Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

Part-time students from the EU will be treated in the same way as full-time students from the EU. We have made our position on EU students clear. We will make announcements in respect of future years—2019-20 and 2020-21—in due course.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

Does the Minister not realise that since tripling HE tuition fees to £9,000 in 2012, Tory-led Governments have been a disaster for mature and part-time students in England? As my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) said, there has been a 59% drop in part-time student applications. That has left scores of continuing education centres in HE axed, while our iconic, world-renowned Open University, where I proudly taught for 20 years, is in crisis. What is the Minister going to do now—not after a wait for pittances in the 2019 review—to protect the OU, where students will not benefit from the loans he talks about, and others from policies that have become both socially and economically insane?

[Mr Gyimah]

Of the £1.3 billion of grant funding that the Higher Education Funding Council for England allocated to support teaching in higher education last year, £72 million went to part-time study. The Open University received £48 million of that, and 47,000 students have steady part-time courses there. We are supporting the OU. It is going through restructuring at the moment, but as I have often said, the review is looking at that and we will ensure that it continues to deliver excellent education for part-time students.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. Apprenticeships represent a wonderful opportunity and are an important part of the mix.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

Last month the Minister wrote to the chief executive of the Institute for Apprenticeships with a long list of requirements—I have it here—for the delivery of degree apprenticeships and technical skills at levels 6 and 7. The chief executive has said he told the Minister that the IFA could not take on responsibilities for technical skills unless adequate additional resources were allocated. Given that the institute is scheduled to take on those responsibilities next month, what resources and extra funds has the Minister allocated to the chief executive here and now?

[Anne Milton]

I was with the chief executive of the IFA only about an hour ago. The institute is increasing its headcount substantially to ensure that it has the capacity to deal with the new T-levels that are coming on stream. This is a fantastic opportunity, and I look forward to working with those at the IFA. They know that they should tell me if they have any problems with resources, and we will then try to meet their needs.

Draft Industrial Training Levy (Construction Industry Training Board) Order 2018

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 26th February 2018 General Committees

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry.

The Opposition welcome the introduction of the levy. It is probably—I don’t know if this is the right term to use—the most venerable of the instruments of its kind, in the sense that it was first introduced in 1964, when we were getting rid of 13 years of Tory misrule and getting in Harold Wilson and the white heat of the technological revolution. Whether it was introduced by the outgoing or the incoming Government I do not know but, most importantly, it has stood the test of time.

Times change, of course, and one reason the construction industry has come to the Government to set the levy at this rate is the introduction of the general apprenticeship levy. That was an important issue for the CITB to communicate to its members, and the Minister has said that it did so effectively. As the CITB’s briefing reminds us, 99.7% of the construction industry comprises small and medium-sized enterprises, and they find it more difficult to train than larger employers. The Minister has gone through the details of the small employers who will be exempted. The exemption is not a token one; it is absolutely essential.

I have some questions for the Minister about what she said and its implications. Incidentally, I note that the CITB’s briefing mentions the challenges it faces, including productivity, future skills and the implications of Brexit. All I will say about that is that the Minister and I both represent relatively small towns, and it is in relatively small towns across the country that this issue will be a particular challenge, as I am sure she understands.

The levy process was informed by the Government’s Farmer review, which made clear the range of challenges—including structural fragmentation, low productivity, workforce size and demographics—that a reformed CITB is critical to addressing. On demographics, the Minister mentioned that money will be put aside for adults retraining in the construction industry. That is welcome, but I must voice a concern that has been raised with me in constituency surgeries and raised by other hon. Members in debates on the levy. Construction industry workers who may be in their 30s or 40s face great difficulties when they want to take on a new project, often with new technologies, only to find that their qualifications are not sufficient. It is not even a question of adding to their existing qualifications, but a question of having to go right back to square one. I raised that point a couple of years ago, although not with this Minister.

