Apprenticeships Funding

Steve Rotheram Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Streeter. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) on securing this important debate.

I am proud to be one of the few MPs currently in the House who completed an indentured apprenticeship. I remember being offered a place as an apprentice bricklayer as a teenager and nearly dancing with joy. Back then, an apprenticeship was very much something to aspire to. It was a path that people chose because they, and especially their parents, understood the brand. In many families, young people were told, “If you get an apprenticeship, you’ll always have a trade to fall back on.” However, successive Tory Governments devalued their reputation. It was the last Labour Government who breathed new life into apprenticeships, with capital support for new buildings and substantial increases to vocational funding models. The Government claim that they want to create 3 million apprenticeships by 2020. That is a laudable aim, but in this House I have repeatedly said that rather than having arbitrary targets on numbers, we need to assure quality. I do not want the House to get me wrong; if all the projected 3 million apprenticeships are at level 3 with a decent wage rate, I am in.

Faced with increased university tuition fee debt, young people are now choosing vocational routes into the workplace instead of academia, but the Tories have overseen one of the worst skills shortages in living memory. Research from the Liverpool city region apprenticeship hub suggests that the number of apprenticeship starts in Merseyside and Halton has fallen by almost 25% over the past five years. The Minister will know that construction sector output is vital to his Government’s macroeconomic policy; but the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians has warned that urgent action is needed to tackle the growing skills shortage, and the Construction Industry Training Board has forecast that the industry requires nearly 50,000 new entrants a year up to 2020. That far exceeds of the number of construction apprentices currently undergoing training, which is roughly half the figure given.

[Amanda Solloway (Derby North) (Con)]

As a member of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, I realise how important apprenticeships are. About three weeks ago in Derby we opened the National Construction Academy, which offers valuable, meaningful apprenticeships for that vital industry. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the plans to extend that around the country are a good thing, and to be commended?

[Steve Rotheram]

I said earlier that it is question of whether the apprenticeships are proper level 3 ones— high skill, high quality, and in high-demand areas. I would of course welcome any initiative to increase people’s opportunity to get a proper job at the end of an apprenticeship programme. However, the Minister is presiding over an exacerbation of the problem and not tackling the fundamental issue.

In the Liverpool city region, the number of national vocational qualification level 3 apprenticeship starts last year was a fraction of the total needed simply to backfill the numbers retiring or leaving the industry. That simply cannot be allowed to continue. The Tories have a track record of failing young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. They scrapped the education maintenance allowance, trebled tuition fees and took away maintenance grants for university students and replaced them with loans, saddling the poorest with ever more debt. That tells us all we need to know about Tory ideology; they want the best only for the privileged few, not for the many.

Our devolution deal, with an area-based review for our city region, at least provides us with the opportunity to shape training better, on the basis of local need—if the Government grasp the nettle. At this point I should declare an interest. Devolving the skills agenda further would allow the incoming metro mayor to implement a skills strategy that would train the next generation of tradesmen and women, equipping them for the high-skill, high-paid, high-aspiration jobs that we need to build and sustain our future economic growth. However, central Government have not devolved apprenticeship funding and delivery and they have full control over the new apprenticeship levy that employers are obliged to pay if their wage bill tops £3 million a year. Will the Minister agree to meet me to discuss how the metro mayor of the Liverpool city region will be able, as it states on page 8 of the devolution deal, to

“collaborate to maximise the opportunities presented by the introduction of the apprenticeship reforms (including the levy) and work together on promoting the benefits of apprenticeships to employers”?

What exactly does he believe that collaboration between the Government and the metro mayor will entail? How does he envisage us maximising those opportunities? Does he agree that it is imperative that, following the upcoming spending and apprenticeship reforms, metro mayors have local control over and are directly responsible for apprenticeship funding and influence over the employer levy? If not, will he explain how he believes it is possible for a metro mayor to achieve improvements and address skills shortages locally without those powers? Apprenticeships must be at the heart of that strategy.

If we are to do that, we must also provide our young people with the proper advice and guidance to make informed decisions. It was an act of civic vandalism by the Government to dismantle the Connexions service when they came to power, which has left us with a system in which vested interests give partial advice to young people about their career options. If elected as the metro mayor for the Liverpool city region in May 2017, I intend to develop an independent careers and advice service that serves the best interests of all of the young people in our area.

Devolution provides us with the opportunity to make funding allocations based on the knowledge of local leaders across the city region, which is better than guesstimates from Whitehall mandarins. Will the Minister specifically address the points I have raised, unlike his colleague, the Minister for School Standards, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), who shimmied and sidestepped last week like Philippe Coutinho?

Education (Merseyside)

Steve Rotheram Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I am delighted to speak on this important issue, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) on securing this important debate. Often in Britain, and all too often on Merseyside, the place where people are born seems to determine where they end up in life, but education is a tool that offers young people the hope of going on to achieve their full potential. It can provide the ladder of opportunity for the next generation and education policy should primarily be designed to do that. It should not be a political football for any Minister or Secretary of State, attempting to impose a narrow sense of ideological entitlement on others. Schools in my constituency, and indeed across our city region, are proud of what they have achieved. The tireless work of our teachers, governors and staff has been mentioned by many hon. Members today. They devote their lives to getting the best out of children, but it has to be said that educational attainment is stronger in some areas of the city region than others.

I note the criticism of the mayor of Liverpool, Mayor Anderson, by the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh), but the city mayor has been asked to achieve something with one hand tied behind his back, partly because of some savage cuts inflicted by the coalition Government of which the hon. Gentleman was a member.

[Conor McGinn]

Surely not!

[Steve Rotheram]

Surely yes.

The excellent work of many in our schools is often hamstrung by factors outside their control. Research by the House of Commons Library suggests that in my constituency just 38% of students get five A* to C GCSEs, including English and maths. With a national average of 53.8% that puts us well behind, but that in no way reflects the effort of the schools and teachers. Although it is only 10 miles away, Wirral’s figure is seven percentage points above the national average, at 61%. It is easy to imply that schools need to do more and be better, as the Prime Minister said today. There has not been a Secretary of State in the past 50 years who has not trotted out the tired old mantra that we need more good schools, but improvement cannot be achieved without the collaborative efforts of parents, teachers and governors and, most importantly, it cannot be achieved without the Government’s political will to invest fully in children’s future.

For far too many pupils there is poverty of aspiration. In many cases we have failed to convince young people from working-class backgrounds that they can be the doctors, nurses and lawyers and even, God forbid, the political leaders of tomorrow. I bet that that is not the case in many of the schools that many on the Government Front Bench went to. The Government’s idea of harking back to the 1950s and an elitist education system by returning to the dreaded 11-plus will do nothing to increase the life chances of the majority of young people.

