Further Education Colleges (North-east)

Debate between Nick Boles and Alex Cunningham

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Kevan Jones]

rose—

[Alex Cunningham]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Boles]

I will not give way. I am answering all Opposition Members’ questions—[Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Boles]

In which case, I am happy to give way to the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham).

[Alex Cunningham]

The Minister has not addressed the issue that I raised with him yesterday, which has been raised again today, about the banking fees that merging colleges will ultimately face as a result of any mergers that take place. They will run into millions of pounds across the country. What action will he take either to influence the banks or to ensure that those costs do not lie at the doors of colleges and that they get the benefit of any mergers that go ahead?

[Nick Boles]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has asked the question again. He is right, of course, that sometimes when there are changes to banking arrangements, fees arise, but those will be visible and transparent, and a college will only undertake an operation that might trigger those fees if it considers that, overall, doing so is in its interest. He will be aware that the Chancellor made it clear in the spending review process that there will be a facility to provide transitional funding for the implementation of area reviews. We will have access to that facility if we need it to support, for instance, a merger or some other arrangement; but ultimately, we will only support such a merger or arrangement if the colleges believe that it is worth doing, even if there are some transitional transaction fees. I hope that helps a little.

Onshore Oil and Gas

Debate between Nick Boles and Alex Cunningham

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Skills (Nick Boles)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) on securing the debate. I had the advantage, or perhaps the disadvantage, of arriving in the Chamber this morning almost wholly ignorant on the subject. This Chamber, at its best, is the best university seminar in the world, and I will leave after an hour and a half a lot more knowledgeable on the subject.

Particularly important and welcome is how constructive and responsible the debate has been. Not a single contribution has been out-and-out anti-unconventional onshore oil and gas drilling. Concerns have been expressed and different approaches by different Governments in the country have been outlined, but nobody has suggested that onshore drilling does not potentially have a role to play in our future.

Interestingly, the focus—especially from Conservative Members—has been on the role of the Government and their various agencies in helping people to cope with change, the unexpected, and the things that baffle and worry them. I congratulate all my hon. Friends on the role they take as Members of Parliament in bringing people together, securing the contributions of relevant experts and helping to lead their communities. The hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) observed the scale of the victory of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton in the last election, but I am sure that he would be as brave in leading his community wherever he was elected and with however few votes over his nearest opponent.

The suggestion of a combined regulator is interesting. There might be a more practical approach than merging regulators, which would be pretty complicated. I will ask Ministers—I suspect it will be those in the Department of Energy and Climate Change rather than the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, but it might be a combination of the two—why all three agencies have to send people to meetings. I will ask whether it is possible to have people who, despite being employed by the Environment Agency or the HSE, can speak to all the different aspects, rather than, as my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) pointed out, the agencies having to travel in packs. That seems slightly inefficient and suggests that there is not a joined-up view and that things can get lost in the cracks.

The Government’s policy on shale is that it can make a significant contribution to energy security, environmental protection and economic growth if it is managed carefully and regulated responsibly. Both Government and Opposition Members have mentioned the desire to arrive at just that balance, between recognising the opportunity and dealing with the risks and legitimate concerns.

On energy security, my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) mentioned that we currently import more than 50% of our gas, and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) pointed out that by 2020, 10% will come from Russia. In the 2020s, based on current projections without the development of domestic sources of onshore gas, we will import more than 70% of our gas needs. Many Members have made the point that gas will always be a major part of our energy mix—or if not always, at least for the foreseeable decades. It is therefore important that we have a secure supply of it, ideally from domestic sources.

[Alex Cunningham]

I am pleased that the Minister has expanded his knowledge this morning. Does he plan to become equally knowledgeable about coal gasification? He could become an advocate for that part of the energy mix as well.

[Nick Boles]

The hon. Gentleman tempts me. No doubt if he secures a similar debate on that subject, I will have that opportunity. I am sure he is right that we can help to reinforce the competitive advantage of our existing chemical and steel industries, and others, through all sorts of innovative ways of securing energy supplies that are more environmentally sensitive than previous ones.

