PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Colleges Week - 29 February 2024 (Commons/Westminster Hall)

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Colleges Week 2024.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Robert, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate during Colleges Week, which runs from Monday until tomorrow. I should also point out that I chair the all-party parliamentary group for further education and lifelong learning, the secretariat for which is provided by the Association of Colleges, to which I am grateful, among others, for the briefings and support they have provided ahead of the debate.

This debate essentially falls into three parts: first, celebrating the great work that colleges do all around the country; secondly, highlighting where Government policy and support are working; and thirdly, pointing out the areas where more work and attention are required so that colleges can realise their full potential for the benefit of the people and the communities they serve.

It is important, first, to celebrate the great work that colleges are doing. All around the UK, they are an essential part of our education system. They are firmly embedded in their local communities, where they are fully cognisant of the opportunities and challenges and the strengths and weaknesses of their local economies. They enable people of all ages and backgrounds to realise their full potential. They are key players in boosting local regeneration and levelling up and in eliminating the gaps in skills and productivity, which are in danger of ever widening. They also play a vital role in preparing people for the jobs of tomorrow, which, all of a sudden, are with us today in areas such as digital, artificial intelligence and the low-carbon fields.

Colleges touch all our lives. English colleges educate 1.6 million students every year and employ approximately 103,000 full-time equivalent staff. Some 925,000 adults study or train in colleges, and 608,000 16 to 18-year-olds study in colleges. The average college trains 950 apprentices, and 100,000 people study higher education in a college. Twenty-three per cent of 16 to 18-year-olds and 27% of adult students are from minority ethnic backgrounds. Twenty-six per cent of 16 to 18-year-olds in colleges have a learning difficulty or a disability, and 58,000 college students are aged 60 and over. In summary, colleges do their job very well. Ninety-two per cent of colleges were judged to be “good” or “outstanding” for overall effectiveness at their most recent inspections. At times, however, colleges feel that they are doing their job with one arm behind their backs, and I shall touch upon that shortly.

I will briefly highlight the great work that East Coast College does in Waveney. It now operates from two campuses, in Lowestoft in my constituency and in Great Yarmouth in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Sir Brandon Lewis). It fully understands the challenges of coastal communities, the communities in which it is deeply immersed, and works very closely with local authorities, local businesses, the James Paget University Hospital, CEFAS—the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, where the Government’s marine scientists are based in Pakefield next to Lowestoft—and the two universities that cover the area, the University of East Anglia in Norwich and the University of Suffolk, which has its headquarters in Ipswich but operates across Suffolk.

In Lowestoft, East Coast College is an active member of the place board, of which I am also a member, which has overseen the projects carried out as part of the town deal. Its work focuses on two areas: first, the need in the health and care sector to support an ever growing elderly population. It has put in place the Apollo project —not a journey to the moon, but a two-year workforce programme designed to address recruitment and retention challenges in the health and social care sector. Secondly, opportunities are emerging in the energy sector. Among other projects, there are the offshore wind farms anchored off the East Anglian coast and the Sizewell C nuclear power project just down the coast.

In recent years, significant capital improvements have been carried out at East Coast College. Those include the Energy Skills Centre in Lowestoft and the eastern civil engineering and construction campus at Lound, midway between Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth. At present, the college’s challenges centre more on revenue funding, and its needs mirror those of the rest of the sector, to which I shall now turn.

The good news is that, in recent years, there has been a realisation of the vital role that colleges play in providing people with the skills they need to realise their full potential, to address regional inequalities and to ensure that the economy fires on all cylinders. Some good initiatives have been put in place, such as the lifelong learning entitlement, and funding has improved, albeit from a low base. That said, significant challenges remain; some are structural and long term, and others derive from the cost of living crisis and the long and sharp tail of covid.

The Local Government Association points out that

“the national employment and skills system is too centralised”,

“short-term” in outlook, and that

“no single organisation is responsible or accountable for coordinating programmes nationally or locally. This makes it difficult to plan, target and join-up provision.”

It also identified that

“poor-quality, insufficient and fragmented CEIAG”—

careers education, information advice and guidance—

“is a persistent and key barrier to youth employment”,

notwithstanding the introduction, finally, of the Baker clause in the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022.

The Edge Foundation focuses on the problem that is all around us: the skills shortages that are getting worse. The shortages are numerous and have grown significantly. The rate of skills investment is in decline, and skills shortages have significant costs for UK businesses, the economy and the environment. The engineering sector is important to me locally, as engineering skills will be much in need to fuel the transition to a low-carbon economy. EngineeringUK, in its “Fit for the future” engineering apprenticeships inquiry, has highlighted the variability and quality of training provision and the problems in recruiting teachers and trainers.

