Liam Byrne
MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North · Labour · United Kingdom
“The loss of 4,000 jobs at Jaguar Land Rover is a body blow for workers, families and communities across the west midlands, so I commend Richard Parker, the Mayor of the West Midlands, for moving quickly on Monday to put £500,000 on the table to help ensure that everybody gets back to work.”
“I wholeheartedly welcome this well-rounded statement from the Foreign Secretary, and put on record my thanks to the new Prime Minister for the hard yards that I know he has put in over recent days and weeks.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, and I offer my warmest congratulations to her on her appointment to the role; she will be a brilliant Minister.”
“Let me start with a word of thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), who is not in her place, who said quite rightly that an awful lot has changed since the Bill was first introduced to this House. Indeed, a lot has been revealed over the course of the summer.”
“The effect of new clause 34 would be to ban off-ramping, ban new forms of digital currency transactions and ban memecoins, which are exactly the kind of measures that Ministers now need to bring forward. If we want to take the crypto system out of political finance, this is what we need to do.”
“No doubt we will learn that Mr Cottrell was in fact on the electoral register when that money was passed. No doubt we will discover that his mother, Fiona Cottrell, declared and did not disguise the fact that the money had ultimately come from her son.”
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“He was absolutely right to set out the extraordinary work that colleges such as South and City College Birmingham and Birmingham Metropolitan College are doing, but they are doing it despite the Government, not because of them.”
“Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) set out with tremendous eloquence what damage that is doing to the fabric of our economy. Of all the challenges, however, perhaps the most serious is that the Government seem hellbent on destroying the spine of the technical education system—our further education colleges. This afternoon we have heard powerful testimony about the damage being wrought all over the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) spoke with his customary eloquence about the impact of the 24% in-year cut to the adult skills budget. It is hard for cities such as Birmingham to move people up the skills ladder when every rung of that ladder seems to be being broken.”
“It is now widely accepted that it is not enough for the Government to talk about their ambition for the number of apprentices; they have to talk about raising the quality bar too. A far-too-small number of apprentices go on to degree-level study. I know the Minister is working hard on this, but it is simply not good enough, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) pointed out, that only 2% of apprentices go on to degree-level studies. At the moment, 70% of higher apprentices go to over-25s, and there has been a 40% fall in the number of people studying for HNCs and HNDs. As a result, the skills gap is getting wider and wider. The chief executive of Jaguar Land Rover, Mike Wright, says that there is a 40% gap every year in the number of qualifying engineers. My hon.”
“It is not clear whether the EBacc will apply to all students in all schools, such as UTCs. I hope the Minister can clarify that. The hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) was heroically, and quite understandably, unable to answer that question. We hope the Minister will do a better job. The number of unqualified teachers in our classrooms is up 16% at the last count. Half of state schools do not send a single girl to do A-level physics. The CBI says our careers service is on life support. As the Minister will know, the number of apprenticeships for under-25s has not risen in the past year, but has actually fallen. The Secretary of State needs to talk far more about the apprenticeship opportunities she is championing in government for 16 to 19-year-olds.”
“We are now all pretty familiar with the strength of the education system in countries such as China and in cities such as Shanghai. I commend the Government for seeking to learn what lessons they can about how we improve our education system from some of those new competitors. I think it is next year, however, that China will spend more on science than the whole of Europe put together. Four out of the top 10 biggest global technology firms are now Asian. We are going to fall behind, and fall behind fast, unless we tackle skills and growth with greater vigour. Across Westminster and beyond, I think there is an acceptance and a sense that reform of technical education is too fragmentary, not ambitious enough and too piecemeal. What we are seeing in some of the Government’s reforms are challenges to every single rung of the ladder.”
“There is no other way of raising living standards in the medium term unless we improve our productivity. It is good that the Chancellor has finally woken up to this issue. In three weeks’ time, he has the chance to set out a Budget that reflects on the contributions we have heard this afternoon and, crucially, does something about it. The productivity crisis has come around every decade or two in this country since the second world war. In the 1970s we invented a phrase for it. We used to call it the British disease. Right now, the growth in productivity is worse—not better—than it was at the end of the 1970s. The British disease is back and it is worse than ever. The danger is that this is unfolding at a time when our challenges are getting stronger.”