On the vital question of environmental protection, my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South made the powerful point that, if all the world’s coal were replaced by gas, it would contribute the equivalent of a sixfold multiplication of the world’s renewables industries. Gas is a fossil fuel and, in the long run, we all hope not to be reliant on fossil fuels. Nevertheless, the transition from coal to gas is probably the most dramatic thing we can do to enable us to cut carbon emissions and prevent further climate change. That is why the Government are so keen to see the development of shale gas in the UK. There are substantial reserves, which will assist us in achieving our environmental objectives and providing economic security.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Boles and Alex Cunningham

Monday 25th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Skills (Nick Boles)]

I have had several meetings with college leaders, often represented by hon. Members, and will continue to do so as the area review process unfolds.

[Alex Cunningham]

The Minister will be aware of the area review of colleges in the Tees valley, which could lead to one or more mergers. The banks will be big winners in this, and I am told that if colleges become liable for penalties for breaking loan contracts that could run into millions of pounds. How much will the banks benefit from these mergers?

[Nick Boles]

This is absolutely the first I have heard about that, and it is certainly not my intention that a single pound of taxpayers’ money should go to benefit banks. The whole point of the area review process is to strengthen institutions so that, like Middlesbrough College in the Tees area, they can offer an excellent service by providing high-quality technical and professional education to local people.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Boles and Alex Cunningham

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

Through our growth deal with the Heart of the South West local enterprise partnership, we have invested £6.5 million in the Hinkley Point training agency. Yeovil college and its partners can bid for that funding to build capacity and deliver skills training for Hinkley Point. The LEP is leading work with partners, including Yeovil college, to develop an action plan to deliver the construction skills that the area will need.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

T9. The Minister appears to be a little shy about telling us exactly when the compensation scheme for energy-intensive industries such as steel is likely to be introduced, or whether it will be ahead of the original planned date. While she is thinking about that, will she also give thought to other industries, such as chemicals, ceramics, paper and cement, with a view to providing sufficient compensation for them? They face greater competition, uniquely, because of the high cost of additional UK Government energy and climate change electricity taxes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Boles and Alex Cunningham

Monday 26th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

5. What assessment she has made of the effect of recent changes in 16-19 funding on the (a) breadth and (b) viability of post-16 education.

[The Minister for Skills (Nick Boles)]

Since 2013-14, all 16-to-19 institutions have received a national funding rate, which we have held steady in 2015-16. We understand the financial challenges facing the sector and have therefore launched a national programme of area reviews to ensure that we have strong and sustainable institutions delivering high-quality routes to employment.

[Alex Cunningham]

The Secretary of State said earlier that she cannot guarantee funding or protection for any one age group, but the Minister knows that the further education sector has suffered a disproportionate cut in funding over many years and the area review does not even include sixth forms in schools. When are the Government actually going to do something to protect 16 to 19-year-olds?

Skills and Growth

Debate between Nick Boles and Alex Cunningham

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

Let me make it clear that I would be happy to give way to a Back Bencher, but I think we can all agree that we have heard quite enough from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) this week, in his not-so-pithy contributions to our debates.

We heard barely a word from Labour Members about our plans to ensure that anyone who has been failed in school and who has failed to achieve sufficient qualifications in English and maths should carry on studying them, through a further education college or whatever other route they take. That is a plan we have invested in and that we are developing.

[Alex Cunningham]

rose—

[Nick Boles]

I am happy to give way to a gentleman who is also always pithy.

[Alex Cunningham]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. He mentioned trying to give opportunities to those who fail to achieve the necessary standard in maths and English. When will the Government provide parity of funding to our colleges so that they can do that job?

[Nick Boles]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman is aware that, unlike under the Government he supported, when sixth forms in schools received much more money per pupil than sixth-formers in other institutions, we have an absolutely equal funding system. Whether someone is in a sixth form or school, or a further education college or a sixth-form college, they will receive exactly the same amount of money per pupil, as he should know well.

We do not believe that we have a monopoly on good ideas, and we are not remotely complacent about the state of education for 14 to 19-year-olds, but we will oppose the motion because a review or, God forbid, the royal commission that one Labour Member called for would distract the Government at a time when we are making real progress. We are making progress in ensuring that everybody secures that vital passport to success which is a mastery of English and maths. We are making progress in reforming qualifications so that they are rigorous, respected and backed by employers. We are making progress with apprenticeships, not just by increasing their number to 2.2 million in the last Parliament, but by introducing reforms that got rid of programme-led apprenticeships, which the last Labour Government introduced. Those involved no employer, no job and a few months of training in a college, yet Labour dared to call them apprenticeships. We have got rid of those and our reforms will continue.

