Higher Education Reform

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Lots of people are surprised by how much they can earn in some of those trades, whether welding, bricklaying or plumbing. There have been, and there will always be, fabulous apprenticeships and full-time courses to make sure everyone can reach those careers.

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

The most important factor in determining graduate outcomes remains the student’s socioeconomic background. The average student from a working-class background goes on to earn less after graduating than their wealthier peers with the same degree. Does the Minister concede that the Government’s insistence on degrading the value of degrees and restricting access to higher education will only compound those deep structural inequalities that define our education system? Does the Minister accept that many young people in my constituency will consider those plans an attempt to put them back in their place and out of university?

[Gillian Keegan]

I was in exactly the same place as the people in his constituency—in fact, in the same city—so I do not accept that at all. We are upgrading the options for people from working-class backgrounds and upgrading the quality of degrees. I would not be here if I had not had the options I had, which included an apprenticeship, FE college and a part-time degree at Liverpool John Moores University. That was high quality. Everybody who puts their trust in the system should get the same.

Children’s Social Care Workforce

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer) for securing this important and timely debate.

The true measure of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members, and there are surely no members of our society who are more vulnerable than the hundreds of thousands of young people currently in our social care system, too many of whom spend every day at risk of physical harm—[Interruption.]

[Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)]

Order.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)]

The debate will now continue until 5.55 pm. I hope there are no Divisions before that. I call Mick Whitley.

[Mick Whitley]

The true measure of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members. There are surely no members of our society more vulnerable than the hundreds of thousands of young people in our social care system, too many of whom spend every day at risk of physical harm and neglect and who are denied the most basic security, safety and affection that is every child’s birth right. By that metric, our country—or more accurately, this Government—is guilty of grotesque moral failure. There are far too many young people falling through the cracks of a social care system that is breaking at the seams.

In recent years we have heard endless arguments about how to fix the crisis in children’s social care. Countless debates have been tabled in Parliament, roundtables convened and studies commissioned. However, the situation we face today is far worse than it ever has been. It is time for Conservative Members to recognise that the causes of the crisis are very simple. It is the direct and chilling consequence of 12 long years of cuts to frontline services that have left children’s services in every corner of this country at breaking point.

In the first 10 years of this Tory Government, central Government funding for children’s services was cut by almost a quarter in real terms. Spending on vital early intervention services almost halved nationally, and in some local authorities it has fallen by as much as 80%. The result is that we are reaching far too many young people in need far too late. The number of children being taken into care is soaring in deprived towns such as the one that I represent. It is young people in our most left-behind communities, such as in the north end of my constituency, who are suffering the most. For all this Government’s talk on levelling up, spending on children’s services has fallen three times faster in the north of England than in the south.

It is not just young people who are suffering. Social workers are truly our nation’s unsung heroes. Their job requires a strength of character, bravery and compassion that I would struggle to muster. However, they are increasingly being forced to handle unmanageable workloads while surviving on pay that has stagnated for over a decade. The fact that growing numbers of social workers are being forced to return from a hard day’s work supporting the most vulnerable children, only to line up for food banks to feed their own, should shame us all.

We should not be surprised that more social workers left the sector last year than at any point in the last five years, with more than one in three leaving after just two years of service. We should not be surprised that, increasingly, vulnerable children and their families are becoming accustomed to a revolving door of social workers, with little chance to establish the lasting and meaningful bonds that are so essential in getting them the support that they need. “The Case for Change” report has highlighted a desperate need to do more to recruit, retain and support a high-quality workforce. However, we have no hope of doing that unless we look urgently at restoring funding for children’s services and ending the scourge of in-work poverty in that sector.

I would not be surprised if my pleas to the Minister fall on deaf ears. After all, my calls for renewed investment in services supporting the most vulnerable could hardly be more at odds with the programme of slash-and-burn economics being advocated by all of the country’s prospective future leaders. If the Minister will not listen to me, then I hope he will heed the warnings of the Public Services Committee, which last year called for funding for children’s services to be returned to 2010 levels. Perhaps the Minister will listen to Action for Children, who are so active on the frontline of the crisis and are demanding that the funding gap in the sector be addressed by 2025, with a clear link between funding and the level of needs in communities like my own.

