Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [Lords]

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 21st February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Perkins]

I could not agree more. I am glad to see the hon. Gentleman has overcome any shyness he may have had about speaking in this House and has decided to contribute to this debate, as he seems to contribute to them all, but he makes an important point. Apprenticeships are the gold standard as far as the Labour party is concerned. We believe they should be the heart of the Government’s approach, and it is hugely disappointing that apprenticeship numbers are down by a quarter since the introduction of the apprenticeship levy.

The apprenticeship levy has reduced the number of small businesses that have felt able to contribute to taking on apprentices; it has reduced the number of level 2 and level 3 apprenticeships and it is a significant failure in that regard. Indeed, our amendment 12, which asks for the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to

“perform a review of the operation of the apprenticeship levy, paying particular regard to considering whether sufficient apprenticeships at level 3 and below”,

is the only opportunity to discuss the future of apprenticeships in this debate.

The funding of level 3 qualifications—an issue of contention since the Government tried to denigrate BTECs, to a widespread and welcome backlash—remains out of the scope of the Bill. Our amendment 15 seeks to reintroduce the four-year moratorium added in another place, to prevent hasty decisions from being made that could widen skills shortages and remove the opportunity to take BTECs. In Committee, the Government even rejected adding the one-year moratorium, which would extend funding of BTECs until 2024, to the Bill. I understand that the Secretary of State has confirmed that BTECs will continue to be funded until 2024, which is welcome, but it is disappointing that the Government were not willing to allow that to be added to the Bill.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the pain around BTECs is because they are usually the gateway for students on lower incomes, students from minority backgrounds and students with disabilities to get into further education? Taking that away is the very opposite of levelling up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Hardy]

It is always a genuine pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), who spoke passionately and articulately of his desire to support, through new clause 5, the people who need that support the most. It was an excellent speech with which I wholeheartedly agreed.

I will not detain the House for too long in speaking about my amendment 17, which is intended to provide additional support for people with special educational needs and disabled people. The Bill proposes that there should be an employer representative body in each area to create local skills improvement plans, to which colleges would have regard. The implication is that colleges would train their students in the skills that they need, thereby improving the labour supply—that is the theory—but the Bill, in its current form, is silent on how that will work for students with special educational needs or disabilities. One of the aims of the national disability strategy is to reduce the disability employment gap, but we see no evidence of that in the Bill as it stands. I tried to raise those points in Committee, although unfortunately I missed some of the sittings because of covid.

I would like the Minister to go away and have a look at a few issues. First, LSIPs should explicitly include actions to tackle the disability employment gap. Although there have been positive moves to narrow it in recent years, the gap remains significant. That is one of the points I raised with the Minister in Committee. Figures show that the employment rate of disabled people is 28.4 percentage points lower than that of people who are not disabled.

Secondly, LSIPs should be informed by consultation with organisations representing the needs of disabled people. We know that, all too often, disabled people feel that their voices are not being heard in those forums. I think it will be a missed opportunity if we do not use the Bill, and the new process of local skills planning that it offers, to help ensure that people with disabilities are asked to contribute to their local economy, and that their voices are heard in the discussion about what that future local economy looks like. An amendment to this effect was voted down in Committee but has been incorporated in the Department’s statutory guidance. I hope that reviewing the extent to which employer representative bodies acted upon this element of the guidance, and what impact it had, will form part of the evaluation of the LSIP trailblazers.

Finally—this is the issue that amendment 17 seeks to address—the Bill should contain measures to ensure that ERBs are composed of employers who demonstrate reputable practice in relation to equality and diversity in employment, in respect of matters including disability. We do not want a board of employers planning and determining skills policy if they have no record of being inclusive and decent, because without inclusive and decent employers on the board, there will not be an inclusive and decent LSIP. That is why my amendment states:

“Representative bodies which are employers, and employer organisations which are members of employer representative bodies, must sign up to the Disability Confident employer scheme within six months of being designated, or becoming a member of, the employer representative body.”

It is a small amendment that simply seeks to ensure that there is the best possible LSIP. If that is to happen, we need the best possible employers. We want employers with a record of treating disabled employees well.

