The Minister of State, Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)

My Lords, as others have rightly done, I thank my noble friend Lady Morgan for securing this important debate, which has ranged widely. I will do my very best to respond to the range of points that have been raised and to receive written representations from anybody who wants to send them—as I believe the noble Lord, Lord Young, promised to do when I took a little comfort break earlier. As others have said, the breadth of expertise that has been shared today shows that improving opportunity is not the responsibility of government alone; it is a national endeavour. This debate goes to the heart of how we build a fairer and more prosperous country. It is about whether every young person, whatever their background or postcode, can gain the skills, confidence and opportunities they need to succeed, and whether every region has the skilled workforce it needs to grow, attract investment and create good jobs. The issues before us are clear. Too many young people remain outside education, employment or training. Too many adults lack access to flexible routes to upskill or retrain. Too many employers report skills shortages, while too many communities still feel cut off from the opportunities that growth should bring. That is why skills and technical and further education matter so profoundly. They are not peripheral to our economic strategy or our mission to break down barriers to opportunity; they are central to both. The debate is therefore about how government, local leaders, employers, colleges, universities and communities work together to make technical and vocational routes more respected, more responsive and more accessible. If we are serious about widening opportunity and driving growth in every part of our country, we must also be serious about where power sits and who is trusted to use it. As the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, emphasised, there is an important argument for ensuring that power rests with those closest to making the decisions. That is why I want to begin with devolution, which is a practical answer to a practical challenge when we are thinking about how we build a skills system that reflects the needs, strengths and ambitions of the places it serves. As several noble Lords have noted, opportunity is not distributed evenly across our country and employer demand is not identical from one region to another—a point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry—and the barriers facing a young person in one community may look very different from those facing a young person elsewhere. Local leaders know their labour markets, employers, colleges, communities and young people, and this Government believe that they should have the powers, funding and accountability to act on that knowledge within a national framework that protects quality, entitlement and access. Our approach is clear: shift power away from Westminster, strengthen strategic authorities and build a skills system that is more responsive to local economic need while staying aligned with the national priorities that matter to us all. Noble Lords have also been clear about the scale of that challenge, with almost 1 million young people not in education, employment or training. These figures are not abstract. They represent young lives and talent we cannot afford to waste. That is why we commissioned Alan Milburn to produce what is an excellent interim report. We look forward to receiving his final report with recommendations. We are already working to ensure that we will be able to respond effectively to the recommendations and believe we will be building on progress and action already taken. I reassure my noble friend Lady Morgan and my noble friend Lady Morris, who should be congratulated on the leadership she showed in the white working-class inquiry, that we will want to respond to those issues together. We must ensure that where a young person grows up does not determine what they can become. It is about how we ensure that talented people, wherever they live and whatever their background, can gain the knowledge, confidence and qualifications needed to succeed. Another theme raised by many noble Lords has been the importance of prevention and early intervention. We know that young people who become detached from education or employment often face multiple and overlapping barriers. These can include disadvantage, low attainment, special educational needs, poor mental health, family circumstances and limited local opportunities. They can affect different groups differently, as my noble friend Lady Whitaker, with her usual tenacity, identified with respect to Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children. We know that the consequences can be long lasting and that is why this Government are placing increasing emphasis on prevention, earlier identification, stronger transitions and more co-ordinated support. We are improving how schools, colleges, local authorities and partners identify young people at risk of disengagement. We are strengthening post-16 pathways, introducing new technical pathways from age 14, and investing in better data and support systems so that fewer young people fall through the cracks. The noble Baroness, Lady Cash, is right that this starts early and that is why we are improving the quantity and quality of early years provision, tackling child poverty and improving, through our support for families and better start in life information, support and information for parents as well. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, argued that there should be machinery of government changes to put skills, training and education at the heart of government. I now straddle the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions following the most recent machinery of government change, which puts skills alongside employment support in the Department for Work and Pensions. I think that was an important change. It has led us to the development of the youth guarantee, which reflects the principles we have been talking about that every young person should have a pathway forward, whether through further learning, training, work experience and apprenticeship, or employment support. We are investing an additional £2.5 billion over the next three years into that and the growth and skills levy to support almost 1 million young people and to create up to 500,000 opportunities to earn and learn. In response to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, I can say that there are 300,000 work experience places through the youth guarantee, specifically. I turn to further education. Many noble Lords have rightly emphasised the critical role that further education colleges play. They are anchors within their communities. They support young people, adults, career changers and employers, drive social mobility and connect education directly to the needs of local economies. My noble friend Lady Morgan described the excellent work happening in Wigan. Every time I visit excellent FE colleges, I see staff and leaders engaged with the local economy, building its input into the curriculum and building links back to their students; this is at the heart of their success. But too often they have been left behind. My noble friend Lord Barber emphasised the need for high-quality teaching, which has been harder for FE to deliver, given its vacancy rates and the lack of investment it faces. That is why this Government are investing in the FE workforce and strengthening the sector’s foundation, including by providing around £120 million in 2026 to support colleges and other FE providers to address recruitment and retention needs, rising to £365 million next year. It is why we have increased the basic funding of FE and supported, in particular, further disadvantage funding, uplifts for T-levels and an inclusive mainstream fund to help those settings meet more special educational and disability needs. Many noble Lords have rightly emphasised the need to raise the status of technical and vocational education. For too long, public debate has treated academic and technical routes as though one were superior to the other. We want technical excellence to command the same respect as academic achievement, and technical education to be seen not as a second choice but as an excellent choice. I also support the argument made by my noble friends, my noble friend Lady Morgan in particular, that high-quality technical and vocational education is not only about engaging students and is not only for those who would otherwise be disengaged; it should be for everybody who wants to achieve excellence, but via a technical and vocational route. It is important that we keep that at the heart of our ambition and the changes we are making. That is why the Prime Minister has announced new prestigious technical education routes, giving 14 year-olds earlier access to technical skills, work experience and local employers. