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25 Mar 2009 : Column 98WH—continued
Building Colleges for the Future
2.30 pm
Dr. John Pugh (Southport) (LD) rose—
Dr. Pugh: For some reason this debate seems to be of great interest to many people.
My object in this debate is to be constructive. If the object were to slate the Government, castigate the Learning and Skills Council or embarrass the Minister, it would, frankly, be like shooting fish in a barrel, because the facts are extraordinarily stark: at 79 colleges, fully costed projects with planning permission are now stuck; only eight have been given the go-ahead, and 71 are in limbo; a further 65 colleges await the results of deliberations; £5.7 billion has been promised but only £2.3 billion is actually available; and there are enormous costs because of delays. According to the BBC, the situation is costing colleges across the country £151 million, and there are some classic examples of what are, frankly, awful problems.
The hon. Member for Barnsley, East and Mexborough (Jeff Ennis) has drawn to my attention to the situation at Barnsley college, where builders have just left the site. The college is almost in a state of insolvency, and is severely exposed financially and in every other way. It is a visible example of a failing system.
Mrs. Joan Humble (Blackpool, North and Fleetwood) (Lab): The hon. Gentleman is well aware of Blackpool’s regeneration plans, so he will also be aware that when Blackpool did not get the resort casino that it wanted, it looked to regeneration in other ways. The relocation of the college site is key to Blackpool’s regeneration. Does he agree that plans such as that one, which are strategically important, should be at the top of the LSC’s priorities?
Dr. Pugh: I do agree, and I cite the example of my own college, where £2 million has already been invested by the college with a full application in principle. It is in a terrible situation because it does not know whether to go ahead with what it planned to do, or to restore existing and wholly inadequate buildings.
However, the object of the debate is not to lay blame. That is far too easy a task. The object is to analyse where we are now and to hear how the problems will be solved, particularly the latter. I hope that the Minister will use all his time to do the latter. We do not want to hear him read out the achievements of the scheme, thereby taking precious minutes away from explaining what will be done to get us out of this pickle. Therefore, to save him a bit of time, I shall read out some of the achievements of the scheme.
A lot of money—£2.9 billion—has been promised. According to the press release from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, a work force of approximately 10,000 has been employed on college sites in 2008 and 2009, and one in 20 of the work force are apprentices. Much good and worthy stuff has been achieved.
I am sad to say that with all the talk about apprentices—the press release came out on a propitious day—in the industrial press, when the 10,000 construction jobs were
mentioned, there was an announcement that contractors on the projects were ordered to cut prices or lose jobs.
So that is where we are. We are in a desperate situation, and we need to concentrate on solutions. A review is not a solution. The Labour party seems to have a succession of grandees lined up for occasions such as this, rather like cabs at a taxi rank. They are scheduled to appear when things go wrong and to conduct a review, but that would be wholly inappropriate in this case, such is the seriousness of the situation. It would be like an AA man going to someone who had broken down on the motorway and giving them a book on the history of motoring. That is not what is required.
Mr. David Laws (Yeovil) (LD): I congratulate my hon. Friend on picking such an important topic for this debate. Before he moves on, as he rightly will, to the solutions to the problem, will he acknowledge that the figures so far published by the LSC and the Government actually understate the scale of the crisis? They exclude colleges such as Yeovil college in my constituency, which has been liaising with the LSC about a scheme for a long time. It has not yet reached the stage where it is captured in the Government’s statistics, but a great deal of public money has been invested in the consultants who are necessary before application in principle and in detail can be submitted.
Dr. Pugh: I agree with and endorse what my hon. Friend says. However, he said that I would move on to the solutions. Oh that we had solutions. They are not at all apparent or obvious at present.
What we do not want is Ministers expressing sympathy or joining in to dish out blame. That has happened so far in public and private discussions on the matter. After all, the LSC is a Government quango. It does not spend billions without the Government’s knowing, monitoring or checking what is going on—at least one hopes not. The board members are not sent off like little lads with pocket money to spend a few billion here and there. Someone—possibly not the Minister, who may not be to blame—watched this mess evolve. They clocked the agreements in principle, they watched the progress through the various stages of the various schemes, they saw what sums were being committed—that is apparent from the freedom of information requests made by Conservative Front-Bench Members—they knew all along what was in the kitty, they knew what was promised, and, presumably, they had some numeracy skills. The Minister cannot simply say, “Me, too. I, too, deplore the situation”, because if he does not have something to answer for, his Department does.
I acknowledge that some enthusiastic salesmen have been involved in the scheme. That was certainly true across the piece and in many parts of the country. There is evidence that people have talked up schemes. They said to schools, “You don’t want to do this, you want to do more. You don’t want simply to restore that building. You want to knock it down and build a completely new one.” They raised hopes and ambitions, and encouraged demolition and rebuild rather than restoration and repair, rather like sub-prime mortgage brokers talking someone into borrowing more than they actually need.
