§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Berry.]
§ 12.7 am
§ Mr. Tom Bradley (Leicester, East)My purpose tonight is to draw the attention of the House, and particularly that of the Minister, to the serious situation which is developing in the Leicestershire careers service following senseless and disproportionate cuts made by the county council to the extent that a large question mark now hangs over the future of the service which the council is statutorily required to provide.
Indeed, a main feature article in last week's issue of the Leicester Trader indicated the concern of a number of careers officers within the county to the degree that they forecast the complete collapse of the service within the next five years.
Naturally, this is of immediate concern to those careers officers and supporting staff, numbering over 30, who are being made redundant. But the long-term consequences will adversely affect thousands of young people—school leavers, further 976 education students and young workers losing or changing their jobs. Unemployed young people will not receive the assistance which their essentially personal difficulties fully deserve. Those still at school and college could be deprived of vital careers guidance facilities. There will be psychological and social problems.
I hope that the Minister will agree with me that the careers service's degree of success should not be measured solely by the number of job placings that it achieves. It also gives extremely valuable and useful advice to young people, occasionally by dispelling their illusions about their capabilities or the possible grandeur of jobs that they are seeking. It has to give that kind of compassionate and friendly guidance over a wide spectrum. It should not be judged merely on the extent of the job placings that it achieves.
The Under-Secretary will know that the provision of a careers service is a statutory responsibility imposed on every local authority in England and Wales. It has operated since April 1974 as a consequence of the passage of the Employment and Training Act 1973. The aim of the service is to act as a bridge between full-time education and the world of work by giving guidance and help to enable youngsters to reach realistic and informed decisions about their future careers and related problems.
Successive Ministers have referred to the service as essential, and one required to play a greater role in the light of rising unemployment among school leavers. The careers service is probably the most informed statutory body on the problems faced by youngsters of all levels of ability and all backgrounds.
The Secretary of State has issued guidelines on staffing to local authorities, but they have not been implemented in Leicestershire. Even before the cuts that we are considering tonight, the level of staffing was 20 per cent. below the guidelines laid down by the Secretary of State. In addition, the increased percentage allocated to the careers service within the rate support grant has not been passed on by many authorities up and down the country, and certainly not passed on in Leicestershire.
For the past two years the careers service has attracted an increased percentage over other local authority services. 977 One must assume that that is because the Government have recognised the value of the service and its relationship to the youth opportunities programme.
In its zeal to respond to the Government's call for public expenditure cuts, the Leicestershire county council slashed £190,000 off the careers service budget of £420,000. Since that decision was taken, the redundancies have been speeded up to some extent, and the total reduction in the current financial year will be about £164,000 within the total budget. That means that 31 posts out of a total of 83—which constituted the old service in the county—will disappear. On 1 June there will be 30 careers officers and 22 support staff—they will comprise the total service —as against 46 careers officers and 37 support staff who operated previously.
I have mentioned already that prior to these cuts Leicestershire operated a service below the recommended guidelines of the Secretary of State. Part of those guidelines advise that the ratio of careers officers to 15-year-old pupils should be not less favourable than one officer to 375 pupils. Leicestershire's ratio was one to every 437 pupils. I am afraid that it will now become one to every 730 pupils.
When this information was conveyed to the Minister of State, Department of Employment, at a time when he introduced a report on the five-year record of the careers service from 1974–79. he made a remarkably candid ministerial statement. I quote from the Leicester Mercury of 2 February when Lord Gowrie is quoted as saying:
The Leicestershire report has caused me considerable anxiety. I have no powers to alter it but shall go into it to see if a cut on such a scale is necessary.We have no evidence that local authorities are going to clobber the Careers Service. There is no evidence that the rather alarming report from Leicestershire is being repeated elsewhere.Another passage follows, in the form of reported speech, which states:No such rundown or cut in this essential service was warranted, and if the Government thought the service was threatened or youth unemployment would rise as a result, they would take over the service.Lord Gowrie's alarm is fully justified, and I shall spell out why. There are 15,000 school leavers a year in Leicester- 978 shire. Last year, 90 per cent. of school leavers were seen by careers officers. In future 50 per cent. only will be seen. The question of which half that will be will have to be resolved, but it is certain that between 7,000 and 8,000 future school leavers will not be offered any careers advice, and they will be given very little help in job placement. There will be no preliminary interviews for third and fourth year children.Not only statutory school leavers will suffer from the loss of the service. In 1979 the Leicestershire careers service, in addition to interviewing 90 per cent. of school leavers, dealt with no fewer than 1,200 further education full-time students. It saw 2,000 adults and over 13,000 unemployed young people. The Leicester city office alone had 18,000 personal callers last year. Activity on that scale will no longer be possible, and those who succeed in obtaining help from the careers service will have to wait much longer for it. Careers officers will have to become more involved in administrative procedures, thus reducing their time available for direct contacts.