The grammar school system is designed to achieve the best not for all but for the selected few. How can the Prime Minister advocate grammar schools when she stood on the steps of Downing Street a few weeks ago and promised the British people that she would lead a Government that works for everyone? Grammar schools will segregate, not educate. They will polarise communities, not promote social cohesion. Grammar schools would once again stifle the prospects of many of the children who would inevitably see themselves as failures if they did not pass the entrance exam. As Ofsted’s chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw put it, grammar schools will “put the clock back”. The desire for selection at 11 years old tells us all we need to know about the Government and how they see our precious education system. It is a microcosm of their entire political ideology. It will deliver for the few, not the many.

As my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby highlighted, teachers have voiced their concerns about upcoming Government proposals such as the prospect of a national funding formula and the added pressure to offer a more restricted curriculum because of the baccalaureate and progress 8. However, the new devolution deals provide an opportunity to transfer decision making and accountability to a local level. We currently face a situation in which the Government seek to devolve powers over industrial strategy and economic growth to metro mayors while fragmenting delivery and centralising accountability in the education system. That does not make sense. We have a ludicrous situation in which local education authorities continue to have statutory responsibilities under legislation such as the Education Act 1996 while having been deprived of any levers to pull to fulfil those duties and influence outcomes. For example, every secondary school in Knowsley is now an academy and is therefore much more accountable to the Secretary of State, through the schools commissioner, than to locally elected politicians, but—guess what?—local politicians get the blame when they are threatened with the withdrawal of A-level provision in the borough.

The problem in Merseyside is not the level of attainment of the top 20%; it is the level of attainment of the rest. We need an education system that lifts the attainment of all, not just those who are gifted and talented. That is why I am calling for the return of an element of local accountability. Education provides the building blocks for achieving the economic success we so desperately need, so the Minister should make the regional schools commissioner accountable to the metro mayor. I would appreciate it if he would address that issue specifically. That would afford the incoming metro mayor—and here I must declare an interest, Sir Roger—the opportunity to create a city region education strategy that could work collaboratively as the catalyst for sharing best practice. If elected metro mayor, I will introduce a pathways to excellence programme in our city region and help to raise educational attainment in each of the six districts, lifting the level of aspiration across all our communities, with no borough and no child left behind.

As metro mayor I want to harness the pool of talent that we have. I want to attract global businesses to locate into our area, offering the high-skilled, high-paid, high-aspiration jobs we need, as well as developing the new businesses that will lift our economy. However, developing a world-class workforce has to start at an early stage, and that has to be in our schools. The metro mayor does not have the responsibility, through the devolved powers they can use, to affect that, which is why we need a joined-up, consistent devolutionary approach between the Government’s industrial and education policies. I hope the Minister specifically addresses that point when he gets to his feet.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

Yes. I have been addressing that by talking about the extra money for early years. As part of the consultation, we released indicative funding rates for local authorities and indicative and average hourly funding rates for providers in each local authority area. Based on our proposal, 75% of local authority areas stand the gain funding. The indicative rates show that the impact of the proposals in the Merseyside region will be mixed. It is therefore right that we look at each local authority area, rather than the region overall.

The Government are providing supplementary funding for maintained nursery schools for at least two years, as the hon. Gentleman knows. We know that maintained nursery schools bear costs over and above other providers because of their structure, and many also provide high-quality early education to disadvantaged children. The additional funding will provide much-needed stability to the nursery sector. We will be consulting on the future of maintained nursery schools in due course.

Thanks to the academies programme, schools have been released from the constraints that too often inhibited great teaching. The autonomy provided by the structural reforms has freed schools to innovate and pursue improved evidence-based teaching methods. Rather than a centralising approach, this is actually the ultimate in devolution.

Headteachers and other system leaders have seized this opportunity. As of the beginning of this month, there are 5,758 open academies and 345 open free schools, university technical colleges and studio schools. About a fifth of primary schools and two thirds of secondary schools are now academies. As the Secretary of State said to the Select Committee on Education in September, the Government want to see all schools become academies over time, and it is our hope and expectation that schools will want to continue to take advantage of the benefits that academisation can bring both to their own school and to others in the local area and throughout the country. We will continue to convert all schools that are failing to deliver an acceptable standard of education.

[Steve Rotheram]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Gibb]

I am hesitant to give way because I have literally two minutes to go and I want to respond to some of the other points. I apologise to the hon. Gentleman.

We also want to see good and outstanding schools choosing academy status so they can benefit from the freedoms associated with it. We will be building capacity across the country. We are also working with the archdiocese of Liverpool and the diocese of Liverpool to ensure that there are rapid improvements in other schools, such as the Academy of St Francis of Assisi in the constituency of the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby. The Education and Adoption Act 2016 strengthens the Department’s powers to ensure that every failing school, whether maintained or an academy, receives the support it needs to improve. The Secretary of State will not hesitate to use these powers so that underperforming schools and academies are swiftly turned around.

Let me conclude by briefly talking about further education. A strong further education system is essential to ensuring that everyone in our society is empowered to succeed. We need to equip FE colleges to be high-status institutions that can confer similar advantages to traditional academic institutions.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Teachers Strike

Steve Rotheram Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

School budgets have been protected. We are spending £40 billion, and we have said that per-pupil funding for schools is protected throughout this Parliament. Schools will face increased costs of salaries, pension contributions and national insurance, but we have provided advice to them about how they can meet those challenges to procure more efficiently and to make sure that their staffing arrangements provide the best education within their budgets. We have protected school funding throughout this Parliament.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Perhaps I need to declare an interest, as my sister is a teacher. With regard to why she would go on strike, it is not just about her terms and conditions—it is about the pupils to whom she believes she has a responsibility. The Minister has mentioned record budgets. Will he confirm or deny whether, in real terms, the budget has gone up per pupil?

[Mr Gibb]

It has gone up in real terms overall, as I have said, and £40 billion is the highest ever level of spending. We have had to take some very difficult public spending decisions over the past six years because of the mismanagement of the public finances by the Labour Government—a party and a Government whom the hon. Gentleman supported. As a consequence of taking those difficult decisions, we are not facing the challenges that other countries in Europe that have had similar levels of public sector deficit have had to face.

Trade Union Bill

Steve Rotheram Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan]

I must say I thought we won the last debate, but somehow or other we lost the vote. As Disraeli said, perhaps a majority is its own repartee, but perhaps things will be different when these matters are discussed in another place.

Amendment 6 would delete clause 9 and leave picketing arrangements as they currently stand. Picketing activities are already heavily regulated in the UK by an extensive range of civil and criminal laws. Unions must comply with the requirements for peaceful pickets contained in section 220 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 and operate in accordance with the accompanying code of practice. The Conservative Government have failed to demonstrate why the picketing provisions in the Bill are necessary or justified. The Government’s own Regulatory Policy Committee concluded that the BIS impact assessments on picketing restrictions were not fit for purpose.

