Skills and Growth

Steve Rotheram Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I welcome my hon. and learned Friend to the House. This is the first time I have been in the Chamber when she has spoken, and she did so eloquently. She was right to recognise the fall in youth unemployment in her constituency and across the country. I will come on to the steps that we will take to ensure that apprenticeships are highly valued by employers and give every young person the best start in life, which is what the Conservative party is all about.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady mentioned the quality of apprenticeships. The average length of stay on an apprenticeship, as described by the Government, is 10 months. Would she allow somebody with 10 months’ training to build an extension to her home?

[Nicky Morgan]

I do not recognise the hon. Gentleman’s point, because there is a statutory minimum of 12 months for apprenticeships. He may well be talking about the programme-led apprenticeships that were introduced by the last Labour Government.

Let us remember what we inherited in 2010 from the Labour party: standards were falling and vocational qualifications were debased, which the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central did have the grace to recognise. Indeed, at the heart of many of his problems is the fact that he agrees with an awful lot of what the Government have done. Even he has admitted that he failed to persuade his former party leader to take much interest in education during the election campaign.

Young people and students were failed by those debased vocational qualifications. Young people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds were told that academic qualifications were not for them, and those who wanted a vocational qualification were sold short by qualifications that were not backed by employers and did not lead to a job. Schools in England were stagnating in the international league tables, going from seventh to 25th in reading, eighth to 28th in maths and fourth to 16th in science.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Welcome back to your place in the Chamber, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) for her speech and congratulate her on it. I have a great affection for Glasgow as well, and for her predecessor, Anas Sarwar. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the new Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) on his maiden speech, and all other Members who have made their made their debuts in the Chamber today.

It is a pleasure to be back in the Chamber, following my narrow electoral victory, to speak on the really important issue of apprenticeships. First, I want to place on the record how concerned I am that the City of Liverpool College is facing further cuts on top of the 24% FE cut to date. If that cut is implemented, it is estimated that it will equate to a further reduction of about 1,300 off its rolls. That is setting a near-impossible task for colleges, such as the City of Liverpool College, in continuing to provide courses to disadvantaged students from places like Walton.

I want to press the Minister to look more carefully at his Department’s flawed decision to scrap its plan for a UTC in Anfield, which had been hugely welcomed in Liverpool, Walton and had the backing of major companies, including Peel Ports. The decision flies in the face of the Tory rhetoric about commitments to having UTCs in every city.

Colleagues who sat in the last Parliament will be aware that I was critical of the Government’s use of rhetoric over reality in relation to apprenticeships. It will therefore come as no surprise to Conservative Members to hear that I have no intention of discontinuing that particular stance in this Parliament when they get things wrong. The reason for that is quite simply that apprenticeships are close to my heart. As a former apprentice bricklayer, I know their value and necessity in the modern age.

It is irresponsible of any Government erroneously to claim that they have created 2.2 million apprenticeships, when they have in fact created nowhere near that number—not proper apprenticeships anyway. The apprenticeships that the Government claim to have created are on programmes where the average length of stay is a duration of just 10 months. One of the Conservative Members—I cannot remember who—highlighted an example of best practice in an apprenticeship that was 16 weeks long. That is not an apprenticeship. I obtained that figure of an average stay of 10 months from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, so the Minister may wish to have a word with his colleagues in BIS before attempting to question his own Government’s figures. Such illustrations highlight the problem. Short-stay programmes are simply work-based training programmes re-badged to hit Government apprenticeship targets. These distortions, which are commonly perceived as bona fide apprenticeships, dilute and devalue the brand.

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

We have created 2.2 million apprenticeships, which the hon. Gentleman doubts, and we have also created 2 million jobs. On that basis, are people not moving from apprenticeships into jobs, and therefore carrying on their training in the workplace?

[Steve Rotheram]

No. The hon. Gentleman conflates two things, which is exactly what I am trying to highlight. Taking somebody in a job who is getting some training and re-badging them as an apprentice is wrong. That is not an apprenticeship. Most think of an apprenticeship as having a duration of two and a half or perhaps three years and involving people learning the skills of a particular occupation and going on to get a full-time job in that skills area. It is not the 16-week shelf-stacking example that one of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues gave.

In my constituency, we now have the worst of all worlds, as the plans for the UTC have been scrapped, and there has been a fall of 32% in apprenticeship starts in Liverpool, Walton for 16 to 18-year-olds since the Tories came to power.

