Oral Answers to Questions

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

We are certainly looking at how we can spend money better in the next seven-year framework. There has been underspend, not least because there were so many programmes. I am trying to rationalise and simplify them, working with colleagues in the three other Departments affected. The House will want to note that the regional development agency Yorkshire Forward employed 434 people and spent a large amount of public money, but did not leverage in anything like the amount of private sector money that the new regional growth fund is doing.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

My Department has a key role in supporting the rebalancing of the economy and business to deliver growth while increasing skills and learning.

[Jane Ellison]

Schools routinely measure the number of youngsters going on to higher education, but not necessarily those who go on to apprenticeships—something that was picked up on in the report published this week by the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills. Does the Minister think that more can be done in this area?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Skills (Matthew Hancock)]

Yes. As I said earlier, we welcome the thorough and interesting report from the Select Committee. Recommendation 16 said that alongside university admissions, schools should publish apprenticeship starts from their former pupils, and I agree. Through the new destinations measures, which were introduced this summer, we will ensure that that happens.

Exam Reform

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Monday 17th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We are always pleased to learn about the Secretary of State’s social engagements.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, and his words about academic rigour will be welcomed by many schools in my constituency, not least Bolingbroke academy, which opened today. Will he be looking to learn from exam systems from other parts of the world that are generally acknowledged to be very rigorous?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. One of the problems with the debate in this country, as the Deputy Prime Minister points out in an excellent article in today’s Evening Standard, is that it has tended to be introspective and backward-looking. My hon. Friend is right that we need to look outward and forward to those countries that have the best-performing education systems.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

The encouraging evidence from the UCAS application data is that people from poorer backgrounds are not being put off going to university. There is no evidence that changes in patterns of university applications are affecting poorer students in particular. I have been considering the issue of sharia-compliant student loans, and we continue to do so.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

8. What steps he is taking to increase levels of employee ownership.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jo Swinson)]

The Government have welcomed the excellent report by Graeme Nuttall, which provided a series of recommendations on how we can promote employee ownership. We will publish a full Government response to his recommendations this autumn. We have already published a call for evidence on the right to request employee ownership, and I encourage any Members who have ideas on it to get in quick as it closes tomorrow.

[Jane Ellison]

I thank the Minister for that answer and warmly welcome her to her new role. The German and US economies have a much greater diversity of corporate ownership structures, so I wonder whether the Minister, in addition to looking at excellent British companies such as the John Lewis Partnership, will be looking abroad for useful lessons.

Childminders

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Friday 6th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is with pleasure that I speak for thousands of parents and young children who benefit from the work of childminders up and down the country. I must first declare an interest: my husband is a non-executive director of an organisation that carries out Ofsted inspections for under-fives providers, including childminders.

There has been a great deal of activity over the last decade or so to improve the quality of child care provision. Childminders have been enthusiastic in embracing that change, and childminding has become far more professional overall. It is mostly women who are childminders, and they have revelled in the fact that they have increased their skills and been recognised as more professional for doing so. I recently met 40 childminders in Hackney who were enthusiastic about the work they do. They stressed that the changes made over the last 10 to 15 years have weeded out bad childminders. They are proud of the progress made in the sector.

Jayne Nulty, who was accredited as one of the best childminders in Hackney a couple of years ago, has talked of her concerns about some of the things that I want to raise, but she also talks about

“the bad old days when the childcarer put kids in front of the television all day and little check was made on the situation.”

She believes that the professionalism of the sector has stopped those sorts of people working in it. A parent has said:

“As a single, working parent I have had a great need of childminders; three in all through my son’s younger years. I have a huge respect for them—it’s an incredibly important job; to care for, socialise and teach young children.”

I am sure that the Minister would agree.

I will not go into great detail about the history of improvements in child care—I am sure the Minister needs no telling: she is master of her brief—but the last Labour Government did a great deal to ensure that child care in all settings was improved, including by introducing a regulation and inspection regime for childminders that is run by Ofsted. This Government have also taken quite an interest in child care, and recently received the review of education and child care qualifications by Professor Cathy Nutbrown. Among her recommendations is that childminders should have a full and relevant qualification up to level 3 by 2022. Her aim is for all under-fives to receive the same quality of child care and education whichever provider parents choose to use. I have no disagreement with the desire to improve and enhance further the professional role of childminders as essential early educators.

A recent study by the National Audit Office looked at the impact of better qualified carers for under-fives on the skills of children attending primary school. Although it is early days—these longitudinal studies need to take their course—there is clear evidence that a highly qualified early years educator can improve the education that children receive and, crucially, help other, less well qualified carers in the same setting to deliver better educational results too. The Government have already changed the early years foundation stage to reduce what they considered to be the regulatory burden. However, it is interesting that we are seeing yet another review of child care. It is important that we understand the scope. Too much change too quickly creates its own burdens and, given the Government’s desire to reduce regulatory burdens, I hope that they are considering thoroughly the impact of any changes that may be coming down the line. In a letter to me of 19 June, the Secretary of State for Education did not give any detail about the scope of this latest review, so I wonder whether the Minister could provide any more information. When will she report to the Prime Minister? Will she take submissions from organisations and individuals? What is the time scale for any changes the Government might introduce?