The Government have made some minor concessions, which I will come on to later, but these new provisions go far beyond what is fair or necessary. In fact they were described by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) as Franco-style and I think that is an appropriate description by a Conservative Member.

The clause will introduce a new restriction on picketing activities by trade unions and their members, and failure to comply with these over-prescriptive requirements will expose trade unions to legal challenges. Employers will be able to apply to court for an injunction preventing, or imposing restrictions on, a picket or even for damages for failing to wear an armband on a picket line.

Over the summer, the Government ran a very short consultation. It was utterly insufficient given the scale of the Bill’s proposed changes. The Government sought to rely on evidence gathered during the Carr review, even though the Government’s own impact assessment confirmed that

“this evidence could not be substantiated”.

Carr decided he was unable to make evidence-based proposals or recommendations for change as originally instructed

“due to the increasingly political environment within which [he] was operating coupled with the lack of a significant enough body of evidence to support any recommendations for change”.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend see the irony in the supposed party of free marketeers intervening in an agreement between two other parties?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

The hon. Gentleman does not understand that trade unions are democratic organisations. They do things on behalf of their members because they are elected and chosen to do so as democratic, voluntary organisations. There is no attack on the individual, and unusually for him his intervention is specious.

[Steve Rotheram]

Does my hon. Friend remember the Prime Minister’s promise of a bonfire of red tape? Does he believe that this measure makes arrangements more or less bureaucratic for employers and trade unions?

[Kevin Brennan]

The so-called one regulation in, one regulation out rule—[Interruption.] Oh, it’s two out, is it? The rule is not being followed in the case of trade unions. Clearly, regulation of trade unions is not considered to be regulation at all, when in fact it is an extraordinary piece of regulation.

Skills and Growth

Steve Rotheram Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I welcome my hon. and learned Friend to the House. This is the first time I have been in the Chamber when she has spoken, and she did so eloquently. She was right to recognise the fall in youth unemployment in her constituency and across the country. I will come on to the steps that we will take to ensure that apprenticeships are highly valued by employers and give every young person the best start in life, which is what the Conservative party is all about.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady mentioned the quality of apprenticeships. The average length of stay on an apprenticeship, as described by the Government, is 10 months. Would she allow somebody with 10 months’ training to build an extension to her home?

[Nicky Morgan]

I do not recognise the hon. Gentleman’s point, because there is a statutory minimum of 12 months for apprenticeships. He may well be talking about the programme-led apprenticeships that were introduced by the last Labour Government.

Let us remember what we inherited in 2010 from the Labour party: standards were falling and vocational qualifications were debased, which the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central did have the grace to recognise. Indeed, at the heart of many of his problems is the fact that he agrees with an awful lot of what the Government have done. Even he has admitted that he failed to persuade his former party leader to take much interest in education during the election campaign.

Young people and students were failed by those debased vocational qualifications. Young people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds were told that academic qualifications were not for them, and those who wanted a vocational qualification were sold short by qualifications that were not backed by employers and did not lead to a job. Schools in England were stagnating in the international league tables, going from seventh to 25th in reading, eighth to 28th in maths and fourth to 16th in science.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Welcome back to your place in the Chamber, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) for her speech and congratulate her on it. I have a great affection for Glasgow as well, and for her predecessor, Anas Sarwar. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the new Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) on his maiden speech, and all other Members who have made their made their debuts in the Chamber today.

It is a pleasure to be back in the Chamber, following my narrow electoral victory, to speak on the really important issue of apprenticeships. First, I want to place on the record how concerned I am that the City of Liverpool College is facing further cuts on top of the 24% FE cut to date. If that cut is implemented, it is estimated that it will equate to a further reduction of about 1,300 off its rolls. That is setting a near-impossible task for colleges, such as the City of Liverpool College, in continuing to provide courses to disadvantaged students from places like Walton.

I want to press the Minister to look more carefully at his Department’s flawed decision to scrap its plan for a UTC in Anfield, which had been hugely welcomed in Liverpool, Walton and had the backing of major companies, including Peel Ports. The decision flies in the face of the Tory rhetoric about commitments to having UTCs in every city.

Colleagues who sat in the last Parliament will be aware that I was critical of the Government’s use of rhetoric over reality in relation to apprenticeships. It will therefore come as no surprise to Conservative Members to hear that I have no intention of discontinuing that particular stance in this Parliament when they get things wrong. The reason for that is quite simply that apprenticeships are close to my heart. As a former apprentice bricklayer, I know their value and necessity in the modern age.

It is irresponsible of any Government erroneously to claim that they have created 2.2 million apprenticeships, when they have in fact created nowhere near that number—not proper apprenticeships anyway. The apprenticeships that the Government claim to have created are on programmes where the average length of stay is a duration of just 10 months. One of the Conservative Members—I cannot remember who—highlighted an example of best practice in an apprenticeship that was 16 weeks long. That is not an apprenticeship. I obtained that figure of an average stay of 10 months from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, so the Minister may wish to have a word with his colleagues in BIS before attempting to question his own Government’s figures. Such illustrations highlight the problem. Short-stay programmes are simply work-based training programmes re-badged to hit Government apprenticeship targets. These distortions, which are commonly perceived as bona fide apprenticeships, dilute and devalue the brand.

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

We have created 2.2 million apprenticeships, which the hon. Gentleman doubts, and we have also created 2 million jobs. On that basis, are people not moving from apprenticeships into jobs, and therefore carrying on their training in the workplace?

[Steve Rotheram]

No. The hon. Gentleman conflates two things, which is exactly what I am trying to highlight. Taking somebody in a job who is getting some training and re-badging them as an apprentice is wrong. That is not an apprenticeship. Most think of an apprenticeship as having a duration of two and a half or perhaps three years and involving people learning the skills of a particular occupation and going on to get a full-time job in that skills area. It is not the 16-week shelf-stacking example that one of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues gave.

In my constituency, we now have the worst of all worlds, as the plans for the UTC have been scrapped, and there has been a fall of 32% in apprenticeship starts in Liverpool, Walton for 16 to 18-year-olds since the Tories came to power.

[Alex Cunningham]

I am sure my hon. Friend’s majority is as narrow as the Mersey.

Our FE colleges are playing an increasing role in supporting apprenticeships. We heard some great examples of that on Monday, when the Association of Colleges held a reception. Yet colleges’ ability is restricted by funding cuts and the fact that they are paid up to a year in arrears for new courses that they develop. That is putting them at the mercy of the banks as colleges run out of money. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to sort out this funding mess, and release our colleges to drive the apprenticeship programmes we know they are capable of providing?

[Steve Rotheram]

My hon. Friend highlights just one of the anomalies in the funding system for FE colleges. I hope that I will be able to tease out one or two other anomalies in the time remaining.

