Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

I know about the good work of the Golf Foundation, under the leadership of Brendon Pyle. I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss its work, specifically the Unleash Your Drive programme.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Sport, PE and outdoor education have a huge impact on building resilience among young people, helping them to gain a love of learning as well as the outdoors, which can be great for them for their whole lives. Does the Minister agree that it is a great shame that just the other week the Welsh Senedd voted down by a single vote the Bill proposed by his colleague and my friend Sam Rowlands which would have made outdoor education an experience that every young person in Wales could access? Will the Minister go one further and back my equivalent Outdoor Education Bill, which will receive its Second Reading on 21 June, so that this place ensures that every young person in primary and secondary schools has the ability to access an outdoor education experience for free?

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Gentleman has been entirely consistent for some time in talking about the importance of outdoor education, about which I am happy to agree. I am not sure it is always necessarily a case for law, but it is certainly important for young people to get outdoors, to be in touch with nature and to see the countryside, as well as running around enjoying PE and sporting activities.

Mindfulness in Schools

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Mr Gray, and a genuine pleasure to follow the excellent speech by the hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols). I too am deeply moved by the response of Esther Ghey to the outrageous murder of her daughter. Her example of compassion and the determination to see the good in others and to demonstrate forgiveness to others is a sobering rebuke and a deeply moving thing, which will do vast amounts of good—it has certainly affected me.

I want to address the issue before us because the issue of wellbeing among our young people is at crisis levels. In the time I have been in Parliament, I have recognised emerging issues through the volumes of casework I receive on particular issues over time. Undoubtably, the biggest spike in issues raised, casework correspondence and conversations I have with people in my constituency is around young people’s mental health. The word “crisis” is bandied about too freely, but it feels like we have a crisis. We could say with some accuracy that people feel more free to talk about mental health and wellbeing these days, whereas perhaps they were more buttoned up a generation or two ago. That is a good thing, but it is also blindingly obvious that we are in an era where our society and culture breed shockingly bad mental health, for a variety of reasons.

It is easy to point the finger at social media and the internet, but I think it has a lot to do with it. In the 1960s, Andy Warhol famously declared that in the future everybody would be famous for 15 minutes, but he didn’t know the half of it. Every kid is famous all the time now, if they want to be, and scrutinised, and observed, and feeling judged and maybe being judged at every moment. To put it slightly trivially, when I was 15, if I made a prat of myself over a girl, eight people knew about it and I got over it. Now, however, that sense of shame, for something that is perhaps very minor, can end up being multiplied and can even cause people lasting and sometimes fatal damage. So, I am deeply concerned about the situation within our culture today and I want to look for solutions that I think will have an impact and make a difference by building resilience for our young people—not only the young people of tomorrow, but the young people of today—as they grow into adults.

Being a Member of Parliament for a constituency with something like 25 outdoor education centres has given me a real sense of the impact of the outdoors on people’s wellbeing and mental health. Outdoor education can take place in so many different ways, but there is no doubt that being active and being outside, which should be common sense for a happy childhood, is unfortunately missing from many if not most young people’s experiences, especially those living in the more deprived communities in our country. It is integral to physical and mental health, and to happiness and wellbeing—we can call it mindfulness. But however we decide to describe it, access to the outdoors is absolutely crucial.

Two years ago, an NHS report found that fewer than half of our young people in the UK met the Chief Medical Officer’s recommendation that young people should engage in 60 minutes of physical activity each day. So it is perhaps no surprise that over 20% of children between eight and 16 have a probable mental health disorder, so described, and that nearly a quarter of year 6 children are considered to be obese. Our physical and mental wellbeing are hugely impacted by the amount of outdoor activity that we are able to engage in.

Outdoor activity can be delivered through forest schools, or through the decision of a school in an urban or rural setting to make use of outdoor learning opportunities, or it can be in a much more specific, out-of-school residential outdoor experience. Such interventions are greatly significant and the evidence base for their value is huge—so much so that we need to make outdoor activity a priority for children. I will come back to that point in a moment.

It is often said, is it not, that it would be great if we stopped fishing people out of the river and stopped them falling in the water in the first place. If we are able to build young people’s resilience, we will hopefully tackle the number of people who are in crisis.

In our part of the world—south Cumbria—child and adult mental health services are run by wonderful people but far too few of them, so they are in desperate circumstances. I know of young people who suffer from eating disorders who were basically told, “Go away and come back when you’re skinnier, or thinner, or more ill, because we haven’t got the resources to help you at this point.” That would never be said to someone with cancer—“Come back when you’re more sick.” We need to help people at the point that they need us.

A constituent in the know told me just last week that autism assessment in south Cumbria has a waiting list of two years. We have shortages of psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, specialist nurses and appropriate beds. In south Cumbria, we have no dedicated separate crisis team for young people within CAMHS. We have people who are therapists and who have been drawn into the crisis work, but doing that means they are dropping or reducing the number of people they see on their regular lists.

All these things need to be fixed, but this debate is a reminder that we would put less pressure on CAMHS if we were able to develop people’s resilience and stop them from getting into a mental health crisis in the first place.

I hope that people will forgive me for taking advantage of this debate in this way, but I also hope that what I am saying is relevant to it. By the way, the Minister’s friends are also friends of mine—Sam Rowlands, a Member of the Senedd, who I think I am right in saying represents north Wales, and Liz Smith, a Conservative Member of the Scottish Parliament. Sam, Liz and I have teamed up to present separately in each of our three Parliaments, Bills that call for outdoor education to be put more front and centre. In particular, my Bill asks that every child, at primary school and at high school, should be given a guaranteed week-long funded residential outdoor experience.