This debate has been prompted by concerns about the focus of the Government’s review of the affordability and availability of child care, particularly as it relates to childminders. This concern stems in part from fears that the review could pick up on ideas espoused by the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) in a recent pamphlet. On the first day of the Budget debate, I was standing in almost exactly this place when she raised concerns about the cost of child care. On this, I can only agree that this is a real issue for parents up and down the country, particularly in London.

Let us look at some of the figures. These are supplied by the Library but came from the Daycare Trust, based on a survey it conducted this year. It found that 25 hours of childminding care for a child under two costs, as the British average, £92, but nearly £130 in London. The differential is quite stark, and that is just one example. As a mother of three children, I am well aware of the costs, particularly given the long hours of work in this place. This is a cost that parents have to live with; it is a real issue. It is right for any Government to look at the affordability of child care, especially in difficult economic times.

I am concerned about a number of points. First, changes to regulation could impact negatively on cost. At the moment, families can receive tax credits or, if they are higher earners, tax vouchers to help towards the costs of regulated child care. If we remove regulation, it is far from clear how a publicly funded subsidy for child care could be justified. I seek some reassurance from the Minister that she will be mindful of these issues; it is not just at the margins, as this can make a big difference to mainstream family incomes.

In the Netherlands, which the hon. Member for South West Norfolk looked at closely for her pamphlet, there was evidence that when changes were introduced, family members benefited from the public subsidy. The costs to the Dutch Government increased, but the number of places did not and there was a decrease in quality. In seeking to address the issue of affordability, we should never seek to water down quality. I hope that the Minister will agree emphatically with me on that point. Any parent who places their child’s care in the hands of a professional stranger should be able to reassure themselves that that professional is safe, competent and will make a positive input to the child’s education.

Two of the key proposals in the paper produced by the hon. Member for South West Norfolk are to increase the ratio of childminders to children and to introduce an agency as the local regulator and inspector of child care. She also highlights the fact that since Ofsted inspections were introduced, the UK has seen a drop in the number of registered childminders. This is a myth that needs to be nailed early on. Before Ofsted, the local council provided a list of childminders, but there was no way of knowing what quality of care was provided. The numbers went down because those not willing to meet the new quality standards drifted away. I mentioned Jayne Nulty, who had talked about children simply being put in front of a television; we do not want to go back to that sort of thing. I would not be happy about allowing someone who does not provide the right quality of care to look after my child. I represent a constituency with many young parents, and I know that they share my concerns about that.

The number of childminders in Hackney has hovered around the 200 mark since 2009, but there has been an increase in child care places. In 2009, 219 childminders provided 839 places; there are currently 198 registered childminders—a small drop—but they provide 847 places. The ratios go up and down, depending on the age of the children being dealt with; the figures can fluctuate a great deal.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

My constituents also include many young parents, so I agree that this is a hot issue. Is the hon. Lady going to address the central thrust of the pamphlet produced by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), which was about the much lower cost of child care generally in comparable European countries that have good, safe and well-regulated child care systems? I was wondering whether the hon. Lady was going to come on to that.

[Meg Hillier]

I will respond to that. In the Netherlands, the Government fund about a third of child care costs. That is not comparable to what is in place under this Government. We have tax credits, so the benefits usually come through the tax system. I recognise that the Government are providing 15 hours of free care for three and four-year-olds and want to extend free care places to two-year-olds—following the trajectory of the last Government—and those are welcome steps, but there is a cost to the taxpayer, and there is a need for balance. I realise that that is not easy, but I think we should see child care as an investment in working women in particular but working parents in general, helping them to maintain their place in the working world and serve as role models for their children as they continue to work.

People need more choice. Many parents in my constituency give up work or reduce their hours because paying for child care is not an option. I hope that, if the Minister refers to the scope of the Government’s review, she will give us some indication of the extent to which they will consider the issue of affordability and the available options, particularly given the current climate.

Between March 2011 and March 2012, the number of registered child minders nationally actually rose. It is interesting that that should happen even in difficult economic times, but it is probably because a number of people, mostly women, are looking for work and want child care that will give them some flexibility. It is also the case that the numbers fluctuate because people go in and out of the profession.

Childminders are currently regulated and inspected by Ofsted. They pay a small fee and are inspected regularly. That is important for two reasons. As well as guaranteeing a quality of care, it allows parents to use child care vouchers to pay for childminding and to receive tax credits. The salary sacrifice schemes and tax incentives that are offered by many employers and supported by the Government are invaluable to parents. They also serve as a key driver, encouraging parents to seek out the best quality care, because they do not have the option of going for something cheap and cheerful but not very good if they have to seek out regulated child care. I hope that the Government will be mindful of that in making any future plans, because the link between public subsidy and quality is important to parents and to ensuring that we educate our next generation appropriately.

