Student Maintenance Grants

Debate between Steve McCabe and Gordon Marsden

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Marsden]

My hon. Friend makes a striking point. That is only one of a series of delinquencies that I want to move on to.

The Conservatives have shied away from the light of debate, challenge and scrutiny on this issue, preferring instead to use a legislative sleight of hand to ensure that the sweeping changes were made in Committee in the hope that no one would notice. All the way through this process, they have been defensive. They have been less than candid and they have systematically resisted the path of openness. There was little detail to be had when the Chancellor first mooted this change in the summer, and not much more in the autumn statement. It was only when the National Union of Students raised the alarm about the impact of the process and threatened a judicial review over the lack of consultation and the failure to publish the interim equality assessment—which the Government have still not done—that a separate equality impact assessment was slipped out.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), the shadow Secretary of State of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, wrote to the Business Secretary explaining our concerns and asking for a full debate on this matter. This was reflected in early-day motion 829, which attracted a number of cross-party signatures. However, the Business Secretary’s reply largely ignored the issues. The issue of failing to bring the matter to the Floor of the Commons was raised by the shadow Leader of the House in December, and at that time the Leader of the House intimated that there should be a debate on the Floor of the House, but no such debate has taken place. A question from my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) was ducked by the Prime Minister last Wednesday. Colleagues raised the issue again in last week’s business questions, and I put a series of detailed questions to the Minister in the Delegated Legislation Committee. I and the other members of the Committee would like to see the responses to those questions in due course.

It is perhaps no surprise that The Independent led today on the way in which this Government have been using statutory instruments systematically to force through profound and controversial changes to the law without proper debate and scrutiny. Nor is it surprising that my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey told the newspaper:

“This is arbitrary rule that massively decreases the power of the Commons to effectively scrutinise the Government.”

The equality impact assessment was slipped out with a relative lack of ceremony at the end of November. As I said last week, this is the document that almost dare not speak its name, not least because the detailed evidence of the negative impact was tucked away in its central pages, to which I will refer later, and was rather belied by the bland conclusions appended to the front of the document. What is driving these panic measures from the Government—the £1.5 billion raid on grants and the threshold fees—is their belated recognition that the whole set of financial assumptions about repayment that underpinned their trebling of fees in 2012 is producing a black hole for them and for future taxpayers.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Did not a Tory Minister stand at the Dispatch Box in 2012 and assure us, on the question of tripling the fees, that increased maintenance grants and the national scholarship programme would protect students from the poorest backgrounds? Now the Government are scrapping both and trying to sneak the measures through. Is this not an absolute betrayal?

[Mr Marsden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and he obviously has the power of telepathy, because I intend to refer to that later.

Apprenticeships

Debate between Steve McCabe and Gordon Marsden

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Marsden]

I will make a bit more progress and then let the hon. Gentleman come in if he wishes.

As MPs, we rightly celebrate the individual successes we observe. I have seen it myself in the development of the 19-year-old women whom I took on in my office as an apprentice. She has come from the excellent Blackpool and Fylde college and is doing an NVQ3. I know that sense of engagement is shared by other parliamentary colleagues who have taken on apprentices, or who are in the process of doing so.

In my work inside and outside Westminster in the past year, I have seen the strength of diversity and quality in apprenticeships in the skillset schemes at the BBC’s MediaCity site and the food and hospitality apprentice achievements that People 1st celebrated here. Last week, I visited Hackney community college to hear about the new apprenticeship opportunities it is creating as a result of the Tech City developments, and in Lancashire, as I said, I talked to apprentices at BAE Systems’s engineering school, and at the defence company MBDA just outside Bolton. This Thursday, I will be handing out apprenticeships awards at—what better place? —Blackpool tower. Those experiences have reinforced—for me and, I think, for all of us—the need for a broad range of apprenticeship pathways that cover not just traditional manufacturing sectors, but professional and service sectors. The common denominator has to be quality.

Despite that good work—and that of other initiatives; we welcome the extra apprenticeships that Barclays has just announced—it cannot be the substitute for systematic broader government action. The take-up of apprenticeships remains challenging and, in some categories, dire. We have already seen the number of 16-to18-year-old apprenticeship starts fall by 9,200 in the first three months between August and October 2012, in comparison with the same period in 2011.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend as shocked as I am to discover that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, with a staff of approximately 2,500, appears to employ only one apprentice under the age of 19? Would today not be a good day for the Minister to make an announcement that he will put that right, put his own house in order and set an example for everybody else?

[Mr Marsden]

We should never tempt providence, but I am sure the Minister has heard my hon. Friend’s remark, which I shall return to later.

The final figures for 2011-12 also show that the number of 16-to-18 apprenticeships has dropped in four of England’s nine regions, including by more than 2,000 in my own north-west region. The growth figures for other age groups—not least 19 to 24-year-olds, which is a crucial age when many, for whatever reason, have missed out first time around—are modest.