I believe that we have to be honest about the scale of the problem facing our nation, so I want to talk specifically about apprenticeships in technical sectors. As colleagues will know, our country needs 82,000 additional engineers, scientists and technologists by 2017. To compete globally, almost half of those in technical roles will require upskilling to keep pace with technological advancements. Some 10,000 new technicians are required for the rail industry, of which 30% are required in London and the south-east alone. In aviation, 7,000 new engineers are needed between now and 2020, of which 30% need to have an NVQ level 4 and above. A growing number of engineering roles feature on the national shortage occupation list, and there is the stark statistic that two in five businesses requiring employees with STEM qualifications and skills are reporting difficulties with recruitment.

The time has come for the Government to roll out advanced technology colleges across the UK to match their, as yet undelivered, commitment for a UTC in every city. We have long lived in a country where the post-16 education system is geared towards results and targets, rather than businesses and young people’s needs and aspirations. In essence, this country faces a skills shortage in many leading industries, such as engineering and construction, because we have not focused our post-16 education system on equipping people with the skills that businesses need in order to thrive. Successive Governments have sometimes got this wrong, and I believe that one way to address the escalating problem is to increase the number of advanced technology colleges.

Last week, I had the privilege to visit Prospects College of Advanced Technology in Basildon. PROCAT is an advanced technology college that specialises in the engineering, rail, aviation, construction and building service sectors. It comprises three skills campuses, with more than 2,000 students and 850 apprentices. The previous Labour Government invested significantly in this facility, with a bursary of about £20 million. I visited to learn about how it recruits, trains and retains apprentices in specific sectors, because I am interested in how we can develop the ATC model across the country. In fact, in the 1950s a host of what are now known as universities, such as Brunel, Aston, Bradford, Cardiff and many more, were all ATCs before they became polytechnics and then universities. The beauty of an ATC is that it has a direct link to the business—it is a model, I think, of absolute success.

ATCs align themselves with businesses that invest in their apprentices, helping to provide a clear and professional training environment and a guaranteed job and career at the end of the training, which is exactly what I was trying to outline to the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman). The curriculum at an ATC is also aligned to the needs of that business, which helps to ensure that all apprentices leave with the necessary skills to be employable.

Lord Heseltine made it clear in his 2013 report on growth that university technical colleges, with links to businesses, are the way forward. I would not normally quote Lord Heseltine; it is not easy for me to quote him, but, after all, he was responsible for bringing Thatcher down, so every cloud has a silver lining and all that! Indeed, I think we must go full circle and return to ATC status in order to restore parity of esteem and to address the urgent need to deal with our growing skills shortages.

In my remaining time, I would like to touch on another issue. Another anomaly in the education system is the entry level for UTC students, which currently stands at 14. At 14, many students will have decided what path they wish to take and whether they want to specialise in any particular occupational area. A UTC is therefore perfect for them, as it allows them to begin their vocational training in a new college at an early stage and focus on that specialty 40% of the time, with the other 60% focused on STEM subjects.

I implore the Minister to study the faculty of foundation apprenticeships, which is being developed by PROCAT and offers pre-apprenticeship training to any 16-year-old seeking to enter technical apprenticeships. There is a gap in the system, and that would be a good way for the Government to address it. They should look seriously at promoting ATCs, step up their game and improve the quality of apprenticeship training to provide real choice for young people deciding between an academic or vocational route to the workplace. We could then finally achieve that parity of esteem we so often hear about in this place.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

There are four remaining speakers. With nine minutes each, we will have time for the Front-Bench speeches and a 4 o’clock vote.

Apprenticeships

Steve Rotheram Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

I am talking about not doing away with the qualifications of levels 1 and 2, but calling those levels something different and maintaining the badge of quality for apprenticeships by having them at level 3 and above. That will bring us in line with many other European countries.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about protecting the apprenticeship brand. Level 1 is a pre-apprenticeship entry qualification. Levels 2 and 3 are recognised by the industry. A person cannot go on to a building site with a level 1, but they can with levels 2 and 3.

[Mr Umunna]

I agree with my hon. Friend.

I have already talked about compliance with the national minimum wage. To tackle non-compliance and non-payment, Labour would give local authorities new powers to investigate and enforce the minimum wage. Hopefully, that will reduce the 15% of apprentices—[Interruption.] There will be headlines about how I cannot pronounce the word “apprenticeship”. Perhaps I should go back to school myself, but, to be honest, people mess up my name all the time. But, yes, we should be giving local authorities more of a role in identifying companies that are not complying with the requirements under the national minimum wage regulations.

Finally, we will make it very clear that we expect Departments across Government to provide apprenticeship opportunities. If we are elected in 91 days’ time and I am given a job by Prime Minister Miliband, I will be working with colleagues in the Labour Cabinet to ensure that we increase the number of apprenticeship opportunities across Whitehall.

I am mindful of the time, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will conclude. I do not think that there is a huge difference in views across the House, but it all comes down to competent, determined delivery of policy across Government. We are determined, across all Government Departments, to do all we can to reform and grow our economy. The provision of more and better quality apprenticeship is a key part of that and will help us to ensure that more people can achieve their aspirations and dreams. It is for that reason that I commend this motion to the House. I am clear that there is only one thing to do this May and that is to vote Labour.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vince Cable]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right. Level 2 qualifications are valuable in themselves, as she rightly emphasises, but they are also part of a progression route. Many people who do a level 2 qualification take a break before going back and doing a level 3. I hope that we have now clarified that level 2 is a part of apprenticeships.

[Steve Rotheram]

With regard to proper apprenticeships, it depends on what a person’s qualification is on entry. With a lower qualification threshold, they would do a national vocational qualification level 2, on the way to doing an NVQ level 3. It is not either/or; it is part of an apprenticeship.

[Vince Cable]

That is very helpful. The hon. Gentleman clearly speaks from experience and knowledge, and we respect that.

The figures are very clear: we have seen a big increase in volume and a big increase in quality. That did not happen by accident. It is important to talk through the constraints on the public finances that I inherited, and on which the hon. Member for Streatham elaborated with regard to the problems that will face the next Government. When I came into office, I was told that the previous Government had planned to cut the Department’s budget by 25% had they returned to office. That was clear and explicit. Indeed, we have had to confront that in office. Let us be clear that it would have been no different had he been doing my job.

The Department’s budget is dominated by two items: higher education, including teaching and student support, and adult skills. There are other, smaller items such as industrial support and science. We were therefore faced, in office, with some very painful and difficult decisions. The advice I got from the Opposition, in a particularly shrill and angry way, was that we must give priority to university undergraduates—future graduates. We did the calculations and found that had we followed the advice from the Opposition, and had we introduced the policy that I think—it is not totally clear—they are now considering introducing on tuition fees, we would have had to cut the adult skills budget by about 40%. Within that, we would have had to cut apprenticeships by even more, because, being of higher quality, they are more expensive than other forms of training. Apprenticeships, which the hon. Gentleman described as growing steadily throughout the time of the Labour Government, as they did, would have been emasculated as a result of the public spending cuts that I think his party would have made had it been in government, and that I was being advised to make.