As a working parent myself, I am aware at first hand of the challenges of securing good quality child care. I do not want to return to the old days when, although the council had a list of local childminders, it was just a list of names which did not tell a parent anything about quality. Now, some years on, I am again the parent of a toddler, and can make a better comparison between examples of nursery, school nursery and childminding provision on a like-for-like basis. It is important to give people information about quality-based choice.

A recent survey by the National Childminding Association revealed that 86% of childminders believe that being regulated by Ofsted helps them to reassure parents that they are professionals delivering a good quality rather than a second-rate service, and 80% feel that proposals to move to an agency model of inspection, removing Ofsted's role of individual inspection, would have a detrimental effect on their professionalism.

Concern about increasing ratios has been expressed by both childminders and parents. Dealing with five under-fives, as proposed by the hon. Member for South West Norfolk, would be very challenging. Just getting five children to the park at that age is a challenge. Parents seeking quality care tell me that they choose childminders partly because of the generally lower ratios that they offer.

I have raised the issues covered in the pamphlet not because they are Government policy, but because they have been greeted with real concern by childminders and parents who fear that this may be the Government’s direction of travel. I hope that the Minister will comment on that. It is understandable that, given the Government’s announcement of a review at the same time as the publication of the pamphlet, people will tend to link the two. I hope that the Minister can shed some light on how much influence the views of the hon. Member for South West Norfolk will have on the Government’s review.

According to the results of the NCMA survey, people who had been childminders for some time felt that their professional status had increased since they started; 42.5% said that that was mainly because they now had to deliver the early years foundation stage, while 39.5% said that it was because they were registered and inspected by Ofsted. They are proud of their professionalism, and that contributes greatly to the quality of child care. I think that the House should recognise what has been achieved.

The survey’s findings underline concern about any model that would water down that clear national standard. The idea that agencies would be allowed to carry out inspection and training locally fills me with dread. I do not say that lightly; I say it with feeling, because of my experience of care at the other end of the age scale. Anyone who has had to work with agencies that provide care for older people in a domiciliary setting will see the impact of this. Those agencies—just like those proposed in places such as the Netherlands—were supposed to ensure quality and carry out inspections, but in domiciliary settings meaningful inspection is rarely carried out. Carers are paid a lot less than the fees paid to the agency by the client, so a tidy percentage in profit is creamed off along the way. I am not entirely sure who would benefit from the proposed move. We would not necessarily see a decrease in child care costs—in fact, an increase would be likely—and childminders would have to pay a fee for the benefit of registering with an agency.

Childminders value the direct relationship they have with parents. They are also concerned that they would see a cut in their fees. Childminders typically make less than £10,000 a year. They can charge what they choose, but the sum is around £4 an hour per child. Even when looking after four or more children, that does not provide a large income when costs such as food, nappies and tax are deducted. There can only be two outcomes: fees go up for parents, who already struggle with the costs, or childminders’ income reduces.

The Dutch model espoused by the hon. Member for South West Norfolk has aroused much concern. Are the Government considering the Dutch model of regulating childminders, and in particular increased ratios and the use of agencies as intermediaries between parents and childminders? Will the Government be looking at the role of Ofsted in relation to childminders?

I represent a borough where about one in five residents are under the age of 16, so these issues are pertinent to more than one fifth of my constituents. That, coupled with the excellent progress made by local childminders and our 12 Sure Start children’s centres, makes Hackney an ideal place for the Minister to carry out a field visit. The Hackney childminding network would be pleased to learn more from her about Government thinking, and to contribute constructively to continuing improvement in the quality of child care and education for under fives and school-age children. I hope the Minister will visit Hackney South and Shoreditch, and I offer her as much support as I can give in ensuring we continue to improve child care, while also working hard to address the challenging affordability issues that working parents face.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

The right hon. Gentleman is quite right to draw attention to that excellent report, which I was able to read this morning. He is right that co-ordinated action by local authorities, the Home Office and the Department for Education is vital, and we will indeed go about that business in the fashion and spirit that he describes.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

On the subject of raising awareness of crime in schools, some primary-age girls are at particular risk of being taken abroad in the long summer holidays to suffer female genital mutilation. Will the Minister take this opportunity to emphasise the safeguarding responsibilities of schools in that regard?

[Mr Hayes]

Yes, indeed. I had a meeting with my officials and discussed just that matter. It is, as my hon. Friend will know—because she has also been a champion of these matters—something that happens across the year in different volumes. There are peak periods for this, and we need to take action to take account of that and to use all agencies to offer the right kind of advice in those areas that are most vulnerable and to those young people who are most vulnerable.