We are making progress with the introduction of university technical colleges, and I was glad to hear support for the concept from Opposition Members. We want UTCs, spearheaded by one of the greatest Education Secretaries that any Conservative Government have ever had, to be within reach of every city. But we want them to flourish too, and we will be looking to make sure that every UTC can succeed, both financially and educationally.

We are agreed on one thing at the end of this debate: we have huge ambitions for our education system, and they are not yet met. We have huge aspirations for every young person going through school and going into a further education institution in our country, and those aspirations are not yet guaranteed. We will not rest until everybody in this country, in this one nation—in Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland—is able to leave school and college with qualifications that equip them for a life of work; a life that is fulfilling and rewarding and that helps to make this country one of the greatest countries on earth.

Question put.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Boles and Alex Cunningham

Thursday 26th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

7. What steps he is taking to ensure that more adults gain basic English and maths skills.

[The Minister for Skills and Equalities (Nick Boles)]

A good grasp of English and maths is the vital passport into the world of work. Of course, people should ideally acquire that good grasp of English and maths not as adults, but at an earlier stage of their education. That is why we have made English and maths essential components of college study programmes, apprenticeships and traineeships.

[Alex Cunningham]

Two weeks ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) and I met the principals of the Tees Valley further education colleges, who pressed for an end to the funding disparity between FE colleges and other parts of the education system. They were particularly concerned about English and maths, but they were also worried about further cuts in funds for school leaver and adult funding, and asked whether the FE loans programme could be extended to people over 19 who were on level 3 programmes. I do not know whether the Secretary of State plans to be in government after 7 May, but if he has any influence, what does he or the Minister think can be done to address the issues raised by our principals?

[Nick Boles]

When it comes to further education funding, we are emphasising the stuff that works. Apprenticeships deliver the most value to the people who do them, much more than any other further education. English and maths are vital—[Interruption.] We are funding them. We are funding them to the tune of more than £300 million a year. That is what we are spending on the provision of English and maths as part of study programmes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Boles and Alex Cunningham

Monday 20th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

3. What assessment he has made of the potential effect of his Department’s proposed change to permitted development rights on the number of (a) betting shops and (b) fixed-odds betting terminals on high streets.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)]

I think there may be some misunderstanding because there are no current proposals to make any change to permitted development rights in regard to betting shops. We have consulted on a permitted development right to change the use from a shop to a bank or building society, but that would not apply to betting shops.

[Alex Cunningham]

There is no confusion over the fact that there is one fixed odds betting terminal for every 701 adults in my Stockton North constituency, one of the country’s most deprived, and one for every 18,267 people in the affluent Broadland constituency. What will the Minister do specifically on planning rules to stop the betting industry going wherever it likes and targeting areas of high deprivation?

[Nick Boles]

Of course it was the last Government who made it easier to bring in fixed odds betting terminals, and I am sure that is why the hon. Gentleman is so enthusiastic in attacking their record. If he attended the debate on the matter, he will have noted that there are now fewer fixed odds betting terminals than there were when the last Government left office.

Debt Advice and Debt Management

Debate between Nick Boles and Alex Cunningham

Thursday 1st December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

This has been a fascinating debate and I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) and my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) on managing to secure it now, in a week when we have learned from the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and others that real disposable incomes for most people in Britain will not rise much in the next few years.

We all know, through our own experiences and those of the people we represent, the extent to which unavoidable costs such as filling one’s car, paying a heating bill or doing the weekly shop are going up. As a result, I fear that many more people will find that the sums just do not add up at the end of every week or month and that they cannot pay every bill on time. It is particularly important therefore that we anticipate now, in the next few months, the rising demand for debt management advice and work out how to protect the people who need to call on that advice.

Many hon. Members are great experts on aspects of this problem. My hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) is a great expert on credit unions, my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) is a great expert on financial advice and the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) seems to be a great expert on everything to do with financial understanding. My interest in this subject comes from my constituency. I am lucky enough to represent the 750 people who work for Payplan in Grantham, which is an extraordinary business. It is important to understand that it is a business—a very valuable business—that does very well at making money. It does so by providing free debt management advice to troubled debtors and taking a fair share of contributions from creditors.

