the United Kingdom, two women are killed by a partner or ex-partner every week. Action is urgently needed to tackle deeply ingrained and damaging inequality. Does the Minister agree that we should support campaigns to tackle misogyny and sexist attitudes, and that men have a crucial role to play in that?

[Caroline Dinenage]

I could not have put it better myself. The hon. Lady is right to draw attention to the fact that last year 81 women were killed by violent partners or ex-partners. In fact, 19 men were killed by violent partners or ex-partners as well. The Government are absolutely committed to tackling violence against women and girls—it is of the utmost importance, which is why we have put more money into it than ever before—and we will not rest until that happens.

Schools that work for Everyone

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I look forward to getting a chance to meet the organisation that my hon. Friend mentions. I reiterate his point, which is that we see grammars operating in parts of the country not to the detriment of the broader school community. This is not, as we saw in the past, a binary system with outstanding grammars and, by contrast, other schools—the 1950s and ’60s secondary moderns—that were not even testing the children that came through their doors, let alone really driving attainment. We are in a very different place now, with a much wider, more diverse system, but that is why we are also right to start opening it up.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

I echo the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart): far from opening up opportunities to all children, all this proposal does is open up opportunities to those children whose parents can afford private tutors for them, to train and coach them through the grammar school exam. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) for his excellent suggestion that our current grammar schools should pilot some of these ideas. The Secretary of State has talked about reforming the 11-plus exam. Why does she not start that reform with our existing grammars, make the exam tutor-proof and do what she says is going to happen, namely give all young people an opportunity?

[Justine Greening]

I know that the hon. Lady will welcome the fact that a number of grammar schools are already looking at how they can make sure that their test focuses more on the underlying abilities of the child than on the ability of their parents to pay for a tutor. We should also look at other ways in which we can overcome those barriers, but I do not think that the answer to that is to simply—[Interruption.]

Higher Education and Research Bill

Liz McInnes Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I do not agree with the hon. Lady, but I recognise the challenges that she talks about in making sure that the universities sector and the higher education sector more broadly come out of the process of Brexit stronger. That is why we are engaging in a structured way across Government and outside Government in sectors such as HE to ensure that we have a smart approach to taking Britain through the Brexit process. I refer her to the point that the University Alliance made earlier today about the Bill being

“a raft that can take us to calmer waters”.

The Bill is how we will provide the security, vision and direction for a strong higher education sector.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

rose—

[Jo Stevens]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to say a few words in this debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), who made an excellent speech that covered most of the points that I was going to raise. I have been asked to finish by 6.35 pm, and I will make sure that I do so. It is interesting that my hon. Friend said that we do not have many scientists on these Benches. I am one of the few scientists in Parliament; it would be nice to have some more of us.

First, I want to talk about students. As my hon. Friend said, yesterday we had a debate in Westminster Hall about detrimental changes to student loan repayments. Since 2010, students in our society have been treated in an unscrupulous and unfair way. They have rarely been consulted. Their voices seem to have been ignored throughout policy discussions, and this Bill seems to be no different. The Government claimed that they set out to make student choice and student interests a central part of their agenda in reforming higher education, but unfortunately they seem to have fallen short on that promise. As my hon. Friend said, there is very little reference to students, or their voices, throughout this Bill. It introduces an office for students but does not mention student representation as part of it. It is absolutely vital that student voices be heard.

The other issue I wish to focus on is the result of the referendum. The parliamentary cycle will now be dominated by Brexit discussions. Until we know what Brexit actually means, and the relationship that we wish to have with and within the EU, this Bill cannot really make any progress. There are more than 125,000 EU students at UK universities, and non-UK EU nationals make up 11.6% of all students at master’s level. International students alone contribute £3.7 billion to the economy. What should happen not only to current students but to prospective students with regard to visa, loan and placement requirements after the 2016-17 academic year? There is no clear and concise policy. Many of the brightest minds come to study at our world-class institutions, and we should look not only to bring them here, but to keep their talents in the UK after they have graduated.