If even that will not steer this Government to action, I hope that the desperate message that I received from social workers in my constituency will. They are telling me that we are standing on the brink of a catastrophe. Enough is enough.

BTEC Qualifications

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) for leading the debate and speaking with characteristic eloquence about what the Government’s plans to defund applied general qualifications will mean for young people living in her constituency.

Like my hon. Friend, I have been deeply moved by the many messages I have received in recent weeks from students studying at Wirral Metropolitan College, urging me to speak in this debate and to stand up and defend the principle of student choice. Many of those young people live in some of the most deprived communities in the country, and they understand all too well what the Government do not: that guaranteeing young people access to a wide range of educational opportunities is essential if they are to realise their full potential. That message has been underscored by many of my older constituents who now work in sectors as diverse as academia, administration and aerospace, for whom BTECs were a vital stepping stone towards university or training in industry.

Much of today’s discussion will understandably focus on pathways to work or further study, but we must never forget that education is all about broadening one’s horizons in other senses. Although much of what a person studies at age 17 and 18 has little bearing on their day-to-day work, it nevertheless plays an important role in shaping more well-rounded, thoughtful and inquisitive adults. Since the Conservatives came into office 12 long years ago, education policy has been treated as a plaything for policymakers, who have little grounding in the sector and are more interested in ideology than in outcomes. Rhetoric has trumped hard-earned experience and successive Education Secretaries have been free to make far-reaching reforms, despite the protestations of education experts, practitioners and young people themselves.

The result is that today levels of social mobility are in freefall, while the UK continues to lag far behind our European neighbours when it comes to investment in technical training and education. Now Ministers want to do away with a system of qualifications that is widely respected, recognised and understood, replacing it with T-levels, which are entirely untried and untested.

For many people working in further education, these plans will undoubtedly revive memories of the ill-fated vocational diplomas and A-levels. However, whereas those served only to distract the Government from attending to the more profound questions concerning education provision, I fear that these new proposals will have the far graver consequence of entrenching long-standing educational inequalities for years to come. Indeed, the University and College Union has warned that by limiting student choice to a traditional academic education or a narrower vocational pathway, we risk giving rise to an overlooked middle of learners who are unable to access either.

For far too long, the Government’s approach towards education policy has been warped by a grotesque desire to preserve a privileged education for the elite few, and by the belief that university is somehow innately superior to a vocational education. The consequence is that vocational education is today poorly understood, even by Ministers who seek to reform it.

Ministers have fundamentally failed to grasp the fact that not everyone studying a vocational subject wishes to enter an occupational role, and nor should they be expected to commit to such a significant decision at such a young age. The education unions are quite right to fear that the Government’s plans for T-levels risk forcing some students, who would otherwise study BTECs, into lower levels of learning or out of education entirely.

Our country faces some extraordinary challenges in the coming years. The landscape of work is set to be fundamentally transformed by the growing pace of automation, while the existential threat posed by the climate crisis demands that we invest in an unprecedented level to lay the foundations for a high-skilled and green economy. These changes all have enormous implications for the future of education provision and, in particular, vocational education. We are in desperate need of a rethink of our priorities and a clean break with the idea that a vocational education is somehow second rate.

However, instead of showing the vision, ambition and commitment to fundamental change that the times call for, Ministers are instead focusing on repackaging technical qualifications and restricting student choice. In the short term, it is young working-class people in my constituency who will suffer, but soon enough our whole country will be forced to pay the price.

Arthur Labinjo-Hughes

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I, too, thank the Secretary of State for the tone of what he has said this afternoon.