Apprenticeships

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Marsden]

No, I do not agree. I hear what the Minister has to say, and I accept that he and colleagues have made progress in that area. My point about 19 to 24-year-olds was not that the numbers had gone up, but that it is just as important to look at quality for that group as it is for 16 to 18-year-olds. Let me say rather gently—albeit excluding the Minister from culpability in this respect—that if the Government move in the same glacial fashion as they moved in other areas of quality and due diligence, such as with the regional growth fund, then we will have the opportunity to come back and quiz them further. However, knowing the Minister’s commitment in this area, his perspicacity, his ability to summon up armies of rhetoric—and, indeed, civil servants to do this job—I am sure that that will happen.

Let us create a landscape where we can continue to boost apprenticeship numbers. However, if we are going to do that, it is crucial to get the preparatory work right. That means a strong, solid system of careers advice for young people, to ensure not only that they are aware of the vocational opportunities available to them, but that they are given the skills to take them up. We support the principles behind the establishment of the all-age careers service, on which the Minister, while in opposition, and I, as a Back Bencher, agreed some time ago, as members of the all-party skills group. But the Ministers’ noble aspirations have been undermined by the chaos and confusion arising from the Department for Education’s arbitrary abolition of Connexions and the removal of a dedicated £200 million of support provision in schools. It is therefore not surprising that the president of the Institute of Career Guidance, Steve Higginbotham, went so far as to say:

“In reality, the National Careers Service is an illusion, and not a very imaginatively branded one either, and is a clear misrepresentation with regard to careers services for young people.”

A recent survey carried out by the Association of Colleges showed that only 7% of school pupils could name apprenticeships as a potential post-GCSE qualification. That illustrates the problem that still exists in some schools, in which the vocational route is not explained to pupils. Teachers and others need to have a much greater understanding of the role that apprenticeships can play in careers development and future job prospects. I fear, however, that the situation will not improve following the abolition of Connexions.

New initiatives such as the programme announced this week by the chief executive of the CBI to send mentors into schools to promote apprenticeships are to be welcomed. That announcement shows a welcome recognition that everyone needs to play their part, not just teachers. We must also ensure, however, that young people can afford to stay in education. Following the abolition of the education maintenance allowance, college enrolment data from the Association of Colleges show that numbers are down across the board. That has real implications, as many young people will miss out on the opportunity to gain the crucial pre-apprenticeship skills that they will need to take up a placement. If apprenticeships are to play an integral role, we must ensure that they are fit for purpose, and that they can match the expectations of the individuals who take up the placements with those of the employers who take those individuals on.

We need apprenticeship frameworks that allow progression for the individual; they must not just be there for their own sake. I know that the Minister shares that view, as it featured heavily in his “Skills for Sustainable Growth” document last year. Now, however, we need movement to match the aspiration. We need clear portability from apprenticeship frameworks, with qualifications that are pyramidal in shape, rather than horizontal. We need a process of continuous assessment and credit accumulation that builds up a broad competence, rather than just bite-sized chunks of training that do not add up to anything.

It is equally important, whatever the qualification route, that we do not force employers or apprentices into a false dichotomy between functional skills and skills for life. Enabling skills are important for gaining and keeping an apprenticeship, and subsequently a job, as well as a knowledge of specific skills. Both aspects need to be taken into account as we balance our skills needs in the years ahead.

We need clear, accessible pathways from higher-level apprenticeships into higher education. I want to point out that the choices relating to vocational and academic education should not be viewed as an either/or proposition. Perhaps the Minister should ask his colleague, the Minister for Universities and Science, the right hon. Member for Havant (Mr Willetts), to get UCAS to consider recognising apprenticeship qualifications as part of its tariff-points system. For too long, complacency about the status quo and some minor snobbery in a minority of universities have hampered not only access but the interchange between the academic and vocational worlds. I welcome what the Government have said about the higher apprenticeship fund and the way in which it will be taken forward, but the key question is how those qualifications will be recognised and integrated into higher education progression.

How will this culture shift of which the Minister is so proud be delivered? The national apprenticeships service, which we set up when we were in government, is clearly set to lead from the front, but will it have the resources to deliver the expansion that the Government are talking about? Recent parliamentary questions have shown that the organisation has lost just under 100 staff in the course of the past year, at the very time that it is being asked to lead the delivery of more and more apprenticeships and to oversee the additional initiatives that the Government are pushing out, including those announced today. My own inquiries have shown that regional directors are now finding themselves further stretched by having to cover multiple areas of the country as well as delivering all the new initiatives that the Government are launching.

The Skills Funding Agency is responsible for all post-19 provision, but, crucially, the Department for Education still controls 16-to-18 provision and is arguably not showing the same commitment to apprenticeships and vocational education as Ministers in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills have done. The problem with all this, and with the Minister’s dual role in the two Departments, is that it is sometimes hard to see who is leading whom.

