Department for Education
Neil O'Brien Excerpts(1 day, 17 hours ago)
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Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
Before the election, Labour said that increasing VAT would pay for more teachers. Even in December, the Chancellor said that
“every single penny of that money will go into our state schools”.
More recently, however, the Prime Minister has claimed that this will instead pay for investment in social housing. He said
“my government made the tough but fair decision to apply VAT to private schools… because of that choice, we have announced the largest investment in affordable housing in a generation.”
These statements from the Chancellor and the Prime Minister cannot both be true. They cannot spend every penny on state schools and also spend money on housing, so my first question to Ministers is this: who is not telling the truth? Is it the Prime Minister or the Chancellor? Logically, both statements cannot be true.
Either way, we are not getting the extra teachers. In fact, statistics just came out showing that there are not more teachers, but fewer. There are 400 fewer overall, including 2,900 fewer in primary. Teacher numbers went up 27,000 under the last Government. Now they are down 400 under this Government. It was at that point, when those statistics came out showing that things were going in the wrong direction, that Ministers suddenly and for the first time started saying that the loss of staff in primary schools would no longer count. Primary school teachers no longer count for this Government. They had never said this before until the statistics showed that teacher numbers were falling.
This pathetic attempt to move the goalposts is so corrosive of trust in politics. It is a bit like when the Chancellor said that she was making her unfunded pledge to reverse the disastrous cut to the winter fuel payment because things were going so well with the economy. Everyone knows that is not true. It was so brazen. Let me quote what the Office for Budget Responsibility has said:
“Since the October forecast, developments in outturn data and indicators of business, consumer and market sentiment have, on balance, been negative for the economic outlook”,
and
“borrowing is projected to be £13.1 billion higher in 2029”.
But this Government seem to think that they can say black is white and people will believe them.
In that same brazen spirit, the Secretary of State responded to the statistics showing that there were fewer teachers in our schools by saying in a chirpy tweet:
“We’re getting more teachers into our classrooms.”
Ministers now say that primary schools do not count because pupil numbers are falling, but pupil numbers in primary are now predicted to be higher than when they made that promise. On the same basis, we could equally exclude all the many areas where numbers of pupils are falling in secondary and, indeed, places where numbers in primary are still going up, as in Leicestershire. It is brilliant: if we just ignore all the teachers that are getting the sack, of course teacher numbers are going up.
Peter Swallow
In the spirit of saying things that are not true and making brazen statements, I wonder whether the hon. Member can get on to the bit of his speech where he pretends that the Conservative Government invested more in our schools.
Neil O’Brien
I am glad that the hon. Member has prompted me—he must have a copy of my speech. In the last Parliament, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, real-terms spending per pupil went up by 11%. I thank him for allowing me to make that point.
So why are so many teachers getting the sack? It is partly because that is not the only broken promise. Labour also promised that it would fully compensate schools for the cost of the national insurance increase. The Minister sighs as I say this, and schools around the country will sigh too, because Labour broke that promise. According to the Confederation of Schools Trusts and the Association of School and College Leaders, schools have been left up to 35% short in some cases. With all the broken promises that we have already mentioned, let me check in on another promise. Perhaps the Minister will tell us the answer. The Prime Minister promised two weeks of work experience for all pupils and the Labour manifesto promised £85 million to pay for it. In May the Government told schools to get on and deliver extra work experience. When exactly will schools receive that £85 million?
Schools are not the only bit of the Department for Education where the Government have broken promises. The Secretary of State’s website still says, in a chirpy way:
“Graduates, you will pay less under a Labour government.”
But Labour has increased fees, not reduced them. The spending review was strangely silent on the subject of tuition fees. I assume that silence can only imply that tuition fees are set to rise in every year of this Parliament. Let me say what that will mean. It will mean that, in 2027, fees will go above £10,000 a year for the first time. It will mean that the total amount borrowed per student taking out the full amount will increase from £59,000 now to £66,000 outside London, and from £69,000 to £77,000 in London. So much for paying less! Ironically, the gain to universities from that broken promise and from that fee hike has been entirely wiped out by yet another broken promise: the decision to increase national insurance, another thing that Labour promised not to do.
That broken promise has also hit nurseries. The Early Years Alliance has said that it is “disappointed” and “frustrated” by the spending review, and the Early Education and Childcare Coalition says that the spending review
“reiterates many promises already made”
and that
“many nurseries and other providers are…running at losses and at brink of closure”.
Meanwhile, the Institute for Fiscal Studies notes that the funding in the spending review for early years
“may not be enough to meet additional unexpected demand”.
So what does this all look like when we come down from the billions to look at it from the frontline? Sir Jon Coles is the leader of the largest school trust in the country and also a distinguished former senior official in DFE. What does he make of these estimates and this SR? He says that
“education will—for the first time in a spending review—get less growth than the average across all spending departments… The last time we had such a poor three-year cash settlement was the period 2014-2018, when average cash increases were about 1.8 per cent. But then, inflation averaged 1.5 per cent… it slightly sticks in the throat that HMT are trying to present it as good news… The claim that this is a ‘£2 billion increase in real terms’ is a version of spin I can’t remember seeing before. It relies on treating the financial year before last (pre-election) as the first year of the current spending review period.”
In fact, he says that when all that is stripped away,
“to all intents and purposes, this is a flat real-terms settlement for three years. If, as Schools Week are reporting, the £760 million ‘SEND transformation fund’ is coming out of the core schools budget, then that represents a significant real terms funding cut in school funding.”
Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether that is correct and it is coming out of core schools spending.
That brings me on to the great suppressed premises in these estimates, which is that DFE assumes that it will save substantial amounts on special needs compared with the trend implied by previous years. The hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) talked about the cuts to special needs spending. In fact, since 2016, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, spending has increased by £4 billion in real terms—a 60% increase. If that has felt like a cut to the hon. Member, he will not like what is being brewed up by the Treasury now.
The SEND plan will be out this autumn—coincidentally around the time of what looks like an increasingly difficult Budget. So far, DFE Ministers have floated two ideas for the SEND review. The first is to restrict EHCPs only to special schools. That would be a huge change. There are 271,000 children with EHCPs in non-special state schools and a further 37,800 in non-special independent schools, so 60% of the total are not in special schools. Anna Bird, chair of the Disabled Children’s Partnership—a coalition of 120 charities—has said:
“The idea of scrapping Education, Health and Care Plans will terrify families.”
