Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell), who managed to avoid party political attacks until right at the end of his speech. I should like to take the House back to last November and Wakefield college's graduation ceremony, which I attended in our city's great cathedral. The graduands processed through the Saturday morning traffic, stopping it, and walked through the crowds of shoppers to take up their places and emerge into our city as graduates. They brought with them their parents, partners, teachers, children and friends—the people who had supported them through their years of hard work and studying, months of revision and assignments and weeks of waiting anxiously for their results. I watched them leave the cathedral and go out to eat a delicious buffet created for them by Wakefield college's catering staff and students, who do a mean egg mayonnaise sandwich. They went out into the world with the confidence that a degree brings. Without the hard work of their teachers and the support of the college, those people would be facing a changing job market unskilled and unprepared. Investment in higher and further education is an investment in the future of those young people and the future of Wakefield. Investing in skills in the Wakefield district is really important, because a quarter of the people who work there have no qualifications, which is the highest rate in the region. More than 39 per cent. of working age people there have no qualifications, and just 18 per cent. of our work force have degrees. For us, the Bill is no academic debate but is vital to the future of the city and the district. Wakefield college has to work hard to attract its students. In 2006, just 68 per cent. of school leavers in the district stayed on in full-time education, the third lowest rate in the country after Barnsley and Salford. That rate is lower than both the national average of 78 per cent. and the regional average in Yorkshire, which is 73 per cent., despite the Government's many initiatives such as the education maintenance allowance, which they introduced to help students from lower-income families to stay on in education. I tell Ministers that raising the school leaving age to 18 in six years' time will transform the life chances of young people in Wakefield. Schools in Wakefield city have no sixth forms, so the college is the only route to further education for young people in the area. A-levels, apprenticeships and national diplomas are all offered, and a new campus opened this month at Whitwood in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). It cost £31 million to build, with a 10 per cent. contribution from the Learning and Skills Council. That campus will focus on entry-to-employment courses and vocational education in the north-east of the district, which has the greatest difficulty in attracting young people to, and retaining them in, further and higher education. I was concerned to learn that the funding for rebuilding the college's city centre campus has been put on hold for three months. However, unlike the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), I will not engage in shroud waving. The council has had approval in principle for the £67 million project, with £40 million due to come from the LSC and the rest from a bank loan and capital receipts. It is imperative that learners in the city have access to first-class college facilities, and the building forms part of the regeneration of what will be the new merchant quarter, which includes a new city centre train station and a new living and working area at the gateway to our city. I have met the Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon) and been reassured by that meeting. The principal of Wakefield college and I met my hon. Friend a few weeks ago to impress on him the need for the new facilities in Wakefield. It is also vital to expand the higher education opportunities in the district. That has become critical since the university of Leeds pulled out of the Bretton Hall performing arts centre in the wonderful Yorkshire sculpture park—I encourage all hon. Members to pay it a visit in the next recess. It is a fantastic place—500 acres of country park, with the finest sculptures of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth dotted among the sheep. I impress on Ministers the necessity for a speedy final decision by the LSC. It is instructive to look behind some of the Conservative rhetoric on investment and remember the reality of Tory Government investment in education and skills. In 1996-97, earmarked Conservative Government expenditure on FE capital expenditure on building was nil. A National Audit Office report stated that college buildings were not fit places in which to learn. The Conservatives let those buildings go to rack to ruin and the Conservative Government cut FE funding by 7 per cent. in real terms in the four years up to 1997.