Julia Goldsworthy (Falmouth and Camborne) (LD):
Does my hon. Friend agree that the experiences of my local college, Cornwall college, are probably matched in other areas of the country? It has several sites but only a
relatively small number were desperately in need of improvement. However, it was encouraged by the LSC fully to review its entire site. It was not asked to prioritise. It was asked what its blue-skies thinking would be, and the result was a much more expensive bid.
Dr. Pugh: I agree with my hon. Friend. There has been a great deal of blue-skies thinking. In my constituency, King George V college was persuaded to do more than it initially thought that it wanted to do—in fact, more than some of the staff and pupils wanted it to do. It was told that money was available and that it would be a better deal and a better long-term project.
Whatever happened, there is an audit trail that leads directly to the Department as well as to the LSC.
Paul Holmes (Chesterfield) (LD): The Government must have seen this coming. They must have seen the problems developing, because exactly the same experience that we just heard of in Cornwall happened in Chesterfield. In autumn 2007, the college applied in principle for improvement and a £37 million partial rebuild. In 2008, the local area director from the LSC said to the principal, “You are not being ambitious enough. You will fall behind West Nottinghamshire college, which is going for a complete rebuild”—although the complete rebuild at West Nottinghamshire, which was due to start on Monday, has been stopped. The LSC encouraged Chesterfield college to go for a £107 million complete rebuild. It now has no idea whether anything at all will happen, and West Nottinghamshire college has already spent £7.5 million on building work that was due to start on Monday, but which has not started at all.
Dr. Pugh: That situation is entirely replicated at KGV college in my constituency. It thought that work would start in February, but now it does not know whether it will start at all.
The Department cannot simply blame or dump on the LSC. We do not need to be told, as we were the other day in oral questions, that this incompetent quango—the LSC—will soon be replaced by a less obviously incompetent quango, the one to come. I genuinely would like to know who is actually on the LSC. Members can replicate this process for themselves: if they go to the LSC website to try to find out who, apart from the chief executive, belongs to it—the list of members and so on—they will find it extraordinarily difficult to drill into the website to get any names. I have a horrible suspicion that some of the same people may well appear on the successor body that is still to come.
Colleges do not need this. They do not need the Department to walk away from the problem, and they do not need a review as such. They need concrete and definite answers. They need to know whether the builders are ready, and when they can start. If not now, when? If that is uncertain, when will they know? It is a fair question. If a project has been agreed but is now deemed unaffordable, because some schemes were the result of blue-skies thinking and are probably not affordable, should the colleges resubmit them tailored to their needs? If so, what are the headline figures to which they will need to work, and what is the time scale? The time scale is very important. If a project has been agreed simply in principle, what chance does it have of being done? If completion is in doubt, should the college
consider re-design or re-submission? None of those questions is answered in any shape or form for the colleges.
If an appreciable expense has been incurred—the figure of £150 million across the country has been put forward—and the project has been aborted, are any costs recoverable, likely to be reimbursed by the Department or legally pursuable through the courts? Colleges need real-time answers to real-time questions, and they need them quickly; they do not need reviews.
Anne Milton (Guildford) (Con): Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the clock is ticking for many colleges? Guildford college in my constituency has spent millions on the planning process, has planning permission and widespread local support and offers a wide range of vocational courses. However, its planning permission will expire in three years’ time, so we do not need a review; we need quick answers for the colleges that have invested such large sums of money.
Dr. Pugh: We can be legitimately sceptical about the amount of building work that has taken place, particularly if we read the Government’s press release, which uses “estimated” all the time. Members will know that many places are on the cusp of building, and in Barnsley building has started and been stopped.
Mr. Andrew Smith (Oxford, East) (Lab): I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on calling this very important debate. May I add Oxford and Cherwell Valley college and Ruskin college in my constituency to the list of those that want positive news as quickly as possible? To do the constructive things that he talked about—when he eventually got round to his constructive points—will it not be necessary to raise the overall ceiling on capital allocation? The Conservatives are clearly not going to support that, but it would be entirely consistent with the contra-cyclical measures that are needed to increase public expenditure and combat the recession. It would be especially valuable, given the training and improvement in skills that those colleges provide, and the history of under-investment in what has been for far too long the Cinderella area of education.
Dr. Pugh: The right hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, the intellectual coherence of which is in no doubt whatever.
I want to make the basic point, however, that, on building sites throughout the land, one might wait for cement, for subcontractors or for the weather to improve, but only in modern Britain does one need to wait for Sir Andrew Foster to complete his review before one goes any further. If we do wait a year or so, the situation will not be uncomplicated, because some plans will be subsumed under Building Schools for the Future, and the financial arrangements may be different. They may be private finance initiative arrangements, rather than the current capital approval arrangements, and another tale is attached to that.
