Oral Answers to Questions

Priti Patel Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

All our hearts go out to the hon. Gentleman’s constituent and his family. I do not know what is possible, but I will meet him as a matter of urgency, if he wishes, to discuss the matter.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

What changes is the Minister considering to ensure that the apprenticeship levy can be used to fund the type of training schemes and shorter courses that employers are demanding and which will help to get more people back into work?

[Anne Milton]

The apprenticeship levy is designed to make sure we get the money into training and end-point assessment and is critical to driving up quality. One year of 20%-off-the-job training for apprenticeships will ensure a rise in the quality of training.

Oral Answers to Questions

Priti Patel Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

No. On the same basis as I answered the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), if the formula were implemented fully in the Bradford South constituency, it would mean an increase of 1.6% or £1.3 million. Across the system, per pupil real-terms funding is being maintained.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

The cost of advertising for teachers and the cost of supply teachers, especially through agencies, are putting strain on school funding and budgets. What action are the Government taking to ensure that more money goes to the education frontline and less on bureaucracy?

Skills Devolution (England)

Priti Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) on securing this important debate and on her thoughtful speech, which covered the whole gamut of skills policy. She had some good initiatives and suggestions for how we can start to address the ongoing skills shortage across our country and our economy in a wide range of sectors.

I remember often discussing young people here in 2010. We talked about a generation excluded from employment and about the employability barriers facing them. We had a system that was simply not functioning and not getting them the engagement that they needed to help them get the skills necessary to join the workforce. During those years, when we had had a recession too, we found that older workers were finding it difficult to retain their jobs and also to find new employment as the economy changed. There was more part-time employment as demands across the economy fundamentally shifted. One of the things that I feel strongly about, which the country and our Government should focus on, is the agility that is required to sustain the flexible economy. We must ensure that people of all ages, all skills and all backgrounds can still remain active in the labour market. To do that, we need to look at education.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making a strong case on the economic benefits of addressing the skills shortage, but there is also a moral case to do with social mobility, aspiration and allowing people to fulfil their potential in society generally.

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will come on to the ladder of opportunity, the moral obligation and responsibility, and the progression pay that the right hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green mentioned earlier. In fact, we have a good economy right now, but we are faced with a shortage of people in the key sectors that cover the health and wellbeing of our economy: construction, nursing, social care, engineering and a whole range of other sectors. Full-time employment and part-time and temporary employment are all incredibly vital to our labour market.

We have record levels of employment, but we should look beyond that to the next generation and ensure that, while they are at school, they are engaged and nurtured to think about the world of work. The Government have the Careers & Enterprise Company and other models of engagement, but that is simply not good enough in terms of overall coverage—engagement with schools and the requirement on our education establishments to open their doors to businesses, so that they may talk to young people about careers, and to bring into schools sectors that reflect the local economy.

I feel strongly about the role and significance of devolution. In my short apprenticeship as the Employment Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, I oversaw some of the devolution deals around the Work programme. I worked with the combined authority in Manchester and on other devolution deals. Employment programmes and employability were a major factor in giving devolution to local authorities up and down the country. At the heart of that success is working with the private sector, not just the public sector, to ensure that the private sector and the needs of the local economy are fully reflected in devolution deals. Importantly, the combined authority and local authority models require an absolute understanding of what is going on in the local economy, where the skills shortages are and where future demand might come from. There is also a need to look at succession planning and how businesses can work with their workforce.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

In Northern Ireland we have recognised it is important to address the issue of skills shortages and to go into secondary schools. Some people have suggested we should even go into primary schools, although I am not sure that is entirely appropriate. We have also addressed the skills shortage in engineering. We should encourage ladies and girls to look to engineering as a possible job for the future, because they can do it as well as we men.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions should be short and not made into speeches.

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is absolutely right. Young girls should be encouraged and should have the opportunity to look at the careers that they might not even consider to be suitable for them. In STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and maths—engineering is a classic example.

