Careers Advice (14 to 19-Year-Olds)

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Westminster Hall

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

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Williams. I strongly congratulate the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) on securing this debate on a crucial subject. I represent one of the youngest constituencies in the country. I can barely walk down the street, and I can certainly never visit a school or educational establishment, without young people directly raising their concerns and demands about the careers services that they want. I am here to speak for them.

I completely endorse the comments of most hon. Members who have spoken today. Young people tell me that they want face-to-face guidance when they need it. That is particularly important in my constituency because many young people do not have connections. They do not have parents with understanding and knowledge of the modern world of work. Many of them have come to this country, and perhaps their parents do not have good English.

On Monday, I was at the KPMG City academy in my constituency with my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt). A year 12 pupil told us that she wants to be a doctor but that her mother is a single parent. She said, “I don’t have the connections that some of my friends in the school have.” The school helps to provide her with the connections that help to level the playing field. KPMG and the City of London sponsor the academy, and KPMG helps to provide her with support—other pupils also have mentors through KPMG. Those business links, as my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) said, are vital.

When I talk to businesses in the community and head teachers, one of the key things they mention is linking those businesses with individual pupil achievement in the school, as well as giving pupils a view of the world of work. That is more complicated than simply careers advice, but I have always supported embedding business connections in schools, and it is one of the reasons why I am broadly in favour of the academies programme.

On careers advice more specifically, I am delighted to have worked from the outset with the charity My Big Career. We found each other because I had been working to encourage professionals in my area to become the family for young people in Hackney who do not have their own connections. I got professionals and sixth-formers into networking events, where they shared notes and found each other. Those young people made their own connections.

The redoubtable Deborah Streatfield decided to set up My Big Career because she is a professional careers adviser working in the private sector and, as well as the private school that employs her, she is often privately commissioned by parents. She realised that the careers advice in many state schools was not of the same standard, so she set up the charity. Happily, I was able to secure office space in Cardinal Pole school in my constituency, which now has an outstanding sixth form. Deborah Streatfield has been offering face-to-face advice, and it is not just her. She has been getting in volunteer careers advisers and, crucially, professionals from business who are trained to give the right kind of professional advice to pupils.

The charity also offers a results day service, which was so effective last year. Shockingly, it was the first time in Hackney’s history that pupils received a results day service from volunteers trained to go in at 7 o’clock in the morning so that young people who had missed a grade could access discussions with universities. For example, four young people who would not have got on to their nursing degree did so because of that input, which should be standard. That happened because a professional, qualified careers team was there at that point.

Young people tell me that they want such advice. For many young people, face-to-face advice is so important because they are just not getting it through other routes. The key thing about My Big Career is the service’s high-level professionalism. I echo the point raised by other colleagues that we need good, properly qualified careers advisers.

I also echo the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) about ensuring that teenagers make the right choice early on. One of the things that My Big Career has discovered is that many young people are being encouraged, quite rightly and effectively, to get a good GCSE in maths, but for many a C grade was just not enough for the course they wanted to take at university. They needed a B grade, and even many heads of maths did not understand the significance of a B grade for the future career choices of their pupils. Bright, able and capable sixth-formers were finding that that one dropped grade in GCSE maths was limiting their future career options. That goes to show that the professional understanding of good, qualified careers advisers makes a difference throughout a school, not just at 14.

The Government have thrown money at careers advice. At one level, we should accept the £20 million that has gone to the careers company, but I have serious questions about how that has been tendered and whether it is really best at national level. There is no road map for how the careers company will deliver good quality careers advice throughout our educational establishments. I hope the Minister can give us more information, because we are all desperate to know how that will help people in Hackney, Hartlepool, Scunthorpe and around the country. I want to know how we will be monitoring the independent advice and guidance provided directly by schools, because the quality varies enormously, as we have heard.

I, too, have a list of asks for the Minister. First, as the hon. Member for Eastbourne described, we want a clearer set of requirements on appropriate and good guidance. We do not have a common set of standards at the moment, and it is vital that we do. It is not fair that a young person going through a school—sometimes a very good school—might have their future completely altered by the lack of quality careers advice. We want a common standard.