I then made a decision, which I think was one of my better ones, to listen to the advice, to reject it, and to do the exact opposite. We took a serious political hit on higher education, but we did the right thing in ensuring that universities were properly funded and that we got a fair repayment system. We also made the decision to invest more, not less, in apprenticeships. That is how we have got to where we are, with not only the volume but the quality. That is because we followed up getting the volume by taking short apprenticeships of below one year out of the system; by significantly supporting advanced and higher level apprenticeships; and, perhaps most importantly—the hon. Gentleman did not mention this at all—by introducing employer ownership through giving business a greater say in how these funds are allocated. In all those ways, we have improved quality.

Let me deal with some of the other critical comments in the hon. Gentleman’s speech and motion. First, he quoted the figure, as he did when he was on television with me the other day, regarding what he calls the lack of formal training—[Interruption.] Indeed, there was a survey that suggested that some apprentices—

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[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Like many hon. Members, in just 92 days I will have reached the end of my first term as an MP. In my mind, it is still inconceivable that I have made it from being an apprentice on a massive building site to being, well, an apprentice on a massive building site, and although my political apprenticeship is about to be completed, the Palace of Westminster is not a bad site to work on. When I walked through the gothic archway that leads to the Chamber for the first time, flanked on either side by the familiar green Benches that I had only ever seen on the telly, I thought that I would be the only brickie in Parliament. But no—not only is my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) a former bricklayer, but no less than the Deputy Speaker himself is a time-served, trowel-carrying member of the building fraternity.

The Prime Minister was challenged by young people on the programme “Stand Up Be Counted”, and he said that although the apprenticeship wage is not that high, the training and experience that someone gets should lead to a good job. However, he did not say what he is doing to address the problem of wage rates. My party is right to advocate equality between an apprenticeship and an undergraduate degree, but there must be greater focus on training people for specific sectors where there is real employment growth.

The Construction Industry Training Board construction skills forecast predicts that the construction industry will need more than 200,000 entrants over the life of this Parliament. That is in part to cope with political priorities such as house building and road improvements, but also to deal with an ageing population in the work force, with many workers reaching retirement age. That means that an average of 40,000 construction workers will need to be trained each and every year. To put that in context, in the last financial year just over 1,000 apprentices completed construction apprenticeships.

Construction was hit hard by the global financial crisis and the Government’s austerity measures, and thousands of workers lost their jobs or were replaced by cheaper migrant workers. We have seen the continued casualisation of the industry, and the latest practice of umbrella companies top-slicing workers’ wages. That is why I am proud of the campaign led by my union—the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians—to stop quick-buck merchants and unscrupulous employers damaging the reputation of the whole industry in a way that puts off many young people from considering construction apprenticeships as an attractive employment option.

The situation is stark and a number of factors require addressing immediately. Careers advice is patchy at best, and we must get away from the perception that construction is just for low achievers. The gender imbalance is still acute. Out of the 13,500 apprenticeship starts last year, only 250 were female, and for the best part of a decade construction has not been an industry that guarantees secure employment.

Liverpool city council has a great apprenticeship model, should others be looking to replicate its success. However, unless the Government are serious about filling the considerable skills shortages that exist in the construction sector, it will be extremely difficult to deliver those infrastructure priorities and we will need to import increasing numbers of skilled workers from abroad.

I firmly believe that the Government can change the circumstances of ordinary people for the better, and if I am re-elected in a few months’ time and come back here, the Labour Government that we will form will give hope to a new generation that is looking for high-quality skills, training and employment in our costed apprenticeship programme. I hope I am returned to see it.

National Minimum Wage

Steve Rotheram Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

Thank you, Sir Alan. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I begin by thanking Mr Speaker for granting this debate. It should really have taken place a fortnight ago, on Friday 28 November, the date for the Second Reading of my private Member’s Bill—the Low Pay Commission (National Minimum Wage) Bill. That is a Bill to make work pay: to strengthen the national minimum wage, to give greater powers to the Low Pay Commission and to tackle the scourge of low wages, which blights the lives of too many people across Britain today. Regrettably, we did not have an opportunity to debate my Bill. Two hon. Members, both of whom are known throughout the House as long-standing campaigners to undermine the minimum wage—I believe that one of them even voted against it in 1997—spoke for more than two hours to sabotage the earlier debate on a Bill to tackle revenge evictions, blocking my Bill as a result. Given that we were deprived of a debate that day and given that this issue means so much to so many across our country, I have called this debate to say now what I would have said then and to give the House the opportunity to debate the important matter of low pay.

Choosing the subject of my Bill was a difficult decision. I had no shortage of helpful suggestions, but ultimately it was the story of one woman that made up my mind. I wanted to make a difference to people such as Catherine. Catherine is a cleaner and housekeeper in my constituency. She juggles six different jobs, working in six different locations across Barnsley. She works more than 50 hours a week on the minimum wage. Like many people, Catherine struggles to make ends meet. Her pay packet does not stretch as far as it used to, especially as the real-terms value of the minimum wage has declined since 2010. When I asked her how that had affected her life, she said that she had had to cut down on what she described as “luxuries”. Soon I realised that she meant that she could not afford essentials such as clothes. “I just work to exist,” she said, “I can’t afford nice stuff. I just work to keep my head above water.”

Catherine does not have time to take notice of polls or political pundits, but what happens in our politics, what goes on in this place and the Governments we choose to serve us here will shape her life more than most. It is easy now to take it for granted that Catherine earns a national minimum wage at all. Before 1997, many workers like her were expected to work for as little as £1 or £2 an hour. In its first months of existence, the Low Pay Commission found appalling cases of factory employees earning only £1.22 an hour, care home workers taking home just £1.66 an hour and even a chip shop worker from Birmingham forced to make do with 80p an hour.

It took a Labour Government to end that scandal. Their efforts were led by Sir Ian McCartney, the former Minister of State at the Department of Trade and Industry, who piloted the Bill that became the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 through the House, and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett), the former Secretary of State. The national minimum wage was one of Labour’s greatest achievements, but its path to becoming law included a record sitting in the House of 26 and a half hours as Members, mainly from the Conservative party, sat through the night, opposing the Bill line by line, to stand in the way of working people getting a decent wage for a hard day’s work. Today, their fears have failed to materialise. They were on the wrong side of history then, and the scourge of low pay explains why the Government’s plan to balance the nation’s books is failing now. A generation on from the national minimum wage becoming law, the low pay challenge for our country has changed. The national minimum wage did help to root out exploitation and extreme examples of poverty pay, but today we have huge numbers of people across Britain who do a hard day’s work and are still living on the breadline.

