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Mr. Damian Green (Ashford): I am grateful to the Secretary of State for advance sight of the White Paper—and, indeed, for the usual steady stream of leaks and media appearances that allow us all to know what is in it long before the House can debate it.
The fact that this country's education system is relatively bad at developing non-academic skills is depressing, and it has been true for more than half a century. We never properly implemented the Butler Education Act 1944: we never built enough of the technical schools that Butler wanted; and generations have paid, and are still paying, the price. I fully recognise the sheer scale of the task facing the Government, but the question today is whether the White Paper even begins to meet that challenge. Sadly, it fails on several counts.
There are two main underlying failures. The first is that the policies in the White Paper are nothing like ambitious enough to deal with the problem—not in respect of the money spent, but in terms of recognition of the need for serious radical reform in this area of policy. The second is that the solution for which the Government have reached is predictably centralised, complicated and bureaucratic. Reflecting on the plethora of national, regional, local and cross-cutting structures that the Government are setting up, it is clear that everyone will spend more time liaising than training. By the time all the committee meetings are finished, there will not be enough energy left to produce the computer engineers, builders and plumbers that we need. I hope that the colleges that will deliver much of the training can cope, especially when page 96 of the document shows that they will be under ever-closer Government control.
Let me first address the document's poverty of vision. The £30 grant for an adult on a full-time course might help at the margin, and might encourage some people to go on a course. However, for Ministers to pretend that tens of thousands of people will find their chances in life transformed is a fantasy. How many more people does the Secretary of State believe will go into full-time education or training as a result of this measure?
Whatever happened to the replacement for individual learning accounts? As recently as 15 April this year, the Secretary of State told Computer Weekly that the creation of "ILA part two", as he put it, was "a high priority". He was right. I realise that ILAs were an expensive embarrassment for the Department, and that the Secretary of State has said that it could not afford to make the same mistake again, but giving up altogether on the idea of giving people some control over their own training needs is a hopeless retreat. Can he tell us when he decided to drop that commitment and why?
Most important of all in respect of what should be in the document but is not, is why there is so little about what will happen in schools to promote skills. Giving people a helping hand if they have fallen through the net is admirable and necessary, but it would help them even more if the net were designed in such a way that they did not fall through it in the first place. It is bizarre that the Government have produced a document on a skills strategy while waiting for a report on the school exam system, which will presumably give them some guidance about vocational qualifications and how we should be teaching skills in schools. Does the Secretary of State agree that one of the key advantages of the system used in most other European countries is the early availability of technical and vocational education, and can he tell the House why this document fails to address it?
Carolyn Hayman, the chief executive of the Foyer Federation—an admirable body—said this morning:
- "In practice, those who fail to gain qualifications while at school are unlikely to fulfil their potential later in life."
There is also the problem that every solution in the document smacks of central planning and regionalisation. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the charmingly named "Unique Learner Number" on page 66 is, in fact, an identity card, and can he tell the House what level of compulsion he plans for the use of that card? How fast does he expect the regional skills alliances to be formed? Given his Department's record on the sector skills councils—three years on from the grand announcement that they would transform training, it appears that only two have been fully licensed—how will he ensure that such delays do not happen again? How does he propose to ensure that employers have the real say in what they require from training and trainees. Bodies that report to the Secretary of State seem to dominate the bodies that he will set up, even though industry spends £23 billion annually on training, or three times the budget of the Learning and Skills Council.
The country needs a well-trained and well-educated work force, so that we can offer a fair deal to everyone. Sadly, today we have learned that the Government have decided just to fiddle with the edges of the skills problem. We have had lots of warm words and some minor improvements, but no sense of the urgency of the problem or the depth of the changes needed. The country needed radical reform: instead, this is a timid, half-hearted disappointment that does not measure up to the importance of the task.
Mr. Clarke: The hon. Gentleman is wrong in every single one of his allegations. He suggested that our solution is centralised and bureaucratic, with committees and so on. In fact, the reverse is true. Through co-operation with my colleagues in the Government, we will create—for the first time—a system that will achieve an immediate one-stop shop for everybody concerned, to do what needs to be done. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that employers, and everybody else, have had to deal with a complicated and difficult system, but we will replace it with one that will work well.
The hon. Gentleman accuses us of a lack of ambition, but I do not accept that. Ambition is not about words, but about doing. The hon. Gentleman ridiculed the sector skills councils, but the two that already exist are making rapid and major progress and the others, which are being created according to the timetable set out in the White Paper, are making progress faster than they otherwise would have done. If the hon. Gentleman took the trouble to talk to employers—for example, Digby Jones at the CBI—about the issue, which I commend him to do, he would see that employers positively want to engage in the process. That is because we have put them centre stage, as we needed to do.