We might also ask about the situation on the ground. Following the abolition of the regional development agencies, the Government have completely failed to link local and regional growth into their skills policies. That obviously includes apprenticeships. They have swept away the informal architecture that used to bring together the key players who were crucial to delivering apprenticeships locally, including further education, higher education and small and medium-sized enterprises.

I welcome what the Minister said today about the supply chain, but he merely echoed what we have been saying for more than a year. Why did a year have to be wasted before he came to the House to say these things? Why did we have to wait a year for the Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) to talk about the Government setting up a set of apprenticeship hubs in a number of city areas? The reason is that both Ministers were fettered by other Ministers, by the Chicago-based economists and by the people who think that they can deliver everything on the ground without any Government intervention, whom the Minister has on other occasions derided. Yes, it is good that the Government are looking at apprenticeship hubs, but who on the ground is going to deliver, arbitrate and energise demand? What about those outside the city regions? Are the second-tier towns, the seaside towns and the suburban and rural areas not entitled to an apprenticeship hub locally? We need those structures on the ground so that business demand can be recognised locally rather than being micro-managed from Whitehall, as happens now.

The situation is not helped by the cluttered environment that has developed in post-16 provision, with the creation of university technical colleges and the potential for free colleges and 16-to-19 academies alongside existing FE colleges. We can all see the results when apprenticeship schemes are run well; we have only to look at the demand for schemes run by BAE Systems, Jaguar Land Rover and Network Rail. I have also seen for myself the excellent work being done by British Gas to encourage more female apprentices, and the work done by the nuclear skills academy. All those schemes demonstrate the value of investing in training and skills for the long term—a point emphasised eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), the shadow Business Secretary, in his recent Bloomberg speech.

This brings us back to the age-old question: what is a good job? How do we match the fluid skills demands of the labour market with the life chances and skill sets of individuals? To boost apprenticeships, we will have to meet the challenge of winning over employers who are still sceptical about the some of the values that apprenticeships could bring. A recent British Chambers of Commerce skills survey showed that many employers were still not ready to engage with the programme. Only 20% of businesses surveyed across the board took on apprentices in 2010-11, with the figure set to drop to 15% in the coming year. The Federation of Small Businesses has rightly highlighted issues of complexity and red tape, which act as a deterrent to its members. So I welcome what the Minister has said today, although we shall have to wait to see the small print and to see how rapidly the proposals are put into practice.

I raised the problems of SME engagement in a debate in June, when I said that the Government needed urgently to consider tailoring apprenticeships better towards their needs. That means not just having financial incentives, which Ministers and others sometimes seem to think are enough, but structuring them to the daily cycle and the needs of SMEs’ work. We need to improve the levels of engagement between large companies and middle-ranked companies—identified only last week as key by the CBI director, Mr Cridland. They can play a vital role in boosting apprenticeships via supply chains.

Undeniable pride and dignity surround apprenticeships. That is why so many hon. Members have been able to recruit support for individual initiatives in their area. It has been the same in my area, and this summer I met apprenticeship award winners at Blackpool and the Fylde college in my constituency. My local paper, the Blackpool Gazette ran a successful campaign to create 100 apprenticeships in 100 days. In these sorts of processes, however, making connections and having middle men can be key. I learned that by talking to my FE college and to apprentices and the SMEs with whom they had bonded.

The Government have re-announced today—this is about the third time—the £250 million scheme to allow employers to bid directly for the training budget, but they need to be careful that the human resources element is not lost in hastily thought-out schemes that do not have safeguards and risk deadweight while funding for learning providers and colleges, which are already voicing their concerns, is top-sliced.

This October WorldSkills hit London, and team UK won 12 medals. I was delighted when by lobbying the Government I was able to play a small part as chair of the all-party skills group in tandem with others in the group in helping to bring that event to the UK. Young people with apprenticeships shone out, including Rachel Cooke from Blackpool and the Fylde, a BAE employer in my area. I agree with what the Minister said about the value of that. Labour Members have agreed with it for many years. Although I did not regret the changes made in the 1990s to the Labour party’s constitution in respect of clause IV, I did regret the removal of the words, to achieve

“for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry”

because that embodied and continues to embody an important part of our tradition and our aspiration. I believe it is crucial that apprenticeships should have and deserve to have this respect—not least because some of the organisations that promote them, such as City and Guilds, which has been with us since 1878, have become a byword for attaining qualifications, rather like Hoover has become a byword for vacuum cleaners. Apprenticeships now span both traditional types of occupation such as stone masonry and thatching offered by the National Trust and the new schemes in the green industry and everything that goes with them. Harsh words have been said about some elements of the service sector in connection with some of the shorter-term apprenticeships, but we have to recognise that the sector will be key in delivering future economic prosperity.

