Education, Skills and Training

Neil Gray Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

We are delighted to support that great new venture—a new model in technology and engineering—in Herefordshire. It addresses several long-standing problems, including skills shortages in engineering. Herefordshire is an HE cold spot. We welcome the venture and its collaboration with world-leading institutions in the United States, such as Olin, and we want to see more such institutions. I applaud my hon. Friends the Members for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) and for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), who has left the Chamber, for their tireless work in championing the new institution.

England’s universities rank among the best in the world. They generate the knowledge, skills and attitudes that fuel our economy and sustain our open society. The world of higher education, however, has changed fundamentally since the last major legislative reforms of 1992 and our system needs to meet new challenges.

A rapid interest in jobs requiring higher-level skills has created a worldwide demand for more graduate employees and for greater diversity of higher education provision. Yet this country is still well below the OECD average for university attendance. We send proportionately fewer people to university to study at undergraduate level than our main competitors: first-time entrants in 2013 were just 48% in the UK versus 55% for the OECD average. We also lag behind when it comes to further study: first-time entry rates to masters courses are only 15% versus 20% for the OECD average.

We are also far from meeting our economy’s needs for graduate-level skills. Between now and 2022, more than half of job vacancies will be in occupations most likely to employ graduates. We have removed the cap on student numbers, but we need to remove barriers to entry for high-quality new entrants who will help to meet the demand for skilled graduates.

[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

Given that the Minister has outlined the desperate need for skilled graduate employees, why are his Government so reticent to reintroduce the post-study work visa in Scotland?

[Joseph Johnson]

This country has a very successful international education exports sector. We have a global market share of more than 10%, which is holding. Our annual growth in international student numbers is between 3% and 4% a year. We are obviously attentive to the need to remain competitive, but we have a successful international education sector and we want to continue to support it by driving up the quality of the teaching and student experience on offer in all our universities.

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[Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in the debate on the Government’s legislative programme for the coming year. Given the subject of this debate, I should, before I begin in earnest, declare that my wife is a primary school teacher in Scotland.

I want to put on the record my welcome for the new Scottish Government team, which was announced by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon last week; particularly new members of the cabinet, Derek Mackay and Fergus Ewing. I also wish to congratulate newly promoted Ministers, Jeane Freeman, Kevin Stewart, Mark McDonald and Shirley-Anne Somerville. I look forward to working with all my friends and colleagues in the interests of the people of Scotland.

It would be remiss of me at this stage not also to pay tribute to colleagues leaving the Scottish Government. Richard Lochhead, who was Scotland’s Rural Affairs Secretary for nine years, stood up for Scottish farming and fishing interests and the food and drink sector in an inspiring way. My constituency counterpart in Airdrie and Shotts, Alex Neil, was Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Communities and Pensioners’ Rights from 2014, after driving the infrastructure and health portfolios in his typically imaginative and diligent way. I wish Alex and Richard all the best.

I now turn to the subject of today’s debate. So far, the successive days of debate on the Queen’s Speech have had far more substance than the Government’s programme in itself. It was an utterly vacuous Queen’s Speech, with very little cheer, and even less of relevance to the people of Scotland. The Scottish National party, as the widely acknowledged effective Opposition in this place, put forward an alternative Queen’s Speech—an alternative programme for government and an alternative to austerity. We have proposed 15 Bills that we believe the Government should have considered as part of their programme. They are Bills of substance that would have made a real difference to people up and down these isles who have been hammered by Tory austerity—a political and ideological choice, not an economic necessity.

Although the Bills in the Queen’s Speech on education, skills, training and access to employment—the subject of today’s debate—relate mainly to England or to England and Wales only, they serve to highlight the contrasting approach to these important matters between the SNP Scottish Government, who have independent powers over education, and the Conservative UK Government. The great spectre hanging over the higher education and research Bill is of students facing fees of up to, and now more than, £9,000 a year, while Scottish students access their university education without fees. I am sure that Members will be interested to note that the Chancellor of the Exchequer promised in a letter to a constituent in 2003 that when next in government the Conservative party would “scrap tuition fees altogether”. Oh, what a damascene conversion we have seen! He now wants fees to rise even further.

