Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David Rutley and Kelvin Hopkins

Thursday 29th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[David Rutley]

I know that amendments have been tabled, and they will be properly considered on Report.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Ind)]

3. What steps he is taking to reduce levels of air pollution to legal limits.

Technical and Further Education Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between David Rutley and Kelvin Hopkins

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Q Both really: management and Government. Do you think there should be something specific in the Bill saying the sort of things I have said about having qualifications among governors and an inspection regime that works—as it did not in that case—to ensure that financial arrangements are not being abused?

Richard Robinson: I am not a governance expert, so I do not know if there is a clause that can be put in to help that. I do agree that the sector can always improve management and governance. No business can say it has perfect management and governance, so constant improvement in those is a good thing.

Richard Meddelton: I think the insertion of a clause in the Bill along the lines you have suggested would certainly help and be welcome, although, like the other Richard, I am no legal expert.

I would answer your first question in terms of how we look at the governance and management of a college. From a Lloyds banking perspective, we take a great deal of interest in the make-up of the management of the college. That would include the expertise of the board of governors. That is an ongoing practice in what we do. We have not got down to stipulating how many accountants or lawyers need to be there, but we would certainly look for a good mix, so that they are professionally managed and so that we have a fruitful long-term relationship over many years.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

Q It is interesting to hear your views. It seems as if there is broad support, at least at the right end of the table, for the direction of travel here. One of the proposals in the legal framework is the role of education administrator, ensuring that the quality of educational provision is continued. Could each of the panel members describe whether they are comfortable with this role as being a helpful addition and whether it should be changed or enhanced in any way?

Richard Robinson: Obviously we know what a normal administrator does, in a normal administration situation with companies. We do not know what the education administrator is going to do, beyond what is written in here—the legal, written thing versus the practical reality. For us, the role seems to be broadly balanced between making sure that the interests of learners are put at the front, which is the right thing to do, and making sure that creditors are not forgotten. There are probably two other things that would certainly help, and both have been touched on by other people. The first is some clarity about who funds the administration—who funds the insolvent college during insolvency—because that could be for a number of years. It is very important for us to know that when making lending decisions. The second point is the legal position of secured creditors, which Richard has mentioned. Again, further clarity about that would be helpful. Other than that, I think it is pretty clear in the draft Bill.

Gareth Jones: From Santander’s perspective, overall we were supportive of the draft Bill and of that role as well.

Richard Meddelton: I have got nothing further to add.

Stephen Harris: If I can just clarify, your question was about the role of the insolvency office holder as an education administrator—

--- Later in debate ---

[David Rutley]

Q Do you believe that businesses are currently engaged enough in helping to define those categories or routes, and are the mechanisms in place to ensure that will happen?

Bev Robinson: I believe it is. The panels are not there to represent a particular business. Shane alluded earlier to the fact that the panels can sometimes be too narrow, as we have seen with the early trailblazers. Lessons learned from that would suggest that you are on that panel because of your engineering expertise, not because you happen to work for AA Engineering Ltd. It is about keeping that currency and making sure that you are representing not your company but the engineering field. Also, because it is co-creation, having educationalists there as well to make sure that pedagogy is also at the heart of the design of these products.

Shane Chowen: I have nothing to add on that.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Q A very important question: what measures should be put in place to protect the quality of education received in a college that is struggling financially?

Shakira Martin: As I said, I welcome the fact that learners are being considered in the insolvency regime. The NUS did put forward some recommendations in the consultation—I think that maybe some of that has not been considered before but, within this process, that is vitally important—of an independent FE ombudsman. When students do go through this process, if they are not satisfied with the end result, what steps do they take in appealing that decision to ensure that they get the best? At the moment there is nothing out there to represent students in that way. I am not really familiar with the HE sector and whether there is the equivalent there, but I am sure that there is probably something in place. After the process has happened and a student has been placed in a college and is not happy with that position—what next? How do they challenge that? I would strongly recommend an independent ombudsman.

Shane Chowen: For me, if it has got to the stage where there are crisis meetings looking at how to recover teachers and get students to a place to learn, at some point along the way the system has already failed. The whole idea behind the commissioner’s office, for example, is to ensure that learners are protected long before a college even starts looking at insolvency as an option. The flags that are highlighted within the Department and the Skills Funding Agency at the moment to trigger a visit from the commissioner, should offer those protections long before an insolvency process.

Bev Robinson: I agree with that; it is about early intervention, not waiting for a failure—it is seeing the signs and making appropriate interventions.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Debate between David Rutley and Kelvin Hopkins

Money resolution: House of Commons & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 14th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[David Rutley]

Indeed.

The Bill is timely. After strenuous efforts to stabilise the economy following the financial crisis, the UK faces a new opportunity—and some challenges—in Brexit. If we are to make a success of leaving the EU, it is increasingly urgent that we tackle our long-standing productivity gap compared with other leading economies. The challenge is to upskill the existing and future British workforce. It is interesting that the Chartered Management Institute says that one in four jobs was left vacant in 2015, owing to skills shortages.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The hon. Gentleman is right to focus on our poor productivity level, but poor productivity often results from the availability of cheap labour because employers are not forced to invest in modern technology. That is a factor in the equation. Low productivity and low-priced labour are a problem for us.