Crucially, we need really good evaluation of what works and quality control. The key thing is the bit in the middle, which my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe talked about—the broker between businesses and young people. The broker could be the careers adviser, but there could be work placements. Rather than young people just being thrown at work placements that have been brokered by a careers service, they could say, “I want to do this, and I need to know who I can speak to so I can go and do that particular role.”

I represent Shoreditch, which the Prime Minister and the Chancellor called “tech city”. It is a hub for future jobs and growth in this country, but most of the jobs in Shoreditch do not exist as such. They do not have job titles, because they are so new and emerging. I can sometimes broker the connections, because of the peculiarity of an MP’s role, where we see a lot of different things. We need to make sure that our teachers and particularly our careers advisers are aware of the opportunities and can make those links. That crucial bit in the middle is the broker. When the broker finds a young person with a particular skill, the broker will know how to make the two or three phone calls that will get the young person the connection to the career opportunity that they can really learn from. We also need to see greater stability of funding so that we can be sure there is a career path for good quality careers advisers.

I welcomed the Government’s decision to include outcome data as a key part of schools. We still do not have much of an update from the Department for Education on how it is going to work. Many schools in my area feel challenged about how they are going to deal with it. I believe—I represent Shoreditch, so I would—that good, well-worked-up software that would allow alumni to be tracked and, crucially, give alumni something back in terms of networking, could be very useful. I have been talking to UBS, the bank that sponsors the Bridge Academy in Hackney. There is a real opportunity to be grabbed, but it needs to be fleshed out. I hope the Minister will do so.

I have mentioned the issues about grade B maths. Such issues underline the need for clear understanding throughout schools of how early choices can affect careers and damage career options. The Government need to ensure that that is embedded through a set of standards.

I have set out my asks. Careers advice is crucial. My young people in Hackney want action. They want to see the best provided to all and I back them in that.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

rose—

Electoral Registration

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

I shall come to the data-matching shortly, but we have considered those on the register in December 2013 and those on the register in December 2014, after the data-matching. An estimated 1 million voters have dropped off the electoral register. For 1 million to be missing in a year is bad enough, but the trends in the groups that are unregistered is also worrying. Data coming in from local authorities are showing serious drops among students and those turning 18. In the patch of my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), the number registering fell from 630 to 114 in just 12 months. As has been said, the figure for attainers registering in Liverpool has slumped from 2,300 to just 76. Three areas with large number of students —Cardiff, Newcastle and Brighton—have seen drops of between 9% and 10.5% in the numbers registered.

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

I represent one of the youngest constituencies in the country, with an increasing number of young private renters—there are more private renters than home owners in the constituency—and people who move frequently drop off the register. I pay tribute to my borough of Hackney, which has put money and time into bringing the register up again. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the cost of doing so is also a problem for local tax payers?

[Sadiq Khan]

To give Members an idea of the scale of the challenge, local authorities now have to write to each individual voter rather than to each household, which is a huge expense. To be fair—because I like to be fair—the Deputy Prime Minister has finally woken up—

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

I shall start by making the bold statement that if the Conservative proposals on electoral registration had gone ahead in their original form in 2010 and 2011, we would have seen a constitutional coup that would have kept the Tory party in power in this country for a generation. There would have been a two-pronged attack that involved bringing the date for the introduction of individual electoral registration forward by a year. That simple act would have resulted in a total of 35% of the electorate dropping off the register, in addition to the 15% who were already missing from it. Those people would have been the most economically and socially marginalised in the country, and their marginalisation would have been complete with their vote gone.

The second prong of the attack was to have been the equalisation of constituencies at 75,000 electors per seat, plus or minus 5%. That change would have been carried out while 7.5 million people were missing from the electoral register—the equivalent of 100 missing parliamentary seats.

[Meg Hillier]

I am concerned that the number of people on the electoral register is used as a proxy for local government funding allocations. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a real concern, especially for the poorer constituencies, which are experiencing the greatest drop-off of all?

[Chris Ruane]

I agree with my hon. Friend.

