Further Education Funding
Debate between Rachael Maskell and Meg Hillier(4 years ago)
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Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is pleasure to serve under you, Mr Hosie, and to follow the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse). I wish to start on the point with which she ended. I have seen the power of the union learning fund and how it can transform people’s lives and prospects. At a time such as this, when we know that so many people will lose their jobs, we see the importance of the fund. It is not just about the fund; it is about the union learning reps who accompany people into training and support them through it in the workplace. That is the transformative element that the trade unions have worked on, offered and developed, It is not just a beacon in the workplace, but a springboard to take people forward in their career.
Meg Hillier
I thank my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse). The fund is so much better value for money because through it people can be properly supported into training and that does not involve throwing good money after bad. Someone is properly trained and qualified when they have completed their course.
Rachael Maskell
I thank my hon. Friend for that point. She is absolutely right. When a course is completed, we see the impact on productivity. We know that the Government have had a real problem improving productivity, so I would have thought that would have seen the value of something that helps them with that. If the ULF is ending, I trust that a Rolls-Royce version of a new fund will come forward that embraces the value of trade unions on the ground. They are there to work alongside workers.
I want to touch on my local colleges in York. We are fortunate to have two: York College under its principal, Lee Probert, and Askham Bryan College, our agriculture college under its principal, Tim Whitaker. They face specific challenges in this covid period and I thank them both for their leadership and all the staff for what they have done over the past few months. It has been a really challenging time in ensuring that their environments are covid secure and that they are gearing up to support our economy. They certainly need help.
The two colleges have come together with York’s two universities to form Higher York, which does not look inwards in education, but looks out to localities, society and the economy to see how we can rebuild our city’s economic base, which is so important at this time, and so release the potential opportunities for our community. That will be particularly important at a time when unemployment in York will be absolutely devastating—among the worst in the country. We are staring down that barrel at the moment, and it is deeply disturbing. Higher York needs more support to deliver that transformative agenda, which we desperately need.
Higher York can drive the economic recovery in our city, and I believe that further education, blended with higher education, is the key that is needed to unlock our economic recovery at this time. As Higher York is proving, we need colleges to be at the heart of shaping the local economy and the skills base that will be required in the future. Taking a local economy place-based approach to skills planning is so important. I recognise the matrix of needing to look at sector skills, which has very much driven skills strategy for a long time, but we also need to look at local place. With devolution and many other measures being put in place, the local economy is very much coming to the fore.
Given how our economic base is developing, with specialism in particular segments of the economy, skills provision can really boost the local economy and blend with employers’ opportunities and needs now and in the future. A lot of work has been done in York on the green economy and how we can sustain the bioeconomy, which I spoke about in this Chamber only a few weeks ago. That could see a growth of 25,000 people through a skills process to enhance skills. That is at the root of how we build a recovery into the future.
I want to address a number of things with regards to covid. The first is what I shall call the basic need of having a covid-secure environment. The Government have come forward with the obligation to provide that, and rightly so, but there are costs, none of which are recoverable at the moment. York College, for example, has spent £400,000 on becoming a covid-secure environment. That is money that the college wants to put into education, and therefore it is important to see some of it recovered.
Secondly, cash-flow issues are particularly acute at the moment. My colleges have come forward with a simple solution to help—something the Minister probably barely needs to ask to change, but it could make a real difference—which is the alignment of the economic cycle between the Education and Skills Funding Agency, the funders of FE, and the colleges. The ESFA funding year runs from April to May and the colleges’ from August to July. That causes a real cash-flow difficulty. A little tweak to the system would make a world of difference.
On the issue of capital funding, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) mentioned earlier, Askham Bryan College in particular is an old college. The facilities are tired and yet the match funding is prohibitive, especially at a time such as this, with the additional pressures the college is facing. I ask that the issue is revisited, so that some more capital grants can be made available to FE, because the estate is important to delivering vital education to young people and adult learners.
The fourth issue is the wider funding formula, which we know is crucial in order to gather skills. We often look at the minimum cost of provision, but there is a wider cost. We need to look at the wider costs of not investing in our learners, particularly in things such as the recruitment and retention of staff—technical as well as teaching staff—which is really important. Obviously the wider economy is a draw, but we must ensure that we can deliver classes. Class sizes at the college in York are getting bigger and bigger, and the opportunities in the curriculum are getting smaller and smaller, in order to try and balance the books. This should be a key investment. I would therefore welcome a further education White Paper if it had a proper funding formula for FE hardwired into it.
My fifth point is about mental health investment. Many young people have felt the stress and strain of covid. I know from discussions with the principal and previous principals that York College has had challenges around the mental health of its students. We need to ensure proper mental health facilities are in place. It does not have the resources that are invested in universities and is not benefiting from any of the investment in the schools mental health programme. I ask the Minister to look at a mental health approach for FE, and for proper resourcing for facilities.