I hope the Minister will consider how to future-proof qualifications, which is very important given the process that will be necessary for implementing the standards in the new frameworks. I ask her to say a little more—if she cannot answer this evening, it would be helpful if she wrote to me—about how her Department, and indeed the Institute for Apprenticeships, will use the CITB’s strong in-depth knowledge to implement those standards.

Another important point made to me by the CITB about its construction training is that 24% of qualifications are acquired by people from deprived areas. The construction industry is one of the biggest employers of people from deprived and disadvantaged backgrounds. That is welcome, but I remind the Minister of the cuts introduced a couple of years ago by the Government to 16-to-18 funding in disadvantaged areas. Her predecessor, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), stepped back from and revised some of those figures, but they are still a drag on the area, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) would tell us if he were here. It would be interesting to know how the Minister will monitor that issue in the context of the CITB.

I have discussed workforce demographics and push/pull factors for people in the construction sector, but I must also ask the Minister about the interface for promoting careers in the industry with the Careers and Enterprise Company, which of course is challenged in that area. Will she also say something about the impact of the levy not just on people who are employed directly, but on the supply chains? As we saw after the recent collapse of Carillion and the excellent work that was done by the industry to reassign apprentices, supply chains are critical in major areas and still need consideration.

Subject to those concerns, the Opposition are content for the draft order to be passed. We hope that it will have the effect that the Minister and the CITB hope for, but we also hope that her officials will keep a watchful eye to ensure that any problems that result from a lower rate of levy are addressed sooner rather than later.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

The review is currently under discussion. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have my tin hat and battledress on, and I will always battle on behalf of the FE sector and independent training providers for the 50% of young people who do not go to university.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

How can the Minister talk confidently about FE provision when the Government’s whole record on the sector is a mess? In the last 10 days, we have seen apprenticeship starts down by 41% since the levy began; traineeship starts down by 16%; the FE commissioner telling the Select Committee on Education that funding is “unfair” and “sparse”; the Public Accounts Committee roasting the Government over learndirect; and five sector leaders calling for a major levy rethink in FE Week. Will she get a grip on the levy? Will she also ensure that she does not claim that those concerned are running FE down? We are passionate about FE and apprenticeships; it is her party that is split on HE and FE policy.

[Anne Milton]

I utterly reject the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion that the situation is a mess. This is the first time that a Government have really got to grips with this issue. I will be running a training session for Members from all political parties. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman come along to discover that it is very easy to get apprenticeships if we do not care about the quality, but I do care about the quality. It is really important that we raise the quality and raise the numbers, ensuring that young people have the skills they need for the future.

Skills Devolution (England)

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) on securing the debate. It has been excellent, thoughtful, positive and full of ideas, and she has led the field.

I am afraid that I do not have time to do full justice to the multifaceted points that my hon. Friend made. She mentioned the co-design of courses and the role of local authorities and their contractors and suppliers. She put forward ambitious and interesting ideas about how we might devolve all 16-to-18 provision, and she mentioned careers funding. I am conscious from my links and discussions with various groups in London—my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) referred to this, too—that there is huge appetite in London for devolution, for all the reasons that she explained.

I also praise the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who drew on local experience to inform her thoughtful comments. I was particularly interested in what she said about careers. I think she used the words “not good enough in their spread”. I do not want to criticise what the Careers & Enterprise Company is trying to do, but one of the central issues in this debate is resources—resources in the centre, and how those resources are distributed. I think that there is some common ground in the Chamber on that issue. Interestingly, she also drew on her DWP experience. In my experience, having spent a long time holding this portfolio and others, if we do not get the mix right between the Department for Education and the DWP, we will not make the progress in this area that we all want to make. That is particularly true in areas such as traineeships.

My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham mentioned the need for urgency from the Government. He rightly drew attention to productivity issues and to ESOL, which is key. The hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti), in an interesting intervention, made the point that this debate is about not just an economic issue but a moral responsibility. On ESOL, we have a moral responsibility to refugees, people who have settled here and given their work to this country, and many other disadvantaged groups in this area.

The hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez) made some thoughtful comments about initiatives in her constituency and devolution for London. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), the extremely experienced former Chair of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, mentioned skills shortages; the incident that he raised with respect to a lack of proper supervision points to what we have been saying for the past two years about the capacity of the Education and Skills Funding Agency and the Department to handle such things. The fallout from the machinery of government changes is still causing problems.

My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) rightly drew attention to the skills gaps in her local economy and the importance of issues in the service sector, which I will touch on. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) used her experience on the Public Accounts Committee to make some telling points, including one that she has made to me on several occasions about parents being crucial.

We are entering a period of extreme uncertainty regarding our skills base because of the challenges of Brexit, automation, cuts to the adult skills budget, and so on. If we do not have a progressive integrated policy, those things will soon make it impossible for us to build highly skilled local economies or address our productivity crisis. Research commissioned by the Local Government Association reveals that the skills gap is worsening. The LGA says that by 2024 we will lack 4 million high-skilled people to take up available jobs, and will have 2 million too many people with intermediate skills and more than 6 million too many low-skilled people. The Open University has said similar things, and the recent British Chambers of Commerce quarterly economic survey also touched on this issue.

As I said when I hosted the launch of the Learning Revolution Trust’s “Delivering skills for London” report in November, we have to accept and embrace the fact that, for many adults, working models and expectations will continue to change radically. That means that there will be more self-employment, more juggling of multiple part-time jobs, more engagement with small businesses, and more demands on individuals with more complex family structures and needs. I pay tribute to the Learning Revolution Trust for that report, which brought together colleges, council leaders and local players in just the way that they need to be brought together.

We must not forget the people who are often missed out. That report referred to the issue of employing people with disabilities—particularly learners with learning difficulties or disabilities, and people with special educational needs and disabilities. The Maynard review made really important proposals in that area. Will the Minister say specifically what collaboration and co-operation is happening in that respect, particularly with DWP and BEIS? Without their involvement, it will be difficult to take this forward. Add to that the public policy challenges for generations and our exit from the European Union—a lot has been said today about Brexit—and it is clear that the skills system needs to be one of our highest priorities if we are going to escape a shortage of labour when we leave the EU, and when people from the EU who are currently here leave. In that context, we must look at devolving skills budgets.

The Minister will know that in November, England’s seven metro mayors—four Conservative and three Labour mayors—called on the Government to devolve that power much faster. The Minister’s colleague, the West Midlands Mayor, Andy Street—I quote from the Local Government Chronicle—said:

“I believe now is the time for government to go a step further and provide us with the tools to tackle the challenges and seize the opportunities we each face.”

Such requests are piling up across the board.

The all-party parliamentary group for London’s report has been dealt with in great detail. I was privileged to speak at its launch last July. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) and the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) on the way that they chair the APPG. My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green talked about its recommendations, so I will not repeat those, but I will say that, although the report focuses on one city, this discussion can be applied to regions across the country.

While we look at how apprenticeships are funded and how they might be part of the mix, we should explore traineeship funding at local level, too. Later today, I will meet the Association of Employment and Learning Providers and around 40 training providers to discuss a way forward for a programme that they believe the Government have neglected. We need to find ways to use traineeships as a contact point for getting on to apprenticeships and meeting local needs and demands. Another area that my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green and my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham touched on is ESOL.

We must remember when we look at local funding that European structural funds have traditionally supported the expansion of apprenticeships and small businesses in areas of the country with strong local enterprise partnerships. The Government have guaranteed funding in this area for the moment, but they have given no guarantee about what will happen when we come out of the EU. Can the Minister tell us what she and her officials are doing to make that clear to No. 10 and her colleagues in the Brexit team? The sum that is potentially available, £725 million, simply cannot be lost from the process.