I wish to probe more deeply into the machinations of that grand plan. It is only by looking at what has happened in the recent past that we can find out what would happen over the next few months if the Tories were to get back in.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, which is typical of the sort of question we get from Opposition Members—a warmish welcome followed by: “But you’re not going far enough.” We are tackling an issue that the last Government left completely untackled. There was no golden age of careers advice, but I agree on the importance of inspiring early on, and although the careers and enterprise company has an important remit regarding 12 to 18-year-olds, I will be discussing with its chairman how we can work with younger children too.

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

When I talk to many young people in Hackney, they all tell me they want actual experience in the workplace with an employer, rather than just talks at school. The Government have thrown a lot of money at this. What is the Secretary of State doing to monitor how effective the money is in getting young people socially mobile and moving onward and upward?

[Nicky Morgan]

I agree that we have thrown a lot of money at this. That money will be working hard to ensure our young people are inspired and given the aspirations to aim higher, and that is what our reforms to qualifications standards were about. While I agree that some face-to-face advice and work experience are welcome, I do not want to see work experience that only ticks boxes and means that young people do not really get to see how a workplace or sector works. That is why the careers company and the wide remit we have given it—working with the National Careers Service and excellent projects up and down the country and involving local enterprise partnerships—will be so important.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend is right to raise the issue of trains and communications, which is why the Government have made a commitment to improve connectivity on trains. He may be aware that Network Rail is in the middle of a competition to work out the best solution to the problem. On Government support, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport announced a few months back £53 million of funding for the programme, with money that Network Rail was supposed to return to the Government. I will also ask my right hon. Friend to give my hon. Friend an update.

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

The Secretary of State has taken some bold steps to push mobile telephone companies to increase coverage in not spots. However, even in areas such as mine in Shoreditch, with mobile coverage, wi-fi and broadband, there is a real issue about planning permission for buildings that are tall enough to allow other technologies to flourish. Will he update the House on conversations he is having or will be having with the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government about changing planning permission to allow these other technologies to flourish?

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Lady has raised an important issue. We are having ongoing discussions, and we have ongoing plans to improve the situation. As the hon. Lady may know, the deal that was announced last month with mobile phone operators included an agreement by the Government to give them access, at market prices, to Government-owned property on which we have the freehold, and I think that that is a positive step.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

I am very far from being smug. Having read my hon. Friend’s interview in which he waxed lyrical about his “bromance” with the Chief Whip, imagine how I felt after our years of friendship. Nevertheless, I remain resolute in supporting him, and I am pleased to be able to tell him that Staffordshire as a whole has received £9 million to connect to superfast broadband and that his own constituency will see 8,000 homes committed under our programme. That is real “bromance”, Mr Speaker.

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

Even in the tech hub at the heart of my constituency we have huge challenges with broadband, as the Minister knows. One of the main barriers to having high speeds everywhere is the fact that competitors are unable to put their equipment on buildings without the permission of the landowner. Is it not time for a change in the planning laws? What conversations is he having with his counterparts in the Department for Communities and Local Government to ensure that that is delivered?

[Mr Vaizey]

I am pleased to tell the hon. Lady that I have sat down with representatives of the City of London to talk about broadband in central London. I was also pleased to hear the City of London’s plans to roll out its own broadband network, because competition is very important. She raises an important point, and we will continue to keep that matter under review.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Grant]

Various stats are always collected. As I said, we have had record visitor numbers and a record spend. The figures are monitored very carefully. The Deloitte report is always a useful document, but I would be happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with a selection of stats if he would find it helpful.

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

5. What assessment he has made of the conclusions of the 50th report from the Committee of Public Accounts, Session 2013-14, on the rural broadband programme.

[The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

The Government agreed with the Committee’s recommendations and we have made good progress on implementing much of what it recommended.

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

Will the Minister finally acknowledge that there was a flaw—a major flaw—in the approach to rural broadband because the bid was drawn up to favour one company that could effectively meet the criteria? Is it not now time for the Minister to find a plan B to deliver proper, superfast broadband in rural areas, as well as in inner-city areas such as mine in Shoreditch?