Payplan has demonstrated, along with the Consumer Credit Counselling Service and a few others, that it is an entirely commercial proposition to offer people advice based on the contributions received from creditors. It absolutely is not necessary to charge consumers for that advice in order to build a valuable business and make decent and respectable profits. Payplan is a partner of the Money Advice Trust and works closely with Citizens Advice and the National Debtline. I have run small businesses and I have many friends and colleagues who work in businesses, and I have not come across a business that makes as much money as Payplan does by doing as much good, so I am immensely proud to represent it and its employees.

The key question I want to address is the one at the heart of the debt management advice industry: what is the right economic model for that industry and should we be willing to intervene as a Government to change or specify that model? I go along with a view put forward by other hon. Members, particularly by those on the Government side, although my Lincolnshire colleague the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) also seemed to be of the same view. I am innately—I do not require the hon. Gentleman to go along with this—an economic liberal, like the Minister. I start off being sceptical of state intervention and I require that people demonstrate to me that a market failure is both obvious and substantial. I was therefore very happy, when a number of us met the Minister to discuss these issues a few months ago, to take his suggestion and look at whether there was a non-regulatory way of trying to fix the problem of cowboy companies gouging vulnerable debtors with huge fees up front and failing to fix their fundamental, underlying problem.

I was happy to look at whether there were alternative ways of dealing with the problem, and I set up a meeting with the excellent people who work in what has become known as the nudge unit at No. 10 Downing street. They are some of the most terrifyingly clever people one could hope to come across, and they are advised by one of the two authors of the original book, “Nudge”, who advise the Government on this issue. At the end of an hour in Portcullis house during which I fuelled them copiously with coffee because I knew that I would be able to make no other contribution to their deliberations, they reluctantly concluded—I think they were genuinely reluctant—that there was no obvious way of nudging this category of consumers.

Hon. Members have talked about the consumers in question, and about their state of mind and character. My hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire described them, and while he was doing so I realised that he could have been describing me. There was the tendency to respond to advertising, and the unwillingness to open letters. Certainly, we Members of Parliament all feel, when we get personal letters, that we have had enough letters in the week. He missed out one vital element that certainly describes me: the total brain-freeze that seizes a person whenever they have to consider their personal finances. Last year, on my election to the House, I forced myself, for the first time, to draw up a budget for the year, and it is not a process that I intend to repeat soon.

We can all understand that for a person on a much lower income than any of us in the Chamber, and for a person whose costs were much more unforgiving than ours, it would be much more difficult to make a purely rational decision. They would be much less likely to ask themselves, “How is it that these people are able to do all this for free? Where will they send that money in the first few months? How quickly will my debts go down, and will they go down as quickly as they would if I went to another provider?”. It is simply unrealistic to expect consumers of that kind, in that situation, to go through the right process of questioning.

Is there a way of making sure that those consumers are at least fully aware of, and given all the required information about, the alternatives on offer? People have talked about Google, and requiring companies that charge consumers to mention the free advice systems. The difficulty is that there is almost no nudge that will overwhelm the advertising that could be funded by the huge fees that companies get. Even Google—a company that I admire greatly, and that is generally very keen to be socially responsible—will find it hard, on its own, to overwhelm the marketing brilliance of commercial operations that have a certain ruthlessness in their approach. As a result, I—and, more importantly, the nudge unit at No. 10—reluctantly concluded that there was no nudge available that would do the job.

As an economic liberal, I then forced myself to go to the next stage, and ask: is this market failure substantial, and is it obvious? I think that the answer is yes on both counts. It is substantial because the disparity between the information available to the consumer and the information available to the person selling to them is great. There are all sorts of areas where all of us, across the House, accept that that is the case, and that regulation is therefore necessary.

We believe, by and large, that it is important for consumers to know up front that cars have certain safety mechanisms in them, because most of us are not sufficiently well versed in checking for ourselves whether a car’s brakes fulfil the standards. We have myriad building regulations because we do not believe that consumers building, buying or moving into houses have any possibility of second-guessing whether the plumbing system will work, or blow up beneath them. We do the same with boilers, and with health care: we expect and require anybody providing laser eye surgery, or any other kind of operation, to be subject to specific regulations, because consumers cannot possibly second-guess whether those products are being provided safely. I would argue that the same applies to the consumers, and the product, that we are talking about.