In his research review for the Government, Professor Paul Nurse warned that leaving the EU would jeopardise the world-class science for which the UK is known and that it therefore risked damaging the economy. We now need to discuss the question of retaining or replacing these assets.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Edward Timpson]

Perhaps I could pick out two traits that would be well worth considering: one is common sense, and the other is kindness—two things that we would do well to try to instil in every young person as they grow up in the society we have created for them.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

We would all agree that participation in sport at school is character building, and the Chancellor announced in his Budget that moneys raised from the sugar tax will be spent on sport in schools. How much money is expected to be raised from the sugar tax, and what talks have taken place on how those funds will be spent?

[Edward Timpson]

The hon. Lady is right to highlight that money from the sugar levy will be spent directly on sport and physical activity. There is also a commitment of £500 million to help up to 25% of secondary schools extend their school day, and we have doubled the PE and sport premium for secondary schools from £150 million to £300 million per year, which is already making a significant impact on the quality of PE in many of our primary schools.

Further Education Colleges: Greater Manchester

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered further education colleges and skills in Greater Manchester.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. May I beg your indulgence and that of other Members? As this debate is about Greater Manchester, we should pause for just a second to reflect that today is the 20th anniversary of the devastating IRA bomb in our city. I remember exactly where I was that day: I was loading my bike on to a car in Northenden, five miles away, and I still heard and felt the blast. I was one of the first civilians to be allowed through the cordon by the security services that week to see the impact at first hand. There were 200 people injured and £1 billion-worth of damage, and 1,000 business properties were wrecked. I pay tribute to the then Prime Minister, John Major, who stood side by side with the Labour authority at the time and—it is worth putting on the record—with the European Union, which pumped tens of millions of pounds into the regeneration of our great city, which started its great renaissance back then.

Greater Manchester is a city region of 2.7 million people and the fastest-growing metropolitan economy outside Greater London. The GM economy has great assets in health and life sciences, finance and professional services, as well as the creative and digital sectors, but there are considerable challenges with employment inequality and regeneration, about which there is wide consensus between stakeholders. Greater Manchester is at the forefront of moves to devolve central Government powers in England, which reflects the strong governance in its combined authority. Although it faces some challenges, the college sector in Greater Manchester also has considerable strengths. There are 21 colleges in the Greater Manchester region: 10 further education colleges and 11 sixth-form colleges.

I want to preface my remarks today by talking about skills in Greater Manchester, productivity and the link between productivity and pay. Finally, I shall discuss in detail the current area review, which is ongoing and hopes to report back in June. In GM, the education, skills and work system is currently characterised by the fact that 40% of children who enter school are not school-ready. Some 47% of young people in GM are leaving school without English and Maths GCSEs. We have a long-standing issue with low skill levels in our working-age population. Qualifications are an imperfect proxy for skill: nevertheless, Greater Manchester has enduring skills gaps at both the bottom and the top end of the skills spectrum. In GM, 33% of the 16 to 64-year-old resident population had at least a level 4 qualification in 2015, compared with 37% across the UK.

However, it is important to remember that there are larger differences within the GM districts than between GM and the rest of the country. For example, 48.4% of Trafford residents hold a level 4 qualification or above, compared with 25% in Rochdale—my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) is here today—where there is huge inequality in educational attainment. Last year, 10% of 16 to 64-year-old GM residents did not have any qualifications at all, compared with 8.8% across the UK. In part, skills difficulties in GM owe something to historical problems with schools in the city region. In GM as a whole, in the past academic year 55% of pupils obtained five GCSEs at grades A* to C, including maths and English, which compares with the English state-funded average of 57.3%. Again, there are large differences within districts in GM.