Following the elections in Scotland it is now clear that the Government’s Tory colleagues up the road are following suit, as they are all about backdoor taxes for students as well. Government Members and their colleagues in Scotland who benefited from free tuition now wish to pull the ladder up behind them. The SNP Government have guaranteed free university tuition in Scotland, and that they will maintain the principle that access to university education must be about the ability to learn, not the ability to pay. It is also worth noting that more of the population in Scotland is educated beyond school than in any other European country, with 46.5% educated at tertiary level, and that a higher percentage of young people in Scotland now leave school for a positive destination than at any time on record.

One area where the UK Government sadly retain control over education in Scotland is non-EU graduates’ right to remain and work in the UK after studying here. The abolition of the post-study work visa for students from outside Europe in 2012 was a regressive step that has reduced our ability to retain world-class talents for highly skilled and much-needed positions. It seems foolish to take the position that it is a good idea for those students to benefit from our world-class universities, but then disallow ourselves from benefiting from their skills and talents once they have finished their education here.

The Smith commission report stated that the Scottish and UK Governments should work together to

“explore the possibility of introducing formal schemes to allow international higher education students graduating from Scottish further and higher education institutions to remain in Scotland and contribute to economic activity for a defined period of time.”

At the time of the Smith commission’s discussions, representative organisations, including Universities Scotland and NUS Scotland, sent it a joint letter warning that the removal of the UK-wide post-study work visa in 2012 had resulted in a significant fall in the number of international students coming to Scotland. At a time when it is crucial—as we heard from the Minister for Universities and Science, who has left his place—that we address skills shortages in key areas of industry to improve productivity and economic growth, it is extremely disappointing that this Queen’s Speech makes no mention of the reintroduction of the scheme for Scotland.

In 2015 the Post Study Work working group— set up by the Scottish Government to provide a view from the business and tertiary education sectors on the impact of the removal of the post-study work scheme in Scotland and on how such a scheme should operate if reintroduced—concluded:

“Reintroducing a post study work route in Scotland would benefit both Scottish economic growth and business development, as well as enriching the learning experience for all students, by attracting more international students to Scotland.”

In February this year, the Holyrood devolution committee, made up of MSPs from the five political parties represented there, unanimously recommended that the Home Office change its policy on this issue. It is extremely disappointing that the UK Government seem unwilling to listen to the views of a diverse range of political parties and organisations in Scotland. In our alternative Queen’s Speech we have proposed a migration Bill, which would include the reintroduction of the post-study work visa. As was highlighted at Prime Minister’s questions by my right hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), and after Prime Minister questions by my hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), who is the family’s local MP, the disgraceful treatment of the Brain family shows the desperate need for the reintroduction of the visa.

There is also an urgent need for changes to the Government’s approach on access to employment, employment support, training and skills, which have all been run down by this Government’s actions and their reckless cuts to public spending. We want an emergency summer Budget, to boost investment in public services, stimulate GDP growth, support wage growth, increase tax receipts, support trade and exports, and boost productivity. For all the Tories’ rhetoric about the long-term economic plan, the Queen’s Speech contains no indication of how the Government will improve productivity, employment and growth in the long run.

Many Government Members will, I am sure, feel betrayed that there was no mention of the much-vaunted White Paper on health and work, which was supposed to compensate for the savage cuts to the work-related activity group element of the employment and support allowance and to universal credit work allowance. A number of Tory Back Benchers were promised jam tomorrow by their Ministers if they withdrew their opposition to those cuts, on the basis of the White Paper being published this year. Some were right to say, as I and others on the SNP Benches did, that the White Paper should have been published before the cuts were made, because of exactly the scenario that we now see unfolding.