The tragic death of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes has shocked and grieved our nation and served as a painful reminder that not nearly enough has been done to protect vulnerable children since the death of Baby P more than a decade ago. Lord Laming, who chaired the inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié, has warned that 10 years of austerity measures have seriously undermined the ability of social services to protect the young people most at risk of serious harm. Does the Secretary of State agree that urgently restoring funding lost since 2010 is essential if we are to stop any other child from suffering as Arthur so tragically did?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I think it important to note the £4.8 billion that local government will receive over the spending review period, but I hope the MacAlister review will give us an opportunity to look at how we can make the best use of funding operationally, and also to understand where the bureaucracy lies in order to free up the frontline and make social work an attractive profession. All that work will continue apace once we receive the review.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [Lords]

Mick Whitley Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 15th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I begin by paying tribute to everything that Wirral Met College in my constituency does to equip young people with the skills they need to thrive in a fast-changing world. Even during the darkest days of the pandemic, when colleges across our country were forced to shutter their doors, educators never wavered in their commitment to their students, but our colleges and sixth forms simply cannot be expected to survive on goodwill alone.

Since 2010, the post-16 education sector has been decimated by sweeping funding cuts. Further education budgets have been slashed by a third, while spending on adult education has fallen by more than half in real terms. Even with the recent announcement of additional funding in last month’s Budget, Government spending still falls way short of what it was when Labour was last in power. The Government can talk as much as they like about the importance of lifelong learning, but their promises will always ring hollow while spending levels remain so woefully inadequate.

I hope the Minister will soon come before the House to explain what steps the Government will be taking to undo the catastrophic legacy of 10 long years of austerity on this critically important sector. I know that many of the young people I represent feel deeply concerned by the Government’s proposals to defund the vast majority of BTECs. Those qualifications have proved a precious resource for the hundreds of thousands of young people who complete them each year, and no one has benefited more from their introduction than young people living in the north end of my constituency, one of the most deprived areas in the whole UK.

Ofsted and the Government’s own equality impact assessment have warned that those are the young people who stand to lose the most from the Government’s reckless plans to replace BTECs with unproven T-levels. That is why I warmly welcome Lords amendment 29, which will maintain approval for BTECs until such time as T-levels are fully rolled out. With employers, educators, trade unions and a host of former Education Secretaries calling for the retention of BTECs in their entirety, the Minister must explain why he is so intent on pushing ahead with these reforms when there is such broad consensus about the damage they will cause.

Education Recovery

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab) [V]]

The Prime Minister claimed that education was his top priority, yet when the man he put in charge of education recovery sent in his report, he casually tossed it into the nearest Whitehall waste paper bin. Sir Kevan Collins recommended that, in the light of the damage that the covid storm had caused for our schools and colleges, there was an urgent need of a catch-up injection of funds to the tune of £15 billion. In his response, the Secretary of State for Education, on 2 June, announced that there was a meagre £1.4 billion on offer. That equates to £50 per pupil compared with the £2,500 per child that the Netherlands has allocated. Poor Sir Kevan was put in the position of a latter-day Oliver Twist, pleading for more, sir. Like Mr Bumble in the book, the Government rudely dismissed Sir Kevan’s request. His resignation is an indictment of the Government and their record.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies reported that total schools spending per pupil fell by 8% between 2010 and 2019. It was, the report stated, the biggest fall in education spending since the 1970s. In my constituency of Birkenhead, home to two of the most deprived wards in the entire country, this fiscal savagery plays havoc with the lives of a generation. To give one example of many, at Cathcart Street Primary School, there was a fall in spending of £117,000, equating to a reduction of £625 per pupil. These cuts created one lost generation of children. We must not let covid lead to another.

Our children have endured unprecedented disruption to their education. Many lacked the laptops and internet to be able to learn at home. They have had to cope with lockdowns and the exam fiasco, their free school dinners being whipped away from school canteens, and a health and safety regime that led to confusion, chaos and closures. The impact on their wellbeing, their mental health and their learning has been dramatic.

Labour’s child recovery plan addresses that. It sets out a programme, with £15 billion now, that can prevent an entire generation from being consigned to an educational equivalent of the dark ages. It can provide for breakfast clubs and new activities for thousands. It can provide support to deal with the mounting mental health problems that children face. It can provide extra support for early years education and put an end to the scandal of children going hungry. Spending this money today is not a drain on this country’s resources; it is investment in the future. My party’s plan can provide us with the teachers, doctors, nurses, care workers, builders and engineers who will rebuild this country in the years to come. I call on the Government to adopt the Labour plan in full and with immediate effect.