The Greater Manchester city region has been a long-standing and emphatic supporter of apprenticeships. The districts that comprise Greater Manchester co-ordinate a strategic approach to apprenticeships through the apprenticeship hub. Of just under 30,000 apprenticeship starts last year, 27% were for 16 to 18-year-olds, 29% were for 19 to 24-year-olds and 42% were for those aged 25 and older. By level, 64% of starts are at the intermediate level, just over a third are advanced and 2% are at the higher level.

Analysis of job growth and economic forecasting suggest that the strongest job growth will be at level 4. Meanwhile, only a small minority of starts in the further education system are at that level, so there is an active debate about supply and demand mismatching. Employers in several key sectors report difficulties in recruiting the skills they need, and any MP who visits factories, workshops or other places of work in their constituency will hear that from the managing directors of those companies. In my constituency alone, I have recently been speaking to HellermannTyton, Manchester Airport and Endress+Hauser, and they have all highlighted that.

The city region is taking active steps to encourage more provision at level 4, including investing in apprenticeships and supporting the concept of an institute of technology in Greater Manchester. If I may be so bold, I really think that the agenda our current mayoral candidates should be talking about is how we close the gap in the Manchester economy. We spend roughly £23 billion on public services and we raise roughly £18 billion. The first job of any new Mayor will be to break even—to bridge that gap—so that we can become more powerful as a conurbation.

The skills challenge is not simply on the supply side, however; there are also issues relating to skills utilisation. For example, in recent years the number of graduates has risen faster than the number of graduate jobs in the local economy, in spite of Media City, the growth of Spinningfields as a financial district and the growth of parts of central Manchester as an agglomeration of law firms. Demand for skills is also likely to be constrained by the business models of GM employers. I am loth to criticise employers, but it is clear that many in the city region pursue low-cost, low-value, low-skill business models to a greater extent than is the norm in the UK. That has to change.

Let me move on to productivity. Labour productivity in Greater Manchester is lower than the UK average. In 2014 gross value added per job in GM was £39,000; in the UK it was £45,000. There are productivity gaps between GM and the UK in all the main sectors, with the notable exception of manufacturing, where GM has an advantage. The largest productivity gaps are in the knowledge-intensive sectors, including financial and professional services and property. In my recent discussions with Accenture, the company was very clear that the Greater Manchester economy lacks digital skills, which will be one of the largest growth areas in years to come. The low-productivity sectors account for a growing share of jobs; in 2000 they represented 35% of employment, but by 2014 the proportion was 40%. Overall, GM has a £10.4 billion productivity gap with the rest of the country.

Low pay is a significant problem in Greater Manchester. Nearly a quarter of jobs in GM pay less than the living wage. In some districts, such as Oldham and Rochdale, the proportion is around 30%.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mike Kane]

I would be glad to give way; it has been a long stretch.

[Liz McInnes]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s gratitude—I can see that he is flagging a little. He makes a very good point about areas that get less than the living wage. My constituency is the second-worst in the north-west for constituents not being paid the living wage, which 40% of my constituents do not get.

[Mike Kane]

I could not agree more. The key thing is that it is a complicated mix of skills, qualifications and pay. I do not want to turn this into a row with the Government, but Opposition Members do not believe that the national living wage is the actual living wage, as defined by the Living Wage Foundation. As I said earlier, we need employers to invest in technology and the skills of their workforce, so that people can move up from cleaner to chief executive in all the companies in the conurbation.

Greater Manchester wages are still recovering from the effects of the recession. There has been a decline of living standards in Greater Manchester, where they have fallen faster than elsewhere in the UK. Average hourly pay in 2014 was below that of 2002. In 2004 workers earned £11.62 on average for every hour they worked. By 2014 that was £11. Since 2009 wages have fallen by 10%, and last year inflation-adjusted annual median pay was more than £1,200 a year less than the UK average. Low-paying sectors account for 36% of all jobs in GM’s total employment market of 1.2 million jobs, and some 400,000 people work in those sectors. Approximately 130,000 women and 90,000 men were low paid in 2014. Men’s wages declined most during and after the recession, leading to a shrinking of the gender pay gap due to that levelling down. By 2014, after adjusting for inflation, men earned, on average, £12.92 an hour and women earned just £10.37—a 25% differential. Well over half of young people under 25 are low paid.

