Budget Resolutions

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

This Budget comes on the back of a lost decade for many of my constituents—a decade of lost investment, a decade of lost opportunity and a long decade of crippling cuts to essential services. This applies no more so than for our further education colleges and sixth forms across the country, and that is the topic on which I shall focus in the short time that I have available this evening.

The Chancellor announced that schools funding for up to 16-year-olds will eventually match the per-pupil levels of the previous Labour Government, but adult skills and 16-19 further education miss out by an estimated £4.8 billion. The Government talk about levelling up and putting skills centre stage but, in reality, the swingeing axe of austerity still falls.

Tracey Aust, principal of West Thames College in Isleworth, told me that, by 2024, per-student funding at her college would not have gone up for 14 years—14 lost years. The current per-student funding is just £1,050 per annum, compared with £6,600 per university student. That has meant cuts in the college year on year: less choice of courses; less career advice; fewer opportunities to link with local employers; and less mental health and welfare support. Furthermore, vocational courses cost more to deliver than desk and whiteboard courses. Together, these two factors make it much harder for this excellent college to provide world-class education and the skills that our economy needs in the future.

West Thames College’s principal also said that replacing BTECs with the new T-levels would risk more students falling through the gaps, as the T-levels require level 2 and above entry requirements. The Department for Education’s own equality impact assessment on T-levels said:

“Those from SEND backgrounds, Asian ethnic groups, disadvantaged backgrounds and males are disproportionately likely to be affected.”

That is yet more levelling down.

Colleges such as West Thames College have done amazing work, ensuring that young people get a world-class education and the skill that they need for later life in the jobs that need doing. Yet they are being held back by a Government who spout warm words about skills and retraining, but then offer virtually no support.

With the climate crisis hardly getting a mention in the Budget, nothing was said about green skills. FE colleges are critical in this regard. They provide the essential learning that will be needed, including designing, installing and maintaining heat pumps, solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars and better insulation; and rewilding our natural spaces. We cannot deliver net zero here in the UK if UK people do not have the green skills, and we cannot level up if people who want to work and who want to get better paid work do not have the skills that this country needs in future.

Better skills need better funding. We need to invest in people and to invest in productivity. Time and again, this Government have been warned about their inadequate investment in skills, and this Budget is just tinkering around the edges. This Budget does not make up for the lost decade that West Thames College and other colleges across England have faced. This is a lost decade that will leave a scarring impact on so many.