Secondly, on top of that, we learned from a Minister of State in the Department of Health and Social Care that the Government also plan to push a lot more children from special schools into the mainstream.
There are two big questions about this plan. To say the least, there is a clear tension between these two money-saving ideas. If the Government take away EHCPs in mainstream schools, parents will be a lot less confident when the council presses them to put their child into a mainstream school rather than a special one. Given that the Government have U-turned on the winter fuel payment and now say that the coming welfare vote will, in fact, be a confidence vote in the Prime Minister, it will be interesting to see what eventually issues forth from the DFE. We know from these estimates and the SR that, as Sir Jon Cole says, unless the Government deliver these large, planned savings in special needs, the settlement for schools will become increasingly difficult.
This Government have broken a staggering number of promises incredibly quickly. Ministers seem to believe that they can just say that black is white and that they never meant any of the things they so clearly promised. This debate is about the money side of things, of course, but in terms of reform, things are also going backwards with the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which will lower standards and smash up 30 years of cross-party reform to appease the trade unions. Tony Blair once talked about “education, education, education.” What we are now getting is broken promises, broken promises, broken promises.
Draft Combined Authorities (Adult Education Functions) (Amendment) Order 2025
Neil O'Brien Excerpts(2 days, 17 hours ago)
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Neil O'Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I will not detain the Committee for long, because this is a technical piece of legislation simply updating regulations to reflect new qualifications and, in a sense, maintaining the principle that we established during our time in government of devolving the adult skills budget, but I want to make one point and press the Minister on one issue. The point I want to make is that although the Government were critical of us for cuts to the adult skills budget when we were in office, they have now themselves cut the adult skills budget by 6% in recent months.
I mention that not to make a political point—although that is something that Labour Members criticised us for doing when they were in opposition, but they have now done themselves in government—but, in part, to frame a question. I asked this question of the Minister for children, families and wellbeing, the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), in April, when we debated regulations on the devolution of adult skills spending to Cornwall and North Yorkshire. I asked her to write to me, and she agreed that she would write on this particular point, but I am afraid no letter was ever forthcoming. I wondered whether I could have another go with DFE colleagues.
A lot of people in combined authorities say to me, “It’s all very well saying that you’ve devolved adult skills spending, but in practice, when the money arrives”—and it is now 6% less—“the great majority of it is taken up by spending on statutory entitlements that we don’t have any control over.” They are not complaining about the statutory entitlements; they are merely making the point that devolution in this area is not necessarily what it sounds like when Ministers announce it. That is a fair point, which applied equally to us when we were in government as it does to the current Government. I press the Minister again to agree to write to me, to tell me: what proportion of spending of the adult skills budget in combined authorities is not taken up by statutory entitlement? What is the real devolution here? What is really left over once the authorities have spent all this money on things that we compel them to spend it on?
I encourage the Minister to get that answered, not just for my benefit but for hers, so that she can understand what is really being devolved or not, and whether we can do something to give the combined authorities a greater margin for flexibility. The Government say that they are in favour of devolution—that is in line with their industrial strategy, which they are saying more about today—so that members of the combined authorities are able to fit local skills spending to their local needs. However, that is only freedom if there is some genuinely free money in the system, and it is not clear that there is that much.
I therefore encourage the Minister to agree to write to me. I apologise to the Minister and officials if the letter was sent, but got lost in the post somewhere. It is an interesting question. I hope the Minister will agree to write on that point and look into the question.
Water Safety Education
Neil O'Brien Excerpts(6 days, 17 hours ago)
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Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
Let me pay tribute to the hon. Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) for leading this important debate and for doing such a good job in setting out all the different issues at stake. Although he covered a huge amount of ground in his opening statement, we also heard some excellent speeches from across the House, with everyone adding important points.
We have had excellent speeches from the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), and the hon. Members for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey), for Gravesham (Dr Sullivan), for Bolton West (Phil Brickell), and for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin). Various points will stay with me. My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) raised the hugely important issue of safety on ice and the terrible, terrible case involving his young constituents.
The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding) caught my attention with her description of the Barbados of south London, which I very much enjoyed. I also strongly agreed with her tribute to water safety groups. My hon. Friend the Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) talked about the terrible case of Emily Lewis and the issue of safety on boats, which is a crucial part of this debate. The hon. Member for West Ham and Beckton (James Asser) raised the issue of those old Central Office of Information films that have stayed with all of us, particularly the chilling “The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water”, which we all seem to have seen. The hon. Member for Bangor Aberconwy (Claire Hughes) then brought us bang up to date by talking about what social media could do in this space. The hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Julia Buckley) made the crucial point about the importance of not drinking and swimming, and the critical dangers there.
The hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) reminded us of the benefits of being able to swim outside, yet there are certain places in which it is just not safe to swim. A number of other Members made the point that, in a more transient society, not everyone knows where those places are any more. The hon. Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) made a powerful speech, talking not just about Sam and his father, but about his private Member’s Bill, the Water Safety Bill.
We also had a really interesting contribution from the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell), who has a beautiful constituency, which I associate with seaside holidays as a child—and as an adult. A surprising fact in her speech was that this subject is not on the curriculum in Scotland, which seems like an obvious first step. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer) talked about the awful case of the missing child in his constituency. We of course hope for the best for that family.
I will turn in a moment to talk about some of the things that the previous Government did. I do so not to say that everything is wonderful, because of course it is not, but because I thought that it might be a way of prompting further reflections on what more we could do to go further. As has already been mentioned, it was the previous Government who updated the national curriculum in 2013 to add swimming and water safety education. It is surprising that it was so late. That was where we got this rule that pupils should be taught to swim at least 25 metres.
A few people have talked about facilities. The previous Government announced the first £10 million and then £57 million to open up access to pools in schools, as it is obviously very sad to see good facilities not being used after school hours. We enabled 220 schools to open up their pools more than they had been doing, and we want to do more of that.
We worked together with some brilliant organisations in the National Water Safety Forum, including the RNLI, Swim England, the Royal Life Saving Society and many more. We have heard from a number of Members about important local and individual campaigns that can be so powerful, and I pay tribute to all the people involved in those.
I was involved in using the sugar tax to create and then expand the PE and sport premium, which has provided more funding for PE lessons in schools. In 2017, we doubled the funding that primary schools received to improve the quality of their PE and sport provision, including water education—it went up from £160 million to £320 million. However, there is still much more to be done, because about a third of adults—about 14 million people—still cannot swim. I must pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Maya Ellis) for leading by example and learning to swim as an adult—good on her for doing that.