Finally, I want to talk about the longer-term opportunity and planning for further education. We have a really big challenge ahead in the skills that people are going to demand for the new economy. As I have said, it is for local areas to plan their approach. It will improve productivity and rebuild the economy, but, more importantly, it will give people a bridge from their current place of employment into new employment, without having to go through the massive dip of unemployment. That is what I fear. That linking through for every person on the cusp of losing or their job—or even before that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch pointed out powerfully—would enable us to sustain our economy and protect people. Everything should be done to enable that process. I am working with the trade unions and the local not-for-profit sector, as well as Citizens Advice and the jobcentre, to see how we can ensure that there is a skills-based approach to recovery injected into our city, but we need support from the Government.
I was concerned about the impact of the apprenticeship levy being returned to the Treasury; it is a lost opportunity for investment. Back at the beginning of the current crisis, there was a call-out for shovel-ready projects to try to kick-start the economy and build skills. I would ask for shovel-ready apprenticeships and opportunities in order to use that money wisely and to invest in the skills that are needed now. Colleges would welcome the opportunity to reach out further.
I have a final point on asylum seekers, who are arriving at this very difficult time and are being placed in difficult circumstances. There is a lack of connectivity into FE. In my city, young people have been placed in a hotel, without a connection into college and skills. I appreciate that that could be quite a transient group, but there is an opportunity to engage young people who are coming here and to ensure that they are on that learning journey. It is a good use of resource and time, but the connectivity between the Home Office and education is not there. It would be really good to see more investment in those connections at a time when people are waiting for their applications to be processed, not least because it is taking so long at the moment.
Health and Social Care
Debate between Rachael Maskell and Meg Hillier(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Meg Hillier
That is one reason that we need to be really clear that we are looking at a long-term integrated health and social care system. Social services support should be there for people—whether they are a frail older person, someone with a particular disability and need, or someone with a mental health challenge—when they need it to prevent them from going to A&E in the first place.
Rachael Maskell
I thank my hon. Friend for her excellent speech. I am disturbed when I hear that the Government are putting more money into mental health, yet I have just received the figures on Vale of York CCG mental health funding, which will be cut in the next financial year. The budget is dropping from £46 million to £45 million next year in a city that has real challenges around mental health, which shows that services are not catching up with what the Government insist is trickling down into the system.
Meg Hillier
My hon. Friend puts a face on the real challenge faced by many trusts and commissioners: they are having to make choices about where to spend the money. Despite the pledges about parity of esteem, there is a squeeze on mental health funding nationally.
The reality of the overall picture is that growing demand is outstripping the ability of the NHS to supply needs, which is having a direct impact on patients. There are now longer waiting times for GP appointments. I alert colleagues to the Public Accounts Committee’s hearing on GP services next week; any thoughts from hon. Members’ areas are welcome. People are waiting longer to see specialists, with the 16-week target being breached, and A&E targets are being breached too often. There is a real challenge.
NHS Improvement is a welcome body for trying to encourage best practice, because there is regional variation. It is quite right that any body as large and expensive to taxpayers as the NHS looks to perform as efficiently as possible but, once again, we are seeing NHS Improvement mask what look like cuts. A 4% efficiency savings target is once again being imposed. It was imposed in the previous Parliament by the then Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), and was acknowledged by the head of NHS Improvement, Jim Mackey, as particularly challenging. Worryingly, the reality was that everyone in the system knew that the target was too challenging, but there is a real lack of a culture of whistleblowing and calling it out in the NHS. It is difficult for people to speak truth to power, as we see over and over again. The head of NHS Improvement again acknowledged to our Committee recently, as mentioned in our report, which was published today, that the 4% efficiency savings required as part of the transformation programme are “challenging.”
Our report also describes a worrying correlation between the financial performance of trusts and their Care Quality Commission ratings, stating:
“Trusts that achieved lower quality ratings had poorer average financial performance, and the 14 trusts rated ‘inadequate’ together had a net deficit equal to 10.4% of their total income in 2015-16.”
That is a real issue.
I will touch on workforce planning before beginning to draw my comments to a close. We hear a lot about the cost of locums. Very often in the national debate, I worry that we fixate on smaller issues when we really need to look at the bigger picture. We often hear about the very high rates per hour or per day paid to individual locums. That certainly is a problem—paying someone several thousand pounds a day or a shift seems ludicrous—but the key issue is the sheer volume of locums needed.
Each year, the trust structures are set to meet the budget sent down to them from the Department of Health—our tax money, but not enough of it. From the beginning, they are just not set up well enough to meet demand. Trusts have to buy in locums to meet the needs of their populations, but that is not sustainable in the long term. There were challenges, with a reduction in the number of nursing places in the last Parliament, which is coming through now. We have recently seen the loss of the nursing bursary, which we hope does not mean a reduction in the number of nurses in the future. However, many women, particularly lone parents, in my constituency welcome the opportunity to better themselves and contribute to our NHS by taking that on. I hope the Minister will give us an update on the numbers of people going into nursing training now and, crucially, on whether the people taking those training places will stay and work in our NHS, especially given Brexit and immigration issues.