Colleges Week normally takes place in the autumn. This year, however, for good reason, it has been brought forward to the spring—not only so that it takes place in advance of the general election campaign, to provide the sector with every opportunity to set out its stall, but so that urgent representations can be made ahead of next week’s Budget to meet many of the challenges that I have highlighted.

I confess that I was expecting the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), to be here, but it is great to see the Minister for Schools in his place, because he and I have discussed this issue a great deal. I would be most grateful if he conveyed some of these asks to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in advance of his Budget statement next Wednesday.

As I have mentioned, there are skill gaps across the country in all sectors of the economy. To eliminate those gaps, I urge the Government to invest the extra money raised from the immigration skills charge to enable colleges to tackle the urgent priorities identified by employers in the local skills improvement plans that are now being rolled out across the country and those that are found in relation to the increased number of skills shortage vacancies revealed in the latest Department for Education employer skills survey.

At the Conservative party conference in Manchester in October, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister rightly announced a 10-year plan to give young people a better start in life through the advanced British standard, with more hours, a broader curriculum, and extra help for those who have struggled up to the age of 16. Those ambitions are the right ones, but if they are to be achieved —if there is to be any chance of having the teachers, the trainers and the facilities in place to deliver them—we must start investing now. To do that, three issues need to be addressed.

First, the pay gap between those teaching in colleges and those teaching in schools must be closed. It has been widening in recent years and now stands at £9,000 per annum. That pay gap cannot persist if the advanced British standard is to be a success.

Secondly, colleges are disadvantaged when it comes to VAT. Unlike for schools, VAT is not reimbursed for colleges—it cannot be recovered. Colleges in England were reclassified as public sector organisations back in 2022 and are now subject to all the controls that apply to academies, but, unlike academies and schools, they are unable to reclaim VAT under the refund scheme in section 33 of the Value Added Tax Act 1994. That could be addressed by amending that Act. The funds that would be released, totalling around £210 million, could then be reinvested, helping colleges to deliver the improvements to the school system that the Government seek.

Thirdly, as I mentioned, covid has had a long and sharp tail, impacting harshly on young people’s education. The Government recognise that and are providing funding for tuition support to help those with the greatest need to obtain the necessary grounding in English and maths and to catch up on the vocational courses where assessments were deferred. That is good news, but the indications are that the demand for those lessons and courses is still growing. It is estimated that approximately 40,000 more students than last year need to resit their English GCSEs, with 20,000 needing to resit maths. I therefore urge the Minister to do all he can to ensure that the funding for that tuition support is extended.

I am reaching my conclusion, Sir Robert. I am sure that others in this debate will refer to FE and colleges as being the Cinderella of the education system. Indeed, that was right in the past, but my sense is that all parties across the House have recognised the error and folly of that. We are now, after a long time, travelling down the right road, with the importance of vocational learning as provided by colleges being acknowledged and accepted by all. However, we are driving down this road in third gear and we now need Government to provide resources, support and more policies so that we can quickly and seamlessly move into top gear. If we do that, we shall provide opportunity for many and eliminate all those stubborn gaps that I have referred to a great deal during this speech.

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Robert. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on securing this Backbench Business debate and on marking and celebrating Colleges Week.

I want to speak in support of the colleges of our nation, which are such a significant part of our education system. My hon. Friend outlined some powerful statistics when he was making his case so eloquently a moment ago, but one in particular jumped out at me, which is that more than 1.5 million students—1.6 million, in fact —are educated at colleges in England every year.

Colleges play a critical role in delivering the skills that our nation and our economy need. I visited many colleges some years ago when I worked on apprenticeships, and they were great visits. However, there is one feature from them all, which I want to draw out and comment upon: the links between colleges and local employers. Through those links, colleges not only provide the workforce that companies need now, but develop the skills programmes for the future.

We are seeing huge changes in the global economy, as countries face the challenges of sectors and routes to market that are going digital. There is also the overarching challenge of net zero and the consequent decarbonising, and how that is creating new skills, new industries and a requirement for significant training. Colleges are at the forefront of meeting those challenges through skills, based on partnerships and local insight, through apprenticeships, with each college training 950 apprentices, as my hon. Friend mentioned, and through professional development, as careers change and people of all ages need to reskill as industries develop. Further, colleges are training tens of thousands of people aged over 60. It is therefore important to keep investing in these areas for our future national prosperity.