All of us are affected by these hugely important issues. Members might think that since my constituency is as far away from the sea as it could be, the main risk is normally people with metal detectors fishing in the canal and constantly fishing out hand grenades, but water safety is relevant everywhere. Just at Christmas a one-year-old girl was rescued from the River Welland.
This has been an important debate. We welcome the Government’s decision to look carefully at what can be done to build on the existing statutory guidance and update it. We have heard excellent contributions from Members on both sides of the House, and I look forward to the Minister’s comments.
Oral Answers to Questions
Neil O'Brien Excerpts(1 week, 2 days ago)
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Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
The last Conservative Government added 27,000 extra teachers. Although we would never know it from the Minister’s answer, there are 400 fewer teachers in our schools than last year. Labour promised 6,500 more teachers, but it is ignoring the loss of 2,900 primary school teachers, because apparently they do not count. The loss of teachers is not a coincidence. The Confederation of School Trusts and the Association of School and College Leaders have shown that schools have been left up to 35% short in compensation for the national insurance rise. Will Ministers finally admit that they broke their promise to fully compensate schools for that tax rise?
Catherine McKinnell
I think the hon. Gentleman’s maths need a bit of work. He will know as well as anybody that pupil numbers in primary are down and keep on falling, yet recruiting and retaining expert teachers is crucial to this Government’s mission to break down the barriers to opportunity. That is why we have committed to recruiting 6,500 additional expert teachers, and we are targeting them at the sectors in which they are most needed. It is not the Government’s fault that those on the Opposition Front Bench do not seem to be able to add up or pay proper attention.
Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
Asked whether the Government were planning to restrict EHCPs so that they apply only to children in special schools, the Government’s strategic adviser on SEND, Christine Lenehan, recently said:
“I think, to be honest, that’s the conversation we’re in the middle of.”
Is she correct to say that Ministers are considering that, or not?
Bridget Phillipson
We do need to think differently about the system that we have inherited from the Conservative party—one that Members from across the House recognise just is not working. This is not about taking away support for families or children; it is about making sure that there is much earlier identification of need and that support is put in place much more rapidly, including ahead of any formal diagnosis. I urge the shadow Minister to reflect and to show a bit more humility about the terrible state of what he and his party have left behind: a system that is adversarial and fails children, and in which children with special educational needs and disabilities do not get the excellent educational outcomes that should be the right of every child in this country. He should reflect on his total failure.
Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
Ministers recently announced that they were axing level 7 apprenticeships. Strangely, they made the announcement during recess; and also strangely, it was only the day after the announcement that they finally answered my parliamentary question from April, revealing that they were making a 90% cut in those apprenticeships. This is blowing a huge hole in the NHS workforce plan, leading to a shortfall of 11,000 nurses. If Ministers will not listen to the many employers saying that this will make it much more difficult for people who are not so well-off to get into the professions, will they at least rule out cutting level 6 apprenticeships next?
Janet Daby
I can reassure the shadow Minister that level 6 apprenticeships are a core part of our offer, and we will continue to fund them. I also say politely to him that we will take no lessons from Liz Truss’s previous Health Minister; that Government left our NHS on its knees, and we are having to rebuild it from its foundations again.
Maths: Contribution to the UK
Neil O'Brien Excerpts(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom) on securing this important debate. We have had some fantastic speeches, and any debate in which Johnny Ball gets a shout-out is a good debate in my view.
Our profession, politics, is awash with mathematical metaphors. Lyndon Johnson famously said that the first rule of democracy is that you have to be able to count. In Westminster, the Treasury is always insisting on making the numbers add up. Lots of junior Ministers who interact with the Treasury and try to get money out of it discover that they get the square root of naff all from those discussions. Occasionally, when I listen to hon. Members who are less concise—they are not in this debate—trouting on in the main Chamber, I am reminded of the space-filling Hilbert curve, which is repetitious and capable of filling an infinite amount of space if left unchecked.
One of my greatest beliefs is in the non-linear nature of innovation. As hon. Members have already alluded to, mathematics is a brilliant example of that. It was never obvious, when the obscure philosophers who became logicians were faffing around with strange upside down a’s and backwards e’s, that they would lay the foundations for the computation that defines our world today.
I read in Quanta magazine that in the ’60s we discovered something that seemed perfectly useless: Penrose tiling—infinitely non-repeating patterns, which are very pretty and obviously totally useless, right? No: they are now used in quantum encryption. We have found a use for that seemingly useless thing.
The same is true of one of the UK’s greatest industrial successes: Arm, which does obscure-seeming work on reduced instruction set computing. What use is that? Why would anyone need a really tiny thing that does not use much power? But we all have mobile phones, and the intellectual property from that bit of Britain’s industrial policy is now in everyone’s pocket, all over the world. Mathematics is hugely important. I completely agree with all hon. Members who have said that.
I have been goaded by the brilliant speech of the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince), who said that I would talk about the last Government, and of course I will. It would be inappropriate not to add some numbers to a debate on maths, so what happened to mathematics under the last Government? Let us look at some international comparisons.
In the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study—TIMSS—between 2011 and 2023, England went from 10th in the world to sixth in the world for maths, and from ninth to fifth for science. That is remarkable progress that puts us top in the western world. We are not quite at the level of the Asian people who dominate the table, but we are the best in the west.
I cannot tell hon. Members how Scotland and Wales are doing on that metric because their Governments chose to withdraw from those competitions as they did not like the scrutiny. However, I can give a comparison by stating where those devolved Governments are in the results of the Programme for International Student Assessment. Between 2009 and 2022, England went from 21st to seventh in the world for maths in PISA results, and from 11th to ninth for science. Whereas Wales —where a lot of the reforms that we had in England were avoided for ideological reasons—went from 29th to 27th for maths, and slumped from 21st to 29th for science.
That is part of a wider picture. I encourage everyone to read the brilliant report “Major challenges for education in Wales” by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which points out that the average deprived child in England is now doing as well or better than the average child in Wales. The gap is so big, and the deprivation progress has been so great in England, that the deprived child in England is now in a better position than the average child in Wales. That is an incredible situation.