I am not saying that such trips are the answer to everything, but research shows that at the end of five days on an outdoor residential trip with their teacher, a child has built up more rapport with that teacher than they would in an entire 12-month period in the classroom. It is not just about the experience of being away in the lakes or north Wales or wherever it might be; it means that, when that child goes back to school for boring old maths—sorry—on Monday, they are much more likely to listen, learn and be happy at school. They will develop a sense of teamwork, build resilience and learn things about themselves that they did not know. They will gain an understanding of how, when they are in an uncomfortable position, to get themselves out of it, and build skills that will be of lifelong value and give them lifelong comfort with and enjoyment of the outdoors. That will mean that they will choose to spend time in the outdoors throughout their childhood, as they grow older and into adulthood.

It is a relatively inexpensive ask, so I would ask the Minister for Schools, the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), to seriously consider adopting my Bill—it is all his; he can take credit for it. Also, I would ask both Labour and Conservative colleagues present to please have a word with their colleagues in the Senedd and the Scottish Parliament to back Sam and Liz’s Bills in those places, too.

[Andy Carter]

I have listened very carefully to what the hon. Member has said, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. We think of schools as places that will set our children up academically and prepare them for the jobs that they will face in the future, but it is becoming clearer and clearer that schools, along with input from parents, are great places to think about the digital world that young people will live in. Mindfulness and the way that we challenge and think about how young people respond to the pressures that will sit on them should form part of the curriculum.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Farron]

I do not want to go off topic too much, but I think that that is very important. One issue with youth provision of all kinds is the question of who draws it up and plans it—old people. The problem is, for people from my generation, the internet did not come along until their mid-20s. We are writing plans and looking at a world that we do not experience in quite the same way as young people, so it is crucial that young people are integral in the co-design of such programmes. These are their challenges, and we need them to lead on them.

I want to make a really practical point. If we want more young people spending time outdoors, engaging with outdoor activities, building their resilience and a love of the outdoors—if we want to tackle mental health issues at source—there is a really simple thing we could do. It might sound particularly odd, but this came up when I was at the Institute for Outdoor Learning conference two weeks ago in Ambleside in my constituency, where I had the privilege of speaking and, more importantly, of meeting lots of professionals. One of the key barriers to people making use of outdoor learning is that teachers can drive a 17-seater minibus, under 3.5 tonnes, with a section 19 permit and MiDAS training, but if teachers are required to gain a full D1 licence —this is really crucial; it is a linchpin—the cost and time involved and the pressures of the school environment create a huge barrier. Therefore, people do not take their kids on those trips. If we can tackle some of the barriers that stop people experiencing outdoor education, that would be a big step forward.

I will put one final point to the Minister before I finish. We are having this debate, in part, because of an appalling, unspeakable act of hate. I want us to do things with our young people that instil a sense of understanding difference and loving others, and that will lead them to seek to put themselves in other people’s shoes and genuinely love their neighbours. The Minister will know this because I am in communication with him and am delighted to say that we will soon, I think, meet representatives of the Lakes School and the ’45 Aid Society. For those of you who do not know what I am talking about, the ’45 Aid Society is made up of the families of the holocaust survivors who were brought to Windermere in 1945. Half of the children who escaped the death camps in Europe came to Windermere—to Troutbeck Bridge, to be precise—where they were rehabilitated and began a new life.

I freely admit that my communities are in one of the least diverse bits of Britain, but the fact is that we have the legacy, between Windermere and Ambleside, of those boys who came from such a hideous experience to be rehabilitated, welcomed, loved here and sent off to do good things in the world. The prospect of a school rebuild and a lasting memorial on the site of the Lakes School is now within touching distance, so I hope the Minister would be prepared to meet—I think he said he would be—with myself, the school leaders and the representatives of the ’45 Aid Society so that we can have something at the centre of our community that helps to teach people around the country of the importance of loving people, even if they are not the same as we are.

To finish, I pay tribute to Esther Ghey for what she has said—particularly in recent times—and to the hon. Member for Warrington North for securing this debate. I would encourage us all to think about practical ways to ensure that we prepare our young people for the world ahead of them—building resilience and doing those things that we know in advance will work and make a difference.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. Bexley’s apprenticeship event on 5 February will be a fantastic opportunity for local people to learn about the apprenticeships on offer in his constituency. We have transformed our apprenticeship system. People around the world look at us and say, “How on earth have you done that?” I am very happy to work with anybody, but all that is at risk. The Labour party would halve the number of apprenticeships, taking us back to square one.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Sadly, the Government did not intervene to save Cumbria’s agricultural college. However, will they decide to invest in agricultural degree apprenticeships, working with the University of Cumbria and Cumbria’s further education colleges, to make sure we have a pipeline of new leaders who can feed us and care for our environment through farming?

[Gillian Keegan]

When I was apprenticeships and skills Minister, we worked together to ensure we had the right college offer in the area that was sustainable. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education will be very happy to work on that. We are looking to expand degree apprenticeships. We have provision in place to work with providers to offer many opportunities, including in agriculture.

Apprenticeship Levy

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd November 2023 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the apprenticeship levy.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq, and I am looking forward to this debate on the apprenticeship levy. As a former teacher and the former Minister for School Standards, I cannot state enough how important apprenticeships are for young people. They unlock opportunities for them, allow them to earn while they learn and drive social mobility. As the proud co-chair of the all-party group on apprenticeships and the employer of two apprentices—Mya and Jess, who are based in my constituency office—I know just how effective apprentices can be in the workplace.

There have been significant achievements in places such as Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, where we have had 13,240 apprenticeship starts since May 2020. One of the great standout legacies of the past 13 years of Conservative government is our outstanding record on education. Compared with 2010, over 2 million more pupils are at good and outstanding schools, and our kids are some of the best readers in the western world.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb), who served with grace and honour as Minister for School Standards—a role I held briefly, although I basically kept the seat warm for his return—on his hard work in improving literacy and numeracy rates, restoring discipline in the classrooms, empowering a generation of learners and bettering educational attainment. His legacy will live on in this House and across the nation, and we are truly thankful for his service.