Catherine, whose story I shared earlier, is just one of more than 5 million people across Britain who are stuck on low pay. The number is up from 3.4 million in 2009 and is at an all-time record. Women and young people are being hit hardest. One third of all working women and nearly two fifths of 16 to 30-year-old employees do not earn a decent wage. Nearly two thirds of children living in poverty now live in families with someone in work. If we look at the proportion of our work force that is low paid, we see that Britain is towards the bottom of the pile, coming 25th out of 30 OECD countries.

Moreover, the real-terms value of the minimum wage is losing ground. The Low Pay Commission has acknowledged that its relative value has dropped significantly since 2004, and job creation in the lowest-paid sectors has exploded at double the rate of the rest of the economy since 2010. That partly explains why the Government now spend more on tax credits and social security for families in work than they do for the unemployed. It is why the Government have been forced to spend an extra £900 million on tax credits to top up low wages, and it is part of the reason why Ministers have had to spend £1.4 billion more than planned on housing benefit for people who cannot afford a roof over their head.

John Maynard Keynes famously once said:

“When the facts change, I change my mind.”

My central argument today is that as the challenge has changed, our approach to tackling low pay needs to evolve with it. Many of our country’s leading business voices have already called for the minimum wage to increase faster than it has done in the recent past. They include Sir Ian Cheshire, chief executive of Kingfisher, and Steve Marshall, executive chairman of Balfour Beatty. Professor Sir George Bain, the first chair of the Low Pay Commission, has described the organisation as a “child of its time” and has called for an ambitious target to bring the minimum wage closer to average earnings. We need the Government to put that into action.

Labour’s plan to tackle low pay—a plan mirrored in my Bill—preserves everything that has helped to make the Low Pay Commission such a success. I am referring to decision making based on strong research; a balance between the need for wage growth and concerns about the impact on employment; and a partnership approach between the employers who create the jobs and the employees who work the shifts. Let me run through the key points.

First, we need to give a mandate to the Secretary of State to set a target for the national minimum wage to increase over a Parliament at a rate higher than that for median earnings. I did not include a specific target in the Bill. Different people will have their own views on that. We as the Opposition have already expressed our ambition for a minimum wage closer to 58% of median earnings. The important point is that the act of setting a target alone would deliver a more ambitious approach to tackling low pay and a greater focus on what progress we are making. A clear long-term target such as that would give firms certainty and time to adapt their business models to boost productivity and support higher wages. It would also bring us closer to other countries such as Australia and European economies such as Belgium and Germany, where all the evidence shows that it is possible to support a higher minimum wage without any negative impact on employment.

The Low Pay Commission would keep its leadership role in delivering on the target and would set out a plan for how it could be achieved; and flexibility could be retained in the system. We know that the success of the minimum wage has been built on an approach that works hand in hand with industry and takes into account the state of our economy, so in the event of significant economic shocks, the Low Pay Commission could be required to present compelling evidence to the Government and to Parliament, setting out why it is not possible to meet the target during the proposed time frame. The Low Pay Commission could then make further recommendations to get progress towards the target back on track.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing this vital issue to the attention of the House. The rate of the national minimum wage is important, especially to those who receive it. Does he agree that it is a shocking indictment of the Government that unscrupulous employers who are paying less than the national minimum wage are getting away with it because such a small number have been prosecuted?

[Dan Jarvis]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and the figures bear out what he has said. I would be interested to hear what the Minister has to say on that point, but I agree that the tiny number of rogue employers who have been prosecuted for paying people less than the national minimum wage is a disgrace. That reflects poorly on the Government’s record.

I believe that the proposal I have just outlined regarding the Low Pay Commission is straightforward and reasonable, and that it is the right thing to do. I would be grateful if the Minister would respond directly to that point.

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[Jo Swinson]

The hon. Gentleman addresses both the youth rates and the apprentice rate, and the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) also raised that issue. I share those concerns, particularly on the apprentice rate. We want to encourage people to take up apprenticeships, and under this Government there has been a great increase in their number. Two million apprenticeships have started since the general election, but both hon. Members are right that £2.73 an hour is a very low rate. It is worth bearing in mind that the average pay for apprentices is upwards of £6 an hour and that most employers of apprentices pay well above the minimum rate, but there is also a concerning level of non-compliance with the apprentice minimum wage. Of course, there never used to be an apprentice minimum wage at all—it was introduced by the Government because apprentices were previously not covered by the national minimum wage. Although that was a step forward, there is still a real issue here.

Earlier this year, my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary stated that he is minded to seek a significant increase in the apprentice rate. He suggested that it might be combined with the £3.79 rate for 16 and 17-year-olds, which would provide a boost of more than £1 an hour. We have asked the Low Pay Commission to consider that carefully, and we look forward to hearing its views on the proposal as part of its overall report in February 2015.

The hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton mentioned bogus apprenticeships, under which people were taken on but not given the training that should go alongside an apprenticeship. The reason for the lower apprentice rate is because employers rightly have to support the development and upskilling of apprentices with training and qualifications. Where that is not happening, national minimum wage law is being broken, even if the apprentice rate is being paid. I encourage anyone who is concerned that they are not being paid the right amount to contact the pay and work rights helpline on 0800 917 2368. I will never tire of saying that number because I want people who are not properly paid the national minimum wage to get in touch and make a complaint. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs will investigate every complaint, and we have increased the resources available for enforcement. I am determined that people who do not properly pay the national minimum wage are brought to book and that those who have been underpaid are given the arrears that they are due. That would discourage employers who might be tempted not to pay properly.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) mentioned prosecutions. I understand his point, but prosecution is not the only way to address non-compliance. The number of prosecutions is not high. We are talking single figures every year since 2007, and there are sometimes no prosecutions in a given year, but the number of prosecutions was in single figures when his party was in government, too. The reason for that is pretty compelling: the most important thing is that people who have not been paid the national minimum wage get the arrears that they are due. If they go through the civil process through which HMRC takes employers, people will get their arrears paid and a penalty will be paid to HMRC—there is effectively a fine for the employer—which delivers a better result for the employee. Of course, prosecution is appropriate in the most extreme circumstances where employers have been wilfully and continually not paying the national minimum wage, but given the costs of bringing a prosecution and the interest of ensuring that people get their arrears, the civil process is the right way to go about it.

[Steve Rotheram]

The Minister is absolutely right about trying to get the best deal for the person who has been short-changed. There is no argument about that, but the message needs to be sent out to unscrupulous employers who continue to underpay that they will be prosecuted. That is the only way that we will stop them, not by good will, nor by appealing to their better nature, but by saying, “If you continue to underpay your employees, we will prosecute.”

[Jo Swinson]

We may have a difference of opinion. I agree that there should be very tough consequences for employers who do not get it right. We have ensured that the fines are in place, increased the maximum penalty to £20,000 per worker—that is currently going through Parliament in the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill—and introduced a naming and shaming scheme that is far more comprehensive than the previous scheme, the criteria of which were almost impossible to meet. We now regularly list employers that have not properly paid the national minimum wage, and we name them publicly so that in their local area people can be aware that those companies are not paying the national minimum wage, which affects the reputation of those businesses.