We reached that conclusion a number of years ago in relation to other financial services. We decided that it was essential to regulate the fees that could be charged by independent financial advisers offering people mortgage, pension or endowment policies and products, for very similar reasons—we did not think that consumers would have the ability or information to assess whether fees were fair. Financial products are innately complicated, and we long ago concluded that consumers needed to be protected from the sharp practices of some providers.

What should the Government do? In the debate, two approaches have been proposed. The reluctance to regulate in a crude way is so deeply instilled in Government Members that they have proposed audits and restrictions on the percentage of fees that can be charged up front, on cold calls and on the worst practices of debt management companies that charge consumer fees. Listening to the debate—and I have genuinely changed my view slightly during it—I have come to the conclusion that going down that route would require enormous expenditure on regulation and enforcement. If we had to enforce measures on cold calls and on auditing everyone, as well as measures on the exact proportion of the fee taken from the repayment in a number of months, that would require such huge expenditure in the Office of Fair Trading that I fear it would be unrealistic.

I have concluded—no doubt the Minister will change my views yet again—that there is a simpler approach. We should take that spectacularly successful commercial model—fair-shares funding by creditors—and make it compulsory for any debt management company to make its money in that way.

[Alex Cunningham]

I have a simple question for the hon. Gentleman. Does he really believe that cold calling should still be allowed?

[Nick Boles]

I do not. I think that cold calling is a terrible idea, but I have good news for the hon. Gentleman: cold calling will die out automatically if all debt management companies follow the fair-shares model. There is not sufficient revenue available from the creditors to fund any of those dodgy marketing practices. That is why CCCS and Payplan do not indulge in those practices. To some extent, we are not here to save one commercial company and not another one, but they do not do so because their fair-share payments from the creditors do not make that possible. It is only because the fee-charging companies charge such huge up-front fees to consumers that they can afford to spend all that money to get them in in the first place.

The good news is that those bad practices would die out. On the other hand, we would have to do something else: we could not just require debt management companies to operate on that model. We would have to require creditors to make it available to all debt management companies, because none of us is in the business of somehow skewing the market towards one or two providers. We would have to require the creditors to offer that to any company that passed the basic regulatory requirements.

I understand that that would be a big step for any Government. The good news is that the legislation is already in place. The Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 is already on the statute book. Part 5, which envisaged setting up regulations for debt management advice, has never been activated, because a commencement order has not been laid. My final suggestion to the Minister is that the Government should bite the bullet and lay that commencement order. They should introduce a simple regulation to enable strong, competitive and profitable commercial providers of debt management advice to flourish by offering advice funded by fair shares from creditors, thereby ensuring that the interests of some of the most vulnerable in our society at some of the most worrying times in their life are protected.

Pensions Bill [Lords]

Debate between Nick Boles and Alex Cunningham

Monday 20th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I thank the hon. Lady—and remind her that her Government had been in power for 10 and a half years by the time they introduced those Acts, even though it was clear long before they took office that such problems existed. However, I do not want to be too ungracious and I do accept that some things were done—but not enough and too late.

So why are the Opposition taking this approach of opposing everything under the general charge that it just is not fair? Is it really fair to tell people that a budget deficit on the scale that we face can be dealt with without pain; without some people being asked to sacrifice things that are important to them; and without everyone in the country experiencing a real material loss? Is it fair to tell young people that, actually, there is no reason to pull back on EMA; that there is no reason to restrict their income when they stay on in education; that there is no reason to change the basis of funding for universities?

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

You have gone on a lot about ideological things, but is it ideologically bonkers to fight for a fair deal for women who have made the sacrifices that you are talking about? They have sacrificed for their country, for their families—

[Alex Cunningham]

I beg your pardon, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it “ideological” for us to stick up for women who have had a raw deal through life looking after their families and doing a low-paid job, but who now find out they have to work even longer for a pittance of a pension?

[Nick Boles]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, but I fear he misunderstands me: I am not accusing him and his colleagues of being ideological, and that, in a sense, is my point. Actually, the Opposition are perpetrating a grand deceit on the British people, which is that there is anything fair about protecting all these things that we can no longer afford; that there is anything fair about arguing to the British people that we—