If I may, I will share with the House a little bit about Essex and how we are approaching the skills issue locally. Essex is famously the county of entrepreneurs. Firms based in my constituency have a proud and strong record of creating jobs and local employment. Businesses in my constituency are almost entirely small and medium-sized businesses and they have now created 25% more jobs leading to more than 30,000 people in employment. They are doing well, but they could do even better. They want to see the barriers to recruitment, employability and access to the labour market brought down. They want people with the right kinds of skills. They want change because we have seen that a deficit in skills standards is one of the biggest barriers to growth locally, and to productivity in our wider economy.

On Friday I attended a skills forum organised by the excellent Essex Chambers of Commerce and Industry, which was also attended by my equally brilliant colleague, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). In that business-led forum the spotlight was on skills and on the barriers that prevent businesses recruiting people. It particularly looked at the barriers around the skills and training programmes in Essex and the demands and challenges for the future workforce who are being trained. We need highly trained people, but the lack of flexibility within the training and provider landscape was clearly on display in the discussions that we had.

What stood out in the skills forum, and in my previous meetings and engagement with local businesses, was that they want to be at the heart of the decisions that are made on skills policies, and they want to be involved in designing and shaping courses. They want to play their part in offering job training opportunities. However, there are many barriers and restrictions on their doing that. They are best placed to understand the needs of their businesses and the local economy in a way that no Government with a centralised approached and no local authority can fully understand until those businesses are a full part of the discussion. The devolution of skills to local authorities can be successful only if businesses play a leading role in developing that skills agenda, including working with the education establishments and the courses in those areas.

Over the years, I have received endless complaints from businesses about the time it takes for new courses to be approved. They also complain, as I have mentioned, about barriers put up by the public sector to engagement with businesses. It can take years, with hundreds of hours of input from business and trade organisations, for new courses to be signed off. That equally applies to relevant courses. On Friday, I met representatives from a business who said that finding a course that was specific to their business was near-impossible. They just wanted a course, for a young person who wanted to be on an apprenticeship scheme, that covered the basic employability skills.

There is so much more that can be done, and I welcome the many creative suggestions in the all-party parliamentary group report. We need to ensure that there is flexibility, and that businesses are at the heart of the devolution agenda. I strongly support the idea of devolution in skills coming to the county of Essex. I think that we would benefit from that, in some of the ways that have been suggested today. Devolving skills, and focusing on skills in the workforce, is important not just to businesses, but to individual workers. The skills deficit has a drag not only on our economy, but on the life chances of people who want to work. We have so much untapped potential across our workforce, and there is a great opportunity for the Government to lift the lid on the talents of those people who are struggling to access the labour market.

One way that we can do that, as the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green mentioned, is through the apprenticeship levy. We need to look at how we can unlock the potential of the levy and use the funds it raises to support the upskilling of a whole generation who are simply not accessing the levy. I also suggest using the funds to upskill agency and temporary workers. More than 1 million people go to work every day to do agency and temporary work. That model offers a great deal of flexibility, but those workers make an enormous contribution to our economy; their net contribution stands at something like £35 billion. There is growing concern that the funds that agencies put into the apprenticeship levy cannot be used to train and upskill workers on their books. Somewhere in the region of 2,000 to 2,500 businesses are paying the levy, and the rules on the spending of funds raised by the apprenticeship levy are so rigid that it is almost impossible to use that money to invest in agency or temporary workers.

We have a very good record in Government when it comes to revitalising apprenticeship schemes, and we should be proud of that. The levy has a critical role to play in providing a great pathway. We know that the current pathways are not suitable for everyone, and we need more flexibility when it comes to the levy and apprenticeship schemes. Many workers need to go on shorter, practical courses to take the next step to move on in their career. Examples include courses in food hygiene and fork-lift truck driving, which are not covered by the apprenticeship levy. The flexibility of the levy could be increased to support some of those courses, so that we can support more people to get back into work and get better pay progression, and give them long-term employment opportunities.

If we are to deliver a fair society that invests in people and provides opportunity for those who want a hand up so that they can reach their full potential, why on earth would we not do this? We have a fantastic opportunity to provide greater training support; existing employment programmes are far too rigid and inflexible to do so. A very good way in which we could do that, I suggest, is that the Minister, working across the Department for Work and Pensions footprint, could give people who are on universal credit, and who are limited in their hours of work, the freedom and flexibility to access the levy, to get on some of these courses, and to get skilled up so that they can progress.