“What we have sought to do in the debate is put the challenge of productivity centre stage. I am delighted that the Chancellor has now woken up to the productivity crisis that bedevils us, albeit arguably five years too late. The facts are very clear, extraordinary and alarming: there is now a 20% productivity gap between the United Kingdom and our G7 competitors. What does that mean? It means something pretty stark: what the rest of the G7 finish making on a Thursday night takes us to the end of Friday to get done. If this carries on, it will mean something pretty simple for the UK economy. We will become the cheap labour economy of Europe, while the rest of our competitors—we have heard many of those stories today—will continue to streak ahead. Quite simply, unless we grow smarter, we are going to grow poorer.”
“This has been an excellent debate. It has been made all the better for the outstanding maiden speeches we heard from the hon. Members for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson), for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), for Derby North (Amanda Solloway) and for Northampton South (David Mackintosh) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain). I was very glad to hear about the warnings and risks to our line of work from the hon. Member for Northampton South. The hon. Member for Derby North spoke with great courage about the progress we need to make to improve our mental health services. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East spoke with real passion and force about the transformative power of education. They all spoke with great wit, great eloquence and great passion, making a mark on both the debate and the House.”
“The right answer would have been to protect the 16-to-19 education budget, which would have delivered a £400 million uplift to further education over this Parliament. The Government will have to make a decision in three weeks’ time. Are they serious about backing the Secretary of State for Education in her ambitions? Are they serious about backing the Minister for Skills in his? It will be decision time, and Ministers will be judged on whether the Chancellor delivers.”
“I cannot believe that such a college is having to lose 1,300 places at a time when the prospects for regeneration in Liverpool are pretty good. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North talked about the catastrophe unfolding at Dudley College, which is doing anything and everything to help people in Dudley get up the skills ladder, get qualified and get better jobs, and again it is doing that despite the Government, not because of them. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) has not been in the House long, but she made a powerful speech about the damage being wrought to Tameside College and the denial of opportunities she is already seeing in her constituency.”
“The hon. Lady cannot evade the fact that a 24% cut is being delivered to adult education budgets across our country. Right now, colleges and college leaders all over Britain are saying to right. hon. and hon. Members that many colleges are about to fall over. If the Minister is serious, as I hope he is, he has a judgment day coming at him in three weeks. If the Chancellor stands at the Dispatch Box and does not deliver a sensible, sustainable settlement for further education, I fear that the Minister’s ambitions for the future of the technical education system will come to naught. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) set out the horrifying scale of cuts to the City of Liverpool College.”
“I hope that the Minister will take it on himself today to deliver a level of consensus, agreement and support for the motion. I hope that generations to come will look back on days like today and say, “That was the moment when partisan differences were put aside, and the parties decided to come together to rise to the challenge of the future.” I commend the motion to the House.”
“We must create a system that will allow more than 14,000 apprentices a year to proceed to higher-level skills. When we live in a country where those who are retiring are more literate than those who are coming into the labour market, we face a very serious challenge, and, this afternoon, no one described that challenge better than my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North. The challenge of technical education has long frustrated us in this country. It was back in 1944 that Lord Percy said, in a report that he delivered to the Government, that “the position of Great Britain is being endangered by a failure to secure the fullest possible application of science to industry… and…this failure is partly due to deficiencies in education.” We do not want that conclusion to be delivered again in 50 years’ time.”
“Thirdly, there must be huge support from the Government for the city apprenticeship agencies that are being established by Labour councils such as those in Leeds and my home city of Birmingham. They are important, because they help small and medium-sized enterprises by finding young people who want to take up apprenticeships. SMEs are creating most of the jobs in our economy today. Fourthly, there must be more specialisation and quality in further education, which will require a sensible funding settlement. That is the only way in which we can set good examples such as Prospects College of Advanced Technology, or PROCAT, which was mentioned earlier. Fifthly, we must allow more apprentices to study skills to degree level. We cannot simply pass a law to deliver parity of esteem between apprenticeships and degrees.”
“Member for Watford in what was a very thoughtful speech. Over the last year, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) and I have set a number of principles, which I offer the Minister this afternoon. First, there must be a broad and balanced curriculum in our schools. That will be harder to deliver at a time when school budgets are being cut by 10%, and at a time when there is ambiguity and confusion over whether every pupil in every school is required to take the English baccalaureate. Secondly, we need to rebuild the careers service in this country. Modern economies need strong careers services in schools. There is an obvious place to look for the money: £50 million could be taken from the widening participation fund.”