Looking at the improvement in school attainment by IDACI—income deprivation affecting children index—decile, we see improvement across the income distribution under the last Government, but the biggest improvement in England was in the bottom half of the income distribution. That is true for maths throughout the educational life cycle. Today, 90,000 more children at key stage 2—the end of junior school—meet the expected standard in reading, writing and maths than in 2015-16.
That progress was driven by a number of measures, including our putting in 27,000 extra teachers over our time in government. Over the last Parliament, we increased real-terms per pupil funding by 11%. We brought in things such as maths schools and maths hubs, lots more low-stakes testing—my daughter is about to do the year 4 times tables test—and the key stage 2 tests. All those things, by the way, are still opposed by some people in the trade unions even though the evidence for the effectiveness of low-stakes testing, for example, is so strong. The National Education Union still opposes all forms of testing in primary school—a crazy position that we were right to reject in England.
There has been real progress as a result of those reforms. Although everything in England is far from perfect—there is loads of room for progress and lots of problems to fix—we can see what the alternative is. Where those reforms were not made for ideological reasons because the unions said no to academisation, school choice and school accountability, things got worse. The people who suffered from that ideology were not the rich and those who could afford to go private, but the poorest.
Some of the things being done now in schools are a mistake, such as hammering the budget for the advanced mathematics support programme. As has already been touched on in this debate, and as quite a lot of the people who care most about maths have pointed out, that is a big mistake. Jens Marklof, president of the London Mathematical Society, said that it will harm the chances of children from poorer areas. He said:
“There’s no AI without maths and if the government is really serious about its AI strategy they have to significantly scale up the support for maths education at all levels…The big success of AMSP was to enable kids who went to schools that didn’t offer further maths to give them this opportunity”.
Likewise, Adrian Smith, the Royal Society president, said it is
“spectacularly short-sighted to pull funding from programmes designed to support teachers and schools to deliver better maths provision.”
He also said:
“Our maths education is not up to scratch—too many young people are leaving school without the skills they need for life or the well-paid jobs that will drive economic growth”.
Dan Abramson, the chief executive of U-Maths, the umbrella organisation for university maths schools in England, and a professor of maths at King’s College London, said:
“For the UK to be at the forefront of AI and the data-driven modern economy, we need excellent mathematicians from all backgrounds, and we need more of them—that means more investment, not less”.
We set up the advanced mathematics support programme in 2018 to provide extra maths help to schools, and the Government have now cut it. I think that it is a mistake and I hope that they will look at it again. Unfortunately, that is part of a pattern. The Government have cut support not just for maths, but for physics, computing, Latin, cadets and behaviour hubs. A lot of the things that were doing a lot of good, including for maths, have been axed even though they are very small in the grand scheme of the Department for Education’s £100 billion budget. I hope that the Government will rethink those cuts.
The hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire also wanted to talk about the higher education part of the piece. It is very striking that although 50% more people are now doing A-level maths—a great success—and the number of people doing double or triple science at GCSE has more or less doubled, which is great progress, that has not always translated into increases in the number of people doing maths at university. In fact, while there has been about a 20% increase in the total numbers entering HE courses at university since 2018-19, the number going into maths, while marginally up, is broadly flat.
Why is the improvement we are seeing in schools not leading to larger numbers doing maths at university? I am afraid that goes to the heart of the issues with our higher education system more broadly. I understand the logic of why tuition fees were brought in and I accept up to a point the idea of a market in higher education, but it seems to us that that market has gone too far. It is really a pseudo-market, because we rely entirely on young people aged 16 and 17 to drive the allocation of resources into our enormous higher education system.
The gradual move from teaching, or T, grants to a highly fees-based system gives Ministers far less control than they previously had. The Government’s decision last week to further reduce high-cost subject grants—T grants, as they used to be called—by a further 10% in real terms is a mistake in its own right because it hits the subjects such as engineering and science that we need for the future, and gives Ministers less control over what is going on in higher education.
The incentives set up by the pseudo-market in education have led to a great growth in courses that are cheap to provide but do not necessarily give great value to either the student or the taxpayer. We know from the leading work of the Institute for Fiscal Studies that, when we look at the combined perspective of the taxpayer and the student themselves, higher education is not worth it, at least from an economic point of view, for around 30% of those who go into it at the moment,.
Since the work that the IFS did, which is based on those who graduated during the mid-noughties, we have seen the graduate premium decline even further. The marginal students who we have been adding have even lower earnings, so those figures could easily be worse if we were to rerun that analysis now. That needs to be addressed.
There is absolutely sometimes a case for higher education to be simply beautiful—to do theology, art or whatever—and for it not to be of economic value, but we should be clear about when we choose to subsidise that. We should also be clear that things that are highly economically useful, such as mathematics and science, also have intrinsic value. They are also beautiful and there is an intrinsic value to studying them—that is not just the case for some of those things, particularly the creative arts, where we see the great concentration of those who end up with very low earnings and negative returns from an economic point of view.
We need to rethink. We need not just to patch up and mend the existing system, but to fundamentally rethink the incentives that it has set up. We should give ourselves the ability to make sure that we are investing in and driving up the growth of subjects such as mathematics, which are so critical to our future economy and security as a country. I will not go further into it than that, but the issues facing mathematics are, in a sense, part of the wider issues facing higher education. I hope that the Government will move from a patching up and mending attitude to a reformist and overhauling one.
The one thing I want discourage Ministers from doing is something that I am worried will come out of the Government’s curriculum and assessment review. Although I have lots of respect for Becky Francis, who is leading the review, one of the things that Ministers have been very keen to do is say that we need to have lots more time for arts subjects—for fun subjects such as music, drama and dance. That is fine in a sense, but Ministers have to be super clear about how they will find that time, and whether they are going to find it by funding some extra hours in the school day or something, because otherwise it inescapably means less time on other things. One of the good things that has happened, and one of the reasons standards have gone up, is that schools now spend about 13% more time teaching maths than they used to in 2010, so more time is going into this critical subject than was before. If we say that we want to have more time for something else, let us be honest about the trade-offs and what we are going to not do and let us also be honest about the consequences of that.
Chris Vince
This does not have to be a political point, but to answer the question that the hon. Gentleman just posed about where schools find the time: my argument is that maths does not need to be taught in a silo. Many subjects—even creative subjects such as art and music, and certainly design and technology—would include an aspect of maths. For many young people, being able to apply maths in those particular subjects would actually be really useful. Would the hon. Gentleman concede that point at least?