[Mr Vaizey]

No, I do not accept that at all. The plan was drawn up to encourage open competition, but it is important to remember that anyone who bid for this funding had to allow competitors to use a publicly funded network. BT was the only company prepared to accept those recommendations. In urban areas, there is plenty of healthy competition, and I note that in the east end of London—an area she so ably represents—Virgin Media is now investing in increasing its footprint, covering an additional 100,000 premises.

Adult Learning

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2014 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure as ever to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I am delighted to have secured this debate on an issue vital to the future of the British economy: skilling up our adult work force. I am particularly pleased to stand here and highlight to the Minister the excellent provision we have in Hackney. I am proud to represent Hackney community college, our local further education college, which really is what it says on the tin. It provides education and training to a community of people, many of whom did not have the chance the first time around. Indeed, some may have arrived in the country without the benefit of skills, education and training in the countries they came from. They are ambitious to achieve, ambitious to learn and ambitious to work, and the college provides great support to them.

I am aware that many other colleagues want to speak, so I will try to keep my opening remarks as brief as is reasonable. I want to talk about funding, in particular for FE, and about apprenticeships and skills. We all know that funding for over-18s has always been complex because the bureaucracy of Government means that, sadly, funding falls between at least two Departments and sometimes more. The Minister has a challenge in that he represents only one section of the funding for adult education. I appreciate that limitation, but I hope that, in his role, he has the clout to bang heads together for the joined-up government that every party strives for. That is particularly important in adult learning, because if the system does not work, learners fall through the gap as well as providers—I will touch on the challenges for providers as well.

Tracking funding and ensuring that the provider and the learner can deliver the contract between them is difficult, because Departments focus on their narrow financial interests rather than the whole experience of the learner or the needs of the employers, which are critical. That was stark in a previous Westminster Hall debate, when we discussed how the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills had cut funding for over 18s—we had a different Minister at that time. That debate aroused cross-party concern about both the impact on the viability of education providers and the disproportionate impact on many 18-year-olds. That debate can be seen as a proxy for some of the challenges faced by many other learners across the age ranges.

Funding has also been catastrophically reduced over the years. Between 2009 and 2015 alone, there is a 35% reduction in the adult skills budget—the core budget for FE—and during a similar period, the number of people aged 19 and over participating in Government-funded training, excluding higher education, has dropped from 3.7 million to 3.28 million, so nearly half a million fewer people are getting their learning and training provided.

Will the Minister tell us whether the Government have any plans to introduce more ring-fencing of budgets, or will they allow local colleges and providers to meet local needs? Hackney is an exemplar of the latter: the college embraced the needs of the Olympics, when it provided training for the catering—it has an excellent training section—and is embracing the needs of Tech City, where it is pioneering its apprenticeships, working with employers. That has served the needs of local businesses and therefore, crucially, enhanced the employment prospects of students in the local area. Many other colleges up and down the country can and do provide similarly, but flexibility is important.

The adult skills budget is the main source of funding for FE colleges, but it is not the only source for adult learning. I believe that a strong, effective FE sector is vital to Britain’s future, but those colleges face a slew of funding changes, and I make a plea to the Minister, who is new in his role, to look at that seriously. All Governments have done that, but often during a year or at very short notice funding is withdrawn or drastically changed, and short-term initiatives are given funding designed to bolster a political announcement, which makes it complicated for colleges and providers to deliver and is often detrimental to learners.

There could be many examples of how the system is broken, but I do not have time to go into them all. One example is this: the number of ESOL—English for speakers of other languages—students in Hackney would have reduced by 35% but for the £400,000 paid by the Department for Communities and Local Government. When one Department withdraws funds, another often puts the money in, but that adds to the disjointed picture I have painted and, in a constituency such as Hackney South and Shoreditch, and in a borough such as Hackney, what could be more important than skilling up Britain by ensuring that those basic language skills are in place?

What plans does the Minister’s Department have for the adult skills budget in future years? I highlight in particular the £340 million reallocated from the adult skills budget to the employer ownership skills pilots up to 2015-16. How much has been spent to date, how many individuals have started those training courses, how many have finished them and where can MPs get routine information about how that money is spent? Both the Library and I had great difficulty in finding that, so I hope that, in a spirit of openness and transparency, the Minister points us in the right direction.

