Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Education
Liam Dominic Byrne (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The same case was made earlier, with some force, by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) There has been an improvement in the youth unemployment figures, but they are still too high. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State should listen, because it is in towns such as her constituency of Loughborough that employers are "sponsoring in". This country imported 300,000 people over the course of the last Parliament because firms were able to prove that there was a skills shortage here, and I am afraid that that gap, and that pull, will only increase unless the Secretary of State weaves her magic with her right hon. Friend the Chancellor in three weeks’ time. Where initiatives such as the northern powerhouse are creating the opportunities for which we pray, those initiatives will come to mean nothing to families unless we give local people the skills that will enable them to do those new jobs Last week, in Westminster Hall, the Minister reflected thoughtfully—as he often does—on his ambition to agree strategic principles for the long term to underpin reform of the technical education system. Our motion this afternoon, which has been welcomed by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, gives him a chance to seize that opportunity with both hands, and I hope that he will take up the offer to agree on principles that could reform the system for a generation to come. There are points of consensus, a couple of which were identified by the hon. Member for Watford in what was a very thoughtful speech Over the last year, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) and I have set a number of principles, which I offer the Minister this afternoon. First, there must be a broad and balanced curriculum in our schools. That will be harder to deliver at a time when school budgets are being cut by 10%, and at a time when there is ambiguity and confusion over whether every pupil in every school is required to take the English baccalaureate. Secondly, we need to rebuild the careers service in this country. Modern economies need strong careers services in schools. There is an obvious place to look for the money: £50 million could be taken from the widening participation fund Thirdly, there must be huge support from the Government for the city apprenticeship agencies that are being established by Labour councils such as those in Leeds and my home city of Birmingham. They are important, because they help small and medium-sized enterprises by finding young people who want to take up apprenticeships. SMEs are creating most of the jobs in our economy today Fourthly, there must be more specialisation and quality in further education, which will require a sensible funding settlement. That is the only way in which we can set good examples such as Prospects College of Advanced Technology, or PROCAT, which was mentioned earlier. Fifthly, we must allow more apprentices to study skills to degree level. We cannot simply pass a law to deliver parity of esteem between apprenticeships and degrees. We must create a system that will allow more than 14,000 apprentices a year to proceed to higher-level skills. When we live in a country where those who are retiring are more literate than those who are coming into the labour market, we face a very serious challenge, and, this afternoon, no one described that challenge better than my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North. The challenge of technical education has long frustrated us in this country. It was back in 1944 that Lord Percy said, in a report that he delivered to the Government, that "the position of Great Britain is being endangered by a failure to secure the fullest possible application of science to industry… and…this failure is partly due to deficiencies in education." We do not want that conclusion to be delivered again in 50 years’ time I hope that the Minister will take it on himself today to deliver a level of consensus, agreement and support for the motion. I hope that generations to come will look back on days like today and say, "That was the moment when partisan differences were put aside, and the parties decided to come together to rise to the challenge of the future." I commend the motion to the House.