Neil O'Brien
I am happy to agree that we can bring maths into many other things, and that is also a fun way of teaching maths. In return, I put back to the hon. Gentleman that there are limits to that. If we want to have more time for something else, we have to say where it is coming from. The improvement in those international league table rankings that I mentioned has not come about as a result of some sort of magic. It has come about by us spending more time on that, putting more resources into it and making it a priority. Unfortunately, not everything can be a priority. If everything is a priority, then nothing is. The last Government chose to prioritise maths and STEM. I think it was the right decision. One can argue that we should go for a different course, but if we are going to do that, people should be explicit about it and honest about what they are actually going to do.
Let me not turn into the thing that I have already criticised—the space-filling Hilbert curve—and take up endless time in this debate. It has been a hugely important debate with brilliant speeches from lots of Members from across the House. I hope that the Ministers will act on some of the brilliant suggestions that have been made, and that we can further improve math education in this country.
Free School Meals
Neil O'Brien Excerpts(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement.
The truth is that the families benefiting from today’s announcement are the same ones who are paying for it, because the same group of people are hit hardest by Labour’s national insurance increase. Labour promised not to increase national insurance, but it broke that promise, and someone earning just £13,000 a year will now take home £500 less as a result of the tax increase. Someone on just £9,000 a year—the exact sort of person who is supposed to benefit from this policy—will lose 5% of their income.
The Government want to talk about the impact of the money they are giving today on poverty, but they do not want to talk about the impact of the much larger sum of money they are taking away. Disgracefully, they have not done any distributional analysis of the £25 billion that they are taking away, which is particularly targeted at low-income households. Will the Minister say how many households that will push into poverty? Will he finally admit what the figure is?
While free school meals are obviously welcome, the things that are being cut to pay for them are much less welcome. For example, the Government broke their promise to fully fund the national insurance increase for schools, and some have been short-changed by 35%. They also broke their promise to fully fund the pay award. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, that leaves a £400 million funding hole for our schools. Under the last Government, although there was an increase in achievement across the board, the biggest increase was in the lower half of the income distribution. That is much harder to achieve when the Government have taken £400 million out of our schools.
What else is being done to balance the costs? We already know that the Government have cut support for maths, science, physics, Latin, computing and cadets in schools, and got rid of the successful behaviour hubs. We know that nurseries, which the Minister talked about, are saying they are on the brink because of the national insurance increase. In fact, the Early Years Alliance says the situation is “catastrophic”. We know that the Department for Education recently announced a real-terms cut of 10% to university teaching grants, and it has abolished 90% of higher apprenticeships—funnily enough, they announced that during the recess. Now the education press are saying that the next cost-saving measure to pay for announcements like this will be to abolish education, health and care plans for everything other than special schools. Will the Minister rule that out today? If he does not rule it out, the whole House will hear, and we will know exactly what is going to happen next.
Turning to the numbers, what is the real net effect of all this? Transitional protections were established in 2018 to ensure that pupils who gained FSM would not lose them while universal credit was being rolled out. That has roughly doubled the proportion of pupils who are eligible from 13.6% to 25.7%. However, the Department for Education has announced that those protections will now end in September 2026, when the new policy comes in. By how much will the end of those transitional protections reduce the number of children who are eligible for FSM? Am I right in thinking that it is by 1.2 million? Will the Minister agree—he is looking away—to finally publish a figure? How many children who have been on transitional protection will lose their free school meals when they change phase of education? Will the Minister finally admit to the figure?
There is another sting in the tail today, because school budgets are going to be hit—that is how this policy is being paid for. That is because FSM is the gateway to pupil premium funding. The pupil premium is a great achievement of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government, and it is worth £1,480 per pupil in primary schools and a bit over £1,000 in secondary schools. As a result of today’s decision, schools are going to lose that funding. With 1.2 million pupils on transitional protection, bringing with them about £1,200 each, schools are going to lose the £1.5 billion currently going to them in pupil premium funding.
Will that funding be replaced by this announcement? No, because today the Government have for the first time broken the link between FSM eligibility and pupil premium funding. On one side of the ledger, £1.5 billion has been lost, and on the other side of the ledger, schools are not getting it back. I had wondered where all the money was coming from, and now of course we know. I ask the Minister to spit it out: how much will this decision cost schools, and how much is it saving the DFE?
On a similar point, will the Minister confirm that the Government will apply the same approach to holiday activities and food, which would also not trigger an increase in that funding? Is the same also true of home-school transport, and how is this all being paid for? I think we need a little more detail.
Opposition Members have become rather cautious about positive-sounding announcements from this Government. For example, the other day Ministers were here to announce that they would continue the adoption and special guardianship support fund, but it must just have slipped their mind to mention that it was being cut by 40%. That is why we like to know the detail when we get positive announcements.
I will end by asking some questions about the facts. Will the Minister agree to publish information on how many children are currently on transitional protection and how much the end of that protection will reduce entitlement to free school meals? Will he agree to publish how much pupil premium funding schools will lose overall as a result of breaking the link between FSM and the pupil premium? Just to ask again, so that the whole House hears the answer, will he rule out abolishing EHCPs outside special schools—yes or no?
Stephen Morgan
I cannot believe that I did not hear the Opposition spokesperson welcome our announcement. It is a shame that when the Conservatives were in government tackling child poverty was not considered a priority. I feel a little sorry for the spokesperson, who claims to care about education, given that his only policy is to give private schools a tax break. Indeed, on the Conservatives’ watch, child poverty grew to record highs and they wore the increasing numbers in child poverty as a badge of honour. Frankly, that is shameful.
This increase in free school meals is fully funded, and that is possible thanks to the difficult decisions that this Government and the Chancellor have had to take to get the economy growing and put the public finances back on a stable footing. I am excited to hear the Chancellor set out more details next week. That is despite the mess we inherited from the Conservatives. Why has the spokesperson not taken the opportunity today to say sorry for his Government’s shameful record on child poverty? He has nothing to say on education for our country. Unlike them, we will not sit by and watch more children fall into poverty. Unlike them, we are not offering a tax break for private schools. We are delivering positive change for our country. We are giving children back the opportunity to achieve and thrive. With this announcement, we are ensuring that every child, no matter what their background, gets the best start in life. [Interruption.]