The UK has not valued colleges enough over past decades. There has been some kind of underlying assumption that the system should really be focused on university degrees, which are right for so many but not the only definition of excellence. I see opportunity and excellence much more widely; I see it in our college network. Spreading the word about the range of choices that people have is one of the benefits of Colleges Week.

I should also congratulate the Minister on a policy change that has quite recently put apprenticeships on the UCAS website. That is a game changer. The feedback I have had from school and group visits in Harrogate and Knaresborough is that that has been a highly successful initiative and people have become aware of apprenticeships. It has almost been like giving them a parity of esteem, which has not been present before. It has certainly boosted knowledge in a very positive way.

We are obviously here supporting colleges today, and my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney has made a powerful case. It is also fair to say, however, that colleges have not fully received the attention that their success and scale merit. My hon. Friend said colleges were formerly a Cinderella service. That might be a little strong and people have woken up to that; however, Colleges Week presents a great opportunity to pay tribute to all our colleges and all that they achieve.

I want to highlight a major development taking place this week at Harrogate College, and also to congratulate the team at Harrogate College and the Luminate Education Group on their work on it. That development is a £20 million scheme to replace the main building at the college and construct a renewable energy skills hub. In effect, there will be a totally new campus, which is very exciting and a real game changer.

Preliminary work started this week and full construction starts next month. Energy efficiency is being built in and will help the college to deliver its plan to become carbon-neutral by 2035. The upgrade will see state-of-the-art facilities on campus, including a mock hospital ward, an electric vehicle workshop and a construction centre that will focus on renewables and the building methods of the future. Basically, that directly relates to my earlier points about how important the links between colleges and local companies are for the skills that are needed; indeed, it is proof of the wisdom of that policy.

The college principal, Danny Wild, has kept me posted throughout the development of this great project, and I was able to speak with Ministers and do all that I could to help to get it over the line. Of the total budget of £20 million, £16 million comes from the Department for Education’s further education capital transformation fund—and transformation is indeed what we are talking about with this development. It will make Harrogate College future proof—the college’s words—and consolidate its position as the leading provider locally of T-levels. It is anticipated that the new development will be open for students in the summer of 2025, which really is not long for a project of this scale and ambition.

Apart from providing better facilities for the students, this development will send a major signal that Harrogate College and all that it does are both aspirational and of the highest quality. Basically, students will be equipped with the skills for a new era. When we see college investment and college success, it is not just about small initiatives at the college itself; the economy of the entire area will benefit. We have a strong local economy, but the companies within it often report difficulties in filling vacancies—the unemployment rate locally is 1.8%. This project will help to fill those vacancies, because it will help to tackle skills shortages.

So I say well done to the Harrogate College team. I look forward very much to visiting the college shortly, and I know that there are positive developments right across the country. There is much to celebrate all over the country, but I just wanted to highlight and celebrate this local news. I look forward very much to hearing what the Minister has to say about ensuring that this sector is front and centre in our education system.

We now move to the Front-Bench wind-ups, starting with the Opposition spokesman.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Robert, and to speak in this debate.

It is right that we pay tribute to the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) for securing this debate. I know that he is incredibly passionate about further education and the skills sector, and he has raised a number of very important issues, which I will address. I also acknowledge his work on the all-party parliamentary group on further education and lifelong learning—I am a passionate supporter of that group—and work of the Association of Colleges, as the secretariat to the group.

I thank all our colleges up and down the country for the vital contribution they make to our national skills system, and to young people and adult learners across the country. In addition to noting the support and advice from the Association of Colleges, it is worth our reflecting on the support and advice that comes from the Sixth Form Colleges Association, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, and our qualification providers, including City & Guilds and others, which have also played an important role in the Future Skills Coalition. In addition, this week, FE Week and City & Guilds put on the annual apprenticeships conference, which played an important part in pulling everybody together during this important week.

I acknowledge the contribution made by the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), who made important points about engagement with employers and about how Harrogate College is helping to meet local skills and workforce needs. That is a story that all our colleges could share, so it was good to hear those examples.

The hon. Member for Waveney said that colleges play an important role around the UK in our skills system and are firmly embedded in our communities. They understand the needs of our local economies, and have played an important role in the development of our local skills improvement plans. Like many other college leaders, Tracy Aust, the principal of West Thames College in Hounslow, who also oversees the Feltham skills centre, has been pivotal in pulling together those voices so that we can better match the skills needs in our local economy with the provision coming through our colleges. That also helps local authorities and other players to develop a deeper understanding of the community learning requirements.