The national programme of post-16 reviews was announced in July 2015 and will run for almost two years until summer 2017. There will be 41 reviews in total, covering all parts of England. The University and College Union has raised a number of serious concerns about the Government’s area-based review programme, both in general terms and specifically in relation to Greater Manchester. Currently the net liabilities of the post-16 sector are estimated to be £1.5 billion and there are around 80 colleges in discussions about mergers. Over the past five years, funding has fallen by nearly a third in key areas such as adult education. If we add inflation-based costs, colleges need to make efficiency improvements of around 40% to 50%. At the same time, the general trend is that quality is worsening, according to Ofsted, which is a damning indictment of the Government’s record in the sector.

The review in Greater Manchester started in September 2015 and is now reaching a conclusion. The core aim of post-16 area-based reviews is to ensure that colleges are in a stronger position to deal with the challenges they face in the future, making them more financially sustainable and better placed to provide the education and training needed in their local economies and communities. The July 2015 policy statement on the area-based reviews set out the expectation that they will lead to fewer, larger colleges. The draft proposals would create a number of new groupings in the further education sector: a group in the north comprising Bolton College, the University of Bolton and Bury College; a group in the east comprising Stockport, Oldham and Tameside Colleges; and a group in the centre that would include the Manchester College and Trafford College, along with a number of other training partners. There are also FE colleges that are yet to declare any alignment.

A significant flaw in the review process has been the exclusion of 11-to-18 schools and university technical colleges from discussions about the future structure of 16-to-19 education in the city region. Although there are good logistical reasons for managing a review process with a limited number of institutions, there are more than 50 schools with sixth-form colleges in GM, educating more than 8,000 young people. Some of those sixth forms have very small numbers and may not be financially sustainable at current and future funding rates.

There is also a problem with the banking system. One of the key barriers to implementing change in GM is the banks’ attitude to the sector. They insist on charging colleges with contractual break clauses for their loans when merging with other colleges. Those fees can amount to more than £1 million, which restricts viable colleges from coming together for the benefit of Greater Manchester. Does the Minister believe that colleges will have to divert funds from community development to cover those fees? The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Treasury have set aside a figure for restructuring the FE sector nationally, which is rumoured to be in the region of £500 million. In GM it is being described as funding that will be available only as loans and not as one-off grants. Viable colleges will not want to saddle themselves with debt from the merger with another college.

So what needs to be done? It is clear that Greater Manchester needs to make progress in tackling the large number of people in the workforce without qualifications, as well as attainment at age 16 and higher level skills development. The area-based review and devolution of the adult education budget will help, but in the main they are focused on the 19-plus skills system. Much of the funding is spent on tackling the lack of achievement by age 16. The combined authority would like further powers over the 0-to-19 skills system, rather than its existing powers over the 19-plus skills system alone. Work is under way to put in place a memorandum of understanding with the Department for Education to ensure that its commissioning of provision is aligned with Greater Manchester’s needs and that decisions taken in one part of the system are consistent with those that we are making in the 19-plus part of the system, which will be a devolved matter.

The skills system is confusing for many people and the quality of advice and guidance on careers and education is variable. The Sainsbury review of pathways, which is due to be published shortly, could be significant in helping to clarify that. However, we need to recognise that current Government policy is that skills at level 3 and above are the responsibility of employers and individuals via adult learner loans. Such loans are currently available only for full qualifications, but many people and employers want and need specific short courses to gain employment or tackle skills shortages. Research has shown that 40% of digital and creative companies in Greater Manchester have lost business due to skills shortages. Targeted short courses, for example in social media, could help to solve some of those issues. Greater Manchester is therefore working with BIS as part of the devolution deal to examine the potential for flexibility in adult learning loans. It would be great to hear the Minister’s views on that.