We need to build a bridge of values between the old and new apprenticeships. We need a 21st century offer that combines an appreciation of the traditional strength of apprenticeships with what they can offer for young people, for retraining and for returning to work, particularly for the women of today. All the structural changes and genuine enthusiasm for apprenticeships will be for nothing if we appear to have promised too much from apprenticeships as a one-stop shop for all training and skills and as the silver bullet to solve all this Government’s skills and employment problems. They will be for nothing if we allow the brand to be contaminated by questionable providers or overstretched by branding all forms of training as apprenticeships. They will be for nothing, too, if we do not provide frameworks that offer the flexibility and progression opportunities for a 21st century economy—ones that are able to adjust to changing domestic and international demands.

The Minister did not find time this evening to talk about one issue that looms on the horizon—further education loans, which anyone aged 24 and above, but not the traditional 25-plus division, will be able to take up. Apprenticeships will be a large part of that number; perhaps as many as 100,000 people will be obliged to take up these loans after Government support is wound down. The time scale for the Government to make detailed decisions after consultation is very short, and this is already causing major problems with colleges across the sector, while business groups have raised the concern that the additional bureaucracy in administering these loans could disengage them from the process. A big bang approach to student loans in further education, including for thousands of apprenticeships, is one thing in a time of plenty, but in a time of scarcity, it is quite different.

When we were in office, we revitalised and re-energised the apprenticeship programme. We put in place procedures to ensure that Government contracts such as Building Schools for the Future would take on apprenticeships, and we saw completion rates rise dramatically to their current rate of over 70%. While the Government have sensibly built on much of that inheritance, there are new challenges that they have not yet understood or that have been hampered by silos, divisions in government and a reluctance to understand how Government can shape and enable markets, which includes skills and apprenticeships. Despite all the press statements and all the re-announcements and the conferences, the adult training budget has been significantly cut. The previous Government had put more than £700 million into funding Train to Gain, but that money has not been allocated to apprenticeships. In effect, the Government have not increased the overall budget for training apprenticeships.

Any Government—whether it be this Government or the next Labour Government—will need to build on a strong legacy from the past by working tirelessly to help expand access to the apprenticeship programme, by engaging with SMEs and helping them to overcome the barriers they face and by making apprenticeships offer a clear route of progression, as I have described. We also need to use the enormous power of Government, which includes creating thousands of new apprenticeship opportunities by incentivising companies to bid for Government contracts over a million-pound threshold to offer apprenticeship schemes.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

On that very point, I hope the shadow Minister will join me in congratulating the Mayor of London, who has indeed incentivised major contractors bidding for public projects by insisting that apprenticeships are part of the mix in their bid?

[Mr Marsden]

Given that I have talked about Scrooge and “A Christmas Carol”, let me say that Dickens would have described the Mayor of London as a phenomenon—possibly an infant one, I do not know. What I would say about the Mayor is that his trajectory in following this Government’s policies in a series of areas is rather interesting, but, secondly, I would say that we are delighted to welcome him to our big tent, as this is precisely what we have argued for a long time.

The Government have discarded the guidance we put in place to encourage this development, so what we want to know is whether the Minister will listen to the broad range of groups supporting this change. Will he go back to those churlish officials who keep putting problems in his way, and will he support the private Member’s Bill proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) when it returns to the House next month? These are crucial issues. While he is at it, will the Minister discourage rather more churlish people such as the Minister for Housing and Local Government for describing apprenticeship requirements linked to public contracts as “ridiculous” and “counter-productive”?

The Government have had to face problems connected with further education loans, queries about ESOL—English for speakers of other languages—funding, active benefit restrictions and so forth. All that tells me is that we need to revisit the elephant in the room, which is how we develop a funding system that weighs properly and incentivises the contributions from the state, employers and individuals. That is a matter that Labour Members take very seriously, so we shall be looking at it in great detail in our policy review.

As we move forward, the world of work will no doubt continue to be epitomised by the rapid change we have seen in the last 10 to 15 years; moves towards hi-tech industries and demand for high-quality niche products will still be valid. Apprenticeships will have to adapt to the challenge of providing skills for jobs that do not yet exist. Apprenticeships will have to respond to the growing wish for people to buy experiences as well as products—hence my comments about the service sector—and that will have implications for the manufacturing-service balance. Our apprenticeship structure must be robust enough to support that evolution. Apprenticeships will also have a key role in the

“partnership between productive business and active government”

to which the shadow Business Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), referred recently.

Opposition Members, many of whose parents, grandparents and other antecedents were apprentices, fully intend to play their part in that process. We will continue to support the Government while they build on our achievements in a sensible fashion, but we will also continue to question them about the devil in the detail—always along the lines of “progression, progression, progression”. We shall be glad to have made a contribution to their learning curve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

It is that time of the evening when we are almost reduced to “name, rank and serial number”. I shall say “Battersea 109%”, and get it out of the way.

I want to make two points in the short time available to me. I have already referred to the picture in London, in an intervention, but I want to say more about that, and also to say something about the gender breakdown in apprenticeships.