School Teachers’ Review Body: Recommendations
Neil O'Brien Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Catherine McKinnell
The hon. Gentleman is always helpful and thoughtful in his contributions. As a Department, we inherited a school system that was in crisis: school buildings crumbling, teachers leaving in their droves and children not getting the start in life that they deserve. We are working on a number of fronts, but we recognise that the outcomes are not ones that the Government alone can deliver; we need to deliver them in partnership with schools, teachers and those who represent them. We speak and work regularly right across the board to maximise those outcomes for children, and I know the hon. Gentleman shares our determination to see that across the country.
Neil O’Brien
It is, Mr Speaker. Earlier, the Minister said that funding had remained below 2010 levels. I am sure that was an innocent verbal slip. However, according to the widely respected Institute for Fiscal Studies,
“Coming on the back of an 11% real-terms increase in spending per pupil between 2019–20 and 2024–25, this allows spending per pupil to return to, and exceed, its previous high point in 2010.”
How can we encourage the rapid correction of the record when innocent mistakes are made?
Mr Speaker
I think you have just corrected the record; that is not a point of order. We can leave it at that, unless the Minister wants to come in.
Oral Answers to Questions
Neil O'Brien Excerpts(1 month, 4 weeks ago)
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Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
Having told this House in answer to an urgent question from the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) that the adoption and special guardianship support fund would continue, Ministers somehow did not manage to mention that the funding per child would be cut by 40%. They then slipped that out during recess. Meanwhile, Ministers will spend £90 million on advertising. Can they at least agree to publish the impact assessment on cutting what is available from this fund?
Stephen Morgan
As I said, this Government are committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity. We will take no lectures from the Conservatives. They have absolutely no plan for education, other than to reintroduce private school VAT reductions. [Interruption.] What?
Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
The British Chambers of Commerce has said that the lack of clarity around the future of the apprenticeship levy is creating uncertainty among businesses, and is “worrying and destabilising”. Employers in universities are worried about plans to cut higher apprenticeships, and the Institute of Chartered Accountants has said that plans to axe level 7 apprenticeships will lead to work leaving the UK altogether. Will Ministers agree to the proposal from the Campaign for Learning for a skills immigration worker test to be carried out before any cuts are made to level 7 apprenticeships, so that we do not go from simply investing in British workers to just importing workers from other countries?
Janet Daby
We are very excited about what this Government are achieving for young people in our apprenticeship schemes. There are, of course, tough choices to take on how funding should be prioritised to generate opportunities for young people so that they can make a good start in fulfilling careers going forward. The Department has received a wide range of representations regarding level 7 apprenticeships, and we will communicate our decision going forward. We are absolutely committed to making sure that people are on the right apprenticeship courses and that we have a wide range of apprenticeships available.
Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
At the start of January, the Secretary of State said that she needed more time to consider the overseas funding transparency measures in our freedom of speech legislation. It is now nearly May. In the meantime, there have been several concerning the reports in the press about UK universities working with Chinese institutions that are designated as high risk and have ties to their defence and security apparatus. This legislation was passed in 2023. When will the Secretary of State reach a decision?
Bridget Phillipson
This is an important area, and this Government will always make sure that issues of national security come first. Measures are already in place to address foreign interference in the higher education sector, from vetting international students in sensitive areas of research to specific requirements around freedom of speech and expression. We continue to keep all these matters under review, and when we are in a position to do so I will of course update the House.
Draft Cornwall Council (Adult Education Functions) Regulations 2025
Draft East Midlands Combined County Authority (Adult Education Functions) Regulations 2025
Draft York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority (Adult Education Functions) Order 2025
Neil O'Brien Excerpts(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey, and to have the draft statutory instruments being put into effect. The agreements were struck under previous Conservative Governments; as we agreed the devolution of powers, we will not pray against them.
I want to put the draft regulations and order into a little context, however, because the Government have just cut the adult skills budget by 6%—something that Ministers previously condemned the previous Government for, only to do exactly the same. We need to see devolution in that context and in that of the wider uncertainty created by Government about skills funding. For example, providers are crying out for certainty about the 10% uplift for T-levels. They want to know whether that will continue this year, but Ministers seem unable to tell them. Also, in the main Chamber yesterday, I quoted the British Chambers of Commerce and other employer organisations’ warning about the funding uncertainty for apprenticeships, with the Government’s plans to allow 50% of the money to be taken away to spend on other things. That is already causing real damage and leading to a reduction in hiring decisions, yet the uncertainty continues and the damage from the Budget likewise.
That is the context of the skills devolution. Earlier in the House, the Minister announced ongoing funding for special guardianship, after the money had gone out. When Ministers were dragged before the House was the point at which they made the decision—when they were literally a day overdue. I hope that we will not see the same thing in skills policy, because that would lead to real damage to skills in this country.
I want to ask the Minister a couple of specific questions, even though we agreed these devolution deals and welcome them. Firstly, what share of the budget will be devolved once all the already agreed devolution of adult skills spending is complete? The explanatory memorandum says that 62% of the ASF is already devolved. What share will that be once the devolution is complete, and what sum in total will be devolved to the delegated authorities once complete?
Secondly, obviously a very large part of the ASF is already bound up with statutory entitlements, which are listed at paragraph 5.6 of the policy context in the explanatory memorandum. Those who work in the mayoral combined authorities have said to me, “Look, you get this budget devolved to you, but you find that a lot of it is gone once you’ve funded those statutory entitlements, so you have less real flexibility than you might think.” What is the Department’s assessment of what proportion of the devolved budget, for those authorities where it is already devolved, goes on things outside those four statutory entitlements that are listed at paragraph 5.6? In a sense, what proportion of the budget is really devolved versus just going to a local level to be spent on nationally set statutory entitlements? How much of the money is really devolved?
With those questions in mind, I will not pray against these regulations, but I hope that the Minister will be able to tell me what devolution will really mean in practice.
Janet Daby
I thank the Committee members for their contributions to the debate, and I will endeavour to answer their questions. In response to the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, currently 62% of the ASF is devolved to nine mayoral combined authorities and the Greater London Authority. If the statutory instruments are approved, they will receive devolved ASF from 1 August 2025. A total of 67.5% of the ASF will then be devolved nationally. The percentage change represented by each of the three areas is as follows: York and North Yorkshire 0.8%; east midlands 3.98% and Cornwall 0.76%.