In that context, our FE institutions truly stand as pillars of knowledge and ambition, but they are also beacons of adaptability. They work together to foster an environment that encourages lifelong learning. One of the best parts of my role as shadow Minister is going to colleges across the country to meet and listen to learners and employers. That includes West Thames College and the Feltham skills centre, which do important wrap-around work on employability and mentoring. Logistics apprentices from the Institute of Couriers are in Parliament today to celebrate their achievements. I pay tribute to the chairman of the institute, Carl Lomas, for all he does, with great enthusiasm, including building links and investing in colleges. The apprentices I saw today feel they know him personally. Those relationships and that social capital around our systems are really important.

I have spoken to students studying T-levels, apprenticeships and higher technical qualifications, and adult learners upskilling, at City and Islington College. I have spoken to people working and learning at the National College for Nuclear, and health and aerospace apprentices in Milton Keynes, Newcastle and Liverpool. Last week, I visited South and City College in Birmingham to see the important new facilities for robotics, electric vehicles and so on. This is not just about connecting young people and adult learners with the content of learning, but about giving them hands-on experience with new technologies.

I am launching my colleges tour over the next few months, which will focus on how we are engaging with small and medium-sized enterprises in our communities and what the barriers are. SME apprenticeship levels have been dropping significantly—they have fallen by 49% since 2016—and we absolutely must turn that around.

As a nation, our No. 1 priority is to grow our economy so that we can invest in our public services and greater opportunities for all. To achieve that ambition for growth, we need to invest in human talent to grow our skills and our workforce across all sectors where there are skill shortages. Colleges play an important role in delivering skills for green infrastructure, our creative industries, our life sciences sector, our public services and our everyday economy, including hospitality. All those things require workforces with specialised skills. It is vital that people across our country have pathways into high- quality vocational training, secure, enjoyable work, and opportunities to upskill. I have talked to adult learners who have told me that the qualifications they did five or 10 years ago have left them out of date, compared with those coming through the system now. Given that nine out of 10 adults are likely to need some retraining in the next decade, that will be an important part of all our futures.

Colleges are uniquely placed to deliver on this combined mission of economic growth and improved life chances for all. They provide an exceptionally diverse range of education and training courses to meet the needs of local economies. They are centres of lifelong learning for people of all ages and at all levels, as the hon. Member for Waveney so effectively highlighted. But just as it is important to acknowledge the successes of colleges this week, we must also acknowledge the challenges they face, a number of which were eloquently outlined by the hon. Member.

As examples, apprenticeship numbers have fallen, real-terms funding for the further education sector has fallen to record lows, and vital decision-making powers have been taken away from local communities. The Conservatives have also overseen more than a decade of decline in skills and training opportunities. I say that because apprenticeship starts have fallen by 200,000 since 2017—it is important to recognise the figures. In every region, apprenticeship starts have fallen since 2010, and small and medium-sized enterprise engagement with apprenticeships has fallen by 49% since 2016.

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. I apologise to the Chair, as I will not be able to stay to the end of the debate as I have a meeting with the head of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service to talk about progression and issues of this sort.

With apprenticeships, it is very important that we compare like with like. It is a great thing that all apprenticeships now involve a year of work and a qualification. That was not the case under the last Labour Government.

I want to put on the record my tribute to the Heart of Worcestershire College and the Worcester Sixth Form College, for the fantastic work they do. I commend to both Front Benches the report from the Education Committee on post-16 qualifications, which made a number of recommendations, including increasing the number of youth apprenticeships and setting a target for the proportion of apprenticeships that lead people into work.

I thank the hon. Member for his contribution and for sharing the work of the colleges in his area, with which I know he is well connected. I acknowledge his work as Chair of the Education Committee, including on that report.

It is important that we are clear about the figures, but it is also important to recognise that things have got harder, particularly for small businesses, since the implementation of the levy. We need to address those challenges. For level 2 and level 3 apprenticeships, the numbers are falling in proportion to apprenticeships as a whole—these are challenges that the Education Committee has rightly highlighted. It is important to make sure that there are pathways post-16 for those who may not have the same qualifications at GCSE. That is a point I will refer to further in my remarks.

It is also true that the Government are on track to miss the 67% achievement rate, with almost half of apprenticeships not being completed. There are a range of reasons for that. Level 2 and level 3 apprenticeships have seen some of the worst falls; there has been a 69% fall in the number of starts at level 2 and a 21% fall in the number of starts at level 3. In addition, too many young people and adult learners say they are not aware of the opportunities available to them. Colleges have also seen real-terms funding cuts under successive Tory Governments. Since 2010, spending per pupil has fallen by 14% in colleges and 28% in school sixth forms.