In response to the hon. Gentleman’s plea for more prosecutions, I would say that, in the cases that are named, in most circumstances the underpayment is not necessarily a malicious act by the employer. That does not make it right, and it does not make it okay, but very often someone has put the wrong digits into a computer program so somebody is not been paid the right pence per hour. There may be mistakes on the accommodation offset allowances or mistakes on the apprentice rate. Of course, if we increased the apprentice rate to the lower age rate, we would simplify the system and make it easier for employers to get it right. That is not an excuse, as employers have a responsibility to get it right, but I would not necessarily contend that those circumstances should also result in a criminal prosecution. Our tough penalty regime, increased fines and the reputational consequence of naming and shaming are the right way to address underpayment. We are increasing the resources available to HMRC to address this issue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Rotheram Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I assure my hon. Friend that we will continue the massive investment in school places right across the country, including in his area where there has been huge investment under this coalition Government—far greater than under the last Labour Government.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

6. What progress she has made on introducing the technical baccalaureate.

[The Minister for Skills and Equalities (Nick Boles)]

Schools and colleges started teaching the 230 new tech-level qualifications that will count towards the “tech bac” from September this year.

[Steve Rotheram]

On 21 July the Minister told the House:

“I am very hopeful that about 25% of young people will take up the opportunity of a “tech bac”.—[Official Report, 21 July 2014; Vol. 584, c. 1141.]

Will he update the House on enrolment figures so far, and say how far they go towards meeting the Government’s target of 320,000 young people?

[Nick Boles]

It is probably better to explain how the “tech bac” works. It is, like the EBacc, a group of qualifications, and we will know how many students have achieved the “tech bac”, or are studying for it, only when the 16-to-19 tables for 2016 are produced in early 2017. There will not be any figures under any Government for the number enrolled in “tech bac”—students do not enrol in it; they are measured after the event on whether they have achieved the qualifications that count towards the “tech bac”.

[Steve Rotheram]

What about the take-up?”

[Nick Boles]

The hon. Gentleman keeps asking questions from a sedentary position, but he has betrayed the fact that he completely misunderstands the policy. That is curious since the Labour party has spent a long time claiming that it was its policy in the first place. “Tech bac” is a group of qualifications. Students do not enrol in it; they discover whether they have achieved it at the end of the period.

National Minimum Wage

Steve Rotheram Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

I could not have put it better myself.

The rise in the national minimum wage comes against a background of record job creation, the biggest fall in unemployment since records began—before I or my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) were born—falling youth unemployment, falling long-term unemployment, unemployment of fewer than 2 million and a claimant count of fewer than 1 million; and that is all part of our plan to build from the ruins of the past an economy that works for everybody.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Will the Minister confirm whether, before the worldwide financial crash, he was asking for more or less regulation? Certainly his Chancellor was asking for a lighter-touch regulatory framework, not what, with hindsight, the Minister now claims.

[Matthew Hancock]

In 1998, when the Labour Government removed the requirement to regulate levels of leverage in the City, the Conservative party complained, and it was that removal which led to the crash being bigger in the UK. It was the result of poor regulation of the financial sector. Labour did not fix the roof when the sun was shining, but instead spent money they did not have even before the crash.

Instead of forgetting about the deficit, as Labour does, and ignoring Britain’s economic challenges, we know that a strong recovery underpins a strong society and that we cannot have a strong minimum wage without a strong economy.

Children with Autism (Education)

Steve Rotheram Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Birtwistle]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes a valid point. In my constituency, there are many people, such as church groups and voluntary groups, who do just that. However, we need the local education authorities to recognise the problems. Children with autism, like children without autism, should have an equal right to access good-quality full-time education.

Let me look directly at my own constituency, which is in Lancashire. Lancashire county council, in my view and in that of my constituents, has failed to ensure that appropriate education and support are provided for numerous autistic children. I will give three examples later in my speech. To put it simply, its oversight is causing too many children with autism to miss out on much of their valuable education. Despite local authorities holding the legal responsibility to ensure that all children with special educational needs in their area are identified and supported, it is evident that that is not being fulfilled. In Lancashire no one is accepting responsibility or taking the time to understand the needs of these children. That is happening across the country, so many of the 70,000 school-age children in England are not accessing the education they need to learn, achieve and, more importantly, thrive.

I draw the attention of the House to three of my constituents. One of the cases is especially moving. When I first heard about it, I was distressed, to say the least. It concerns a young lady named Chloe, who is 17 years old. She is now on suicide watch as a result of repeatedly being failed by Lancashire county council since the age of 11. The detrimental impact of Chloe’s lack of education and development as an individual is clear. She was threatened with exclusion from her mainstream school placements up to the age of 13, when she was finally diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism.

Children with statements of special educational needs are eight times more likely to be excluded than their peers, and children with no statement are 11 times more likely to be excluded. When Chloe was 14 her family was advised that she would receive a statutory assessment of her educational needs. Lancashire county council failed to undertake this, despite it being recommended by professionals and her parents’ insistence. It took years—not weeks or months, but years—for Lancashire county council educational psychologist Yakub Padia to assess Chloe. After a 20-minute consultation he disagreed with the findings of experienced psychologists who had spent prolonged periods with her, and it was recommended that she be placed in a pupil referral unit, rather than the specialist school recommended by the professionals. Lancashire county council disregarded this and even the advice of the head of the pupil referral unit, who thought it was not suitable for Chloe.

As a teenager Chloe was passed from pillar to post, with a total lack of accurate assessment. Lancashire county council let her down. Chloe felt worthless and rejected. That led her to self-harm and to suffer from depression. She has ended up in a specialist psychiatric unit on suicide watch. Her brothers have had to watch her attempt to hang herself in the family home. Chloe is now emotionally and mentally damaged. Without question, missing out on education leads to poor life outcomes for the child involved and for their families. Chloe’s mum is one of the 50% of parents of disabled children who say they have had to take up part-time work as a result of their child’s exclusion. Chloe is a very sad case.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle) on bringing this important issue to the attention of the House. I was hoping he would go on to paint a picture of how we as parliamentarians can help to destigmatise the condition and break down some of the barriers that people face in their everyday lives in respect of employment and perhaps even diagnosis of their condition. All we have heard up till now is an attack on Lancashire county council. I hope the hon. Gentleman will focus on what we as parliamentarians can do to assist people who have the condition.

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[Gordon Birtwistle]

I agree with everything that has been said. Why cannot these diagnoses be done quickly? Why cannot we solve these problems?