“Where initiatives such as the northern powerhouse are creating the opportunities for which we pray, those initiatives will come to mean nothing to families unless we give local people the skills that will enable them to do those new jobs. Last week, in Westminster Hall, the Minister reflected thoughtfully—as he often does—on his ambition to agree strategic principles for the long term to underpin reform of the technical education system. Our motion this afternoon, which has been welcomed by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, gives him a chance to seize that opportunity with both hands, and I hope that he will take up the offer to agree on principles that could reform the system for a generation to come. There are points of consensus, a couple of which were identified by the hon.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The same case was made earlier, with some force, by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner). There has been an improvement in the youth unemployment figures, but they are still too high. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State should listen, because it is in towns such as her constituency of Loughborough that employers are “sponsoring in”. This country imported 300,000 people over the course of the last Parliament because firms were able to prove that there was a skills shortage here, and I am afraid that that gap, and that pull, will only increase unless the Secretary of State weaves her magic with her right hon. Friend the Chancellor in three weeks’ time.”
“We have to ask ourselves what it is about this country today that means that despite our long history of genius and innovation on these islands, what the rest of the G7 finishes making on a Thursday afternoon takes us until the end of Friday to get done. If we want to break out of the cost-of-living challenges that many families still confront, we have to earn more as a country, and skills are absolutely at the core of that problem. I look forward to the Chancellor putting his money where his mouth is in the Budget later in the parliamentary Session, because of course setting out a Budget that seeks to raise UK productivity is incompatible with further withdrawing money from skills and from the Minister’s domain.”
“For my part, I will provide the Minister with all the support and scrutiny that he has enjoyed over the last year. When he does well, he will get hymns of praise, and when he does badly he will get a forensic verbal assault here and elsewhere. I hope that the hymns of praise greatly outnumber the words of verbal assault. However, I will start where the hon. Member for Stroud started: I too welcome the fact that, rather belatedly, the Chancellor has woken up to the grave productivity crisis that our country confronts. The truth is that we have the worst productivity record in the G7. There is something like a 20% productivity gap between ourselves and our major competitors, and it is not getting better; it is getting worse.”
“It can be seen, at the beginning of the present Parliament, that there is great interest in this field of policy, and a shared agenda across the House for strengthening it and moving it forward. We all know how important it is to our economic future. I also congratulate the Minister. I am disappointed that he is doing the job and I am not; but there is no better member of his party to serve in that role. He has taken a huge interest in the subject and has bothered to spend a great deal of time in colleges, talking to students, teachers and principals. I hope that he will bring energy to the brief, and maintain and sustain it in the months and hopefully years ahead. What this field of policy needs above anything else is stability, and I very much hope that he will provide that.”
“It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I, too, want to start by congratulating the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) on securing the debate. I was of course very disappointed at his re-election to the House, but I notice that he is back with an increased majority; that is a testament to the work that he has put in, in his constituency. He reminded us of some of the reasons for his re-election by making an excellent speech in an excellent debate. I want to add a word of praise and congratulation to the organisers of Vocational Qualifications Day. The wisdom of the hon. Member for Stroud in securing the debate has been much in evidence as we have listened to a wide range of excellent speeches.”
“Many people throughout the country told me that they would not have had to contend with a 24% cut to the adult skills budget this year if they had just been given the budget they were entitled to and were allowed to make decisions about priorities much more locally. I hope that the Minister tells about his conversations with the new Minister for Universities and Science, whose father was rather unfair in attacking his lack of exposure to science as a young man. I have always found that new Minister a thoughtful, clever and progressive individual. I hope that the Minister here today and the new Minister in BIS will make a good double act, because, heaven knows, there is an awful lot of work to do.”
“I want to put on record my thanks and congratulations to the Association of Colleges and the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education for their work in consistently highlighting this risk. I hope that the Minister shows us a little bit of leg this afternoon as regards his plans for system reform. We famously designed a wonderful system of technical education for the new Germany after the war, but forgot to implement a similar blueprint for our own country. Perhaps it is time to move on and introduce system changes of our own. I hope that the Minister can tell us about those changes. I hope that he can say a bit more about his ambitious plans to devolve control over skills to local authorities, and particularly city regions.”
“On top of that, a third of the cuts announced by the Chancellor last week are set to hit the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Education. Many colleges are already on the brink. The Minister will have to move fast with his colleagues at the Treasury to ensure that colleges do not fall over and become unviable, despite the Chancellor saying that we need to fix the productivity gap, and many in this House saying, “Look, technical education is key to this.” The Minister will also want to, or have to, consider other funding pressures, including the performance of advanced learning loans for those over 24, because they are vastly underperforming at the moment. There has to be a sevenfold increase in the number of people taking up these loans if the budget is to be consumed.”