The hon. Gentleman is also wrong about the replacements for the ILAs. We have put together three specific replacements. The first is the entitlement to free learning up to level 2 for those who have not achieved it. The second is the inclusion of information and communication technology in the skills strategy, and the third is the ability to provide courses up to level 3 in those sectors and regions where that is necessary. That is a comprehensive programme that will put in place real opportunities for people to learn.
I accept, up to a point, the hon. Gentleman's remarks about schools for the 14–19 age group, but he will—or at least he should—have studied the detailed document on 14–19 provision that we produced earlier this year specifically to address the issues he raises. He is right to say that we must develop a much stronger relationship between work and school for pupils from the age of 14. Mike Tomlinson's inquiry will address that specific point, and several measures to deal with it are also alluded to in the White Paper.
The response from employers has been positive, because we are putting them centre stage so that we have education and training that meets their needs. That is as it should be. The issue for colleges is whether they can ensure—it will be tough for them—that the courses they put on meet the needs of employers in their locality. That is the challenge that we are setting, and our approach to it is far more radical than anything else that has been done in recent times to address those historic problems.
Mr. Phil Willis (Harrogate and Knaresborough): I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his statement and of the White Paper. I also thank the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education, who has been running the process, for the way in which we have been kept in touch during its lengthy development. We congratulate the Government on their attempt to do what no other Government have done in my working lifetime, and that is to deal with the chronic skills shortage in the work force. That is not a modern phenomenon, because the problem has existed since the post-war years.
We also wish to support the Secretary of State in his desire to have a demand-led strategy, but that demand should come not only from employers, but from individuals and, indeed, the state—because it also has demands that need to be met. We recognise the need for an inclusive approach. We welcome the fact that four Departments will work together, but which will take the lead? As we know from the problems with schools funding, the lack of a lead Department can cause an awful mess.
We give a cautious welcome to the skills alliance. The Secretary of State would probably agree that it has all the hallmarks of a highly corporatist structure, and as such is a throwback to the 1970s and the Manpower Services Commission. We must avoid that corporatism at all costs. I hope that the Secretary of State will give us an insight into how such a massive organisation can ever hope to be responsive to individuals and individual employers. The saving grace is the late inclusion of the Higher Education Funding Council. My party accepts that the skills strategy will remain incomplete unless the universities are involved and delivering high-level skills.
Will the Secretary of State assure the House that the proposal is not a back-door attempt to force some universities to become teaching-only institutions, designed to deliver level 4 skills? Will he assure the House that the foundation degree—which we support—will serve both as an end qualification and as a staging post to honours and postgraduate qualifications?
We welcome the universal entitlement to training at level 2, paid for by the state, but what has happened to the universal entitlement for 19 to 30-year-olds studying
at level 3? That was openly promised before. If there is to be a regional lottery for support for students at level 3, who will make the decisions—the planners, the employers, or students themselves?How will individual learners or employers make sense of the tangled web of quangos that will exist at regional level? They will include sector skills councils, RDAs, local learning and skills councils, Jobcentre Plus and business link, not to mention the emerging regional assemblies. Those assemblies will probably appear in the north-west, Yorkshire and Humber and the north-east. Which of those organisations will take the lead?
We welcome the adult learner grant as another positive step. Will the Secretary of State explain why a full-time level 4 student studying from home needs £3,000 by way of support, whereas a level 3 student is expected to manage on £1,500? That is an important question.
Will the Secretary of State look again at the support for modern apprenticeships? We welcome the fact that the bar has been raised from 25 to 28. That is positive, but why has it not been lifted altogether? If adults are to work until they are 70, is not there a need for an adult modern apprenticeship, to encourage people in their 30s and 40s to go down that route?
We have long championed credit accumulation as the way to approach qualifications in education and skills. We warmly welcome the unit-based system. We accept the need to learn the lessons from individual learning accounts, but when does the Secretary of State expect such a system to be in operation? Will he give further education colleges immediate authorisation to deliver bite-sized units to employers? Will he enable them to draw down the necessary resources from the learning and skills councils? That is what colleges need to do, and what employers want.
Will the Secretary of State explain whether colleges are now to have what are, in effect, top-up fees? Unless they collect the resources from employers for the skills training that they deliver, they will not be able to meet their income targets and will therefore go under.
We warmly welcome what the Secretary of State has produced today. We are prepared to be supportive, but I suspect that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is writing the manifesto as we speak, will deliver the big ideas for the next general election.
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