Jack received a statement of educational needs at the age of three due to his prematurity and his visual impairment, so his parents should have received adequate support and his needs should have been met as he wanted. Conversely, he has been subjected to humiliation in the school environment, with unfair treatment by a teaching assistant and his recent forced removal from the mainstream school that he had attended for four years. Jack was officially diagnosed with autism in 2012 when he was seven, but he had a problem when he was three. The school declared that it could no longer cope with Jack, who struggled with the transition from infants to juniors.

After several meetings with the county council education authority, Jack’s parents worked well with the school—a state school—to create a suitable environment with the input of a teaching assistant providing additional facilities. Jack thrived and his marks improved. However, the county council has taken away the special needs teacher and now he cannot manage at school. His parents have no trust in placing him in this environment and are currently appealing against his placement. It is wrong that the county council, instead of encouraging Jack’s development, has not considered all his needs. That is what it is all about—considering the child’s needs.

It is more than alarming that the parents had to face more battles to get the county council to amend Jack’s statement to include autism as part of its diagnosis. Why should the parents have to argue with the experts to get a proper diagnosis of the child’s illness? Why on earth do they have to do this? Is it not delivered automatically? Are we not paying the experts within the education authority to deliver this service to my constituents—the parents and the child? That is the big problem.

[Steve Rotheram]

I want to go back a step or two and express my gratitude to the hon. Gentleman for raising this issue, but not necessarily for the manner in which he is doing so. He is, of course, absolutely right to illustrate the cases of his individual constituents, but an immediate member of my family who has autism went through a similar experience to the one he is describing when Liverpool had a Liberal Democrat council. I say that not because I want to make a party political point, but because this is widespread and happens all the time. We have to understand that this is a condition—it is not a disease—with a spectrum of different conditions within it. It is very complex. That is why early diagnosis and assessment followed by a support package based on the individual needs of the child is the most important thing we can do. I hope we will get to the point where we can work with the Government to see what we need to do better to enable people to get the best start possible in life.

[Gordon Birtwistle]

I am grateful for that intervention. My only aim is that we all work with the Government and education authorities to come to a conclusion on how to address early diagnosis and to deliver for these young people—who in the main have amazing talents—educational facilities that will take them on, help them succeed and be superb members of the community, and enable them to live normal lives. My argument is that we are not doing that, and the hon. Gentleman obviously agrees with me.

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[Steve Rotheram]

We must all agree, as parliamentarians, that the distressing picture that was painted of the cases of Chloe, Jack and Honey is worrying. We could all bring similar cases to the House. I hope that what we will achieve is to help the family members and carers of people on the autistic spectrum by highlighting programmes such as Autism Initiatives in Liverpool, which provides a signposting service so that family members can get support and access early intervention, assessment and diagnosis. That is essential because autism stays with people for their whole lives, not just when they are at school.

[Mark Hendrick]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. I will go on to speak about the work that Lancashire county council is doing in that area. I would be grateful to hear about his experiences in Liverpool if he makes a contribution later.

Lancashire county council also makes provision for short breaks for children with ASD. It has commissioned more than £182,000 of short breaks provision from local specialist autism services, to provide activities for children during evenings, weekends and school holidays, while also providing their parents and carers with breaks from caring. The most recent attainment data at the end of key stage 2 show that 73% of children with ASD made two levels of progress in English, compared with 94% of all pupils, and that 69% of children with ASD made two levels of progress in mathematics, compared with 93% of all pupils. Given those pupils’ conditions, that is a tremendous achievement. Of children who are statemented with ASD and took GCSEs in mainstream schools between 2011 and 2013, 75% gained five A to C grades, including English and maths, which is well above the national average of 60.8% for all children during the same period.

Lancashire schools have access to considerable expertise on autism provided by specialist advisory teachers and educational psychologists. That is supplemented by rapidly developing school-to-school support, where centres of expertise based at special schools provide an increasing range of guidance and support to their colleagues in primary and secondary schools.

For children and young people with more complex autism, Lancashire’s special schools have developed much greater expertise. All special schools for generic learning difficulties are funded to meet as wide a range of special educational needs as possible. They are all able to provide for pupils with autism, and several have chosen to specialise in autism by developing staff training programmes and allocating substantially increased resources to that specialism. In several cases that has been recognised by Ofsted inspectors.

The hon. Member for Burnley raised issues on behalf of three of his constituents where parents are seeking what is effectively private school education for their children who have autism. The council has identified provision in at least two of our maintained special schools, which are judged by Ofsted to be good and outstanding. In those cases, parents have appealed to the first and upper tier tribunals, which have found in favour of the council—he made that point—and directed that the children go to the maintained special schools. The outcome of a further appeal to the upper tribunal by one of the families is awaited.

All Lancashire’s special schools for learning difficulties —23 in total—are rated as good or better by Ofsted. I fully appreciate that parents, particularly of the three children involved, want to fight for what they see as the best opportunities and outcomes for their children—the hon. Gentleman would want that, as would I. However, the recent behaviour, language and actions of those involved—by that I am referring to the hon. Gentleman—has caused considerable anxiety for many families, while also conveying a partial view of the provision made by the council. For schools that are doing a great deal of good work in this area, the constant bombardment by him in the Lancashire press about those schools and the county council is causing considerable anxiety, not only among staff at those special schools, but among many of the parents of children who go to them. It is one thing to represent parents who are concerned about their children—he is entitled to do that—but that also has an effect, rightly or wrongly, on children and parents in other schools where the council is providing good teaching and provision.

On a number of occasions the hon. Gentleman also suggested that Lancashire county council officers have not been completely truthful about their approach to considering parents’ expressions of preference for special educational placements in independent non-maintained special schools, but the council refutes those allegations.

On the specific examples outlined by the hon. Gentleman, the case of Chloe Wold is a tragedy. Nobody looking at the record could say anything other than that. I concur completely with him about her situation. She has been in this condition for some time and is on suicide watch, and I sympathise totally with the parents in this case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Rotheram]

The 2014 Act does not kick in until later this year. Given that this debate has been widely welcomed outside this place, will the Minister commit to a future debate, so that we not only keep this in the public consciousness, but see the effects of the legislation once it starts to have an impact?

[Mr Timpson]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for remaining stoic in his efforts to bring this issue to the fore, both in Parliament and in his constituency. It is important that we do not decide that the job has been done, and show no more interest in the consequences, just because an Act of Parliament has been passed. Things work the other way round: in some ways the easy bit has been achieved and the hardest bit is the implementation. That is why we are ensuring, in the run-up to September and beyond, that we have a clear understanding of how it feels for parents and families as the changes start to kick in. I would welcome any opportunity, be it Adjournment debates or other means by which hon. Members can bring these issues to the House, to continue taking a constructive approach to the legislation and the subsequent attempts to put it into place on the ground. We must be mindful that we are asking for a culture change to happen and take hold in many parts of our communities and our countries. The more Members of Parliament and other leaders in our communities show a direct, vocal and public interest in the life chances of children and young people with SEN, the greater prospect we have of getting the culture change we all want to see.