Further Education Funding

I beg to move,

That this House has considered further education funding.

Good morning, Sir Roger. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship and to see colleagues from across the House come together to debate further education colleges. I do so with my co-conspirator, the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin)—165 colleagues signed our recent letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This is a fantastic opportunity for hon. Members from all parties to come together without the need for indicative motions on alternatives and to reach a rare and much-cherished cross-party consensus on four simple propositions.

The first proposition is that further education is incredibly important to all of us, in every constituency in the land. The second is that our colleges need more funding to achieve important goals. The third is that the spending review and Budget are a great opportunity to make giant steps towards that objective. Lastly, today is an opportunity for many people to give a clear message to the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, who has been very supportive throughout, and to the wider Government: please do more to help our colleges provide the skills our young people need for themselves and for our country.

Well done to my hon. Friend for securing the debate. Peter Symonds College in Winchester is the largest in England. It has grown significantly in recent years. Student numbers grew by 19% between 2011 and 2018, yet in the same period the college’s overall funding grew by just 3%—the relevant factors are the rising cost base, changes to pension contributions, national insurance and the part-funded pay rise—meaning that, without a long-overdue increase in the base rate, it will have to make some very difficult and significant changes. Does my hon. Friend agree that the comprehensive spending review is looking increasingly like a seminal moment for this sector?

Order. Before the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) answers, may I put a marker down? An enormous number of Members wish to take part in the debate. I am going to insist that interventions be brief.

The short answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) is yes.

Today, I want to set out briefly what the problem is—as you say, Sir Roger, many Members wish to speak—what the case for further education colleges is in more detail, what outcomes we would like to see from more funding going into the sector, what skills and productivity we should be looking for, and some of the key statistics, both locally and nationally, that are on our minds.

Let me start by outlining the problem. It is simply that education for 16 to 18-year-olds has, broadly speaking, not been funded as well as that for other age groups. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has done research that shows that. The chart we used in our letter shows clearly that, of the four main categories of education—primary, secondary, further and higher—further education is the only one on which spending has fallen in real terms recently. It is therefore the most deserving of the four categories, but let it also be said—

I will give way in a second; let me just finish the sentence. I suspect that all of us here share the view that education in general is a good cause for the spending review and the Budget, so this is not to decry the other three categories but to highlight the importance of more funding for further education. Three colleagues wished to intervene—I think they were, in order, an hon. Friend and then two Opposition colleagues.

I will be as brief as I can. Does my hon. Friend not think that FE colleges have the ability to improve the situation themselves by attracting good companies in to help fund apprenticeships? That is precisely what I am doing with the FE college in my constituency.

My hon. Friend is always a great champion of these things, and he is absolutely right. Colleges can certainly help themselves by attracting great employers to offer apprenticeships, and we can help them by introducing some of the employers if need be.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the restrictions on FE funding have directly damaged the ability of colleges to recruit very specialist skills at the highest level, such as in engineering, meaning that vacancies exist for long periods and that colleges are often cutting short those types of course?

The hon. Lady has brilliantly anticipated a line in my speech, and I agree with her.

Notwithstanding the Treasury’s historical aversion to hypothecated taxation, does the hon. Gentleman agree that, given that the Government are making a substantial surplus out of the apprenticeship levy at the moment, there is a strong moral case for recycling that money into the 16-to-18 sector?

Hypothecated funds are interesting. I am an advocate of them for the field of care. I will leave my right hon. Friend the Minister to comment on the huge surplus being generated; I have not yet seen much sign of that surplus coming through in my constituency, but the hon. Gentleman raises an interesting point.

The point about recruitment and retention has been raised. Does my hon. Friend agree that the sector desperately needs more funding? In a case I am aware of, there are staff who have not had a pay rise for 10 years. If that is the case, retention will become impossible.

Yes. When it comes to pay rises, all of us will remember that take-home pay has increased by about £1,200 as a result of the tax-free allowance being almost doubled, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right on the wider point about being able to retain key staff. That point has been raised by other colleagues and is crucial.

I will give way to Cheltenham and then Truro.