“As the last Government put up our national debt to £1.5 trillion, this Government will have to deliver some savings. I hope that they will also sensibly raise some taxes from those who can afford to pay just a little bit more. The Budget will tell us more. If we are to close the productivity gap that our country confronts, we must support technical education in a radically new way. My hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe made an excellent point when he sounded the alarm about the 24% cut in adult skills delivered in-year. During the many visits he made before the election, the Minister will have been lobbied about some colleges now being unviable. I know this because I visited many colleges after him. Some colleges are at risk of falling over without urgent action this year.”
“There have been some welcome advances, which I know the Minister helped to drive through before the election, but there must be a revolution in the number of apprentices going on to degree-level skills. Apprenticeships should be a route to the top in the same way that doing A-levels and going to university is. At the moment, I believe that many people are not taking the apprenticeship route because they know that the ladder only goes so far up the wall. We want an apprenticeship to be a fast track to the top, in the same way that a degree at a good university is. I know that all of this work will be detailed and involved, and there are few better minds than that of the Minister to puzzle all of it through. However, his bigger challenge will of course be the funding settlement that he will have to contend with.”
“The funding entitlements for colleges differ according to whether their students are under 18, between 18 and 24, or over 24. There is a quagmire of qualifications. There are too many qualifications; they are too disjointed; they are delivered at far more cost in England than in Scotland; and, frankly, the whole field of technical qualifications needs a good root-and-branch review. I know that there has already been some simplification of the system, but we have much further to go. Crucially, there must be a revolution in the collaboration between further education and higher education. Hon. Members made some very good contributions this afternoon about the need to join those systems up. It is not good enough that just 2% or 3% of apprentices go on to degree-level skills; we will not compete globally if that situation continues.”
“The Minister will know that we intend to focus constantly on ensuring that quantity does not come at the expense of quality. Quite simply, there is no point in putting our people on to programmes that do not genuinely equip them with the skills to compete globally. I know that he, too, cares about that issue passionately. However, the bigger and more complicated question is about the whole system of qualifications, entitlements and funding arrangements for our constituents who are aged between 18 and 24. At the moment, there is not a smooth pathway on a technical education track for our constituents in that age range. There are entitlements to maintenance, which stop at the age of 18 but restart at the age of 24, with the availability of advanced learning loans.”
“That is why I support many of the reforms pioneered by Lord Baker. I hope that the Minister, with his colleagues at the Department for Education, can continue to lobby for practical and empirical subjects. I hope that we make serious progress in building a stronger careers service during this Parliament. I think it was the CBI, of all organisations, that said before the election that the careers service in this country was “on life support”. That situation will not help us to compete with the global competition that we now confront. Although small amounts of money were offered before the election, the Minister will know, and in his heart believe, that that was not a solution to the problem, given its scale. We need a radical increase in apprenticeships; I am glad that there is all-party consensus on that.”
“We have a piecemeal, ad hoc system of institutions, exams and funding entitlements that are yoked together, often in a very rudimentary way. That does not allow young people from the age of 14 a clear line of sight for a technical education career that goes up to the degree level of skill, which many hon. Members have talked about, celebrated and underlined as being critically important. In his speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) forensically exposed the inadequacies of the current system. If I might be so bold, I will throw a few suggestions on to the pile that hon. Members, particularly the hon. Member for Stroud, have given us this afternoon. In our schools, there has to be a bigger and bolder effort to expose more 14-year-olds to technical education.”
“Of course, that situation has particular consequences for not only families but young people. All of us now serve the younger generation, which is the first generation in a century that is worse off than the generation that came before it. Social mobility is, in effect, going into reverse; none of us can be proud of that, and all of us must want to alter it. Young people in particular desperately need breakthroughs in this policy area, and I know that the Minister is absolutely focused on it, like a laser. I hope that the Minister will use this debate and this great day to begin telling us a bit about an ambitious vision for system reform—reform that is evolutionary, perhaps, but revolutionary in scale. The truth is that although we talk about a system of technical education in this country, we do not have a system worthy of the name.”
“There are not necessarily the column inches devoted to this issue that there should be; The Economist has done a good job, as has Nigel Nelson of the Sunday People , in highlighting the risk associated with this change. We have to look hard at the competition that we are up against. When the programme for international student assessment results in Shanghai are so much better than ours, when China is about to spend more on science than the whole of Europe put together and when four out of the top 10 global tech firms are Asian, we can see how the battle for good jobs will intensify over the next 10 years, and the risk is that we will lose it. We will not beat the global competition without a much bigger and bolder plan to improve the skills of our country in the years ahead.”