We need to increase employer engagement in the skills system. We know, as local MPs, that there is a huge mismatch. There are some great examples, but there is a lack of consistency across Greater Manchester. We have to work with employer groups to get the message out about investment in skills and to get their input into the provision that GM needs to meet its future needs. We need better modelling of workforce requirements, so that we can train our young people for the jobs of the future. The apprenticeship levy is an opportunity to drive higher level skills development for new recruits to GM companies and to upskill the existing workforce, which will drive higher levels of productivity in GM firms. Greater Manchester has made the case to the Government for greater involvement in the apprenticeship levy implementation. It should also be noted that the devolved Administrations in Scotland and Wales have far greater control over the way in which the levy is spent. The area-based review will help shape an important part of the infrastructure that GM needs to develop future skills, but it only will be part of the solution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under you as Chair, Ms Ryan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) on securing this debate and on the way he comprehensively set out the context in the education landscape. It was an excellent introduction.

I want to make a few short remarks about the process and scope of the area review, and about the effect on my constituents in south Manchester. Further education plays a vital role in our local economies and our communities. It can boost growth and drive personal achievement and social mobility. The best FE colleges are adaptable to local needs and provide skills and training where local areas need them most, and they can design courses according to local needs, such as the innovative higher education/further education hybrid courses offered at the Fielden campus of Manchester College in my constituency, so I welcome the chance to discuss FE and skills in Greater Manchester today.

We have a mission in Greater Manchester to skill up our communities to meet the challenge of the modern economy and to give them the flexibility and adaptability to thrive. We need to match our economic success with educational success, so there are questions about how we change our system to educate our young people, and how we deal with adult retraining and skilling up an underqualified population. These are big challenges. Overshadowing any discussion about FE and skills in Greater Manchester is the area review. Some would say that the area review has overshadowed the sector itself in recent months. The view among some people I have spoken to in the sector is that it has come at the wrong time, has the wrong focus and has distracted people from getting on with the job of improving standards in the sector. Certainly the delay in the process has not helped anyone.

There are merits, as my colleagues have mentioned, in some of the aims of the area reviews, but there is certainly a feeling that the area reviews are more about saving money than improving access for students or raising standards, which is not helped by the fact that the initial guidance on the review was about cutting costs, not meeting learner needs. The Greater Manchester area review is a process that should serve the needs of students and the local economy, not the need of the Government to cut budgets.

There is a wider problem about the scope of the review. People in the sector feel that the review has not addressed the real problem, which is the skills shortage that we have heard about and how we design a whole sector to meet the challenge. The Library has confirmed that the most popular reason given by employers in Greater Manchester for having hard-to-fill vacancies was,

“Low number of applicants with the required skills.”

There is an argument that the area reviews have been too focused on structures and governance, rather than tackling the challenge. The review falls short of tackling the long-term reforms that Greater Manchester needs, and it may turn out to be a missed opportunity to properly review post-16 provision across the system.

[Liz McInnes]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Greater Manchester Combined Authority has spoken of its dissatisfaction with the proposals made by the 10 FE and 11 sixth-form colleges involved in the steering group? The GMCA is concerned that only two mergers have so far been proposed involving five colleges. Is my hon. Friend going to talk about that in his speech?

[Jeff Smith]

I will certainly refer to that. Such concerns are legitimate and the combined authority is right to raise them. They certainly need to be addressed.

The process needs to look at further education provision as a whole and should consult all post-16 providers. The Association of Colleges, Unison, the University and College Union and others have all pointed out the dangers of a narrow review process that ignores large numbers of FE providers. In its review of post-16 Government policy, the Public Accounts Committee argued:

“It is unclear how area-based reviews of post-16 education, which are limited in scope, will deliver a more robust and sustainable further education sector.”

I believe that is the case in Greater Manchester.