I welcome what the hon. Member said. Devolution is about giving freedom to those who understand local needs best so that resources can be managed more effectively and deliver greater positive impacts for local people. The Government inherited a very challenging fiscal context, and we have had to make a small reduction to the overall adult skills budget for next year. However, we will still be investing £1.4 billion in the adult skills fund next year. It is in the region of 3% across the academic year, which equates to around £40 million.
Let me reiterate the important strategic role that devolution has to play in the growth of our economy. I recognise what the hon. Member for North Cornwall said, and I invite him to have further conversations with the Government on that.
Neil O’Brien
Could the Minister find out what proportion of the devolved ASF goes on statutory entitlements at the moment? That is the measure of whether this is really devolved. We all agree on the importance of devolution and so on, but is it real devolution or, in fact, are these devolved authorities ultimately having to spend money on things that we have decided? What proportion of the devolved budget is currently being spent on those four statutory entitlements?
Janet Daby
I outlined the areas that will be devolved, and I explained how much funding will be given for those devolved areas. The national statutory entitlement is to get the equivalent of GCSE level in maths and English, so that young people aged 19 to 23 have a second chance to get qualifications. Consultation has taken place in those three areas, and overwhelmingly, over 60% have confidence that the devolved money will be used for those local areas.
Neil O’Brien
It is entirely my fault that I did not explain clearly what I meant. We are in complete agreement about the policy, but what I am keen to understand from the Department—the Minister may need to write to me on this point—is: how much of the money that has already been devolved is being spent on statutory entitlements, and what proportion of it can, therefore, be spent on things that are not statutory entitlements? It is a question of fact rather than of great policy disagreement.
Janet Daby
I thank the hon. Member for clarifying that he is after the detail. I will endeavour to write to him with that information.
As the country responds to an increasing number of internal and external challenges, there can be no doubt about how reliant we are on a skilled and flexible workforce, and how important it is that we support all adults to become an active part of that workforce, to deliver our growth agenda. Devolving adult skills, functions and funding to the east midlands, York and North Yorkshire and Cornwall’s local areas will help to ensure that adult education provision is tailored to meet local needs and create the best conditions in which we can collectively deliver on these aims. I commend the order and the regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
DRAFT EAST MIDLANDS COMBINED COUNTY AUTHORITY (ADULT EDUCATION FUNCTIONS) REGULATIONS 2025
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the draft East Midlands Combined County Authority (Adult Education Functions) Regulations 2025.—(Janet Daby.)
Draft YORK AND NORTH YORKSHIRE COMBINED AUTHORITY (ADULT EDUCATION FUNCTIONS) ORDER 2025
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the draft York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority (Adult Education Functions) Order 2025.—(Janet Daby.)
Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [Lords]
Neil O'Brien ExcerptsMonday 31st March 2025
(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)
I find myself in complete agreement with the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom), and our amendments—new clause 4 and amendment 6—are suggested in the same spirit. There were good reasons why standard setting was put at arm’s length and closer to employers, but now the Government are bringing it into the Department. Alongside other changes, such as shortening apprenticeships and axing higher apprenticeships, that risks damaging the status of these qualifications, which we have been working to build up.
The Budget was bad for employment, and it will make it less likely that businesses will take on apprentices. Rather than addressing the problems that they are creating, the Government are reorganising. It is the umpteenth reorganisation in recent decades. The Government’s own recent impact assessment says that the reorganisation will lead to a delay and drop in apprenticeships, hence our amendments.
For decades, politicians have said that they want to make apprenticeships more prestigious. On average, twice as many people started apprenticeships each year under the last Government as under the previous Labour Government, but higher apprenticeships grew fastest of all. The number of people on higher apprenticeships went from just 3,000 in 2010 to 273,000 last year—a huge increase. We increased the quality of apprenticeships, too, which was much needed, as has already been alluded to by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds).
In 2015, a devastating Ofsted report found that some apprentices who had been on an apprenticeship for more than a year were not even aware that they were on an apprenticeship, and the skills they were learning were things like making a cup of coffee, which are not life-changing skills. Things were being funded that did not benefit young people, but did allow employers to pay a lower wage. Whereas we lengthened apprenticeships, this Government have cut the length of apprenticeships to eight months. By abolishing IfATE and bringing it in house at the DFE, they are eroding that employer ownership that we worked to build up. Whereas we grew higher apprenticeships, they are about to abolish most level 7 apprenticeships. That is a taste of what is to come if our amendments are not accepted. The Government are doing this because in opposition they promised that employers could take 50% of their levy funds and spend them on other things.
On 20 November, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State who will respond to this debate said that this commitment was “currently being reviewed”. But just weeks later, on 9 December, the Secretary of State said the Government were still fully committed to “50% flexibility for employers”. When I asked the Minister in Committee whether that was still the policy, she said that she would have to get back to me. As the Skills Minister said in the Financial Times, far from the 50% being a promise—as employers were led to believe—it will, in fact, all depend on the outcome of the spending review.
Businesses are starting to raise the alarm. The British Chambers of Commerce has said that a “lack of clarity” about the levy is creating “fresh uncertainty among businesses” and is “worrying and destabilising”. Employers say that this is leading to firms pausing hiring of apprentices.
Since the levy was introduced in 2017, real-terms spending on apprenticeships and work-based training have increased by about a quarter from £2 billion to £2.5 billion. Moving 50% of all that money out of apprenticeships would obviously lead to a substantial drop in the number of apprenticeships. In a written answer to me, Ministers have confirmed that the Department has an internal forecast for the number of apprenticeship starts, but they have also said that they will not publish it—I think we all know why that is.
The previous Government moved to make it more attractive for small and medium-sized enterprises to take on younger people. Since April, 16 to 21-year-olds have had 100% funding, rather than requiring the 5% employer contribution. We need to build on that and cut bureaucracy for smaller businesses, but the Government’s answer is different: they plan to abolish the highest-level apprenticeships and redistribute the money. I thought the brilliant speech by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) on his amendment 2 was so right. I will not be as articulate as him, but I will try to add to the points he made, and I hope the Minister will listen to her wise colleague. Employers and educators can see that this is a trial run of what it will be like as Ministers take more control with this Bill, and they are warning that it is a big mistake.
Dan Lally at Sheffield Hallam University says that level 7 cuts will
“disproportionately impact on public services…We are meeting vital skill gaps in disciplines such as advanced clinical practitioner…These are NHS workers, civil servants and local authority employees. A high number of our level 7 apprentices…come from the areas of highest deprivation.”