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has noted the emphasis from 14 that the new Prime Minister has brought in. I note the noble Lord’s strong emphasis, once again, on the opportunities that UTC sleeves may well provide in delivering this. But rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all model for delivering this new approach designed by Whitehall, regional mayors, local leaders, schools, colleges and employers will shape pathways around local industries and growth sectors, from advanced manufacturing, AI and digital technology to clean energy, life sciences, construction, health and care, and the creative industries. These changes build on our existing reforms, which demonstrate both the urgency and the ambition. With respect to the point about English and maths, I strongly agree that the literacy and numeracy skills that you need throughout life, often represented by a grade 4 at GCSE, are fundamentally important. That is why we are determined, with all the reforms that we are making pre 16, to strengthen the ability of children to get those qualifications and, post 16, to make sure that the system is focused not on a churn of resits but on the quality of teaching, professional development and the evidence of what works to enable young people to succeed if they have not up to that point. It is why we will also introduce a new level 1 stepping-stone qualification to enable young people to build the foundations they need in English and maths if they have not been successful in doing that previously. Equally, it is important that we emphasise the specialism and the contribution of FE colleges, which is why we have developed 29 new technical excellence colleges, including the 19 announced this year that are backed by £175 million, giving around 65,000 learners access to training for high-demand jobs in advanced manufacturing, clean energy, defence, digital and technologies. That builds on the first wave of construction technical excellence colleges, supported by £120 million of investment, which will train 40,000 construction learners by 2029. Together, that is a practical example of skills policy being tied directly to the industries and places where growth will come from, and it is an investment in the capacity and ability of further education colleges to work alongside those industries to provide opportunities for young people and the skills the country needs. As I have already said, I strongly support the points made by my noble friends Lady Morris and Lady Morgan about the rigour and quality that we must maintain in technical and vocational education. It should not be seen as a second-rate or alternative route for those who do not want or are not able to take an academic route. It must of itself be a prestigious, high-quality and rigorous route, and access to that quality must be open as widely as possible. I take the points made about level 6 apprenticeships, for example, which are offering brilliant opportunities for students but are not currently widely accessible enough to those from disadvantaged backgrounds. It is also the case that young people need a broader range of enrichment and experience, as several noble Lords have identified. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester talked about the need for work experience, as I have said, and the role of volunteering in contributing to the sorts of experiences that are important for young people. The noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, rightly identified the benefits that cadets can bring. Others identified important ways in which we need to support young people to progress. I note as well the point, made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry, about young people who might arrive at 16 without having had the opportunity to achieve up to that point. That is one of the reasons we are changing the qualifications and the routes for young people—what we would call level 2 post-16—to provide new pathways through an occupational route into jobs and a further study route into the ability to study level 3 qualifications. We cannot let young people lose the opportunities that jobs or further study could offer them. As she often does, my noble friend Lady Caine made a powerful case for creativity across the curriculum and throughout the age ranges. She challenged, as she often does. In a Question on Monday, we will have an opportunity to talk about support for higher education in creativity. We rightly heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, about the need to ensure routes into dance. This Government have continued to support the music and dance scheme, and I hear the calls for certainty around that. My noble friend Lady Hazarika spoke on the enthusiasm, the opportunities, the enrichment and joy that the study of music can bring, and the need to continue the work that we are doing on financial literacy was emphasised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sater. Several noble Lords highlighted apprenticeships and their powerful role in supporting young people into work and on the path to successful careers. That is why we are investing in them and reversing the sharp decline in apprenticeship starts among young people which we have seen over the last decade. There is an additional £1 billion investment to support 50,000 more young people into apprenticeships over the next three years. My noble friend Lady Alexander noted the ambitious plans that the Government have and rightly identified our need to make it as simple, easy and straightforward as possible for employers to take on apprentices. We have made progress in that area already, and we will keep pushing to make sure that that is the case. To support employers, we will also develop brokerage opportunities locally—as was suggested by my noble friend Lady Morgan; we are piloting them already—to bring together employers and apprentices. An important point was made about the role of higher education. I see—not just because of my job—the system as a tertiary system where opportunities need to work through further education and higher education. Of course, it is the case that very many of the skills that our economy needs will be provided through higher education, not just through an earlier route. That is why we need higher education to provide more opportunities for apprenticeships and to work effectively with further education to develop the level 4 and 5 qualifications that we need in this country. The Government have set out our target to increase the number of young people achieving level 4 and above qualifications. My noble friend Lord Docherty raised adult education, and several noble Lords talked about the need for education to be lifelong. I strongly support that. My noble friend is right that the funding for adult skills has fallen since 2010. Within the constraints that we face, we will try at the very least to maintain the support that is there, because it is so important for reskilling people, getting people back close to the labour market, helping people who have no English and maths to take up their entitlements to that, and supporting speakers of other languages with English—which is one of the things that the adult skills fund supports. The adult skills fund is devolved to make sure that it will be as effective as possible. My noble friend Lord Nagaraju, quite rightly, talked about the need for reskilling and the emphasis on AI, and made the point that that needs to be open to encourage the widest possible participation. In closing, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. The points raised today will inform our work to build a skills system that is ambitious, inclusive and responsive; one that empowers local leaders, supports disadvantaged communities, strengthens regional growth and ensures that talent, determination and hard work are rewarded wherever they are found. I commend the Government’s approach to the House.