---

Social Mobility and the Professions

I accept that. That is why the Government's various changes to the careers service over the past 10 years have really not helped. I do not think that the quality of careers advice, or the creation of Connexions, has helped at all. We believe that there should be a professional all-age careers advice service that independently assists young people who are making their way in the world. There have been at least two sets of changes. The dismantling of the Careers Service as it existed in 1997 was a mistake. The chopping and changing on Connexions has not helped. We attach a large amount of importance to independent careers advice. The Minister has to accept that the Government's record of chopping and changing, and of focusing on Connexions instead of independent careers advice, has not helped young people through the maze that confronts them. So the first item on my list is better careers advice from a genuine, independent, professional careers service. The second item on my list is internships. I remember the launch in January of the national internship scheme by the former Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), using that well-known device, an interview with The Daily Telegraph. He identified Microsoft and Barclays as companies that would join that scheme. I hope that the Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property, who will wind up the debate, can give us some more information about that. Since then, Barclays and Microsoft have made it clear that they already run internship schemes. They seem to have no proposals to change them in any way. We have heard about lists of places in a graduate talent pool that has been launched. I received a written answer today from the Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property. I had tried to identify how seriously the Government were taking the new internship scheme by finding out how much money they had allocated to it. So far as I can tell from his answer, they have put £800,000 into a website. I have to say that it is not at all clear how the 5,000 extra internships are to be financed, or what has happened to the national internship scheme beyond the work on that website on opportunities. That website may be admirable, but it is not quite what his previous boss launched in January. What has happened to the national internship scheme, and what resources are the Government putting behind it? I am interested in that, because we understand and accept the evidence, which is absolutely clear: the concentration of internships in London and the south-east, and restricted access to them, is a barrier. That is why the Social Mobility Foundation, and its work with internships in this House, is such an excellent initiative. That was the second item on my list. The third item on the list, of course, is the "three As at A-level" challenge. To get into the competitive professions, which often select from a relatively small group of universities, one needs very good A-level grades. There are a variety of attempts to tackle the problem. We have to be wary of any system that just chucks applicants into the bin because they have been to private school, or because we think that they come from an affluent background. We need measures that are clear, defensible and well understood. The scheme that has impressed me most is that at King's College, which aims at broadening access to Guy's, King's and St. Thomas' school of medicine. King's College has created up to 50 extra places a year, on top of its mainstream recruitment, for students from state schools in 15 of the poorest London boroughs. It accepts them with A-level grades down to two Bs and a C, but they are subject to an internationally recognised aptitude test, so that there is an objective test of their merit; the scheme is not simply an exercise in social selection. The places are additional, so no one with good grades misses out. There is also an extra year—an American-style foundation year—to bring those students up to the level that is necessary if they are to be properly trained and are to qualify as doctors. Of course, one can only leave that medical school as a doctor, with a proper qualification, if one has achieved exactly the same high level as others have had to achieve before. None of us wants to have heart surgery performed by a consultant who may not have been very good at it, but who at least came from a poor background. There comes a point when sheer objective standards matter, and one can pass only if one has achieved those standards. That seems an admirable initiative. Again, I hoped that we might hear more from the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, who opened the debate, about the Department's ideas on how that initiative could be extended. There are two other items on our list of five. The fourth item is skills apprenticeships and better routes from apprenticeships to university. The Minister said that the UCAS points system would include apprenticeships, but that is easier said than done. I have had conversations with UCAS about that, as I am sure the Ministers will have had, but the UCAS application form and website are unclear and there is very little about apprenticeships. There is a lot of information about the value attached to music grades, for example, and a reference to the value attached to a horsemanship qualification, but trying to track down the value attached to an apprenticeship is not at all easy. UCAS says that its problem, which invokes a separate debate that we have had on other occasions, is that there is such a diversity of training schemes called apprenticeships. The term "apprenticeships" no longer involves simply level 3, but level 2, so it is difficult for UCAS to include apprenticeships automatically on its form. If the Minister, in his winding-up speech, were to flesh out what the other Minister said in her opening speech about exactly how all those apprenticeships will involve UCAS, that would be very interesting. We strongly support such apprenticeships, and I have urged UCAS to do better on identifying them.