I have had a foretaste of the process, because a few years ago a similar thing happened with another quango, the North West Development Agency, which had boldly gone down the route of agreeing things in principle, getting other people to produce matched funding and handing out schemes with largesse. Then, when somebody
totted up how much money was in the kitty, the result was similar to that with the LSC. The agency went into a bunker, did not answer queries and simply did not know what had happened. It was a dreadful funk that took some time to sort out, and I genuinely struggle to believe that democratically elected bodies, transparent as they are, could do worse. The Minister is democratically elected, so perhaps he can tell us.
Mr. Joe Benton (in the Chair): Order. Before I call the next speaker, I must note that quite a number of right hon. and hon. Members wish to speak. I have no control over time but will do my very best, so I propose to commence the winding-up speeches at half-past 3. I ask Members to be as brief as possible.
2.44 pm
Keith Hill (Streatham) (Lab): Thank you, Mr. Benton. I promise to speak for seven or eight minutes.
I thank the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) for his initiative in securing this timely debate, which I approach from two angles: first, as a member of the Public Accounts Committee, which received a positive report from the National Audit Office on the Building Colleges for the Future programme—and, I have to say, an even more upbeat account of its prospects from civil servants at a hearing in mid-November, which made the moratorium on new schemes announced just a few weeks later all the more surprising; and secondly, and more importantly, as a local MP with two campuses of Lambeth college in my constituency and, now, a major question mark over the future of the proposed new technology centre in Brixton.
The National Audit Office is quite right to be positive about the Building Colleges for the Future programme. So far, it has been one of the great success stories of this Labour Government. In 1997, there was no capital budget at all for further education colleges. Between 1997-98 and 2006-07, more than £2 billion was invested in modernising further education facilities, and a further £2.3 billion will be invested in capital projects in the sector in the current spending round up to 2010. In other words, by the end of the period, almost 700 projects in 330 colleges will have been funded by the programme. That is a remarkable achievement.
In Lambeth in my constituency, we have also been beneficiaries, with the excellent Clapham sixth-form centre, costing £21 million, on target and due for completion in May. However, the second phase of the college’s property strategy was the state-of-the-art technology centre at the heart of Brixton. The new centre—a marvellous design, by the way—would have housed world-class construction, engineering, electronics, media and computer-aided design facilities, and would have replaced the current provision that is housed in poor premises in Vauxhall and cannot cope with the demand for the employment skills that the college offers. The centre has been designed to meet a wide range of needs in the Government’s 14-to-19 and adult skills strategies.
Lambeth college has developed the centre in consultation with the local authority, the relevant sector skills councils, and major construction and engineering employers. It
would have offered a large vocational skills training centre at the heart of Lambeth, in curriculum areas that are crucial to the regeneration of the local and regional economy; it would have directly addressed Lambeth’s disproportionate number of residents with no qualifications and its large number of those who are not in education, employment or training; it would have enabled stronger partnerships to develop with local secondary schools to increase delivery of engineering diplomas; and it would have encouraged growth in non-LSC-funded student numbers, because it would have provided a modern, high-quality and centrally located facility, attractive to employers, sector skills councils, higher education institutions and fee-paying students. That in turn would have helped the college’s bottom line and enabled it to focus even more resources on the front line.
As a result of January’s announcement of the LSC capital review, it appears that that wonderful and transformational opportunity at the centre of one of London’s poorest boroughs is now at risk. All design work on the new centre has been suspended and the professional team working on the project will have to be disbanded. Without the new centre, training in those subjects will be delivered at the Vauxhall and Brixton Hill sites, which are not fit for purpose; they are in poor condition and in urgent need of modernisation. So, in any circumstances, money will have to be spent sooner or later, and one asks, where is the economy in that?
Nick Harvey (North Devon) (LD): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?
Keith Hill: I shall, but I will not give way very often, because I am conscious that a large number of colleagues wish to speak, so I intend to be as brief as possible.
Nick Harvey: The construction work itself could be part of the stimulus to the economy at a time of recession, and, on the country’s ability to repay the bill, surely the very investment that the right hon. Gentleman describes in his area would be one of the best ways of doing that. Pound for pound, it would be far more effective than investment in the university sector. In my case, locally, North Devon college has spent more than £6 million and had hoped to get £75 million from the LSC, which was to be part of a wider package—the £200 million redevelopment of Barnstaple. Without that, I fear for the economy now and for our ability to pay back all the money and sort things out in the long run.
Keith Hill: The hon. Gentleman makes an eloquent case and, although I do not wish to engage in invidious comparisons between educational sectors, echoes the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith). I am delighted to observe—as I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister will in due course—that substantial sums have been brought forward in the further education college building programme to contribute towards combating our current economic difficulties and to generate exactly those apprenticeships and jobs of which the hon. Member for North Devon (Nick Harvey) spoke. I am grateful for his intervention.
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