English for Speakers of Other Languages

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) on the comprehensive and passionate way in which she has put her case—and, indeed, the case of so many Members on both sides of the Chamber today. She conveyed with great passion and conviction her points about the particular impact on women, which were echoed by so many, and about whether the Minister had realised that two thirds of ESOL students were women. She also made points about the practicalities of the co-funding, about why the Departments are treating ESOL differently from various other Skills Funding Agency funding streams, and about economic activity.

My hon. Friend’s passion and conviction have been shared by the other contributors. The hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) urged the Minister to look at the cost-benefit analysis of ESOL and focused, very importantly, on economic inequality. My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) talked about listening to what the Association of Colleges has said about sliding scales of fees. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) reminded us that the issue is broader than just further education and used, I think, the phrase “knocking heads” with the Home Office—that is a challenge for the Minister.

My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) made the very important point that the big society will fail if it does not include new entrants, and that ESOL is very important in that process. My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) urged the Minister to look at the design of the ESOL programme, and my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) made the point that many women come to England to find a voice and that we are in danger, with the legislative changes, of locking them into silence.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) made some very important points about the role of single parents, and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) said that the importance of the equality impact assessment was still not recognised by the Government, even at this late stage. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) talked about how ESOL overcomes division and isolation, and my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) made a very important point about the future of Britain—about mothers and children—and said that the issue is part of lifelong learning, about which I know the Minister is passionate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) talked about how ESOL was fundamental to the life and success of FE colleges, and I shall say a little more about that shortly. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) made another important point about community-based, as well as college-based, teaching. In my own constituency of Blackpool South, many of the groups that we want to meet simply will not or cannot go to colleges, so that point is very important.

The Minister has had a cornucopia of advice and fervour today, and I think that he will recognise all the points made. ESOL courses play a key role in helping people who have arrived in the UK to learn and develop English and to integrate into our society. The Minister will know, because of his own portfolio, that that is important in equipping them to contribute to the communities in which they live, not just through their integration, but also through their skills, their taxes and their economic activities.

As we have heard several times today, no less a person than the Prime Minister has banged on about the issue in recent speeches and has rightly identified the understanding of English as a key element. Yet paradoxically, at the very time when he is being so fervent with the rhetoric, the impact of some of his Ministers’ decisions will make the job much harder. Their decision to remove ESOL funding for learners on inactive benefits—in other words, not on jobseeker’s allowance or employment and support allowance—will hit many people on low incomes. They are precisely the sort of people that ESOL courses would help, by improving their language skills and, in turn, helping them in the job market and to feel further integrated into our society, rather than being stuck on the perimeter. It is worth remembering that, alongside these changes, the £4.3 million learner support fund that gave colleges the discretion to help with fees has been scrapped, as has the funding uplift that gave ESOL courses 20% more than courses in other subjects.

I am afraid that, as with so many other policies, the Department seems to have rushed in and then stopped to ask the questions later. It is very much like “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”: sentence first, trial later. Only now, after the policy has been announced, a matter of months from the changes coming into force, has the Department commissioned a specific equality impact assessment.

I urge the Minister to listen to everything that has been said today and to make that assessment a real basis for real change. How could his Department sign off on changes as fundamental as these without a proper assessment of how they could affect the disadvantaged and the vulnerable, and exacerbate the gender bias in progression and employment? I hope that he already has his officials working on a plan to counteract some of those anticipated problems.

The changes to ESOL funding are, however, only the tip of a large iceberg. The restriction of fee remission to only those on active benefits is being applied across the board by the Skills Funding Agency as part of the harsh funding settlement that the Minister’s Department was dealt by last year’s comprehensive spending review, and Lsect—a learning and skills analysis company—estimates that the move could affect up to 25% of the adult provision currently funded by the SFA. That works out at some 300,000 learners.

Last year’s Government skills strategy was called “Skills for Sustainable Growth”, but what exactly is sustainable in cutting back on support that would enable low-income earners to take courses to improve their skills and job prospects? Those are surely vital aspects of building a balanced and sustainable economy. Someone working 30 hours a week on the minimum wage, for example, who has an annual income of £9,050 and receives working tax credits, will no longer qualify for full fee remission, thanks to the changes being brought in by the Government. I believe that the policies will nudge people away from, rather than towards, work, and that they point to a fundamental and potentially fatal disconnect between the Government’s policies on skills and welfare.

It is clear from discussions that I have had with many of the key stakeholder groups, who were not consulted on the potential impact of ESOL change, that they are driven by the waste as well as the unfairness. I attended and spoke at a meeting in this House at the end of March, at which the University and College Union, the Association of Colleges, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, the Refugee Council and a number of individuals eloquently expressed their frustration with the Government on this issue. I urge the Minister to take on board not just what he can do in his own Department, but what he can and needs to do with the Home Office and the Department for Work and Pensions, to prod them into rowing back from this ill-advised course of action.

The ESOL learning cuts could be, as others have said today, another blow to FE colleges, which have already had to cope with a 25% cut in their resource grant over the CSR period and the possible disastrous drop in enrolment thanks to the abolition of the education maintenance allowance. The cutting of ESOL funding could put college courses at risk, and in turn jeopardise lecturers’ positions, and that is reflected in a recent UCU-Unison survey that shows that 60 of the colleges surveyed were already planning to cut courses over the next year.

The Minister is, as others have been, fond of referring to FE as moving away from being a Cinderella sector. However, he knows—because he and I were in Birmingham at the Association of Colleges conference, where it came up time and again from the floor—that many of the colleges that right hon. and hon. Members here represent are very worried about the story’s ending. The confusion that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has caused over ESOL sums up the muddled thinking and lack of joined-up thinking across the Departments, with sweeping changes being made before their impact has been considered.

The Prime Minister has talked the talk on promoting cohesion and integration, but the Minister’s Department is failing to walk the walk. The issues being thrown up in ESOL provision will replicate themselves as general FE colleges across the country suffer the implications. The consequences will be serious for those who want to gain the skills to improve their career prospects and move on with their lives.

The issue is about the big society and moving forward. I urge the Minister to listen to what has been said today, delay the introduction of the policies, consider alternatives and convene the group that has been discussed. As I said, the Prime Minister has been eloquent on the subject. On 2 February, in response to a question on ESOL from one of his own Back Benchers, the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), he said:

“I completely agree, and the fact is that in too many cases”,

learning English

“is not happening. The previous Government did make some progress…I think we need to go further.”—[Official Report, 2 February 2011; Vol. 522, c. 856.]

Are the cuts the sort of going further that we need? I think not. The Minister is rightly fond of literary quotations. I remind him of the words of Siegfried Sassoon’s poem “The General”, about Tommies on the western front:

“‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack…

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.”

If the Minister does not wish himself or his Prime Minister to be associated with such an outcome, he needs to think, persuade and act fast.