Labour will put colleges at the heart of our plans for breaking down barriers to opportunity and boosting Britain’s skills. Central to that is our plan to develop technical excellence colleges, enabling colleges in local skills improvement plan areas to specialise in the particular needs of their local economies and businesses, driven by LSIP priorities. We know that Whitehall does not have all the answers for what is needed in our local communities. That is why we will continue to build on the already begun process of devolving and combining power and budgets for skills and adult education to combined authorities and local areas, so that the right decisions and right priorities are led by those with the most local information, who are in the right places.

These plans will empower FE colleges to take a lead in responding to local needs. We see it as important that we reform the apprenticeship levy to become, in part, the growth and skills levy, giving businesses and employers the flexibility they need to invest in skills and training and to continue to support SMEs to take up apprenticeships, too. An estimated £3 billion in unspent levy has gone to the Treasury since 2019 that could have been spent on more training opportunities for learners and, through that, on training providers too, supporting capacity to grow the sector. The system is not working as it needs to be. Bringing more flexibility is a policy backed by the Manufacturing 5, the British Retail Consortium, techUK, the Co-operative Group, City & Guilds—the list goes on.

It is vital that young people are aware of their post-16 options so that they know which routes are open to them and how to take them. That is why Labour wants to train more thsn 1,000 new professional careers advisers. I recognise the point made by the hon. Member for Waveney about fragmented advice and guidance, but we want to train those new advisers for students in our colleges and schools and introduce two weeks of compulsory work experience for every student to connect them earlier with the workplace.

There are real concerns about the chaotic roll-out of T-levels and the phasing out of many overlapping qualifications among college staff and young people—a serious issue that has been raised with me. The Protect Student Choice campaign estimates that 155,000 students could be left without an appropriate course of post-16 study if the Government go ahead with these plans in this way. That is why Labour will ensure that all students are able to complete their qualifications and will pause and review the proposed removal of courses until we can be sure that these reforms will not prevent young people from pursuing high-quality vocational qualifications.

In conclusion, boosting Britain’s skills will be a national ambition for Labour, led by our new body Skills England, which will help provide that overarching national skills framework, connecting that with regional and local need, and will bring together businesses, training providers and unions to meet the skills needs of the next decade across all our regions. I am proud to say that colleges will be at the heart of that ambition.

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Robert. I join colleagues in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on securing this debate in Westminster Hall on this important subject. He rightly mentioned that he and I have talked about these topics many times over—I think it is fair to say—many years. I know he has a fervent passion for and deep knowledge of the subject, and I thank him for what he does with the all-party parliamentary group on further education and lifelong learning. I join him in thanking and congratulating the Association of Colleges. Like many colleagues, I had the opportunity earlier this week to go over the road—the other side of Parliament Square—to the AOC awards event. It was great to meet an award winner from my local college in Alton and its other campus in Havant, but also to see the huge variety of people benefiting from all that colleges have to offer. Both my hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones) spoke with passion about the importance of colleges and the great work they do in educating and training people of all ages and backgrounds, as well as the key role they play in communities. They rightly talked about the challenges they face, and I do not argue with any of that.

I am the Minister for Schools, but I still know there is no more important subject than colleges. I see every day that we have great schools educating our children, giving them a great education and grounding to take them on whatever path they choose at age 16. Of course, we also have strong higher education institutions, delivering world-class higher education to young people and equipping them with the high-level education and skills they need. We then have further education colleges, which are the filling—if you like—in the education sandwich. Like the best sandwich options, there is a variety to choose from because colleges do just about everything, including all the things I have just mentioned. They do basic skills, English and maths and so-called level 3 provision. More recently, there has been the introduction of T-levels. They do apprenticeships, as we have been talking about, and I will come back to adult learning. As my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney reminded us, FE colleges also do HE, as well as pre-16 provision for certain groups of young people. To cap it all, some colleges even have their own nursery—they are really providing the full range of education. We are not talking about jacks of all trades, because they do not just do lots of things; they do them very well. The latest figures show that approximately 92% of colleges were judged to be good or outstanding at their most recent inspection, which is quite an incredible figure.

The Secretary of State and the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education visit colleges around the country frequently. I should say, by the way, that the latter would have loved to be here today. He phoned me this morning to say so, and to ask me to pass on his best wishes, in particular in celebration of Colleges Week. He is not able to physically be in two places at once; otherwise, he would have been here. The Secretary of State and the Minister meet staff and students and see at first hand some of the excellent work they are doing, as I have had the opportunity to do in previous roles in the DFE. They are astounded by the range and breadth of high-quality provision on offer in fantastic facilities.