This call for devolution is not new, and neither are the benefits that would come from it. Back in 2013, my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) and I wrote a Smith Institute pamphlet about how the Government and Whitehall had been far too slow to grasp the nexus between skills and sectoral delivery, as well as place delivery. I wrote:

“Put bluntly the age of relying on Government micromanagement and mandarins to deliver what we need in this area has reached a bit of a dead-end.”

I added that

“to encompass new low carbon and hi-tech industries…Such initiatives cannot any longer simply come out of Whitehall”.

The Minister will of course remember what Lord Heseltine said about that issue in his famous 2013 report, “No stone unturned: in pursuit of growth”.

I am hugely conscious of what we need to do for councils, such as mine in Blackpool and that of my hon. Friend the Member for York Central, that were able to create their own apprenticeships in the early 2010s but now, because of funding cuts, are not able to do so. The LGA has put forward an important vision in Work Local, which the Minister should look at as well as IPPR North’s recommendations.

Our national education service talks about how important accountability is:

“the appropriate democratic authority will set, monitor and allocate resources”.

Skills devolution is not just the smart thing to do in the community but the way forward. If local authorities, mayors and combined authorities have the capacity, competence and aptitude to take it forward, the Government need to take a far stronger and more thoughtful look at that.

[The Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills (Anne Milton)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) on securing the debate. We do not have enough time to cover everything. It has been a fantastic debate, and it is useful for me to hear from individual Members. As the shadow Minister said, there is a lot of cross-party agreement on the subject. It is not terribly party political.

The hon. Lady talked about the significant skills gap. I was recently at the WorldSkills competition and conference, and of particular note was that Ministers from about 55 countries all around the world were saying the same thing. This is not a uniquely British problem. There is a skills gap around the world. If we look ahead 10 or 20 years, we cannot think of the jobs that will be available. This is a fast-changing climate.

To give some background on how serious the situation is, the skills for life survey in 2011 reported that 43% of people were found to have literacy skills below level 2 —a good pass at GCSE—and 78% had numeracy skills below that level. Of the respondents, 15% were found to have the literacy skills of an 11-year-old or lower—an estimated 5 million people—and 49% were at that level for numeracy. Therefore, it is estimated that 17 million people have the numeracy skills of an 11-year-old or lower.

According to a 2017 Lloyds bank report, 11.5 million people in the UK are classified as not having basic digital skills. However, increasing numbers of young people are now leaving compulsory education with good standards of English and maths. In 2016, just over 71% of 19-year-olds held a level 2 qualification in both English and maths—the highest figure on record. However, we have a cohort of adults who lack those basic skills.

The hon. Lady was quite right that historically employers’ investment in skills has been poor. Employers and businesses have been bad at investing in the skills of their workforce, and the levy is one way of making sure that that is no longer the case. They pay into an account that must be used for training and assessment.

The hon. Lady also mentioned careers. I hope she has time to read the careers strategy I launched late last year—I spent a lot of time on it. Careers advice has been delivered poorly—I say that not least from my own experiences at school—and the strategy specifically mentions some of the issues she raised. She talked about patchy careers advice. What is the point of education if not to give young people the right start in life? Education is not an end in itself but a launch pad for life. We therefore need careers to become integral to what happens in schools. The largest word on the cover of the careers strategy is skills, because that is what it is about. I am not terribly fond of the word “careers”, because it invokes images that no longer apply. It is about jobs and skills.

It was a pleasure to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) contribute to the debate. I know how passionately she feels about this subject. As an aside, my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) mentioned the moral case, as did the shadow Minister. I could not feel more strongly that we have a moral imperative to get this right. It is not just about business and the skills needed; it is about making sure that people have a job path and manage to reach their potential in life. It should not matter where they come from, who they are or who they know. Everybody should have the same opportunity.

I urge Members to go into schools and talk about their careers advice, and to look at the careers strategy. There are a lot of requirements—there needs to be a lead on the governing body—and the spine that runs through the strategy is the Gatsby benchmarks.