I served proudly with the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education when he chaired the Education Committee, and he understands, as do we all, that further education plays a vital role in providing the skills needed to revive key sectors such as manufacturing and ceramics, so that we can level up the country. We have made great strides since 2019. We introduced T-levels and the lifelong learning entitlement. Government initiatives such as the skills bootcamp scheme, which works with local employers and local authorities to fill skills gaps and vacancies in local areas, should continue to be expanded.

Apprenticeships offer a great opportunity to learn and earn, and they keep talent and skills in our local area, making a vital contribution to the labour market. The huge demand for apprenticeships is waiting to be matched by supply. Almost half of the young people registered on UCAS are interested in apprenticeships, yet only 10% go on to start one. In recent years, there has been a dramatic decline in the number of new apprenticeship starts. Since the apprenticeship levy was introduced in 2017, overall apprenticeship starts have fallen from half a million in 2016-17 to just over a quarter of a million in 2022-23. That urgently needs to be reversed. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the number of apprenticeship starts for 16 to 18-year-olds has fallen by 41% since 2015-16. For 19 to 24-year-olds, it has fallen by 31%, and for those aged over 25, it has fallen by 26%.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the points he is making. Last year, more than £3 billion of the levy was not spent, I guess for many of the reasons he is setting out. In my community, many of the businesses that would love to have an apprentice find it too hard to get into the scheme. Would it be wise in an area such as mine, where one in four people work for themselves and many opportunities come through small businesses, to redirect some of the underspend to encourage small businesses to take on apprentices? That would be good news for our economy and for everybody else, for that matter.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I could not agree more: the levy should be much easier to access for small and medium-sized enterprises, and even for big levy payers, such as Lloyds Bank, which I met recently in my constituency at Saint Nathaniel’s Academy in Burslem. It said that it found it incredibly tricky to navigate the system to try to get money to the frontline. In that case, it was for digital apprenticeships and skills for those teachers and support staff, as the school went to a Google Classroom-based learning system. I will set out later how I think the levy can be reformed to make it more accessible and to ensure that more SMEs get more opportunities to take up apprenticeships. It is all well and good talking about skills, but if we do not have enough apprentices in the first place with the opportunity to access them, we will always have to overly rely on cheap foreign labour from abroad to fill vacancies. I suspect the hon. Gentleman and I have slightly different opinions on that, but the Chancellor said in the autumn statement today that he wants to see us skilling up and levelling up the opportunities for young people here.

The fall in the number of apprenticeship starts suggests that apprenticeships in their current form are not benefiting young people and helping them get into the workforce. We require businesses to invest in their existing workforce. Increasing the flexibility of the apprenticeship levy would help businesses with the cost of investment in British talent, further militating against the dependency on mass migration. Although increased collaboration between the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and the Migration Advisory Committee will not eradicate reliance on immigration for vital skills, it will shift the focus to prioritising British upskilling and offer a long-term solution to the nation’s skills shortages.

As evidenced in “The New Conservatives’ plan to upskill Britain”, which I proudly wrote with my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Lia Nici), red wall areas have been hit especially hard by the reduced number of younger apprentices in SMEs. In northern and coastal constituencies, the number of apprenticeships has fallen, while it has grown in places such as Wimbledon and Chelsea. As the New Conservatives’ skills paper suggests, areas such as Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke need more home-grown apprentices so that we do not rely on cheap migrant labour to fill the skills gap. That is why it is so vital that we take on recommendations from industry and reform the levy, so that communities can benefit from apprentices.

One way the New Conservatives’ skills plan seeks to do this is by pushing for the Migration Advisory Committee to work much more closely with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, by identifying gaps in the market where unspent levy funding can be used to support the training of home-grown talent that will help to close the skills gap. With net migration standing at over 600,000 in the year to June, it is essential that we explore ways to wean the economy off cheap migrant labour, which puts immense pressure on our public services, including our schools, our NHS and our housing supply, with migrants now making up half the demand for new builds. I am confident that reforming the apprenticeship levy to allow underspends to target specific gaps in the job market will help to solve one of the UK’s most challenging long-term problems.

In the New Conservatives’ skills plan, we also raise issues surrounding the levy transfer mechanism and suggest raising the current transfer from 25% to 35%. Since the introduction of the levy five years ago, £4.3 billion has been raised by the levy but kept back by the Treasury. In 2021-22 alone, the revenue raised was £750 million—more than the entire apprenticeship budget—and according to FE Week analysis, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs pocketed an extra £415 million in the year to September 2023. I know that this is an issue for small and medium-sized businesses in Stoke-on-Trent, and I was shocked to see the Sentinel report in January this year that Stoke-on-Trent City Council was forced to send its £1 million apprenticeship underspend back to HM Treasury.

As co-chair of the APPG on apprenticeships, I have spoken to many businesses that say the system for transferring funds is immensely bureaucratic and requires excessive paperwork, which dissuades businesses from pursuing it. Our skills paper therefore sets out plans to increase the apprenticeship levy transfer to 35%. As the New Conservatives’ report sets out, the current cap at 25% limits employers making the most out of their funding, and it is difficult for businesses to transfer funding to SMEs outside their supply chain. That is why we advocate increasing the ease with which funds can be transferred by including other SMEs local to the region of the levy payer, which would keep investment local and widen access to apprenticeship funding.

The New Conservatives and I want to see a greater amount of the billions of pounds of unspent levy funding—like the £1 million underspend in Stoke-on-Trent—spent on skills locally, which will help the levelling-up agenda and assist young people in finding good career prospects near to home. However, to do that, the Government need to be brave and expand access to apprenticeship funding, as we outline in our report.