We have a shared interest in ensuring that we have the best possible quality of education in FE. We also need to recognise the vital role FE has in working with many adults who have had bad learning experiences in the past, and for whom simply attending class regularly is the first big achievement.

I am a regular visitor to Hackney community college, but I remember not long ago meeting two interesting learners, one of whom was training to be a painter and decorator. He had not enjoyed school and had failed to achieve basic qualifications in English and maths—that happened not in Hackney, but in another borough. He was unable to read. To look like the other commuters, he pretended to read Metro on the tube every day, but he could not read even the headlines. With support from his excellent tutors at the college he learned to read, and in a few months he was reading Metro for real. Such achievements may not be a great leap forward in academic terms, but they were a big achievement for him and, critically, they enabled him to progress in his chosen career rather than be condemned to a limited choice of low wage, unskilled jobs. That is the nub of the issue.

I also met a young woman, who is a mother of a young child, who similarly had not enjoyed maths at school, but, as she was training to be a chef, she could see the point in it. Again, she had support from Hackney tutors to ensure that she could get those necessary basic maths skills. For many, FE is a second chance at education, but, whether a first or second chance, it plays a vital role. Too often, however, it is the Cinderella of education. It needs to be on a more stable footing. Although we all want more money invested in training and education, my bigger plea is for colleges to be given the freedom and stability to make their own sensible decisions.

The Government have made many claims about the increase in the number of apprenticeships created. I would never be critical of the creation of new opportunities for young people, but we need to look at those claims carefully—they should be heavily caveated. The number of apprenticeships for over-24s has increased, while for 16 to 18-year-olds it has decreased in most areas. An added problem is that, in many areas, 16-year-olds are competing with A-level students and A-level students are competing with graduates for those valuable opportunities, so we are seeing inflation of apprenticeship competition. Sought-after apprenticeships require more interviews than a university place: the Rolls-Royce apprenticeship interview process is longer than that for Oxbridge.

We need to get back to the heart of apprenticeships: training on the job, for a job. We also need to ensure progression and opportunity for apprentices. I know that there is genuine desire in the Government to ensure that apprenticeships are a real opportunity, but we all hear bad stories about them not truly delivering. In Hackney, for example, I am approached every few months by yet another provider keen to provide tech apprenticeships in Shoreditch. They always want a base in Shoreditch and most want to go it alone—they do not want to collaborate with existing providers. Employers tell me that they are getting confused and potential apprentices have to shop around. The quality of the education is often unclear and difficult to assess for both the potential apprentices and the employers. I am not saying that there should be one single provider, but we need much more clarity on quality.

Information about apprenticeships should be clearer and quality control needs to be rigorous. Employers such as Optimity in Shoreditch, which has been in the vanguard of the tech apprenticeship set-up, is embracing that initiative. Such employers have a vital role to play—clearly, without employers, the apprenticeships go nowhere —but they need a simple route to working with the right education partner and ensuring that that apprentice gets good quality in both their training and their education. That requires more accountability and monitoring, such as that required of FE colleges. We all want high-quality apprenticeships, so we must be wary of watered down offers.

On the skills deficit, as MP for Shoreditch, which includes the international tech hub that is often called Tech City, I frequently meet business innovators who know what skills they need but cannot recruit people with them locally. Admittedly, the sector is fast-moving, and it is difficult for schools and colleges to keep up with the fast pace of change. For Britain to be successful and competitive—an ambition shared by all parties—we must ensure we have a highly skilled population that can compete with the best from around the world. Tech City is an international hub, not only because it competes internationally, but because it attracts people from all around the world to invest and work. For young people in Hackney to have a chance, we must ensure they are trained, but we must also ensure that adults can train to fulfil employers’ needs now and in future. We must not only equip school leavers, which we are doing effectively in Hackney, but provide opportunities for adults to take high-level skills training.