My right hon. Friend mentioned two examples in Essex. I met a fantastic company in Essex, with 1,000 employees and 54 apprentices at any one time. That company is doing what we need employers to do. If it has a skills shortage, it recruits locally and takes apprentices from level 2 up to level 7, catering in some areas specifically for people with special needs and people on the autism spectrum. It is brilliant.

All the changes brought in have put the Institute for Apprenticeships and employers centre stage. Someone mentioned how the work is led by employers, and in a way it has been devolved to them. They, along with the IFA, can set up the new standards and fill those gaps. My right hon. Friend mentioned the training programmes needed, and that is one way of dealing with that.

Flexibility on the levy came up in the debate. Yes, I am open to extending the levy’s use, but it has been in place for less than a year. We will allow transfers. For me, the levy is something I will review constantly and see how it is spent—it will not be about having a review. What matters is not that we just get apprentices. I want high-quality apprenticeships and the money from the levy to go to where it is needed. There is a lot of money sloshing around in the system, and what matters is that it is not gamed or misspent but spent on the purpose for which it is intended.

On small and medium-sized enterprises, the Government will pay 90% of their training costs, and I believe for SMEs with fewer than 50 employees we pay 100%, so there is nothing to stop them taking on apprentices. The opportunity is there.

[Gordon Marsden]

I have personal experience of this. The Minister says that the Government pay 90% of SMEs’ costs, but that is only for 16 to 18-year-olds. It would be useful if they were to look at the market for 19 to 24-year-olds as well.

[Anne Milton]

The shadow Minister raises an important point. There are so many issues I would like to raise—I have all these lovely notes about all the things we are doing. The best response I can give to hon. Members is that it might be useful to set up, along with officials from the Department, a session to let them know what is going on and to get their feedback. That would be a useful way of moving forward, particularly on where we support SMEs, because they are an important part of every local economy.

Although I have lots of things to talk about, I have to conclude. The national retraining scheme, which we have launched, is one of them. We have put £64 million of new funding into early initiatives. I could talk about the skills advisory panels, which will be important in looking at the regional skills issues mentioned by the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey). I commend what is going on at Dudley College and the local initiatives there. That is exactly the sort of scheme we want to see, and which I am seeing.

T-levels are not in place yet. I wish they were, but they are coming down the road soon. They are part of a consultation. We are also changing completely the approach to careers, and—I am skimming through my notes now—there is the devolution of 25% of the adult education budget. The areas where it is being devolved to have asked for more time, but it will be devolved in 2019-20.[Official Report, 30 January 2018, Vol. 635, c. 4MC.]

None of the skills improvements we want to see will happen through Government action alone. Schools need to see students’ future, not just a set of exam results, as mainstream to their work. Employers need to play their part in building a skilled workforce, and we need a really strong FE sector and those important, independent training providers. That is critical. Parents also need to see that what their children need is a set of skills, not only—and not always—a university degree.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered skills devolution in England.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Gordon Marsden—get in there, man.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

Friday’s National Audit Office report on the higher education market is hugely damaging. It says that the market is failing students and that such practice anywhere else would raise questions of mis-selling. Meanwhile, the Student Loans Company is in crisis. This is all under the watch of the Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation. What does he say now to the NAO?

[The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Joseph Johnson)]

The National Audit Office rightly pointed out that students want value for money, which has been the guiding objective of our entire suite of HE reform programmes. That is why we have set up the Office for Students, which will ensure that universities are held to account for the teaching quality and value for money that they deliver to our students.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 6th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and he did excellent work in this area in his previous role. What matters to me is that every pound spent produces a pound’s worth of good, high-quality training. We are looking at subcontracting to ensure money goes to where it is needed: producing high-quality apprenticeships that young people and employers value.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

If we are looking to broaden apprenticeship participation, it helps to have as many people starting them as possible, but total apprenticeship starts in the three months since the levy came in, in spring, are down by a disastrous 61%. Why are Ministers not doing anything to promote traineeships, which can be game-changers for people accessing apprenticeships? With a 30% drop in traineeship starts by 19 to 24-year-olds this year and last week’s critical comments from the Education Policy Institute, is it not time they did something?