We need to allow for training to be more sensitive to labour market demands, so that we can upskill our homegrown talent. We should seize on local areas’ expertise, such as Stoke-on-Trent’s thriving video game industry, to make apprenticeships work for the economy. Alongside using unspent levy funding to support SMEs with grants, we should look to make it flexible enough to support shorter courses. Microsoft has identified that a modular approach to apprenticeships would allow apprentices to fit into the gaps in the labour market much more effectively. It says that this is essential to ensure that people are equipped with the digital skills they need to perform an increasing number of tasks.

In some cases, labour market demands do not require long courses, so making the levy more flexible will support shorter courses that meet existing needs of the business, rather than fulfilling bureaucratic apprenticeship requirements. This will enable employees to develop much-needed skills and help employers to address specific skills shortages that they face. Microsoft identifies such flexibility as being necessary for businesses to adapt to the rapidly changing requirements of digital roles, noting that the current 18-month waiting period for the digital apprenticeship standard to be approved is too long. Such long approval times stifle growth and leave employers without the skills that they need. Increasing the flexibility of the apprenticeship levy will also help Britons to upskill, improving productivity and reducing the skills gap.

In my role as the co-chair of the APPG on apprenticeships, I have also spoken with many leading businesses in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke as well as across the country, and they have outlined ideas about how to make the levy work. Policy Exchange’s excellent paper, “Reforming the Apprenticeship Levy”, makes the disappointing point that SME involvement in the apprenticeship system has plummeted since the introduction of the levy, and it states that that has wider implications because, historically, SMEs train higher proportions of apprentices, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds.

As such, Policy Exchange has proposed a number of recommendations to streamline the process and support SME involvement in the training of apprentices, including financial support for off-the-job training. It suggests that SMEs should be supported with £2,500 to fund off-the-job training for apprentices under the age of 25, with an additional £500 on completion.

Given that FE Week reported that HMRC pocketed around £415 million generated by apprenticeship levy receipts last year, I want the Government to explore whether there is scope to use some of that underspend to back SMEs with the £3,000 payment advocated for by Policy Exchange, which believes that such support would cost around £200 million. The policy was backed by the Prime Minister when he was Chancellor during the covid-19 pandemic, so I urge him to consider that to get more people doing apprenticeships once more.

For some businesses, especially SMEs, the hidden costs are often what prevents them from being able to hire an apprentice in the first place. The funding is there to support our SMEs and to support our apprentices with more than just training, and this simple change could be transformative.

Alongside reforms to the levy, I want to use this time to raise the issue of functional skills requirements, which are also a barrier to apprenticeships. For someone to be an apprentice in England, they must prove that they have good qualifications in English and maths. If they cannot do so, the Government pay to enrol them on a course and enter them into exams to prove that. That is wasting tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, because, in some circumstances, despite an older apprentice holding a degree or other level 4 qualifications, the fact that they cannot find their GCSE or even O-level certificates means that they must retake the exams.

The current focus on functional skills qualifications also poses a challenge to some hoping to complete apprenticeships, disproportionately impacting those from disadvantaged backgrounds and SME employers that are more likely to offer apprenticeships to younger and less well-educated students. I wrote to the Department for Education to raise my concerns about this issue and was disappointed with the response I received this week from the Minister, who said that they are

“currently unable to offer any flexibility here”.

If we were to relax those requirements, there would be a significant public savings benefit, meaning that money could be spent on helping businesses to support their apprentices more effectively. Over the past five years, the Government have spent £379 million on functional skills, with the per-apprentice cost increasing by 64% since 2021-22. If we reduce those costs by being more flexible about functional skills requirements, businesses will benefit.

As the co-chair of the APPG on apprenticeships, I have spoken with businesses who told me that reviewing functional skills requirements, which is also a recommendation in the New Conservatives’ skills paper, will improve retention rates for apprenticeships. That will give businesses confidence that the investment they make in new employees will be worthwhile.

Data supplied to me by Multiverse shows that 60% of apprentices undertaking functional skills exams already have degree certificates, but they do not have their school qualifications to hand, or they were schooled internationally. I do not believe that it is necessary for someone to take on extra training in English and maths if they have a degree-level qualification. A degree should be an indicator of competency in English and maths, and new recruits should be focused on developing skills that are fit for industry and not on functional skills training.

Multiverse argues that this requirement is a significant and unnecessary barrier to work. Its data shows that 74% of apprentices withdrew from their course when they were required to undertake English and maths exams. Given that fewer people have been undertaking apprenticeships since the introduction of the levy, we need innovative and simple ways to improve retention rates, and removing functional skills requirements could help to achieve that.

However, outdated attitudes towards higher education are thankfully ending. Recent polling shows that the British public are more positive about technical and vocational education than they are about university education, with 48% of parents saying that they would prefer their child to get a vocational qualification after leaving school, compared with 37% of parents who would prefer their child to go to university.

More broadly, there is support for prioritising further education and higher education equally, with 31% thinking that vocational education should be prioritised by the Government over university education and only 9% thinking that university education should be prioritised over further education. It is regrettable, therefore, that equal treatment of higher education and further education is not shown through the welfare system. Families should not be penalised if their child opts for an apprenticeship rather than other post-16 education. However, current welfare policy requires child benefit to be removed from families with children aged under 19 in apprenticeships, unlike if their child were studying for A-levels or T-levels.

More needs to be done to ensure that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds benefit from apprenticeships rather than being short-changed by their university experience. For those with low academic attainment or opting for low-return courses, a quality apprenticeship could offer a better option for a variety of reasons. Such a route should not be closed off due to parental financial worries.

In conclusion, the over-expansion of university education by Tony Blair and new Labour has left too many young people in debt, without the skills needed to secure well-paying careers. At the same time, investment in high-skilled trades has dropped, leading to an over-reliance on cheap immigration from abroad to meet our ever-expanding list of job shortages. As the party that values hard work and aspiration, we need to reverse that trend and invest in local talent that matches local labour market demands.