[Alex Cunningham]

I am sure my hon. Friend’s majority is as narrow as the Mersey.

Our FE colleges are playing an increasing role in supporting apprenticeships. We heard some great examples of that on Monday, when the Association of Colleges held a reception. Yet colleges’ ability is restricted by funding cuts and the fact that they are paid up to a year in arrears for new courses that they develop. That is putting them at the mercy of the banks as colleges run out of money. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to sort out this funding mess, and release our colleges to drive the apprenticeship programmes we know they are capable of providing?

[Steve Rotheram]

My hon. Friend highlights just one of the anomalies in the funding system for FE colleges. I hope that I will be able to tease out one or two other anomalies in the time remaining.

I believe that we have to be honest about the scale of the problem facing our nation, so I want to talk specifically about apprenticeships in technical sectors. As colleagues will know, our country needs 82,000 additional engineers, scientists and technologists by 2017. To compete globally, almost half of those in technical roles will require upskilling to keep pace with technological advancements. Some 10,000 new technicians are required for the rail industry, of which 30% are required in London and the south-east alone. In aviation, 7,000 new engineers are needed between now and 2020, of which 30% need to have an NVQ level 4 and above. A growing number of engineering roles feature on the national shortage occupation list, and there is the stark statistic that two in five businesses requiring employees with STEM qualifications and skills are reporting difficulties with recruitment.

The time has come for the Government to roll out advanced technology colleges across the UK to match their, as yet undelivered, commitment for a UTC in every city. We have long lived in a country where the post-16 education system is geared towards results and targets, rather than businesses and young people’s needs and aspirations. In essence, this country faces a skills shortage in many leading industries, such as engineering and construction, because we have not focused our post-16 education system on equipping people with the skills that businesses need in order to thrive. Successive Governments have sometimes got this wrong, and I believe that one way to address the escalating problem is to increase the number of advanced technology colleges.

Last week, I had the privilege to visit Prospects College of Advanced Technology in Basildon. PROCAT is an advanced technology college that specialises in the engineering, rail, aviation, construction and building service sectors. It comprises three skills campuses, with more than 2,000 students and 850 apprentices. The previous Labour Government invested significantly in this facility, with a bursary of about £20 million. I visited to learn about how it recruits, trains and retains apprentices in specific sectors, because I am interested in how we can develop the ATC model across the country. In fact, in the 1950s a host of what are now known as universities, such as Brunel, Aston, Bradford, Cardiff and many more, were all ATCs before they became polytechnics and then universities. The beauty of an ATC is that it has a direct link to the business—it is a model, I think, of absolute success.

ATCs align themselves with businesses that invest in their apprentices, helping to provide a clear and professional training environment and a guaranteed job and career at the end of the training, which is exactly what I was trying to outline to the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman). The curriculum at an ATC is also aligned to the needs of that business, which helps to ensure that all apprentices leave with the necessary skills to be employable.

Lord Heseltine made it clear in his 2013 report on growth that university technical colleges, with links to businesses, are the way forward. I would not normally quote Lord Heseltine; it is not easy for me to quote him, but, after all, he was responsible for bringing Thatcher down, so every cloud has a silver lining and all that! Indeed, I think we must go full circle and return to ATC status in order to restore parity of esteem and to address the urgent need to deal with our growing skills shortages.

In my remaining time, I would like to touch on another issue. Another anomaly in the education system is the entry level for UTC students, which currently stands at 14. At 14, many students will have decided what path they wish to take and whether they want to specialise in any particular occupational area. A UTC is therefore perfect for them, as it allows them to begin their vocational training in a new college at an early stage and focus on that specialty 40% of the time, with the other 60% focused on STEM subjects.

I implore the Minister to study the faculty of foundation apprenticeships, which is being developed by PROCAT and offers pre-apprenticeship training to any 16-year-old seeking to enter technical apprenticeships. There is a gap in the system, and that would be a good way for the Government to address it. They should look seriously at promoting ATCs, step up their game and improve the quality of apprenticeship training to provide real choice for young people deciding between an academic or vocational route to the workplace. We could then finally achieve that parity of esteem we so often hear about in this place.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

There are four remaining speakers. With nine minutes each, we will have time for the Front-Bench speeches and a 4 o’clock vote.