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Higher Education

We have clearly identified 300,000 places over two years—a combination of apprenticeships and training places at colleges. Much of the money is currently being spent on, essentially, giving people paper qualifications without enhancing their underlying skills and without improving their progression through jobs. In any event, those people are already in work. We have made a tough decision about priorities, which is absolutely the right decision in the present circumstances. We have decided that our main priority should be new opportunities for young people: that should be the focus of our efforts. I hope very much that Ministers will be similarly helpful if my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings or I seek to intervene in order to question some of their own assertions. We face a crisis this summer, with a declining number of apprenticeship places, further education colleges under severe financial pressure, and a declining number of university places. Conservative Members have been trying to present practical proposals to tackle that problem.