The policy suggestions presented in the New Conservatives’ skills paper aim to shift the balance from Government overspending on low-return higher education and repurpose all money saved for investment in quality technical and vocational education that keeps talent local and high-skilled. That will be achieved only by both disincentivising students from poor-quality university education and incentivising them towards high-quality technical and vocational education.

Such measures also need the support of local businesses. Small and medium-sized businesses need to feel that their investment in local talent is worthwhile and supported by the Government. With renewed prioritisation for apprenticeships and other technical and vocational training and education, our country can upskill its workforce, meet labour demands without reliance on immigration, and ensure good jobs for the present are there for future generations as well.

The central message of the New Conservatives’ skills plan is to increase the parity between further and higher education funding. That means that it is essential for the Government to support all apprenticeships offered by an SME regardless of how much of the levy is used. That will help businesses and individuals get greater access to apprenticeships, which is in line with my vision to make apprenticeships a more viable option and to make clear that degrees are no longer the sole gold standard in education.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

This is two days running that I have been called directly after the proposer of the debate. I am in a state of anguish and shock that I should be called so early.

I am pleased to be here. I am also pleased to see my good friend, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) leading today’s debate, and I look forward to other contributions from the shadow spokespersons. We have a Minister in place—I am not saying anything that is not true, because we all subscribe to this—who eats and sleeps education; a Minister who works his butt off to do the best for all pupils. Whenever he is here to answer, we all know we will get the answers we seek, because he has the same passion for the subject matter as we all have. I mean that honestly and with all sincerity, because that is how I feel about him, and I suspect others feel every bit the same.

I am aware of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North’s involvement in the APPG on apprenticeships as co-chair, and I thank him for all his work. I am a bit biased, because he is the guest speaker at my association dinner in Northern Ireland, and I am very pleased that he is coming to speak to us next year. As a true Unionist, he will be able to encourage my association members on the things that matter for us here at Westminster and elsewhere.

As I am sure everyone is aware, there are different rules regarding apprenticeships in the devolved nations, so I come here to give a Northern Ireland perspective, as I do all the time. There are two different systems. The Minister does not have responsibility for Northern Ireland, but I want to sow into the debate the thoughts we have back home. The levy is paid into an apprenticeship service account, and funds in the account must be spent on apprenticeships, training and assessment. Since 2017, there has been a large fall in the number of apprenticeship starts. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) referred to another methodology for taking advantage of moneys that have not been used, and I support that. In fairness, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North gave an indication that he, too, would be appreciative of it.

At the end of the 2021-22 financial year, the total value of the levy funds in apprenticeship service accounts was just under £5 billion. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all receive a share of that funding through the Barnett consequentials. Some of the moneys go to us in Northern Ireland, but also to Scotland and Wales, so there is a spin-off, of which we can take advantage. Apprenticeship funding is crucial for society. I believe it is absolutely critical to put people on the path to work, especially young people who have no desire to go to university and who are insistent on learning a skill to better their future. I see the importance of apprenticeships to many young people who have taken up apprenticeship jobs. They ensure opportunity and are really important.

I will give a classic example that I often think of and refer to. I know of a mechanic in my constituency of Strangford who is now 25. He left school when he was 15, and was keen to do something with his hands. He started as an apprentice in a local Ford dealership on £3.67 per hour. My goodness! Apprenticeships are never highly paid. They certainly were not highly paid when he was 15. He has worked his way up the system through his apprenticeship, and qualified as a mechanic, and on the journey, he learned all the necessary skills to become a fully qualified technician for Royal Mail. What a really good example of what apprenticeships can do, and how they can change lives and give people opportunities!

Apprenticeships allow young people to learn high-level professional skills. Skills policy, including responsibility for apprenticeships, how they work, and how apprentices work their way up, is a fully devolved matter, so each Administration across the United Kingdom has developed an apprenticeship policy tailored to the needs of its skill priorities. Regionally, that is done through the Northern Ireland Assembly, and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment. As I have stated many times, Northern Ireland has a large agricultural industry, which is especially evident in my constituency of Strangford. I live on a farm, and there are farm-related opportunities for apprenticeships. To give two examples, Dale Farm and Lakeland Dairies offer apprenticeships for young people.

In addition, City & Guilds offers level 2 and level 3 agriculture apprenticeships through NI Direct. That is a fantastic way to get people involved in the industry, especially in the rural community where I live, where there are not as many opportunities as there could be. Apprenticeships in the rural community are on offer, and our young people can and do take advantage of them, which is good news. I know that the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale has the same interest, because he lives in a rural community as well, so we understand the role for apprenticeships and how we can move forward.

[Tim Farron]

We did not plan this, but it is really good of the hon. Gentleman to let me intervene. He makes important points. I represent a community in which there are well over 1,000 farms. We have a real issue with succession of farmers, and bringing new people into the farming industry. Less than 60% of the food that we consume in the UK is grown in the country, which is deeply troubling. The answer surely must be to bring more young people into farming. Does he agree that the Minister should look carefully at how we can enhance agricultural and other farming apprenticeships, so that we can make it attractive and financially possible for young people to enter the industry and feed us all?

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Gentleman makes a salient and important point that underlines the issue for us as representatives of predominantly agricultural constituencies. Our role in the rural community is to feed others, and we have the potential to feed even more of our nation, which will reduce the amount of food that we have to import. Hopefully, we can look towards a time when we can be almost self-sufficient; we will never be fully self-sufficient, because we cannot grow some of the stuff that we import, but his point, which I wholeheartedly support, is that we have opportunity. When the Minister sums up, perhaps he can give the two of us—and others in this Chamber—some encouragement on the way forward.