We are on the cusp now. The levy is new, but it represents a fantastic opportunity. Devolution of skills is surely a success for our region, and it deserves to receive more encouragement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Priti Patel Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I agree that every classroom in every school should guarantee that children are receiving high-quality teaching, but I think it instructive to note that the hon. Lady’s attempts to breathe new life into the policy of her party’s Front Benchers has come a little too late. Nowadays, when the shadow Education Secretary is interviewed on the BBC, he is reduced to saying that our policies are a success, and when it comes to Question Time he cannot think of any education questions, and has to ask some health questions instead.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

T10. This morning I attended the launch of “Get Tiptree Reading” at Tiptree Heath primary school in my constituency. This local reading initiative is led by some outstanding head teachers in the constituency, and is intended to inspire a love of reading among schoolchildren. Will the Secretary of State commend the leadership of that school and other local schools which are going the extra mile to support reading and literacy among the young?

[Michael Gove]

Absolutely. I had the opportunity to visit Essex twice last week; sadly, I did not manage to make it to my hon. Friend’s constituency, but I hope to do so before too long.

The leadership being shown by primary head teachers, and teachers across the country, in helping us to eliminate illiteracy is inspiring. The introduction of the phonics check, which was the idea of my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), has really raised the level of ambition, and the new primary curriculum which will be introduced in September will help to reinforce that.

Self-Employment

Priti Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Richard Harrington]

The shadow Minister makes a valid point. I read that article in the Financial Times online—if I cannot sleep at 3 o’clock in the morning, I find that that is the best way to get back to sleep. It focused on the general problems of the economy and how much more difficult it is for people who are self-employed and have their own business. Some of those people look towards employment as an answer, and I do not disagree with anything that was said. I am sure that some people want to go back to the comparative security of employment, but I do not think that that changes my main argument. People becoming self-employed and setting up their own businesses is one of the most important things for this country to expand the economy.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I come from a small business family. My parents were immigrants to this country and it is interesting to see the number of immigrants who are self-employed. My hon. Friend’s premise is to get young people engaged in self-employment. Does he agree that part of the challenge is getting started, which is always very difficult, particularly for young people who feel insecure about doing so? Does he also agree with the concept of a youth investment fund to provide Government funding or incentives that give people a cushion and confidence to develop their own ideas to become self-employed?

[Richard Harrington]

I appreciate that comment, because I intend to address the youth investment fund, which is important. Indeed, Sir Richard Branson has expressed an interest in this debate. He is elsewhere in the House at the moment and will join us later. The fund is important, but it is just one aspect and I hope to come back to it shortly.

On the education system, it frightens me that 60,000 people a year do GCSE business studies—this was true of my own sons—and are forced to learn accounting ratios, liquidity ratios and the difference between US generally accepted accounting principles and British accounting standards, but there is nothing whatsoever that will give any of them any desire or incentive to relate to business as they see it, which is buying a product and selling it at a profit, or providing a service for which people will pay. That is a real gap in the system, which, at the moment, is filled by Young Enterprise and various other very good schemes. However, that does not change the deep cultural point that people in this country do not perceive business as something to do that is either socially or economically worth while.

Oral Answers to Questions

Priti Patel Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Mr Adam Holloway. Not here.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

The Secretary of State will be aware of the extensive process that parents and schools go through when undertaking testing for special educational needs for children. What advice does he have for parents in my constituency when schools refuse to test their children for special educational needs?

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Sarah Teather)]

Parents’ views about their child should be central. One thing that we are looking at in the Green Paper is how we can make clearer what should normally be provided in schools and what local authorities should normally provide. It should therefore at least be simpler for parents and teachers to understand whether a child’s needs are greater than those normally provided in the school, and much clearer whether they need a statutory assessment.

School Transport

Priti Patel Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree, having touched on the safety of children going to school, that parents of children with special educational needs, in particular, are deeply worried? A case of mine concerns Melanie Green, whose 7-year-old son Aaron Green is given no support in going to school. I would welcome it if the Minister were to look at that case. In modern Britain, with our children’s changing needs, the area in question is one that must be considered thoroughly. Local authorities in particular must pay more attention to it.