My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney rightly alluded to another key role that FE colleges carry out, which is acting as agents of social mobility. Many learners in FE come from disadvantaged backgrounds, so our colleges are essential for ensuring that individuals from all backgrounds are supported to progress into employment or further learning. It is fair to say that for many years, colleges were unsung heroes, doing fantastic work without ever really getting commensurate recognition for that work. That has changed now, because everybody understands and recognises the importance of what they do. This debate is a great example of that recognition.

The skills agenda, in which colleges play a critical role, is one of my Department’s key priorities. Colleges are delivering our radical skills reforms, helping individuals with basic skills needs right up to challenging the highest performers to reach their potential, raising the stages of technical education through the delivery of apprenticeships and the introduction of rigorous T-levels.

It is easy for us to say that colleges are great, and that we recognise all they do, but we need to back that up with support and investment. That is why we are making major investment in post-16 education, in which colleges play a huge part, with an additional £3.8 billion over this Parliament for education and skills. In particular, throughout this Parliament, we have consistently increased overall funding for 16-to-19 education year on year, including an extra £1.6 billion in 2024-25 compared with 2021-22—the biggest increase in 16-to-19 funding in a decade. FE colleges, like all 16-to-19 providers, have benefited from that investment. We are investing £3 billion in capital between 2022 and 2025 to improve the condition of the post-16 estate, deliver new places in post-16 education, provide more specialist equipment and facilities for T-levels and deliver institutes of technology.

We recognise that the issues colleges are facing are not just about whether they have enough funding and how to make the funding stretch to deliver everything they need to do, but about systems, procedures and bureaucracy. Colleges have told Government that we need to address those things, and we have listened. That is why we have consulted on reforming the further education funding and accountability systems, and last year issued our response. We have committed to simplifying funding systems and creating a single adult skills fund and a single development fund. We have already started delivering on those commitments and will continue this work to reduce the bureaucracy associated with funding. We have set out a much clearer approach to support an intervention for colleges, and will also remove duplicative data collection and take steps to simplify and improve audit. All these things will help to minimise burdens on colleges and let them focus their efforts on delivering that excellent education and training.

Of course, FE would not be what it is without teachers and teaching. The quality of teaching and leaders is the biggest determinant of outcomes for learners, and that is why we are investing £470 million over the financial years 2023-24 and 2024-25 to support colleges and other providers, and to address key priorities, including on recruitment and retention. That funding has already fed through to colleges and other providers via increased 16-19 rates and programme cost weight increases from last September.

It is part of a wider programme to support the sector to recruit excellent staff. That includes a national recruitment campaign to strengthen and incentivise the uptake of initial teacher education, teacher training bursaries and the Taking Teaching Further training programme. We also announced £200 million to improve teacher recruitment and retention by giving those who teach key shortage subjects a payment of up to £6,000, tax-free, per year in the first five years of their career. For the first time, that applies to those teaching eligible subjects in all FE colleges.

Let me turn to some of the comments made by the hon. Lady who speaks for the Opposition, the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra). This debate has not been primarily party political, and nor should it be. We are celebrating Colleges Week, and that is something on which colleagues right across this House agree. I welcome a number of the things that the hon. Lady said, but there are a couple that I cannot quite let go, particularly on the subject of apprenticeships.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) was quite right in saying that, if we are going to talk about apprenticeships, we must talk like for like. I am afraid that, before 2010, there were some people who, when asked about the quality of their apprenticeship, did not know that they were on an apprenticeship. We have changed that and underpinned the apprenticeships programme with guarantees of quality: the minimum length of the course; the minimum amount of time in college; the creation of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education; and, critically, employer-designed standards. That has made a very solid set of very high- quality apprenticeships. I would urge the hon. Lady and her party not to pursue the plans and policy that they appear to be—not to undermine those apprenticeships or have fewer of them, and instead create a new quango.

I thank the Minister for his comments, and we do not need to get into a debate today—there are many other opportunities for that. He is right that it is important that we do not create dividing lines where we do not have them, in an area that needs both stability and long-term planning, but I want to challenge him on the point he has made. It is true that apprenticeships starts have fallen, and I am not saying that we have not also supported some changes through the passage of time. However, we all know that there are challenges, such as employer involvement in start-ups, employer fatigue due to the difficulties with the current apprenticeship system and the drop in SME engagement, and it is really important that the Government acknowledge those challenges.