The cuts to ESA WRAG and universal credit have been made, reaping all that social damage, and now the supposed replacement has been scrapped. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions used an appearance at the Work and Pensions Committee on 11 May to announce that he was scrapping the proposed White Paper and taking more time to consider a Green Paper. He said that he had made it clear in his first statement to this House as Secretary of State that he was looking to “push the reset button”. That statement was on 21 March; I asked him directly that day when the White Paper would be published, given that his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), had told me at his last appearance at the Dispatch Box that it would be “well before the summer”, and how much money would be committed to it. The new Secretary of State could not answer my questions, so he made a commitment from the Dispatch Box to write to me on the matter. As a follow-up, I wrote to him on 30 March to remind him of that and request a meeting, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford). I am still waiting for a reply, despite repeatedly chasing the matter up. Perhaps one will now be forthcoming.

The UK Government have wasted precious time by not publishing the White Paper. I urge the Secretary of State to come to this House with a date for the publication of the Green Paper. Any success in this matter will ultimately be determined by the Government’s willingness to engage with community and voluntary organisations, as well as experts, to help shape any new framework.

The new Secretary of State at the DWP hopes to have changed the tone of the debate, but what we really need is substance. He talks about pushing the reset button; why, then, has he not gone back to the brutal cuts to ESA and universal credit, or to the lack of assistance to women born in the 1950s regarding their repeatedly delayed and mishandled state pension entitlement—an issue that has been commendably spearheaded by the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—or to the immoral bedroom tax? Why has he not gone back to the much-needed reforms to work capability assessments for those with mental health issues and with long-term conditions, who face the stress of constant unnecessary reassessments, and to the waste of money and time, as well as additional stress to the claimant, because of decisions that should never have been made in the first place that are then overturned at tribunal? Why has he not gone back to the two-child rule, or to the rape clause, or to any of the other decisions taken by his predecessor? Of all those disastrous policy areas, why did he choose to review the White Paper?

We are concerned that valuable time to make progress on disability employment is being lost as a result of that delay, and believe that Ministers should bring forward proposals as soon as possible. The announcement of the Green Paper should be welcome, if it is brought forward with urgency, meaningful engagement with the community and voluntary sector, and with experts to shape the new framework. However, we remain sceptical that the Tories will rise to that challenge, and they cannot be allowed to kick this any further into the long grass. The Minister must formally make a statement of his intentions, and lay out the road map for the development of the new programme with a timeframe. With cuts coming down the line for disabled people, the Tories must act now. Tory Back Benchers will be interested—as we are—in why the Minister has abandoned the White Paper, and we hope that they will join us in calling for progress on the Green Paper to be introduced with haste.

Forty-nine DWP inquiry reports into the deaths of social security recipients were finally released after a long two-year freedom of information battle. Forty of those reports followed a suicide, and in 10 of those cases the recipient had been sanctioned. Peer reviews do not make a direct link between DWP policy and those sad deaths, but they do highlight the serious problems that are faced by claimants with complex issues, mental health challenges, or learning support needs. I hope that we can now see an end to the unwillingness of Ministers to accept that their policies, however well intended they may think they are, are having serious consequences and could be costing lives. There must be a full, urgent review that includes the impact of current work capability assessments, the punishing sanctions regime, and further cuts to disability support.

The SNP has proposed a social equality Bill to restore work allowances for low-income workers and single parents, to end maternity discrimination, to consider further shared paternity rights for individuals and employers, and to address barriers to employment for disabled people. That would bring matters in line with the principles on which the Scottish Government will found the new Scottish social security agency, by treating people with dignity and respect.

Although the Queen’s Speech did not have anything useful to say about those matters, at its tail end we were informed that the Government would hold a referendum on membership of the European Union which, despite the lacklustre campaign so far, will not have come as a revelation to many people. That was followed by the vaguest of sentences, notifying us that

“proposals will be brought forward for a British Bill of Rights.”

Given the vast differences that exist in the Cabinet and on the Government Back Benches about membership of the European Union and the European convention on human rights, with many people losing track of who is an in-out, an out-out, or an out-in, it is difficult to imagine how they could find enough common cause to agree on what such a Bill would contain, and the Queen’s Speech gave no further insight into that. For that reason, the Bill of Rights is as likely to be brought before the House this year as it was after being mentioned in last year’s Queen’s Speech.