[Nicky Morgan]

I entirely agree. I am sure that the Minister has heard and will hear representations about the particular case that my hon. Friend has mentioned. She is right about the need to return to a common-sense approach and consider the needs of individual families, whether it is the parents or pupils who are affected. There are parents with disabilities who cannot accompany their children to school, because they just do not have the physical ability to do so, yet somehow they are deemed to be able to accompany their children. This is a huge issue for many hon. Members, across the House, and I am glad to have the opportunity to allow them to express their frustrations and views today.

Apprenticeships

Priti Patel Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I commend the Government on demonstrating their commitment to supporting opportunity and job creation by prioritising the development of apprenticeship places. The fact that a record number of apprenticeship starts took place in 2010-11 is something to celebrate. For the record, in Witham we have had a 70% increase in the number of apprenticeship places over the past 12 months. I also praise Essex county council for its role in spearheading that. It has invested resources into apprenticeship places and is working with businesses to get young people into employment and training. That shows a clear dividing line between the failed policies of the last Labour Government and the positive steps taken by Ministers since May 2010.

Let us not forget Labour’s lack of ambition on apprenticeships as they sought to herd people through university in a very much one-size-fits-all approach to post-16 and post-18 education. We heard lectures earlier from the Opposition Benches, which are now deserted, but Opposition Members are in no position to give lectures on boosting economic growth or tackling unemployment because, as we heard in the debate, youth unemployment rose by over 40% under their watch. That is why the 400,000-plus new apprenticeship starts last year stand as a real tribute to the exceptional efforts of the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, who has worked tirelessly to deliver rapid increases in the number of apprenticeship places being offered to young people and the unemployed across the country. They are new opportunities to develop skills, enhance their experience and progress into long-term employment.

I should declare an interest, as I was recently delighted to welcome the Minister to my constituency on a visit to see the outstanding work being undertaken by an organisation called Lota Training to secure apprenticeship places for young people. It specialises in apprenticeships places and works hard with many local businesses of all shapes and sizes. It is innovative and creative in looking at new ways of working with business and creating more opportunities. During his visit he heard about the good work Lota is doing and about the partnerships it is forging not only with local businesses, but with firms in the City of London and large international companies to provide opportunities across the country, which is to be commended.

In the minute remaining, I would like to refer to small businesses, because about 83% of local jobs in my constituency are in the private sector and in small and medium-sized businesses. That figure is about 15% higher than the national average. As you will know, Mr Speaker, Essex is a highly ambitious and entrepreneurial county that is full of small business people. There is no doubt that they are keen to create new jobs, but they have found it difficult to take on more apprentices over the past few years, which is why I welcome the positive measures that the Minister outlined today. I certainly look forward to seeing more of my local businesses thrive, prosper, grow and, importantly, provide many more opportunities to young people through apprenticeship schemes.

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Performance)

Priti Patel Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I am not taking any more interventions, because I have been very generous.

I wish to conclude by discussing some of the other issues that the Government now have to deal with. These are major issues that we have inherited and where major policy is required in order to strengthen growth. The first issue is trade. That is fundamental to recovery, yet does not even merit a word in the Opposition’s long motion. Do they not understand its importance? In the next few days a trade White Paper will: set out a new approach to the Export Credits Guarantee Department, a largely moribund organisation to which we are giving a new suite of products; refocus the activities of UK Trade & Investment; and stress the importance that we attach—I am personally involved in this—to trade liberalisation within the single market, in bilateral agreements with India, Brazil and the European Union, and through multilateral trade.

One of the things that we do, and I do—the Prime Minister has given his personal leadership on this—is ensure that Ministers spend a lot of their time attracting inward investment and opening up the big emerging markets that will be crucial to our growth. The right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen asked what I had been doing in the past few weeks and months. Most recently I have been to India twice; I have also visited China, Brazil and Russia trying to open up markets and attract inward investment that will provide the growth and the jobs of the future, many of which are now materialising.