It is also important not to misrepresent Labour’s call for a reform where employers, if they so chose, could spend up to 50% of their apprenticeship levy more flexibly. Too much of that levy is being returned to the Treasury because employers are unable to spend it on any learning. For most employers, the reform would not make much of a difference because they are only able to spend about 50% of their levy, and that would not change. Perhaps the Minister might also know that, if we see more growth in the economy, we will also see more of the levy coming in and greater apprenticeships there too.

Again, let us not have a party political debate—that is not the nature of this discussion today. I can absolutely assure the hon. Lady that I have not misrepresented the Labour party’s policy in the slightest. She then went on to repeat it, which is to say that there would be less money guaranteed to be available for apprenticeships. That would surely lead to a move away from those high-quality apprenticeships that I mentioned. I understand the attraction of voices saying that the levy is not a good way of doing things, but I have to tell the hon. Lady that it addresses a fundamental problem—

Will the Minister give way?

Absolutely, and I will come back to the fundamental problem in a moment.

I thank the Minister again, but I think he does not fully understand the Labour policy and that may be because he has not engaged with it in detail. The point on the growth and skills levy is that the opportunity to spend on more modular courses and more flexible learning, creating the opportunity to build qualifications through more modular approaches, could support more engagement with learning and contribute to a reduction in the early ending of apprenticeships, where the targets of apprenticeship completion are not even being met. That is a real issue.

I assure the hon. Lady that if there is any misunderstanding about the Labour party’s policy, it is not because people have failed to engage with it; it is because it is not clear—and one great benefit of our apprenticeship system is that it is clear. The approach of the apprenticeship levy resolves one of the fundamental questions of investing in human capital, training and people, which is the so-called free rider problem.

For many years, some employers invested strongly in their workforces and then some of the members of those workforces, after a couple of years of training, would get up and go to the competitor. The levy is precisely to make sure that the whole of our economy and the whole of industry has a like interest in developing those skills and developing investing in the potential of people. I advise the hon. Lady to be careful in deciding to get rid of that and replace it with a new and unneeded quango.

I turn to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough, who also spoke about the centrality of apprenticeships and the quality of them. He spoke about the importance of colleges to the whole local economic area. I too represent an area with a particularly low level of unemployment, even though unemployment across the country is low compared with historical norms—it is at slightly less than half the level it was when I and my hon. Friends the Members for Harrogate and Knaresborough and for Waveney came into Parliament in 2010.

Particularly in areas of even lower unemployment, however, skills matching becomes vital for the local economy. I also join my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough in congratulating both Harrogate College and the Luminate Education Group on their work on the renewable energy skills hub. That is a great example of colleges being future-looking, forward-looking and innovative, making sure we are equipped with the skills for the future and creating facilities that contribute to that.

I come now to my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney, who has brought us to this Chamber today—and we are all grateful to him for doing so. He listed some of the several ways in which colleges are vital to our economy and society. He too spoke of the importance of colleges in their local communities. He reminded us that that is about people of all ages—including those who might not have had that great an experience coming through education the first time, who can have another chance, and those who had a fantastic experience the first time around, who can further develop their skills. It is also about the jobs of tomorrow and making sure we can continue to adapt and that in so doing we offer social mobility to people throughout the country.

My hon. Friend also talked about productivity, which is so important here. We know that there has long been a big productivity gap—since the year I was born and beyond, and I am 54—between this country and the United States and Germany in particular. It has improved, but it is still a gap and we need to move further. Making sure we can match skills to where they are needed and hone those skills is incredibly important.

My hon. Friend also spoke about the importance of colleges themselves as big employers in local areas, and we should never forget that. He also discussed the importance of working with employers, a subject also covered by our hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough. In particular, I note the work of Suffolk New College in leading on the local skills improvement fund for my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney’s area. Indeed, I pay tribute to all three colleges serving his local area—East Coast College, Suffolk New College and West Suffolk College.

We are getting close to a fiscal event, and my hon. Friend quite rightly put in his Budget bids, which will have been heard. He also talked about some of the progress made. I agree that the value of the Baker clause is not just what it does directly, but the symbolism and the message it gives that all children should know about the full range of what is available to them at the age of 16. Some of those children will be better suited to going to a school sixth form, some will be better suited to going to a sixth form college and some will be better suited to going to an FE college. Some will be better suited to a largely academic route and some will be better suited to a technical and vocational route. Having those options made known at a suitable time in that journey is really important.

