University Technical Colleges

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I am incredibly grateful for this debate. I spoke about apprenticeships and vocational training in my maiden speech, and have campaigned regularly since joining the House last year for apprenticeships and apprenticeship rights. I have now worked for many months behind the scenes with Harlow college, Anglia Ruskin university and employers in my constituency to apply for a university technical school in Harlow, which I will talk more about later.

Although universal technology colleges have not yet received the same media attention as free schools and the huge expansion of the academy programme, they are an equally profound reform of our school system. They are hugely popular, and something that we should think about in their own right.

I want to make three points. First, for decades we allowed vocational education to decline. Secondly, for growth, skills and jobs, UTCs represent the reform that we need. Thirdly, the results are positive, and we should support a massive roll-out of UTCs around the United Kingdom. When the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) called the general election in 2010, there were nearly 1 million young people unemployed. The same is broadly true today. However, youth unemployment is not a recent crisis. Figures from the Department for Work and Pensions show that it has grown steadily worse and worse over the past 10 years. In Essex, in particular, nearly 4,000 young people are not in employment, education or training. My constituency is one of the worst affected towns. We have allowed our skills base and vocational education to decline.

In the past 10 years in Austria and Germany, one in four businesses offered apprenticeships to young people, but in England that figure was just one in 10.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

I am listening with great sympathy to what my hon. Friend says about his constituency, because in my area of Medway we have had a similar problem with the closure of the dockyard 25 years ago. We lost an enormous employer that had trained hundreds and thousands of apprentices, so for us, UTCs would provide a new opportunity to develop in that area. With the Royal School of Military Engineering and MidKent college, there is a real partnership approach. I look forward to learning—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is developing a most interesting argument, but I want to hear Mr Halfon.