I strongly support the Government’s agenda for rebalancing the economy throughout the United Kingdom, but London is going great guns on apprenticeships, which are an incredibly important part of the UK’s economy. The number of apprenticeships in London increased by 99% between 2009-10 and 2010-11, which reflects the Mayor’s enthusiastic championing of them, and he has set the ambitious target of 100,000 apprenticeship starts by the end of 2012.

Members on both sides of the debate have talked about the way in which public procurement projects can be used. There is no doubt that the Mayor has used big public projects such as Crossrail and Thameslink to drive forward the apprenticeship agenda in London. I know that the Skills Minister has had conversations with the Mayor’s officials on the subject, and I shall be interested to hear his and other Ministers’ responses. I know that they are considering the matter. Given the large number of exciting public projects that were given the green light in the Chancellor’s autumn statement, this seems an appropriate time for them to comment.

I welcome what has been said about the gender rebalancing of the overall number of apprenticeships, but if we dig down into the 12 key sectors which represent about 60% of apprenticeship starts in 2009-10, we see that, as well as the problem of snobbery that some of my hon. Friends have mentioned, there is a problem of gender stereotyping.

[Mr Marsden]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Jane Ellison]

I will not, but only for the sake of others who wish to speak. I do not wish to be discourteous.

To take a couple of extreme examples, in children’s care, learning and development, the breakdown is 4% men and 96% women, while in plumbing it is 98% men and 2% women. I chose plumbing as an example because in London plumbers can make a fortune at present, and I want women to have the opportunity to be in the high-wage jobs. I chose children’s care, learning and development because we in this House regularly debate the need for more male role models in children’s early years. That sort of gender imbalance in that important area of employment is clearly not right, just as it is also not right that we have a similar gender imbalance in primary school teaching.

While celebrating the overall gender balance across apprenticeship starts, we must use every opportunity—through the new National Careers Service, through visits to schools and firms, and through talking to young people—to encourage young people to look at the widest possible range of professions. It was very heartening to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage) talk about the young apprentice she described. There are not enough similar examples. As we approach 2012, we must challenge the obvious stereotypes that still exist, and the apprenticeship programme provides us with a chance to challenge and tackle them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

As the hon. Lady knows, we have had discussions about Plymouth. I very much hope that all the representatives of Plymouth will join in putting together an area to attract business that is very much in keeping with the enterprise zone proposal. Of course I will put together a package of the research and make it available to her.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

12. How much capital expenditure for scientific research his Department has allocated in 2011-12 to date.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

I have recently announced that the Department will be investing an additional £145 million in high-performance computing. That brings the Department’s total capital spend in science and research to £793 million for 2011-12.

[Jane Ellison]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Britain has always been great at discovering and inventing things, but we need to address how to commercialise some of that cutting-edge research. Will he therefore comment on what the Government are doing to ensure that we bring that research, and those discoveries and inventions, to market in the future?

[Mr Willetts]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is why we are setting up the network of six technology and innovation centres. It is why we are particularly backing the campuses in Norwich, Babraham, Harwell and Daresbury, which bring together scientific research and business applications. It was also the reason for the investment of £50 million in the application of graphene to business purposes, which was announced only a few weeks ago.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vince Cable]

Well, Keynes famously wrote in his well-publicised note to Franklin Roosevelt that probably the most useful thing that the Government could do in a depression was keep down long-term interest rates, and that is what this Government have done as a result of their fiscal prudence.

The hon. Gentleman says that we do not have the policies in place; we have two things in place. We have policies for financial stability, which we did not have when we inherited the economy; and on the other hand we have policies in place to rebalance the economy, to reinvent manufacturing, which was allowed to decline catastrophically under the previous Government, and to promote exports and business investment—things that were shamefully neglected when his colleagues were in government.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

T2. The Mayor of London has had great success in growing the number of apprenticeships from the low base inherited from his Labour predecessor by requiring apprentices to be taken on as a condition of bids for public projects. Will the Minister look at whether that success could be built on and extended to national Government?

[The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the remarkable figures in London. Of all the regions, London has seen the biggest proportionate growth in the number of apprenticeships, and I recently had a meeting in the Mayor’s office to discuss the subject. She is also right that there are things the Government can do to help, so we will look again at what can be done, based on the experience in London, to promote apprenticeships in the way she describes.

Public Disorder

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

The rioting that affected Clapham Junction, which is in the heart of Battersea—to make a boring geographical point, it is not in Clapham, but in Battersea, as Clapham is several miles away, a point that causes great confusion—affected many businesses, leaving some of them very damaged, and left the community badly shaken. I live very close to Clapham Junction and once the police made it clear that serious trouble was expected, from about 8 o’clock, I spent an hour or so visiting businesses that were still open, particularly takeaways and restaurants, to advise them of what was going on and to urge them to take precautions. Many of them felt that they had not been given sufficient warning by the authorities and felt rather let down, and that has resulted in a loss of confidence in the authorities.