The area review, as we have heard, has not encompassed university technical colleges or the 50 school sixth forms in Greater Manchester, in which more than 8,000 young people are taught. There are 11 sixth-form colleges included in the Greater Manchester area review, of which 100% are judged good or outstanding. They are already doing a really good job for the students they serve. I have no problem with including them in a review of further education and skills in the region, but they do not work in isolation. The system needs to work together. I do not see how we can design a system for the future without looking at the whole system in the present.

The review also does not deal with the key issue of devolved funding. As we know, the Government have already moved to devolve £6 billion of health and social care funding to Greater Manchester, and there are plans of course for a wide package of devolution of resources that we in Greater Manchester have long argued for. I echo the comments made earlier about the need to have oversight of school improvement on a local and regional basis. The devolution of the adult skills budgets was announced in March, but there is no real sign of the same for 16 to 19 and apprenticeship funding. There is a question to be answered here. This inconsistency of devolution of funding arguably prevents the Greater Manchester Combined Authority from shaping the reviews according to the real demands of the region and the various parts of the sector that are trying to deliver the change that we need.

The needs of Manchester’s students are changing. There is higher demand than ever for English and maths courses; more students are choosing work-based learning over traditional FE pathways; and there are big increases in demand for English for speakers of other languages—ESOL—courses at a time when there has been a cut in Government funding. Giving the Greater Manchester Combined Authority the power to manage and distribute funding according to need could help colleges to be more flexible in such developments. That feeds into the wider agenda. If we are going to devolve responsibility we need to give the combined authority the proper means to deliver it.

Finally, I want to highlight some specific concerns about the proposed Tameside, Oldham and Stockport merger that will particularly affect my constituents in south Manchester. The various merger possibilities have been described as shotgun weddings, and it does feel a little like that. I wonder how much consideration was given to the idea of some of the less successful colleges working with a variety of the more successful ones, rather than being forced into mergers that may not be appropriate. What appears to be happening on the east side of the conurbation is a merger of three less successful colleges into, potentially, one larger less successful college. I hope that that is not what will happen: we need to learn lessons from successful colleges.

Leaving aside the estimated £50 million of taxpayers’ money that may be needed to make the mergers viable, I am concerned about the effect on learners—particularly the nearly 400 constituents of mine who attend Stockport College. I am concerned about what the new arrangements may mean for them in terms of their courses and access to institutions. There is a worry that my constituents currently studying at Stockport and the other colleges will suffer reductions in the number of courses, increases in journey times or other disadvantages as a result of the proposed mergers. I seek reassurance that my constituents will not be detrimentally affected.

It appears to many people that the review has not yet dealt properly with issues of quality. It has simply looked at college mergers to address financial concerns. It has not dealt with retraining and reskilling and has not yet come up with a convincing plan that will give us the confidence that we have an FE sector fit for the job of equipping our residents for the future. Greater Manchester residents deserve better.

Age Discrimination: National Living Wage

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I have only prepared a short speech, so I might give the Front-Bench spokespersons a bit longer to speak. However, I am sure that we are all eager to hear what the Minister has to say.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) for securing this important debate. It is about a subject that I know she has done a lot of work on, and I commend her for that. This is a really important issue and I agree with her that fair pay for fair work should start at the age of 18. The arbitrary cut-off point of 25 makes no sense; 25 is not the age of consent. There is no reason why this Government should have picked on people under 25. Not for the first time, I find myself standing up in this place and asking, “What have this Government got against young people?”

This Government seem to be intent on attacking young people across the country by putting barriers in their way. They come in the form of educational barriers—the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance—the depletion of local youth services, the increase in tuition fees, the transformation of maintenance grants for students into maintenance loans, which puts those students into more debt, the refusal to address zero-hours contracts and the failure on housing, with the lowest house building figure since the 1920s. In all these ways, this Government discriminate against younger people and now they seem to be using pay in the workforce as another way of undermining our young people.