[Anne Milton]

It is disappointing that the hon. Gentleman expresses dismay about apprenticeships. We need to talk apprenticeships up. There was a 47% increase between February and April 2017. We know there has been a fall in the number of starts, but that was anticipated because we have brought in a brand new system. He is absolutely right that traineeships play an important part in ensuring a path on which young people can travel to get on, but I urge him to speak up for apprenticeships and apprentices and to do everything in his power to encourage employers to take on apprentices.

Higher Education (England) Regulations

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

We have had a very good debate with some excellent contributions from both sides of the House. Obviously, I want to single out one or two of the contributions—my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) said we had to look at student support in the round; and my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), spoke about the way in which Government were saddling people with debt.

I had to agree with the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), who made the important point that there was no sense of public space or public good in anything the Secretary of State said in her speech. There was no sense of the contribution made to the local economies that people work in or the ideas and productivity they develop.

The right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), the Chair of the Education Committee, in a characteristically thoughtful speech echoed the concerns that we have had about graduate outcomes and some of the issues around vice-chancellors’ fees.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), in a superb speech, emphasised not just her pride in her Sikh heritage but the multi-ethnic pride in both place and context of her constituency in Birmingham. She spoke movingly about the concerns of the NHS and specifically addressed the issues of student debt and graduates’ sense of public duty.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) was right to focus on the evidence base, especially the academic evidence in respect of the lower numbers of part-time students in the Russell Group. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) reminded us that debt was incurred from day one. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), who did superb work on the Higher Education and Research Bill with me and my other colleagues, said that when we had our Opposition Day debate in 2016 we were right to focus on maintenance grants.‘

My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) spoke about the statistics failing to convey—indeed, freezing out—the human stories of the results of the pressure of debt. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid), who stoically stayed all the way through both of today’s debates, reminded us that it was the Conservatives who had systematically stripped away many of the benefits that were given from 2012.

I want to make brief comments—they will be brief because, unfortunately, I see the Secretary of State is not in her place. She equivocated on an emergency cap on student numbers—another policy that exists only in the minds of the Government. In fact, she said,

“if we are not willing to fund the system, there can be fewer people in it.”

But the Secretary of State ignores the fact that we would be replacing, pound for pound, the actual outlay of the Student Loans Company. Also, when talking about so-called record numbers of students in our universities, she ignored the fact that UCAS figures showed applications actually down 4%.

The context of the debate and all the Government’s procedural shenanigans were eloquently explained by my colleague the shadow Secretary of State, in a superb speech. She also made the point that the Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), who spoke in the Standing Order 24 debate in July, did not take account of what his namesake, Alan Johnson—there the comparisons end—the Minister in 2004, said about what we should be doing.The effect of annulling the fee increase would do something immediately. For reasons that I will go into, we know that the Government have already performed twists and turns over where they think they might be going, but the fact is that the cumulative effect of Tory Ministers’ actions since the tripling of tuition fees in 2012 has been socially and economically destructive.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gordon Marsden]

Owing to the time left, I will not.

Two recent reports from OFFA and the Social Market Foundation point to growing drop-out rates, especially among students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The most recent Sutton Trust survey shows the poorest stats on school students planning for HE in eight years. The Government have not hobbled just one generation. The tumbrel of ever-rising fees has hit not only the young, but people of the second age and even the third age. I warmed to the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for her positive words about her Open University experience, but the fees were a fraction of what they are today when I was teaching and when she was studying. The Open University has been badly hit by this process.

We must also remember mid-life issues, which is why the University and College Union’s 20 July report suggested that things would get radically worse with the ninefold increase in inflation. Who knows where we are going from the 6.1% interest rate? None of this exactly hangs out a welcome sign to young people who have a place at or hope to go to university. The interest rates are linked to inflation and are set to rise by about a third from 4.6% to up to 6.1%. Throw in the disastrous decline in the number of part-time and mature students and we get a sense of how the nudge factor, so beloved of Tory theorists such as the Universities Minister, is now working to push would-be students away from HE. On the other hand, people have the opportunity to do apprenticeships with top employers, removing the debt factor.