I am also glad that, although we all acknowledge the bravery of the police and what they did, the Prime Minister said in his statement that senior police offices have acknowledged that some of the tactics need to be reviewed. In truth, parts of my constituency were a free-for-all for hours, with scenes broadcast on rolling news of people helping themselves that made it far harder to restore order. The numbers piling in were increasing as that carried on. Many people were appalled to see open criminality being tolerated on the streets.

I do not know what shocked me more: passing the giggling groups of teenagers phoning their friends to check on their trainer size, the van that parked opposite my house with eight or nine balaclavaed youths piling out of it who went up to Clapham Junction, gathered up armfuls of stuff, got back in the van and drove off—obviously I have given the registration number to the police—or the fact that the first person convicted lives in Battersea and is a 31-year-old school worker in a south London primary school. We have to be very careful about reaching for easy solutions about social exclusion when we look at some of the people who have been convicted.

[Andrew Selous]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if that school worker is convicted—I say this in the presence of the Secretary of State for Education—it would perhaps be a good move for the school to consider dismissing them from its employment as a poor role model to the children?

[Jane Ellison]

In truth, I cannot see how someone convicted of that offence could possibly be a role model. I am sure that the authorities will take the right action.

I want to say a word about the mix of police skills, and about numbers. A lot of points have been made—some of them a bit party political—about numbers, but in my conversations with my area commander, the emphasis has been on having the right skills mix available to the police. The skills that a safer neighbourhoods team constable has are quite different from those of a trained public order officer, and the two cannot easily be substituted for each other, so it is not purely a police numbers issue; it is about those on the ground having the right skills mix to deploy, and being able to react to a very fast-moving new challenge.

On the effect on retailers, I think people have been shocked to realise that loss of livelihood does not feature as high in the priorities as many feel it should when it comes to public order. It is a very serious thing for people to lose their business or their job, particularly in retail; the ultimate irony is that retail is an area of the economy that provides entry-level jobs to young people straight from school. It is the most stupid area of all to attack, and to deprive people of jobs in. If JD Sports pulls out of some of the areas that have been badly affected, the people affected would have a very similar demographic profile to those who attacked it. That is absolutely crazy and self-defeating, so I very much welcome the measures that the Prime Minister announced on business rates holidays and so on.

I should like to make a plea, and I am sure that hon. Members will take this up with their councils. As we know, many small businesses do not apply for the relief that they are due. I have said to my council, which has been very responsive to the idea, that it should provide a form-filling service to very small businesses, to make sure that they hit their deadlines and that nothing is rejected because the forms are not in order. Wandsworth has been very responsive to that idea, and I very much hope that other councils will do the same. We do not want to hear of people missing out because they missed the deadline.

There will be a lot of focus in the coming months on the causes of the problems. Essentially, there will be a focus on the gulf between the values of the young people who marched towards Clapham Junction on Monday night, armed with a brick, and the many more young people who descended on Clapham Junction the next morning, armed only with a broom, to help with the clear-up.

School Funding Reform

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I hope to take decisions this autumn. I would not wish precipitately to raise hopes in any part of the country, but we will seek to work constructively. Deprivation obviously figures in revenue funding, but in capital funding the question I have to ask is: which schools are in the gravest danger? We need the information now to ensure that every child is in a safe school place, whichever part of the country they are in. Obviously, if a council such as Liverpool is prepared to work constructively, we will work constructively with it.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the statement, which I know will be read with great interest by, in particular, the governors and head teacher of St John Bosco college in my constituency. My local authority despaired of the—often—30 months of bureaucracy that preceded any BSF project getting to the construction phase. Will the Secretary of State assure me that the new capital programme will be a big improvement on that?

[Michael Gove]

We will absolutely ensure that capital gets to those who need it more quickly, as a result of the James review recommendations.

School Closures (Thursday)

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who makes two fair points. On the first, yes, I went out on strike and indeed I lost my job as a result of taking industrial action. One of the reasons I am therefore so opposed to industrial action this Thursday is that I recognise that strikes do not solve problems. Any one of us, on either side of the House, who has taken industrial action and lived with the consequences recognises that strikes do not solve deep-rooted problems. On the broader question of the way in which pension reform is designed to deal with the problems we have inherited, as I mentioned in my statement we are seeking to deal both with the terrible state in which our public finances were left by the previous Government and with the demographic challenges that force us to conclude that there is a case for reform.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

In my constituency, the impact of Thursday’s strikes will be felt not by the bankers who live there but, most acutely, by lower paid people, lone parents and, especially, women who rely on fragile networks to provide child care, based on education, family and so on. Does he not share my astonishment that that point does not seem to be fully understood by those on the Opposition Benches?

[Michael Gove]

One of the critical points my hon. Friend makes is that the Opposition seem to be curious in their desire to make political points rather than seeking to work constructively with local authorities and others to keep schools open. As the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) made clear in his response to my statement, it is wrong for strike action to be taken at this point when discussions are still going on. The victims will be working women who will lose out as a direct result of the disruption to family life.