Child Food Poverty

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Monday 24th May 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this important debate, although it is a source of shame on this country that we are having to discuss this issue at all. The fact that over 900,000 food parcels were delivered to children in the last year, in one of the richest countries in the world, is a national scandal, and responsibility lies squarely at the feet of this Government.

This issue has a special resonance in my constituency, where over a third of all children are living in poverty. In fact, there are few communities in the country more left behind than the north end of Birkenhead. Here, a male resident can expect to live 11 fewer healthy years than the national average. The typical household income after housing costs is just £16,000, and over half of all children are living in poverty.

The pandemic has been difficult for everyone, but it is particularly bad for young people living in north Birkenhead and the many communities like it. For too long, they have borne the brunt of an austerity agenda that has decimated frontline services. For many of these children, a school dinner is the only hot meal they can rely on in a day, and with schools closed and unemployment soaring, covid-19 has plunged many of them into deprivation and food poverty.

These young people desperately needed this Government to be true to their word and ensure that no child was left behind as we battle this virus, but time and again this Government have had to be shamed into taking even the smallest steps to support these children, whether that is extending free school meals over the summer holidays or maintaining even temporarily the £20 uplift to universal credit. I welcome the Minister’s presence here today, but she should know that defending this Government’s disgraceful record on child hunger is an almost impossible task.

As public health restrictions are eased, I look forward to visiting schools across my constituency. I will be meeting the dedicated educators and support staff who everyday bear witness to the devastating impact that child hunger has on their students and, of course, I will be speaking to the young people who sit at the very heart of this debate. When those children ask me why we have a Parliament and a Government, I would like nothing better than to be able to say, “To look after you,” but in all conscience, I cannot do so while this Government continue to let so many children languish in poverty and hunger.

I urge the Minister to do everything she can to ensure that the blight of child food poverty is stamped out once and for all. That means listening to organisations such as the Trussell Trust and making the £20 uplift to universal credit permanent. It means heeding the calls of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) and incorporating the right to food in the national food strategy. With 72% of all children struggling with food poverty having at least one parent in employment, it means delivering on the promise of an employment Bill that can end, at long last, in-work poverty.

Adult Skills and Lifelong Learning

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Thursday 15th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)[V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate and I thank the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for securing it. I also draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Looking at the current state of post-16 education, I cannot help but think of how dramatically things have changed in the years since I was a young man. When I left school there were proper training opportunities that paved the way to secure, well-paid and lifelong employment. That all changed in the 1980s when the Thatcher Government took a wrecking ball to our industrial heartlands and ripped the heart out of towns such as Birkenhead. As the factories, steelworks and shipyards slammed their gates shut, the day-release apprenticeship that gave my generation skills, jobs and hope all but vanished. Since then we have been stuck on a policy merry-go-round that has taken us nowhere. Adult education and training now face a massive crisis since the incorporation of further education colleges in 1993.

There have been around 40 Green Papers on adult education policy, yet today participation in adult learning is at its lowest level in 24 years. Nearly half the poorest people in our country have had no additional training since leaving compulsory education. Well-paid quality apprenticeships are in scarce supply, too. In 2021, it is easier for a young person to get an offer from Cambridge than it is to get an apprenticeship at Rolls-Royce.

I therefore welcome the Education Select Committee’s call for a well-funded long-term adult education strategy that gives adult workers the opportunity to learn new skills. That is key to our being able to ensure that our workforce can adapt and thrive in an economy convulsed by covid-19, Brexit, climate meltdown and the fourth industrial revolution. However, I feel that the Select Committee, like me, will be bitterly disappointed by the Department for Education’s recent White Paper on further education. It falls short of the further education revolution that was promised.