There is no doubt that apprenticeships work and are good for society. There is much pressure on young people to go to university and get a degree. I am not saying that they should not, but not every person is of a mind to do that. Not every person has the capabilities, the functioning or perhaps the focus to make that happen. I have three boys who are now young men, and my neighbours down the road, who are also farmers, had three boys around the same age, and they all went to school together. I knew early on that the oldest of those young boys was never going to get on at school and get all the qualifications that it gives. He only wanted to work on the farm. That is where he wanted to be, and where his love was. Those are the things that we need to focus on. Whenever the hon. Gentleman speaks highly of agriculture and how we can move forward, I endorse that, because I have examples of what he is talking about in my constituency.

When apprenticeship opportunities are successful and are proven to work in the United Kingdom, they deliver opportunities, and lifelong jobs and commitment. If apprenticeships are worse off for the levy, then I urge the Minister to look at other ways in which the moneys could be used. Despite this being a devolved issue, I believe that the Minister has an interest in the situation in Northern Ireland, and a sincere responsibility to ensure that it does not fall behind. I recognise, of course, that this is about Barnett consequentials, and the moneys that come from here to us.

Apprenticeships are about ensuring that underachieving females and males can succeed. It is great that today we can talk about apprenticeships giving opportunities, and jobs for life. In other words, they are about giving not just our children, but our children’s children, a future that we all endorse and would wish for—a future in a stronger United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, where apprenticeships matter and make a difference.

Autism and Learning Disability Training

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Westminster Hall

[Dame Caroline Dinenage]

It is almost as if my right hon. and learned Friend read my mind. I will come on in a bit to talk about the Oliver McGowan training, which I am glad he endorses. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on autism, he speaks with enormous experience and passion on this subject, and I am grateful for his endorsement.

As we have heard, there is already training in this area, which I am sure the Minister will reiterate. However, a report by the National Autistic Society showed that just one in seven—14%—of schoolteachers have received any form of autism training. Rachel, a SEND learning support assistant, said, in her words, that she had

“not really received much training”,

and that when she started, she

“was thrown into the deep end.”

Everything Rachel knows is mainly based on her experience of working with SEN children, not her training, yet the survey responses show that where teaching and support are right, they can have a game-changing and enduring impact on the education and life chances of neurodivergent pupils, in some cases supporting them all the way through university and building them up for their adult lives and careers ahead.

What concerns me deeply, however, is the fact that further research from the National Autistic Society showed that while 87% of teachers surveyed said that they felt confident or very confident supporting autistic pupils in the classroom, findings from a 2021 report showed that seven in 10 autistic children and young people said that school would be better if more teachers understood autism, while 54% of autistic students said that having teachers who did not understand them was the worst thing about school. That is a problem. There is a clear and sizeable gap between how teachers think it is going and how autistic children and children with a learning disability actually feel. It is vital that we bridge that gap. It is simply not fair on either party if we do not. All children deserve to have the very best possible experience in the classroom and the best opportunities to learn and fulfil their potential.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is making excellent points to which I give my very strong support. Does she recognise the experience of many of my constituents, with young people waiting perhaps two years for an education, health and care plan and a diagnosis? Something that has become obvious to me only recently is that 50% of the young people on the books of child and adolescent mental health services in my part of Cumbria have autism and ADHD. It turns out that through the NHS, via the local integrated care board, there is literally zero funding for that service to support any of those young people, which delays their getting the care and support that they need in the classroom, but also affects all young people—some with neurological issues and some without—who need support for eating disorders, anxiety and so on. Is it not time that the NHS funded CAMHS sufficiently so that young people with neurological issues can get the treatment and diagnosis that they need?

[Dame Caroline Dinenage]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. There will not be a single Member of Parliament who has not had some issues with local CAMHS, sadly. Of course, early intervention and recognition is key to this and can stave off many problems that come further down the line. I would not be doing teachers or pupils justice if I did not refer to wider issues surrounding SEND provision and support for autistic children more broadly. We know that there are simply not enough specialist SEND school places or trained professionals to cope with the increased need.

Schools are required under the Equality Act 2010 to make adjustments, but there is only so much they can do with current provision. As we have heard, it takes an inordinate amount of time to secure an EHCP and then for the associated funding to filter through to the educational establishment concerned. Meanwhile, schools are left to pick up the tab and in many cases to pick up the pieces involved in offering incredibly intensive support to children with very complex needs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barbara Keeley]

It is very much like the case I have just given: the parent of that five-year-old boy is told that he is “too naughty” to have more than two hours of school a day, and that is absolutely disgraceful. It is not a behavioural problem if it is autism.

Education, health and care plans are another important source of support. As we have heard, there are 200,000 school-age autistic pupils in England, but just 55% have an education, health and care plan. The Government’s investment plan for children with special educational needs and disabilities claims that this is a priority area, but the National Autistic Society said there is “little substance” in the Government’s plan for reducing waits for a child’s education, health and care plan.

Concerningly, there have also been reports that the Government have signed a deal with a consultancy aiming to reduce targets for education, health and care plans by 20% for 55 local authorities, as part of a delivering better value in SEND programme. The consultancy firm was tasked with reducing cost pressures on local authorities by targeting a 20% reduction in the number of new education, health and care plans issued. It is painfully ironic that the design of this so-called value-for-money programme seems to have to cost the Government nearly £20 million in consultancy fees to Newton Europe. It is also painful to understand that the Government see education, health and care plans as cost pressures to be managed down, and not as vital documents that set out the education provision that children with significant needs must receive by law.

[Tim Farron]

I thank the hon. Lady for making such a valid point and for being so generous in giving way. It seems to me that even if we did not put an extra penny of funding into supporting young people with autism spectrum disorders—although we should—if we spent the money more intelligently and more fairly, we would do more good. We have a situation in which schools that do the right thing and accept young people with autism, and indeed other learning difficulties, are funded only once they get past the £7,000 threshold. Schools that do the right thing are having to spend out of their own coffers to support children, whereas schools that somehow dodge the bullet, so to speak, end up being financially rewarded. Is it not wiser that we spend money to support the schools that actually support the children?