“That is absolutely right. The right hon. Lady helpfully points to the fact that global competition is intensifying, and if we are to improve our performance in trade markets in which we have been losing market share during the last four or five years, we will have to raise our game. Skills are absolutely at the core of that, because there is a risk, given the pattern of economic development over that time, that our country is becoming a cheap labour economy. About 80% to 85% of the jobs that have been created have been low-paid jobs, which is a problem if we are to earn our way out of the cost of living crisis that we are trapped in.”
“They are a good example of how we cannot simply import a system from a country such as Germany that does a much less good job at fostering a culture of self-employment, the skills for self-employment and a yen for enterprise, too.”
“The Minister is absolutely right to sound a warning that it is impossible to import one system wholesale to one economy from another. The key thing we have to learn from the German system is that smooth pathway through. A couple of things have been mentioned in the debate that are important to incorporate into some of the Minister’s research, of which one of the most important is the growth in self-employment and enterprise. There are superb colleges up and down this country—not least Sheffield College and others in the Peter Jones network—that are doing a first-class job in encouraging an entrepreneurial revolution among our young people.”
“Actually, the UCAS figures published recently show that there are 7,000 fewer British applicants to our universities than there were in 2011. Figures from the Library show that we are wasting and writing off £1 in every £2 that we invest in the higher education system, and our students will not pay back their debts until they are in their 50s. We are educating fewer of our young people and we are wasting more of our money. The Chancellor forecast that there would be 60,000 extra students this year, yet the UCAS data show that there are only 12,000 extra applicants for this September. Does the Minister want to explain to the House why, if his system is so good, he has just missed his growth target by an incredible 80%?”
“I thank the Secretary of State for giving way; he is being characteristically generous. I am glad that he has focused on the fall in the number of apprentices under the age of 25. Does he think that that trend can be reversed with the budget that the Chancellor has set out for his Department, as implied by the fiscal path for the years ahead? He knows as well as I do that if the science budget is protected, that implies a 44% cut for the Department. Does he think that it will be possible to reverse the fall in the number of apprentices with that kind of settlement?”
“Before the Secretary of State concludes, will he update the House on the potentially quite sweeping changes to how we fund apprenticeships in this country? The Minister for Skills and Equalities’ predecessor launched a wide-ranging consultation on direct payment through the PAYE system, but on 13 January the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), told the House that the process was in a state of suspended animation and that no further reform would be made. Will the Secretary of State tell the House this afternoon what on earth is going on?”
“We need to accompany these changes with radical measures to devolve spending to city regions, which will often know their local labour market best, but above all we must harness public procurement on a completely different scale compared with the ambitions set out by this Government. That point was wisely made by the Chair of the Select Committee. I am glad that there is a shared ambition across the House on the aspiration but there needs to be a practical policy in place to deliver that aspiration, and Labour Members are determined to practise what we preach.”
“First, we need to ensure that our apprentices can compete with the best in the world, which is why level 3 is the right level of ambition. Level 2 is an important step on the road to that qualification, but if we want to compete with the best in the world and close the productivity gap, we need to set our standards high, not low. We therefore need radically to expand the number of higher-level apprenticeships. That is why the Leader of the Opposition has said clearly that our priority in expanding the university system is to create thousands of new technical degrees that would allow apprentices to go on and study up to degree-level skills. Those are the kind of skills that our science-based businesses are asking for.”
“The Secretary of State was sanguine about the fiscal outlook for his Department, but the truth is that if the Chancellor gets his way and the science budget is protected, the BIS budget will be cut by some 44%. The Secretary of State knows as well as I do that that is not deliverable—certainly, his civil servants do; it is not a fiscal settlement that will allow him to build the bigger, better apprenticeship system that we need. A different level of ambition is needed. We should set a goal of sending over the next 10 years as many young people into a high-quality apprenticeship as head on to university. That is the level of ambition we need in this country, and if we are to deliver on it, we need to get several things right.”
“The fact that only 2% of apprentices go on to acquire degree-level skills is a major problem that employers, particularly in engineering and science, argue is holding our country back. Many companies are not re-shoring jobs because of the skills shortage. Mike Wright, chief executive of Jaguar Land Rover, said in an independent review commissioned by my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor that we are graduating only approximately half the number of engineers we need to make good the skills gap. That means that we have to transform the number of technicians coming on line each year through the apprenticeship system. Right now, the Government simply do not have plans in place to fix that imbalance.”