[David Rutley]

The Government have already put in place improvements to the national living wage and will do more in that arena. Productivity is about a lot more than wages. From contributions that the hon. Gentleman has made in previous debates, I know that he is fully aware of that, too. The situation is more complicated.

One in four jobs left vacant in 2015 were due to skills shortages. The CBI has found that one in five employers want candidates for jobs who not only have academic qualifications but can demonstrate other skills as well. So the Government must ensure that their efforts to close the skills gap inspire and motivate those who would gain most—those in training and businesses that need their skills. If we are to strive to achieve the greater parity of esteem that we have talked about and to get businesses actively involved in education and training, we need to motivate more young people who are planning to pursue the non-academic track to gain the skills that will transform their lives. Only then will we secure the prize of greater national productivity. Wages have a role to play, but so, increasingly, does motivating young people to want to acquire these skills.

The key to promoting technical training will be the Government’s drive to provide 15 clear routes to 3 million quality apprenticeships. These routes are set out in the post-16 skills plan, which was published in July. It is a strong plan; my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) deserves real credit for setting it out, and I join the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) in wishing him a speedy and full recovery from his current health challenges. Those routes—or “occupational categories” as they are called in the Bill—will signpost such sectors as construction, catering and hospitality, and vital ones such as engineering and manufacturing. The obvious, recognisable nature of these categories will give young people the assurance they need that apprenticeships are, and will be, focused on delivering identifiable careers and are relevant to their own fields of vocational interest. Relevance is absolutely key.

Confidence in these routes as genuine career paths can be bolstered only by involving businesses in their design. Fostering links between business and schools, and between business and the rightly reconstituted Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, has never been more urgent. The Government have taken the initiative in encouraging businesses to step up to the plate and to deliver employer-led technical education that addresses the skills gap. I hope businesses will now seize this opportunity—it is vital that they do.

The Bill should be seen as part of a process of going further in breaking down the barriers between education and business—between school lessons and work experience. I have talked to my right hon. Friend the Minister about this. We need to get more young people out of school and into business, and more businesses into schools and further education. Indeed, schools themselves need to be made more aware of the options for, and the importance of, motivating young men and women in the classroom about wider opportunities to develop skills and career options.

No one in the House wants schools to feel they are being imposed on by the Bill; we want them to recognise the benefits of the Bill for the futures of the young people in their care. It is important to establish, as set out in part 3 of the Bill, an information-sharing relationship between the Department, schools, academies, colleges and other providers. Businesses, too, will need to find it easy to engage with education providers to be motivated to participate. Those relationships will need to be forged—in some cases, from scratch.

Fortunately, there is good practice—from existing schemes to introduce business skills into schools—to learn from and extend. For example, Young Enterprise and Enabling Enterprise provide teachers with opportunities to link up with business, and supply model exercises in flexible, transferable life and work skills. Young Enterprise already has relationships with over 50% of secondary schools. I shall be interested to hear—although this is not directly relevant to the Bill; it relates to the wider issue of what we can do to engage and motivate people—what role my right hon. Friend believes these schemes will play in this vital area of motivating more people.

There is much more that we need to do to close these skills gaps. In South Korea, for example, there is a clear difference between the skills gap among 55 to 65-year-olds, nearly half of whom are low-skilled, and among 16 to 24-year-olds, who have a much higher skills base. In England, however, about 30% of the 16 to 24-year-old age group and the 55 to 65-year-old age group are classified by the OECD as having low skills. It is clear that we are not closing the gap for the different age cohorts, and the Bill will be fundamental in taking that work forward.

My right hon. Friend is absolutely keen to move things forward on social mobility and to play his part in the party for the workers, which he has helped to articulate in recent years.

Savings (Government Contributions) Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between David Rutley and Kelvin Hopkins

Thursday 27th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. During the era of TESSAs, PEPs, ISAs and national savings certificates, the wealthy, if they were wise, would have bought all of them for themselves, their partners and their children—anyone within the family for whom they could buy them—every year. They would build up a massive portfolio of tax-free savings over the years and be extremely well off in old age, especially if the savings in those four schemes would otherwise have been taxed at the higher rate. Instead of incentivising poor people to save, the schemes were actually tax-free bunce for the wealthy. I had some TESSAs, PEPs and ISAs, and I still have some national savings certificates today, so I am sitting pretty, but I am comfortably off. I am more concerned about people who are poor, and I am certainly not poor. I am not wealthy, but I am not poor. Mr Davies made the point well.

That is a frontal assault on such instruments, but the concern about damaging auto-enrolment is also serious. I strongly support auto-enrolment, which has been a great success so far. I wanted to go much further, and I have said in the Commons on more than one occasion that I believe we should have a compulsory universal earnings-related savings system for everyone, including the self-employed, so that we all make sure that we save for our old age. I do not stand back from that proposal, which I intend to continue advocating as a step beyond auto-enrolment. Auto-enrolment is a major step forward, but it is still not a defined-benefit scheme and it is still subject to stock market fluctuations, whereas a state system could have guaranteed defined benefits.

[David Rutley]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about self-employed people. We heard in the evidence sessions that LISAs would help a significant element of the self-employed. The Government are carrying out a review of how auto-enrolment could support the self-employed in future. Does he think it is important to think about not just nirvana and what might be, but how we can tangibly help people now? This product will make a difference to a big section of the self-employed.