[Barbara Keeley]

Indeed. Local authorities must be supported to fulfil their statutory duties to children and young people, just as schools and colleges, as a continuation, must access the training necessary to become genuinely inclusive. That is what we want to see.

As an MP, I raise many cases of parents and carers of children who have or are seeking a diagnosis of autism and are being failed by the schools they attend, yet it is such a fight to get an education, health and care plan for them. One of my constituents is the parent of a girl with complex special educational needs and disabilities who had to battle with the local authority to get an education, health and care plan for her daughter. My constituent told me about the battle she has had, saying that her daughter

“only has access to large mainstream secondary schools which is unacceptable for a child with such complex needs. I have provided all evidence, co-operated fully and repeated and repeated medical evidence and wrote lengthy information. They have all the information and now I am going to mediation and appeal. This process has taken over a year. I am exhausted. This is not good for anyone. I am not being heard and I am fighting to safeguard my daughter. I have a child with complex additional needs. My time, care and attention should be only focused on her but again I have to prepare now for mediation.”

I supported my constituent to get the plan for her daughter, but it took a long time and she ended up missing the first six months of secondary school.

It is crucial that we have better support for autistic pupils and pupils with learning disabilities. The Oliver McGowan mandatory training programme and education, health and care plans are both important elements in that respect. The Government must do more to ensure that autistic people and people with learning disabilities can receive the education they need, and that they are able to live long and independent lives in the community. Sadly, for far too many people that is a distant dream.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

I would be delighted to visit XYZ. Music in schools is a personal passion for me; I want to see more of it and a better quality of it. In 2021, we published the model music curriculum, which is designed to help primary and secondary schools to improve their music education. It took two years to produce and was written by a panel of music education practitioners, including Ed Watkins, head of music at the West London Free School, and Julian Lloyd Webber; the panel was chaired by Baroness Fleet. I would love to discuss that curriculum and learn more about XYZ.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

12. What steps she is taking to improve school buildings.

[The Minister for Schools (Nick Gibb)]

Well-maintained school buildings are a priority for this Government, and we will spend whatever it takes to keep children and staff safe. We have allocated £1.8 billion in 2023-24—£15 billion since 2015—to improve the condition of school buildings, and we are working to address reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. We are transforming hundreds of schools across the country through our school rebuilding programme.

[Tim Farron]

The excellent Lakes School at Troutbeck Bridge serves the communities of Windermere and Ambleside and those further afield with 11-to-18 education, but it is widely acknowledged that the school needs a full rebuild because the buildings are well beyond their sell-by date. Because of the unique history of the site, on which I am happy to brief the Minister separately, it is very likely that we will have significant charitable and private funds to help towards a rebuild, as long as there is some Government support as well. Will he agree to meet me and the school leaders to talk about how we can make sure that a brilliant school has a bright future?

[Nick Gibb]

Absolutely; I will be delighted to meet the hon. Gentleman. We want all our schools, including excellent schools such as the Lakes School in the Lake district, to have the best-quality school buildings. That is our priority, and I will be delighted to meet him and teachers at the school to discuss how to make it happen in his constituency.

Teaching Assistant Pay

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Sir Mark. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) on an excellent speech, and I thank the people who signed the petition. Some 1,000 or more in Cumbria signed the petition, which might reflect the fact that we are a community of many schools, not least because of the rural nature of much of Cumbria, which means that many of those schools are very small. In my visits around Westmorland in recent weeks and months, I have been to primary schools with as many as 450 children, as few as 13 and all points in between. The value of teaching assistants in each of those schools—a primary school, a high school and a special educational needs school—is immense, and it is important that we recognise that.

One thing I hope we can achieve in this debate—I hope that we can achieve much more—is to put on record the collective gratitude of Members on both sides of the House to people who choose to enter this profession. The value of teaching assistants is immense. They assist—as one might expect from the title of the profession—teachers to teach. If a teacher is dealing with, say, 30 children of a range of abilities, teaching assistants allow them to focus on the delivery of the subject matter, and teaching assistants get alongside those children, whether they are ahead, behind or in the middle of the pack. As we have heard, that is of enormous and transformational value in terms of children’s ability to succeed later in life. Particularly at primary school level, teaching assistants help children to get a love of learning and understand how to learn independently, at least to some small degree, so they can go on to learn with a greater level of maturity once they get to higher education.

Teaching assistants’ qualities are immense, their value is immense and they are not well paid, as we have heard. The hon. Member for Gower read out a number of powerful statistics, and I hope that people pay attention to them. Perhaps the most powerful is that although the median or average wage of a teaching assistant is around £19,000 a year, many of them are term time only—some of them by their own choice and some of them because of the school’s budgetary constraints—which means that their average income is just over £14,000.

That will have an ever bigger impact in the more expensive places to stay, so I want to make a particular case for the Minister to bear in mind how things are for us in Westmorland and Furness. In our community, the average house price is more than 12 and a half times the average household income. In the last three years, the long-term private rented sector has almost evaporated into Airbnb. Along with the steady rise of second home ownership, which has gobbled up the housing market in much of the lakes and the dales, that means that there is basically no housing that is even remotely affordable or available for people on anything other than a staggering salary.

That affects not just teaching assistants but people working in care, hospitality and tourism, and every other profession. We have a massive workforce crisis, which is seen very clearly, school by school, when it comes to teaching assistants. Westmorland and Furness Council receives no provision, and neither do other councils similar to ours, to acknowledge the vast gap between average wages and average house prices and rental prices. That means that we are starved of a workforce, so we are very grateful for every person who chooses to work in the profession.

We have also heard, rightly, about the issue of career progression. If someone does not feel that there is a way through their profession into a higher level of qualification —potentially even becoming a qualified teacher at some point—their morale and the ability to retain those people in the profession will be affected. We see that school by school and, I am sure, constituency by constituency: people who have great qualities and the ability to add even more value to their communities are being stymied, reaching a glass ceiling and therefore leaving the profession altogether.