We welcome the Government’s national living wage, although I prefer to refer to it as the new national minimum wage. The real national living wage would be considerably higher and set independently by the University of Loughborough, which is something we should all be moving towards—a rate of pay that people can actually afford to live on and that is independently assessed. I welcome the pay rise, but I am profoundly concerned that the Government are undervaluing the skills and talents of people under 25, leaving many young people across the country in a perilous position by excluding them from the full living wage.

The legislation fails to address the finding of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission in 2015 that younger people face the

“worst economic prospects for generations”.

The commission stated:

“Younger people suffered the greatest drop in income and employment compared to older age groups and now face greater barriers to achieving economic independence and success”

than they did five years ago. The same report indicated that there was a decline in both earnings and full-time employment among younger workers, despite their being more likely to be better qualified than previous generations. We must harness and encourage the talent of young people, not discourage it.

One of the Government’s flagship polices to drive young talent was to deliver 200,000 new apprenticeships and to introduce an apprenticeship levy. However, the CBI has questioned the implementation of that policy, asking “for more clarity” and arguing that apprenticeships will only “help a small minority” of businesses. Also, apprenticeships need to be extended from traditional industrial sectors to meet the growing demands in social care, the tourism and leisure industry, and the digital and creative sectors.

Those 16 to 19-year-olds who are not in full-time education are at greater risk of being in poverty than any other category of people who are eligible to work. Even when 16 to 19-year-olds are in full employment, the cuts in benefits and the rise in zero-hours contracts have meant they face a daily struggle, making it increasingly difficult for them to get on and make a start in life by, for example, getting on to the housing ladder.

Home ownership among young people is below 50% and figures from the Office for National Statistics show that more young people aged between 20 and 34 are now living with their parents than was the case 20 years ago. The prevalence of zero-hours contracts is higher among young people than among other age groups, with 37% of those employed on zero-hours contracts aged between 16 and 24.

Austerity is a political choice and people under 25 should not pay such an unfair price—in the form of low wages and poverty—because of the policies of this Conservative Government. It is scandalous that the Government feel that they can discriminate against under-25s. Age discrimination is illegal under the Equality Act 2010 unless “objective justification” can be demonstrated, and saying that lack of experience justifies this age discrimination is not satisfactory.

In 2013, the Prime Minister proclaimed that young people have “low aspirations” and that his Government would

“get them to think that they can get all the way to the top.”

The Chancellor has claimed that the Government put “the next generation first”. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor speak great words, but they are really empty words that ring hollow, to my ears and to those of young people in this country, whose lives we are discussing today.

This Government have put young people last: last in opportunity; last in funding; last in jobs; and last in pay. We must not condemn younger people to become a lost generation and we must bring the national living wage age-exclusion to an end.

Education, Skills and Training

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate on the Queen’s Speech and to follow the hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes). I agree with her about the importance of early-years education. She made an important point.

There was a major omission from this Queen’s Speech. Following the Government’s U-turn on forced academisation, we will have a Bill

“to lay foundations for educational excellence in all schools,”

whatever that may mean. We had the promise of legislation to support the establishment of new universities and

“to promote choice and competition across the higher education sector.”

Yes, following the Government’s failed £9,000 a year tuition fee experiment, which was never intended to have the result that all universities would charge the maximum £9,000, this Government are now going to give universities the freedom to charge even more, making a university education even more inaccessible to young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady not recognise that children from disadvantaged backgrounds have a much greater opportunity to go to universities in England and Wales than in Scotland, where the fee system means that it is a subsidy for the middle classes and not for poorer students?

[Liz McInnes]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman, and that is certainly not what is going on in my constituency, which I will elaborate on. The number of part-time students and mature students applying to go to university has plummeted since the introduction of tuition fees.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

I cannot let the comment about Scotland pass. It is true that if we look at direct routes into university, Scotland has slightly lower numbers going from disadvantaged backgrounds, but if we look at more interesting routes into university through further education, Scotland is doing extremely well with children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

[Liz McInnes]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. I will go on to talk about further education, which is a key part of my speech.