“The fact that this Government have undertaken the wholesale destruction of our careers service is a problem, and the Chair of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), and my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), were absolutely right to point the finger at that problem, which we will be determined to fix. Our young people face the challenge of a world in which one in six of their peers is still out of work. If they want to go to university, they will graduate with a bill of £44,000—a debt that, on average, they will not pay off until they are in their 50s. Not enough apprenticeships are available to them because the numbers are going down, and neither are there a meaningful number of opportunities to take them on to degree-level skills.”
“The measures undertaken to increase the number of higher apprenticeships are welcome, but the truth is that only 2% of apprentices go on to degree-level skills. There is no vocational, professional and technical path to a degree-level skill worth its name in this country, and we are absolutely determined to change that. A number of Members rightly pointed out that underlying many of these shortcomings are problems in not just the apprenticeship system but the education system. The fact that we do not require everyone in our country to do English and maths up to the age of 18, as we recommend, is a problem. The fact that there is no gold-standard technical baccalaureate at the age of 18 is a problem.”
“The level of ambition in driving out low pay from apprenticeships is not good enough, and I am afraid we did not hear enough on that front from the Secretary of State this afternoon. I hope the Minister will correct that deficit when he winds up. It is pretty clear to us that apprenticeships are currently too short. Approximately a third of English apprenticeships last under 18 months—a shortcoming compared not simply with international standards but with other parts of the United Kingdom. In Northern Ireland only 12% of apprenticeships are that short, and only 17% are in Scotland. So the Government have much further to go in increasing the length of apprenticeships just to match other parts of the United Kingdom.”
“In fact, the Doug Richard review set the target at 20% for off-the-job training each week so, on the Secretary of State’s own data and by his own measures, his Department is failing to deliver the right level of training for apprentices. That obviously has a knock-on consequence for pay. I am glad the Secretary of State acknowledged that 15% of apprentices not receiving the minimum wage was a scandal and was not good enough and more action needed to be taken to end that abuse. If young people know that an apprenticeship is something that is not properly paid and where the Government are content to look the other way when they are abused by employers, it is going to be harder, not easier, to draw young people into apprenticeships.”
“It has been argued this afternoon that there are four or five important areas where the Government’s apprenticeship reforms have fallen short. First, there is the question of whether there is enough training in the apprenticeships that are available today. The Secretary of State did an heroic job of defending the data his Department published, but the truth is that nearly a quarter of the 19 to 24-year-old age group do not receive any formal training, which means an apprentice in England gets under seven hours of training a week. We do not think that is good enough, and neither do the Secretary of State’s own advisers.”
“That is a very good example of public procurement being used to increase the number of apprenticeship opportunities for our young people. A number of hon. Members have noted with appreciation that there is a degree of consensus in this debate, and the Government did do some things that sought to build on the firm foundations left by the last Labour Government. The skills strategy published in 2010 committed to improving apprenticeship standards, and the higher apprenticeship fund was a welcome innovation, as was the money for higher apprenticeship numbers that the Secretary of State referred to in response to an intervention from me. The question, however, is whether the scale of this Government’s ambition is anywhere near the level that is needed to get this country out of the hole into which they have put us.”
“We achieved that through some concerted policy measures, not least the creation of a National Apprenticeship Service, which was extremely successful in its short life. I am glad the current Government kept it on, although I am afraid it is now a somewhat eviscerated version of its former self. We were the first Government to introduce a national apprenticeship week back in 2008, but crucially we learned the hard way—and it is a shame these lessons were not taken up in the way they could have been—that public procurement could be used to drive up apprenticeship numbers, and I was very pleased to see on Monday deep below Tottenham Court road the extraordinary work that Terry Morgan and the Crossrail team are undertaking there. That public procurement project has now driven about 440 new apprenticeship numbers into the system.”
“The fact that there is now a 20% productivity gap between this country and the rest of the G7 is shocking, and it is going to make it very difficult for us as a country to earn our way out of the cost of living crisis in which this coalition Government have landed us. It is simply impossible for us to raise wages in the way we want to unless we raise productivity rates and that, in turn, is going to require us to raise the level of skills in this country. As my hon. Friend said, we are very proud of our record in government in rescuing the apprenticeship programme from the Conservative Administration back in 1997. I think the grand total then was 65,000 apprentices, and we are very proud that we were able to raise that number to nearly 300,000 by the time we left office.”