We of course see people leaving education because of salaries. In particular, in my community that is because there is great pressure on our workforce for a variety of reasons—I have mentioned housing, but there are others. Nearly two thirds of the hospitality and tourism businesses in my patch are operating below capacity, because they do not have enough staff. That means that those who have the wherewithal can therefore increase their terms and conditions and salaries—that is great—but teaching assistants, care workers and others are the pool of labour that is being redistributed into the private sector away from teaching assistant and care assistant roles, and we are suffering as a consequence.

I have been to lots of schools recently. In the past few weeks, I have been to many of the schools in Kendal, Brough, Tebay, Kirkby Stephen, Appleby, Great Asby, Clifton, Witherslack, Shap, Windermere, Crosby Ravensworth, Kirby Lonsdale and Crosthwaite. The No. 1 issue that they raise—and I think that this will be obvious to most Members present—is that of salary, pay and where that money comes from. There has been no central or local authority funding to address rising energy costs. Teachers’ pay awards are overdue and insufficient, yet schools have not been funded to pay for them, either. The current pay offer looks like 6.5% but more than half of that will have to come from within school budgets. They cannot find the money. What can schools do? They cannot put prices up or increase their commercial revenue. They will, of course, pay the teachers their pay award, but that will mean having to cut other staff—which very often means teaching assistants. I am afraid that it looks like schools are having to pit teachers’ pay awards against having teaching assistants. These folk, who are on low wages but do immense work, are being let go. I cannot think of a single school in my part of Cumbria that is not at least contemplating doing that.

I ask the Minister to think very carefully about the impact on children of having demoralised teaching assistants who are either taking second and third jobs just to keep themselves going or, more likely, leaving the profession altogether. What does that mean for the quality of education? What does it mean for the stress levels of the teachers left behind to deal with large classes without any help whatsoever? What does it mean for children with special educational needs? We know how long it takes these days to get an education, health and care plan. Schools and teaching assistants have to carry the load before an EHCP is provided, and even when one is provided it is the schools that have to come up with the first £6,000 of the cost. Teaching assistants spend time with those children with the greatest level of need. If we want them to thrive, we need to invest in them, and that means paying people enough to keep them in their profession for a long time.

In conclusion, if the Minister is going to take this issue seriously and do more than pay lip service to how much we value teaching assistants, he will ensure that schools are adequately funded to provide the pay rises that they are being asked to make. That will enable them to keep their current staff and pay them properly. The huge cost of living disparities in authorities such as mine mean that many people, including teaching assistants, are being lost to the workforce. The Minister should therefore also arrange a special alteration to the formula for Westmorland and Furness so that our schools can pay teaching assistants adequately and they can afford a place to live. Finally, as has been said by Members on both sides of the House, we ought to be retaining teaching assistants by valuing them, creating a career structure and ensuring that the options on the table include the ability to progress directly into the training profession. In the end, we must value our teaching assistants not just through what we say but through what we do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his continuous campaigning on this subject. I do not know how many meetings we have had, but I see his passion to get a UTC in Southampton. I recently met Becky Smith, one of the fantastic former students of UTC Portsmouth, who is now a degree apprentice studying mechanical engineering at the University of Chichester in my constituency. She was full of praise for her time at UTC Portsmouth. We are currently considering the applications we have received. I have seen them all, and I have been through them in great detail in the latest free school wave, including Portsmouth’s bid for a new UTC in Southampton. We hope to announce the successful applications very soon.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Hospitality and tourism is an industry worth £3.5 billion a year to Cumbria, and it is our biggest employer. Apprenticeships are an important way into a career within that sector. The problem is that T-levels are a useful stepping stone into apprenticeships, yet the Government have again kicked into the long grass the T-level on catering, having already taken out the hospitality element of that. Will the Secretary of State meet me and representatives from Cumbria Tourism, so we can talk about how she can change that policy, and so that more young people can enter that important profession?

Higher Education Reform

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

My hon. Friend knows that we have already looked at that in careful detail. It is kept under review, and we recently made changes to the taught course route.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Of course students deserve high-quality education at university. They also deserve to be cared for during what is, for most of them, their first time away from home. Does the Secretary of State agree with me, and with the families of young people who have tragically taken their own lives at university, that higher education institutions should do more to look out for and protect those students, including by having a statutory duty of care?

Childcare Reform Package

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

I know my right hon. Friend is incredibly passionate about this area, and I share her passion. In the consultation we have set out some flexibilities after talking to the sector; an example of that would be relaxing some of the requirements around having level 2 maths for level 3 qualifications, which we know has been a barrier for some people. We are looking at all kinds of flexibilities that mean we will get the right staff at every stage to make sure that our children get the right education.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The Minister would have been very welcome in the north of England, particularly in Westmorland. This announcement is welcome in many ways and will help many parents in my constituency who cannot afford to work at the moment. It is a good step forward. However, many childcare providers—probably the majority in my constituency—are linked to the primary school in that community, and primary schools have never faced such awful financial circumstances as they do now. I have visited many schools in Westmorland the last few weeks, from Appleby to Windermere, from Kendal to Brough, from Shap to Witherslack and many others. They all tell me that the deserved pay rises for teachers and other staff are unfunded by Government and that energy costs, which they have seen go through the roof, are also largely unfunded, leaving many schools in deficit and having to shed staff. All that undermines their ability to provide childcare and other forms of education. What has the Minister to say to our local schools in Westmorland, which are desperate for her support so that they can carry on providing education and childcare?

[Claire Coutinho]

We are taking schools funding to a historic real-terms high. We are also making the single largest ever investment in childcare. I recognise that it has been a difficult time for public sector services, and the most important thing we can do is to grip inflation and make the pound go further, but overall we are putting record funding into both areas.