For example, level 7 apprenticeships are absolutely central to the NHS’s long-term workforce plan. Last year, we saw the Government’s disappointing decision to cancel the level 7 doctor apprenticeships. That means there will be a shortfall of about 2,000 medical places a year. Students who had already started on the medical doctor apprenticeship have sadly been left in limbo, and I am concerned the Government will do something similar to nurses as part of the level 7 cuts. The NHS’s workforce plan proposed an extra 50,000 nurses coming through the apprentice route. Around a quarter of them tend to be on an “Agenda for Change” band 7, which typically requires a master’s equivalent, so we would expect about 11,000 of those nurses to be coming via level 7 apprenticeships. If the Government get rid of them, that is a huge hole in the NHS plan.
As well as the NHS, local government makes huge use of level 7 apprenticeships, including the extra town planners that the Government say are needed to deliver on housing targets. Deborah Johnston at London South Bank University says:
“Over half of the employers we work with…on level 7 apprenticeships are local authorities. Our apprentices enable councils to deliver projects in the wake of…reintroduced mandatory housing targets. The suggestion that, as employers, local authorities should step in and pay for the level 7 apprenticeships themselves is fanciful.”
The professions are also worried. The Institute of Chartered Accountants has said that axing level 7 apprenticeships will lead to work leaving the UK. It says:
“removing Level 7 apprenticeship funding will mean that fewer UK training roles are created. Instead, organisations are likely to turn to offshoring to replace UK training roles”.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central rightly said that it would lead to people being outside Stoke-on-Trent, but in some cases it would lead to them being outside this country altogether. That is why the Campaign for Learning has called for a skills immigration worker test before defunding level 7 apprenticeships, so that we do not simply go from investing in British workers to importing workers from other countries.
Likewise, the Chartered Management Institute has said:
“cutting funding for level 7 apprenticeships would risk creating gaps in leadership…at a time when business and the public sector need them most.”
I have been contacted by several firms worried about the abolition of the solicitor apprenticeship—a way into the law for people from less privileged backgrounds. Attwells Solicitors, for example, says:
“Reducing funding to level 7 apprentices runs the risk of removing opportunities into professions”
and that
“Apprenticeships help break down barriers into not only Law but all career paths which could be inaccessible to young people without them.”
As well as hitting employers, on the other side of the ledger—this is why our amendment is important—axing level 7 will be destabilising for university providers. It will particularly hurt those institutions that have tried to do the right thing for those who traditionally do not go to university. Sixty-six universities deliver level 7 apprenticeships, and a prestigious institution such as Cranfield University, which is a postgraduate-only institution with deep industry links, will be hugely exposed if the Government wield the axe in the way they plan. York St John University has something like 100 level 7 apprentices. Other institutions such as the Open University, Manchester Met and the University of West London are all exposed, too.
Culling level 7 is a big mistake. These apprenticeships are vital across the public sector and are a way into the professions for people who might otherwise struggle to enter them. Above all, they are the capstone of a drive to make the apprenticeship system more prestigious. British Airways carried on running the Concorde even though it was a small part of its business because of what it called the halo effect. It knew that it changed the way the organisation was seen. By creating the top of that pyramid—the very top of the ladder; people can go all the way—level 7 apprenticeships create a halo effect around apprenticeships, and that is a vital part of why we should not get rid of them. Worse still, it was crystal clear from the Minister’s replies in the Bill Committee that the Government are keeping open the option to move on and take an axe to level 6 apprenticeships too, which would make that mistake even bigger and will not, in fact, drive money towards L2 and L3.
The other day we learned that the DFE is to cut the adult skills budget by 6%—something for which Ministers criticised the previous Government but are now doing themselves. Ironically, that came out at the same time as, and was overshadowed by, the welfare reform Green Paper, which mentioned training 18 times. In Committee, the Minister refused to confirm whether the Government would continue to provide the extra 10% funding to get T-levels going, even though providers are crying out for clarity on that. It is no wonder that many employers would like the certainty that comes with a degree of independence from politics.
Wise people on the Labour Benches want that, too. Lord Blunkett said in the other place:
“When two years ago I led on the learning and skills document that was a precursor to Skills England…we never envisaged that an agency inside government would have to take on the assurance and accreditation of the relevant sector standards.”
He noted:
“A Skills England that has no legislative backing and no parliamentary references but is down merely to the changing face of ministerial and departmental appointments is in danger of losing its birthright before it has got off the ground.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 November 2024; Vol. 841, c. GC98.]
Even those on the Labour side who were involved in dreaming up Skills England have argued for its independence. Likewise, various employer bodies, including the Institute of the Motor Industry, the Skills Federation and the Construction Industry Training Board, have argued that it should be more independent.
As Labour peer Lord Knight has pointed out, the problem that some of us have with the Bill is that it feels as if the second half is missing, and that second half is the establishment of Skills England as a statutory body. The original draft of the Bill did not even mention Skills England. As Baroness Blower, another Labour peer, has pointed out, the appropriate move from where we are now would be to make it a statutory body. That is why our amendment would make the Bill do what the Government are pretending it does by actually setting up Skills England, which was clearly the intent of many on the Labour Benches.
Given all the problems that the Government are creating, the very act of a further reorganisation is likely to compound the effects of the Budget. The impact assessment states:
“The transfer of functions from IfATE to the DfE could potentially cause a temporary slowdown in the growth rate of new apprenticeships and technical education courses due to potential delays in the approvals process resulting from the Bill… This may disproportionately impact disadvantaged learners, who rely more heavily on these pathways”.
So there you have it, Madam Deputy Speaker. Employers and educators are criticising the uncertainty that the Government are creating; Labour peers are arguing that Skills England should be made independent, but the Government are ignoring those on their own side with experience; and employers are warning against axing valuable qualifications, but the Skills Minister is determined to end them. Yet another reorganisation, yet more centralisation, no clear vision—it is another big mess.
Neil O'Brien
I have already read out quotes from employers and those in education and the public service warning about the problems building up in the skills system because of the decisions the Government are making. This evening the Government have decided not to listen to some of the wise people on their own side, including a former education Minister, but I hope that they will listen to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), because they are on the edge of making a huge mistake by butchering higher apprenticeships —a huge mistake that they will live to regret. They are not listening to their own Members this evening, but I hope that they will in the future.
Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time.