The briefing notes for the Queen’s Speech on the Bill of Rights added only that:

“These rights would be based on those set out in the European Convention on Human Rights, while also taking into account our common law tradition.”

That suggests that although the Government are sensibly distancing themselves from the Home Secretary’s personal views on the ECHR, they have little of substance to say about the purpose or need for such a Bill.

Professor Mark Elliott from the University of Cambridge stated that in the Queen’s Speech,

“there is no hint of any developed thinking about how the perceived shortcomings of the HRA ought to be addressed, or of how reform in this area would be reconciled with the UK’s remaining a party to the ECHR.”

If the Government are unable to provide detailed answers to those points, they should question whether attempting to appease some of their own Back Benchers is worth more than having sensible legislation. For Scotland, the key concern is that the Government have shown little consideration about how that decision will affect the Scottish Parliament, and the other devolved legislatures of these isles.

Briefing notes for the Queen’s Speech addressed that issue—to pardon the pun—only briefly, and stated that:

“Revising the Human Rights Act can only be done by the UK Parliament, but we will consult fully before bringing forward proposals.”

Although it is true that the Scottish Parliament does not have power to alter the Human Rights Act, the Law Society of Scotland has argued:

“Under Devolution Guidance Note 10 (DGN10), when UK legislation will alter the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament or the Executive Competence of the Scottish Ministers the consent of the Scottish Parliament is needed. Repeal and replacement of the Human Rights Act 1998 would in our view, require the amendment of the Scotland Act 1998 in those respects which would affect the competences of both the Parliament and Scottish Ministers. Any change to the Scotland Act concerning the Human Rights Act 1998 which affects the competence of the Parliament or the Scottish Ministers will in terms of DGN10 require the consent of the Scottish Parliament.”

Therefore, not simply consultation with, but consent from the Scottish Parliament would be needed, and given that a clear majority in the Scottish Parliament do not support such a change, that consent is unlikely to be forthcoming.

President Theodore Roosevelt famously said that

“the credit belongs to the man who...spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly”.

Unfortunately, in this case, I believe that the Prime Minister and the Government have neither succeeded nor dared greatly, but instead have offered a weak and poor programme that will do little to address the needs of the people of these isles.

Although some measures are to be welcomed, such as the likely delivery of a universal service obligation on broadband, this Queen’s Speech is yet another missed opportunity from the Government to address the key issues. Instead of offering clear solutions and innovative ideas, I am afraid that in years to come, this Queen’s Speech will be remembered as an empty, vacuous and largely irrelevant sideshow from a governing party that is more concerned about patching over internal divisions on EU membership, and jockeying for who will be next Tory leader, than about delivering for the people.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicky Morgan]

I will get to the hon. Gentleman’s speech in a moment [Interruption.] I am glad that he wants to listen to my remarks.

The hon. Member for South Antrim (Danny Kinahan) rightly said that we should learn from each other, and perhaps through him I can welcome the new Unionist Minister, Peter Weir, to his place in the Northern Ireland Assembly. The hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) asked where the evidence was, and I encourage him to read the discussions of the Education Committee about international evidence. Several SNP Members spoke about the new Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills in the Scottish Government. I spoke to John Swinney on Monday, and hope that we can work together, particularly on the 2017 international teaching summit that Scotland is hosting. I hope that all Administrations will take part in that.

[Neil Gray]

I assume that the Minister will be keen to retain as many skilled graduates as possible. Will she commit to working with the SNP, and the new Cabinet Secretary and Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, and approach the Home Secretary about the reintroduction of the post-study work visa?

[Nicky Morgan]

I heard the hon. Gentleman’s earlier remarks to the Minister. We have one of the most successful university sectors in the world, of which people from overseas rightly take advantage, and it is incumbent on us to ensure a robust visa and border policy. The number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds who go to universities in Scotland is almost half—[Interruption.] Deprived young people in Scotland are almost half as likely to attend university as their peers in England.

The right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) spoke about multi-academy trusts, and we debated that. He will have noticed the item in the White Paper on multi-academy trust accountability, which says that we will launch new accounting measures for MATs, and publish MAT performance tables in addition to the continued publication of performance at individual school level.