There are also T-levels. Of course, colleges are not the only places that deliver T-levels, but they are at the centre of that great reform. They offer more hours in college and bring English, maths and digital skills right into integration with the core vocational subjects and, crucially, the nine-week or 45-day industrial placement. When I meet employers or young people who have done T-levels, that is the thing they always talk about the most: the opportunity to apply what they learn in college directly in a workplace and develop the workplace skills that we know are so valued by employers. By the way, they bring an opportunity to see a young person in action in the workplace for an extended period.

There are the higher-level technical qualifications and the advanced British standard, which is in development now. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney was quite right that we are developing that landmark reform to remove fully the artificial divide between the academic and the vocational. In doing that, we need to start investing now—and we are investing now. That is such an important point to make, and it is understood across Government.

When people think about a college, probably the first thing that comes into their head is a picture of a building, but my hon. Friend and I, and everyone here, know that it is all about people. That is why those investments in people are so important, including the extension of the levelling-up premium to further education colleges for the first time. The Teach in FE recruitment campaign is running, and there is the Taking Teaching Further programme. We know that there is a particular importance to, and sometimes a challenge in, getting people with recent industrial experience—those “on the tools”—into college to impart those skills onwards. There are FE teacher training bursaries worth up to £30,000, depending on the subject, tax-free, in the academic year 2024-25.

I will close by thanking everybody who has taken part in this debate, particularly our hon. Friend the Member for Waveney for tabling it and convening this important discussion. It was informative to hear from him and others about local issues, successes and, of course, how much we value our colleges—“Love our Colleges”, to coin a phrase from Colleges Week. The one clear thing coming from this debate is that we all recognise the importance, value and role of our colleges, as the strapline that I just mentioned makes clear.

I have set out how we are backing our recognition of colleges through investment and support by increasing funding, investing in facilities and estate, reforming accountability and funding to reduce burdens and investing in programmes to support and boost the further education workforce. I hope and believe that those things will benefit colleges and support them to deliver. I know that we ask colleges to deliver a lot these days, but that is because we know that they can and do deliver incredibly well.

I am a shade disappointed, not by the quality of the debate but because there was high demand to take part and we have not had as many colleagues as I would have hoped for. There are loads of demands on people’s time. However, what we have lacked in quantity, we have made up for in quality. I am the odd person out in this debate; I am the only participant who has not had a Front-Bench role, so it has been interesting to hear the views of those on the frontline.

The three of us on the Government Benches—I, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones)—have all been here since 2010. Colleges are in a better place, generally speaking, than in 2010, particularly in terms of the quality of their estate. That has certainly improved, but we need to move on. While the shiny new buildings are important, we need the teachers and trainers to be able to help with the learning in those colleges. That is where we have a particular problem. Look at the energy sector that East Coast College is having to deal with: we have a crying need for welders and fabricators, but there is a real challenge in getting those teachers and trainers.

Lord Baker fought for the Baker clause for years. He took too long to get it, but he got it. At some stage, I would welcome some information on how it is going down in practice, because when I go around the community I represent, I cannot say, “Ah! That is a result of the Baker clause.” If we pull a lever in this place, it does not automatically lead to a gear change in the rest of the country.

The one disagreement we have had is on the issue of apprentices. If one looks at where we were in 2010 and where we are today, we are generally in a better place, but the journey has not been smooth—there have been ebbs and flows along the way. I am slightly confused by some of the statistics. It may be that we were in a better place two or three years ago than today. One of the challenges is to get SMEs properly involved in the apprenticeship system.

That brings us on to the levy. The levy is a great idea, and the Government were right to introduce it, but there have been teething difficulties and challenges with money being returned to the Treasury. The Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), and I have been in events where I have said that we need to press ahead with a review now, rather than waiting for next year after all the hullabaloo of the election. It must take place now, so that we can iron it out and get it on the right journey.

Finally, here are my funding asks of the Chancellor. This is ultimately about ensuring a level playing field. Colleges are not on a level playing field with schools and academies when it comes to VAT. They are not on a level playing field when it comes to what teachers are paid.

At the beginning of the time that I have spent in this place, there was the problem of colleges having to pick up the pieces for young people who, for whatever reason, had not acquired basic literacy and numeracy skills in secondary education. That situation has improved dramatically, but covid has thrown a big spanner in the works and the colleges are having to work very hard to address that. It is not going to go away immediately, and that is why they need those funds to be extended.

Sir Robert, thank you for bearing with me for a few extra minutes. It has been a good debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Colleges Week 2024.