There is another point that I raised with the Minister, and I hope he has had a chance to consider it again. The definition of “local”, and the difficulties of defining a geographical region, arose in Committee, and I have not yet seen any proposals explaining how that will be dealt with. To many Members, the definition must seem fairly obvious—why is it contentious that we do not know what constitutes a local region?—but, as I pointed out to the Minister, the local enterprise partnership in Hull is different from the local authority because it covers more than one region. It is different from some of the big employers such as the Humberside police and fire and rescue services, which are different from the chamber of commerce, which is different from the Ofsted regional body, which is different from the regional skills commissioner area, which is different from the new organisation proposed in the Government’s White Paper—a board to look across the Humber at large businesses and zero carbon, which has not even been created yet. All those bodies have slightly different geographies, so I am keen for the Minister to explain the definition of “local” in his local skills improvement plans.

[Sarah Champion]

I largely welcome the aims of this Bill to improve the quality and funding of post-16 education, but it will do little to tackle the major skills shortages in key sectors including health and social care, manufacturing and engineering. It introduces local skills improvement plans, which would be created by employer representative bodies to assess local skills needs and help shape the courses that further education providers should offer to fill those needs.

In principle, these measures are good, but the Bill is significantly weaker in its current form than it was on Second Reading, after it had been thoroughly improved by amendments voted for by the Lords. I was deeply disappointed that during Committee stage in the Commons, Conservative Members voted to reverse these changes, which would have hugely benefited students from all backgrounds. I urge the House to take this opportunity to support Labour’s amendments, especially amendments 15 and 16.

Previously, the Bill would have retained funding for BTECs for at least four more years, ensured that no student would be deprived of the right to take two BTECs, and allowed students to keep their universal credit entitlement while studying. It would also have required LSIPs to be developed in partnership with local authorities and further education providers, rather than just by the employer representative bodies. Now all those sensible and valuable improvements to the Bill have been scrapped, and I urge the Minister to reconsider.

I am particularly outraged by the Government’s plan to scrap funding for BTECs. BTECs make up the majority of level 3 qualifications in this country, with nearly a quarter of a million young people taking at least one last year. For many young people, they are the most effective pathway to higher education or skilled employment. My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) has made the important point that last year 230,000 students took a level 3 BTEC. It is the Government’s goal that in four years’ time only 100,000 students will be taking T-levels, which are the proposed replacement. Even if they achieve this, that could leave a gap of 130,000 students who will not be working towards an equivalent qualification if BTECs are no longer funded.

Who will be most affected by these changes? The Government’s impact assessment acknowledges that students with special educational needs and students from disadvantaged backgrounds are disproportionately represented on courses that risk losing funding. Some might be unable to achieve a level 3 qualification if these plans go ahead, so again I urge the Minister to reconsider. Research published by the Social Market Foundation in 2018 showed that students accepted to university from working-class and minority ethnic backgrounds are more likely to hold a BTEC qualification than their peers. Is this retrograde step really what the Government would consider to be levelling up?

I was proud to work with Natspec in tabling a series of amendments that would have strengthened the provision of LSIPs for students with special educational needs and disabilities. Some 21% of all students in general further education colleges have a learning difficulty or disability, and the figure rises to 26% among 16 to 18-year-olds. There is no mechanism in the Bill to encourage or require employers to use local skills improvement plans to help address the disability employment gap, which stands at nearly 30%.

My amendments would have required the LSIPs to include positive actions to improve the employment prospects of disabled people, and required members of employment representative bodies to demonstrate a commitment to equality and diversity, so that they can create an inclusive plan for all, especially disabled people. These amendments were debated in Committee, and though I regret that the Government did not agree to put these conditions in the Bill, I am pleased that the Minister gave assurances that these key requirements would be in statutory guidance. I thank the Minister for that, and I ask him to confirm his commitment to working with organisations such as Natspec and the Association of Colleges on the guidance to make it as effective as possible.

Disability employment and the needs of young people with SEND should not be thought of separately, or as an issue that will relate only to forthcoming SEND Green Paper. They must be integral to the Government’s plan for further education, and to addressing the nation’s skills needs.

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It was a pleasure to serve as a member of the Bill Committee on this important piece of legislation. I support all the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), but I want to focus my comments on amendments 14 and 15. However, I think it is also right to mention new clause 13, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), relating to sharia-compliant lifelong learning loans—something that is very important for many of my constituents.