On the political side, there has been a lot of discussion about the UK Independence party and the sort of people who support it. There is a danger because many people in my constituency have been left behind—particularly men in their 50s who have skills but no paper qualification to prove it, who have never had a driving licence or a passport, who still live at home with their parents, and who cannot provide the paperwork and skills qualifications needed to take on the jobs that they are skilled up to do. I met a 56-year-old who had none of those things. He got training through the Olympics as a security guard and had all the right bits of paper. Although he was unemployed when I met him, he felt confident that he was ahead of the pack. However, there are many people in his position who have been left behind and would benefit from proper skills training.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills equality analysis showed that women students, students from black and minority ethnic background, and those from inner city areas are dropping out disproportionately from higher-level qualifications since loans for higher-level courses were introduced—sadly, Hackney ticks all those boxes. People are increasingly doing shorter, lower-level qualifications. I hope the Minister shares my concerns about the long-term inequality that problem creates. What does the Department intend to do to tackle it and prevent inequality from becoming imbedded in the system?

The number of students on advanced courses dropped by 20% between 2012 and 2013-14—one in five students fewer in only one year—according to research by the Association of Colleges. Are the Government liaising with business sectors to ensure that the future work force is appropriately skilled, and are they assessing the impact of that dramatic drop in numbers on Britain’s competitiveness?

The CBI and many other key business groups have called for the skills deficit to be tackled. I believe passionately that helping workers to retrain is vital. I have given an example from my constituency, and I meet many men and women from up and down the country who have been out of the workplace for a while, perhaps because they had children or a health problem. It does not take long for skills to get out of date, and it would be more cost-effective for the Government to have a strategy for retraining for higher-level jobs, because when people get those jobs they pay more tax.

In Hackney, the cost of rent, child care and housing is so high that many working families are trapped in a cycle of working poverty. As I was preparing to speak today, I received a heartfelt tweet from Sarah, who said:

“I would do anything to go back to some kind of adult learning to better my work skills so I can get a better job and hopefully be able to provide for my family and not be reliant on tax credits.”

Sarah speaks for so many of the forgotten people who work hard but have no realistic chance of skill development because minimum-wage employers often provide little or low-level training and the loan makes it impossible for them to think about higher skills training. There is great poverty in my constituency, but no poverty of ambition. The Government must revisit the impact of loans and assess what can be done to iron out the inequalities in the system.

My final point is about a real concern that I have. For some time I have talked about this issue, but too many people are still being taken off courses by the jobcentre when they are close to completion, even if the course would lead to longer-term, sustainable and better-paid work. The issue particularly affects parents, and usually mothers, whose present on their child’s fifth birthday is to be told that they cannot complete the course they have been doing for a few years because they need to seek employment immediately.

Hackney community college has done great work in negotiating for students, some of whom require only a week or two to complete their course. The cost of an additional couple of months’ benefit is minimal compared with the higher wage those people will earn with a good qualification under their belt. The additional tax they will pay and the fact that they will be less reliant on tax credits and benefits, as Sarah highlighted, will more than pay for it. I know the Minister’s influence does not extend to every part of the Government, but I hope that he, as Minister with responsibility for skills, will take that up with the Department for Work and Pensions. It is not dole for learning, but a sensible approach to skills training. It would be awful to condemn the many single mothers in my constituency to low-level, minimum-wage, low-skill employment for the sake of a few weeks of unemployment benefit, which would be a much bigger investment in their future, the future of their children and the future of Britain.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Boles]

The right hon. Gentleman is too good a numbers man not to recognise the trick he has just played, which is to take the total budget as his denominator and use only the number of starts achieved so far as the figure that he is declaring it against. If he looked at the amount of money that has been drawn down from the pilot, he would see that his denominator is a very much smaller figure and that dividing that three-hundred-and-whatever million by 20,000 does not present an entirely accurate picture.

[Meg Hillier]

On that point, £340 million has been allocated and has not been drawn down at the right rate. What is going wrong, what is the Minister doing to check on what is happening and how on earth is the situation being monitored to make sure that it is not just backfilling what employers would do anyway and giving money to businesses without them adding more to adult skills education?

[Nick Boles]

What this Government do not do—we do not believe in it—is just push money out of the door. That is what the previous Government did, which is why we inherited a deficit on the scale that we did. We believe in inviting people to come forward with bids and come up with quite experimental ideas—the scheme is unashamedly a pilot—and then checking whether those ideas are high quality and are adding value, and whether the money is going to be put to good use. If we do not end up spending all of the money mentioned, I will be the first to say that we did not do so because we did not have bids that were good enough and were going to deliver enough impact. That is the responsible way to deal with taxpayers’ money and money borrowed from future taxpayers, not the approach of the previous Government.