This problem is not just an English thing; it is a British problem, affecting not only English students, but students from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who have chosen to study in England. They, too, will be hit by this unjustified and regressive increase. In 2015-16, 28,730 Welsh students were studying in the UK, alongside 9,505 Scottish students and 11,745 Northern Irish students.

Rising fees might have been a coherent defence but, as MillionPlus has said, there has been no direct grant available for university courses in so many subjects since 2014-15. There is an alternative, however. It that was outlined by the Labour party at the last general election, but I will not repeat the eloquent pledges of my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State. Instead of reversing the changes on grants, the Government have just ploughed on regardless. They are wedded to an outdated market-driven Thatcherism that is stuck in the late 20th century. They do not understand the changes of the 21st century or issues relating to our international competitors. In that respect, the Universities Minister has shown a degree of arrogance and complacency in failing to adjust. He pins his hopes on an explosion of new private providers while the threats to our existing world-class HE system are piling up all around him. That system, local economies and the UK economy will suffer if there is no change in this Government’s addiction to these dangerously outdated models.

The Government are now panicking. A recent YouGov poll found that only 9% of 18 to 24-year-olds trust the Tories on education. As we have heard, the Chancellor and various others are tearing their hair out and scurrying around, trying to find quick fixes. Rachel Sylvester said in The Times this week:

“The Tories have smothered their own charm offensive at birth. It is the sense that their future is being stolen from them that has really fuelled the youthful rage against the ascent of the gerontocracy.”

That reminds me that the Government Chief Whip’s tarantula is called Cronus. Cronus is identified in Roman mythology as Saturn, who devoured his own children, so it is appropriate that that should apply to the Chief Whip and the Front-Bench team.

As I said, the tumbrel of ever-rising fees has hit everybody. This Minister and his colleagues are so besotted with the mantras and clapped-out ideologies of late Thatcherism that they have failed to see that nudging has become throttling for graduates. The list of their supportive groupies is shrinking and the evidence of dysfunction and short-termism is there to see. There is no narrative or strategy except the cobbling together of a minority Government of diminished expectations and little vision outside the coteries of private advantage. They have traditionally praised Benjamin Disraeli’s one-nation Conservatism. Perhaps they should remember what he said about Gladstone’s Ministers the year before they were defeated in a general election:

“behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest.”

Well, there they sit, the 21st-century Theresa May versions of Disraeli’s exhausted volcanoes.

We see that all around. We have set the vision. We have raised the parity of esteem. We have proposed a national education service. We have put those things forward. We are acting anew when the Government are stuck in the past. Acting anew means acting today to move past this ridiculous situation and to cut the fees, as we have proposed. I urge the House to approve the motion this evening.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Monday 11th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The emphasis in topical questions is supposed to be on quick-fire questions and quick-fire responses. I am not sure that that has been altogether grasped either by those who advise Ministers and tend to write out long and tedious screeds or even by Ministers themselves, but it would help if it was.

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

Last week’s stunning National Audit Office report said that the Department for Education could not show that £200 million from LIBOR funds pledged by the Government for 50,000 apprenticeships for unemployed 22 to 24-year-olds had actually been used for that purpose. Eighteen months ago, when I tabled four parliamentary questions on the issue, Ministers ducked and dodged answering. Was the £200 million shoved down a Treasury sofa, or was it just pocketed by DFE? What is the Secretary of State going to do now that the NAO has found the Government out?

[Anne Milton]

Nobody, neither the Treasury nor the Department for Education, is shoving money down the sofa—£200 million was given to the Department as part of the apprenticeship budget, and that was allocated in the 2015 spending review. [Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman cared to listen, he might find out the answer. I am satisfied that the money is being spent on those who need it.