The Minister for Universities and Science is no longer here, but I would like to point out that Labour is not opposed to new universities, despite the Minister’s assumption. For his information, it was the Tory press that dubbed University College London “cockney college”, not anybody from the Labour Benches.

What was missing from the Queen’s Speech was the vital link between schools and universities—further education. Not a mention of it, yet it provides a vital service to our young people, giving them opportunities, skills, training and the possibility of using FE as a stepping stone to higher education. Hopwood Hall College in my constituency, which serves Heywood and Middleton and the wider borough of Rochdale, has its own particular issues, none of which were addressed in the Queen’s Speech. The lack of literacy and numeracy skills is a massive issue in the borough, and some students require an extra year at Hopwood Hall to improve on English and maths, but funding reduces once the learner hits 18, with no allowance made for that catch-up year.

The borough of Rochdale was one of the most affected by the cut to education maintenance allowance and by reduced payments to disabled learners. At this stage, I should declare an interest: my partner used to teach at Hopwood Hall College. When the coalition Government scrapped EMA, my partner had students coming to see him to say that, although they were enjoying the course and the opportunities it gave them, they simply could not afford to keep attending—without EMA, they could not afford the bus fare to college. What a lamentable state of affairs to leave our students in—denied an education because of the cost of a bus fare. With the area review of post-16 education, the problem is likely to be exacerbated, as courses are forced to combine. Some students could find themselves having to travel 30 to 40 miles to access their college courses.

The Greater Manchester area review is causing great concern in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Education because of ongoing delays. The chair of the steering group—the chief executive of Tory Trafford Council—warned that the process would lead to

“a fragmentation of the colleges in Greater Manchester”.

The borough of Rochdale also has one of the lowest rates of people going to university. Replacing maintenance grants with loans, and the thought of a £50,000-plus debt, have served as a massive deterrent. Students in England leave university with more debt than students anywhere else in the English-speaking world. They now owe an average of £44,000 on finishing, while Americans run up half that debt, and Canadians a third of it. When maintenance grants are abolished, the poorest students will end up owing more than £50,000, or over half the average price of a terraced house in my constituency.

How many working-class parents will talk their children out of ending up with such a huge debt? Well-off parents, who can afford to pay private school fees, will simply see the cost of a university education as a continuation of those fees, and their children will continue climbing the ladder, untroubled.

While we are talking about student debt, I would like to mention the proposal in the BBC White Paper to close the so-called iPlayer loophole. Doing that will force students living away from home who do not have a television but who access online BBC content to spend yet more money purchasing a yearly TV licence—as if our students were not in enough debt. A Change.org petition against the proposal, which was started by a student at Loughborough University, has now reached a staggering 16,847 signatures. I have asked the Culture Secretary to consider the particular situation students are in; so far, he has evaded my questions, but the petition shows the strength of feeling among students and their families, and I hope he will agree to be bound by it.

Hopwood Hall College provides many innovative courses to help students who aspire to go to university. However, while students continue to face ever-mounting debts, there will be no answer to the social mobility problems in my constituency. The formation of new universities is not the solution, and the Government’s own assessment shows that the number of FE college students applying for higher education will be lower than it is at present.

Further education is sandwiched in the middle of schools and higher education, with key stages 4 and 5 massively underfunded. Yet Hopwood Hall College and many FE colleges like it continue to succeed, seemingly against all the odds. We have 4,000 people in the borough doing vocational courses or A-levels who would previously have travelled outside the borough. We also have a lower level of NEETs—people not in education, employment or training—than neighbouring boroughs. Demand for courses in science and technology, and in health and social care, is increasing, and the college is responding to this, but there is a real challenge across the FE sector in attracting good teachers, especially in maths.

It really is time that this Government recognised the essential role of the FE sector and took some genuine action to address gaps in funding and the problems of recruiting and retaining good-quality teachers in order to achieve their stated aim of educational excellence for all—and that includes for my constituents in Heywood and Middleton.