To return—it seems rather optimistic now—to areas where we perhaps agree, we need to have more higher apprenticeships. We also agree that although the increase in the number of adults doing apprenticeships is welcome, we should not allow that to be at the cost of 16 to 18-year-olds doing them. We therefore need to ensure that the offer is there and stands for everybody.

The hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and a number of others asked me about the changes in the funding of apprenticeships under the new trailblazer standards. All I can say at this stage is that, first, I am looking at the matter extremely closely, and, secondly, before coming anywhere near politics—before coming into the policy world, let alone to Parliament—I spent 10 years running a business that employed 150 people in the manufacture of paint brushes and rollers. I have lived and breathed—and wept—the experience of running a small business. I am not going to be a Minister who puts burdens on small or medium-sized enterprises that persuade them not to do what we want them to—provide more high-quality, long-term, demanding apprenticeships that improve the skills of the people of Britain.

There were also a lot of questions about adult learning and its funding. It is clear that there have been some very difficult decisions in that area, which have caused difficulties for some institutions and further education colleges, and, as we heard from the hon. Member for Sheffield Central, for some of the charities and social enterprises that work with FE colleges. Those decisions have also perhaps interrupted the availability of some provision, as the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) so eloquently described. We have had to make sacrifices, and it may be that some are never undone because of the fiscal situation we face as a country and the priorities we have to put in place. But we are going to look at the experience of advanced learner loans and then ask ourselves a series of tough questions about how much further it is right to go to align what is available for adult learners who are not going into universities with what is available for those who do.

We have had one little reassuring set of data. Wild and gloomy predictions were made about the effect of fees and loans on the participation of people from a range of different backgrounds, including poorer ones, in universities. Those predictions have not come about. Similarly, we have no evidence on advanced learner loans of any dramatic effect on or change in the profile of those who participate in adult learning. We will be looking at making sure the opportunities are available. They may need to be funded differently from how they were in the past, but it is right to see whether we can make sure they are available for all in the future. [Interruption.]

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I am delighted to be able to tell my hon. Friend that Virgin Media, Jaguar Land Rover, Siemens, the BBC, National Grid and Barclays, to name just a few, are committed to setting up and offering traineeships. I will certainly be happy to look into seeing whether any of those could be available to his constituents in the Medway area.

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

We now have a raft of opportunities for young people—traineeships, apprenticeships, sixth-form colleges, further education colleges—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] That is not to say that they are all something that Government Members should claim credit for. Does that not underline the importance of good, transparent, independent careers advice from a young age—from 14? Would the Minister be willing to come to speak to constituents of mine who have expressed to me very strongly their desire for access to face-to-face careers advice at an early stage so they can make the right choices in life?

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

Work-related learning is an attempt to pretend that young people can be given a feel of what it is like to be in the workplace without putting them in the workplace. We care about high-quality work experience, because all the evidence shows that the more work experience young people do, the more likely they are to get a job.

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

Does the Minister agree that learning to network and to make connections is also important? He did agree to come to Hackney to see some of the best networking and careers advice, and I hope that he will honour that commitment.

[Matthew Hancock]

I am keen to come to Hackney. We have been working on some dates, but we will renew our effort. I agree with the hon. Lady, not least because those who do not have natural networks through their family links often find it harder to break into high-quality jobs, and networking and mentoring can do an enormous amount to break down those barriers and improve social mobility.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely will.

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

Earlier the children Minister talked about the increase in places at school nurseries. Is she aware of the challenge that faces many working parents who cannot secure more than the 15 hours a week they are guaranteed and cannot buy extra hours in a school nursery, which reduces the choices for working parents?

[Elizabeth Truss]

That is why we are making it very clear to school nurseries that they are able to charge for extra hours and they can open from 8 until 6 to provide parents with that service. As I said, 45% of all early-years places in London are in school nurseries. There is huge potential there to get better service from our existing assets.