I worry that the Government have ignored a key factor that is essential for success. Any adult skills and training strategy must be backed up by a comprehensive industrial strategy that delivers economic justice for towns like Birkenhead. I welcome the work that employers are doing with Wirral Met College to develop training programmes for young people in my constituency. I hope that the Committee’s proposed individual learning accounts and skills tax credits will help to support adult learners.

What is urgently needed is for the Government to get serious about creating jobs and training opportunities for adult workers in the industries of the future, such as green energy and the digital economy. Yet, it is not clear how the recent further education White Paper relates to the 10-year industrial strategy unveiled in 2017. Moreover, the Business Secretary’s disastrous decision to axe the Industrial Strategy Council suggests that this Government are not interested in the long-term, joined-up planning that will be essential to deal with the unemployment and skills crisis that confronts us today.

The Committee is also right to call on the Government to reinstate the union learning fund. As a lifelong trade unionist, I have seen at first hand the transformative role that the ULF plays in equipping those workers least able to access learning opportunities with the basic skills they need to survive in the job market. With every pound invested in the scheme returning £12.30 to the wider economy, the Government’s decision to scrap it seems to me to be petty and ideologically driven—an act of industrial sabotage. It flies in the face of the Government’s pledge to level up the country.

I urge the Education Secretary to go even further. In much of Europe, trade unions play a vital role alongside colleges and employers as a provider of adult learning opportunities, but there is not a single mention of the unions in the White Paper. It is time he finally stops treating the unions as the enemy and realises the vital role that they can play in any attempt to reach out to or to level up left-behind workers.

The Committee’s report calls for bold and ambitious action to prepare British workers for the immense challenges of the coming decades. That must mean apprenticeships, training, education, skills and jobs. Sadly, it appears such action is not on the Government’s agenda.

Union Learning Fund

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) for securing the debate. First, I declare an interest—I am a lifelong trade unionist and former regional secretary of Unite the union.

My experience in the workplace over many years has given me an insider’s view of how valuable the union learning fund has been to so many workers. Currently, the fund supports 250,000 workers, through the provision of first-class training and skills courses. The Government’s announcement last October that the fund would end in March 2021 flies in the face of the country’s needs, as the pandemic still rages. That is why the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have opted to maintain the fund.

As the virus tears apart our industry, resources need to be put into rebuilding our skills base, retraining our workforce and developing people capable of taking up new jobs in new industries. At least, that is the view of the devolved Governments, and I must ask why that view is not obvious to the Conservative Government. If they really believe that we must build back better, how can they also believe that taking away a key means of achieving that goal is a good idea? It will not save them money, but will cost them considerably in terms of an educated workforce, capable of meeting the challenge of the green industrial revolution that must lie at the heart of rebuilding our economy. Even now, the ULF more than pays for itself, contributing an estimated £5.4 million in improved productivity. For every pound spent through the fund, an extra £3.57 per worker is taken in taxes, as a result of improved wages and welfare savings from securing employment through the fund.

Not surprisingly many employers, including Tesco, Tata Steel and Heathrow, are supporting the trade union campaign to save the ULF. I warmly welcome the campaign and strongly urge the Government to change course on this issue.

As well as the big-picture arguments about the ULF’s economic value, I want to talk about the benefits from a human point of view. In my years as a trade union activist, I have seen and dealt with many individuals. I have had to support them personally as well as collectively. The beauty of the ULF is that it gives properly trained and accredited union learning reps the chance to help people directly in the workplace.

I have spoken to colleagues who have suffered a disability and panicked about their inability to carry out their job. I have spoken to people who cannot read or write, though many find ways to disguise that fact from their employer and colleagues, out of shame. I have met people whose potential to advance in their work has been cruelly hampered by a lack of education or being scared about learning new skills to do with new technologies.

It is simple: from the point of view of educating the workforce of the future and supporting the workforce of today, the ULF is a precious resource, which we must not give up. A sum of £12 million is not a lot of money, but it is worth its weight in gold to the people who use the fund. Stop being petty and reinstate the fund.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

We now come to the Front Bench speeches. The guidelines are 10 minutes for the SNP, 10 minutes for the official Opposition and 10 minutes for the Minister.