The second issue covers finance and the banks, which have been referred to on several occasions. The only reference to it in the motion is a factually incorrect one to tax revenue.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

rose—

[Vince Cable]

I shall give way in a moment. The factually incorrect reference is to tax revenue, because in fact the banking levy will result in the Government raising three to four times as much tax revenue from the banks as was going to be raised by the one-off profits levy last year, and that is excluding the effects of getting the major banks to comply with anti-avoidance procedures; the previous Government completely ignored that. There is an issue to address—I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) is intervening to tell me about it—concerning medium-sized and small companies that cannot attract bank lending. That serious problem is continuing because of the massive deleveraging taking place in the banking system. We have extended the system of bank guarantees. We now have a fund of £2 billion, and that process will continue. The Chancellor and I are personally negotiating with the banks to ensure that we deliver a substantially improved flow of funding to viable British companies.

[Priti Patel]

I have previously raised with the Secretary of State the horrendous time that my constituent, the chocolate maker Amelia Rope, has had in getting finance for her business so that she can make even more of her outstanding chocolate bars. Will the Secretary of State comment further on what he is doing to get more finance to businesses such as hers so that they can thrive and prosper and start doing more trade internationally?

[Vince Cable]

I know of my hon. Friend’s frustration regarding this particular company and the banks, and I, or the relevant Minister of State, will be happy to meet her and the banks if that will help to get a proper evaluation of what is happening there. One development in that area is that a bank task force has been established, which will have a proper system of investigating complaints when banks behave unreasonably. I am very happy to take her through that, to meet her and to try to expedite that particular business transaction.

National Apprenticeship Scheme

Priti Patel Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Westminster Hall

[Ian Lucas]

We certainly need to work hard with smaller companies to develop apprenticeship schemes, but there are good examples. I will mention another company in my constituency, Lloyd Morris Electrical. It is a small construction company that deals with electrics. It places great store by its apprentices and the training of its young people. There is a great appetite for apprenticeships among young people. Some of them could go to university but simply do not want to do so because they see their lives developing along an alternative route.

An important point was made earlier when we mentioned teachers and their attitude to apprenticeships. We need to give teachers a much more accurate and up-to-date representation of modern apprenticeships, and I mean that not in a particular sense, but in a broad sense. High-skill, high-technology and high-value jobs are involved, and teachers should encourage their students to follow them.

The Minister has made a commitment on apprenticeships, and I welcome his language, which contrasts, I am afraid, with what was said and done by the Conservative Government before 1997. He needs to be transparent about the details of what will happen in future and not pretend that his commitment is something that it is not. He hopes to announce the creation of 50,000 extra apprenticeships, giving the impression that they are new jobs for young people. First, it is one thing to promise apprenticeship places and another to deliver them—the devil is in persuading businesses, small ones in particular, to take on apprentices. I have often had that discussion with businesses in my area.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

Small and medium-sized businesses are at the heart of my constituency, creating something like 80% of local jobs in Witham. The hon. Gentleman spoke about small businesses. Having been in government, what practical measures would he recommend to enable small businesses to take on more apprentices? The small businesses that I speak to in my constituency are struggling and are fed up with the paperwork and bureaucracy associated with taking on apprentices.

[Ian Lucas]

I ran a small business myself and was Minister with responsibility for regulatory reform, so I do not like paperwork or bureaucracy—no one does, and every Government talks about reducing the burden.

We need to reduce regulations and burdens as much as possible. Saying that is easy, but doing it is difficult, because we have to be accountable for the use of public money. It is important that we should have a scheme tailored to what small businesses need, and that requires commitment by business. Businesses cannot expect such tailoring to happen by accident; they have to commit to working with providers and putting together an appropriate scheme that will be of benefit. That is what we need.

My first point was that it is easy to say that 50,000 apprenticeship places should be delivered, but that we need to get them delivered. Secondly, even if 50,000 places were supported, the Minister needs to guarantee that they will be quality places, helping those who need them most.

We need the Minister to be clear today and to answer questions about his plans. How many of the 50,000 apprentices does he expect to be new recruits and how many will be existing employees? How many will be under 25? That is an important issue. Those questions need to be addressed. Will he please respond to the question about level 3 and level 2 qualifications? Does he value level 2 apprenticeships? We need to look at the detail of what will happen. It is easy, when talking about apprentices, to talk the talk; what we need from the Minister is an assurance that he will walk the walk.