Participation in the Government's youth opportunities programme will be reduced, at a time when youth unemployment in Leicestershire is running at double the 1974 figure. The forecasters are now suggesting a further 40 per cent. rise in youth unemployment this year. That will mean that in the peak period in July there will be no fewer than 3,550 unemployed school leavers in Leicestershire. I remind the Minister that the Manpower Services Commission has said repeatedly that the youth opportunities programme schemes could not take off and operate without the active involvement of the careers service.
Handicapped pupils will suffer, too. There is already only a limited amount of time for this work. In future one specialist officer, instead of two as at present, will try to cope. It will be impossible to deal with those protracted cases that are so often found among disadvantaged persons.
All links with the Open University will be severed, and schools will have to organise their own careers conventions and visiting speakers. That could create extra problems for teachers, and they will not have time to interview their school 979 leavers. In any case, they are not trained to give vocational guidance.
I have no time to develop other possible effects of these drastic and harmful cuts in the Leicestershire careers service. The Minister told me in reply to a question on 19 March that it was too early to assess the impact on the service. In answer to an earlier question he told me that he was keeping himself informed about the position. That means that he is concerned, and that he is considering possible action. In my view, he should call for an urgent report from his inspectors in the careers services branch. He should arrange for a full discussion of this development in the careers service advisory council in Leicestershire, and he should issue advice to all local authorities—with perhaps two copies for Leicestershire—that it will be harmful to young people if cuts fall disproportionately on the careers service.
I hope that the Minister will say what steps he can take and what pressure he may be able to bring to bear on his political friends on the Leicestershire county council. It is clear that the council has overreached itself with these damaging proposals. There is some evidence to suggest that the decisions were taken in undue haste, and that full consideration was not properly given to all the implications involved.
The careers service is recognised as the only agency that effectively links education and work. A good start in life is vital to young people, who are the future lifeblood of our nation.
The Leicestershire county council has disregarded that basic truth. Other authorities may be tempted to economise on their careers services if the Minister allows Leicestershire to get away with its reckless and irresponsible policy.
The hon. Gentleman's reply will have a wider significance. I hope very much that he will feel able to give the House a positive indication of how he intends to use his influence to protect this important national service.
§ The Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Jim Lester)I should like to thank the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Bradley) for his thoughtful and well-presented speech, which draws the 980 attention of the House to a matter that is of concern to the Government.
The hon. Gentleman is rightly anxious to ensure that young people in Leicestershire receive as much help as possible in making the transition from school to work in the present year, in which, as the Government have acknowledged, the unemployment situation is unlikely to improve. However, I am bound to say that, although Leicestershire is not without its problems, in that respect the area is better placed than many others in the country.
The matter is of public interest, as evidenced not only by the number of questions tabled by the hon. Members for Leicester, East and for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding), but also by the volume of correspondence that Ministers and officials have received and, indeed, by the newspaper report that the hon. Gentleman referred to.
Besides the question of the Leicestershire careers service, the subject raises the whole issue of the relationship between central Government and local government. It is right to say that the Government are committed to a policy of allowing maximum freedom for local authorities to carry out their statutory duties in whatever way seems best to them in the light of their knowledge and experience of local needs and circumstances.
However, as I said in my reply to the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme on 13 February, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment has been keeping himself informed about the staffing position of the careers service in Leicestershire. It so happens that an inspector of my careers service branch is engaged in an inspection of Leicestershire at present, in the normal course of events.
As the hon. Member for Leicester, East knows, the Employment and Training Act 1973 requires local education authorities to provide a careers service in their areas. Their statutory duty involves providing a vocational guidance service for people attending education institutions, other than universities, and an employment service for people leaving those institutions. Authorities are also expected to make those services available to people in their teens who have recently left the 981 education system but still wish to use them.
The Act also empowers the Secretary of State to give general guidance to authorities on the way that they run their careers service and to require statistical and other information from authorities about the performance of their duties. That latter power is, for example, the basis of the Secretary of State's inspection of local authority services.
In common with other local government services, the careers service is funded through rate support grant arrangements. As I said in reply to a question from the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme on 20 March, the rate support grant
is an unhypothecated block grant in support of local revenue so that decisions on the actual level of the careers service expenditure rest with the local education authorities."—[Official Report, 20 March 1980; Vol. 981, c. 318.]As the hon. Member for Leicester, East will know, although the forecast expenditure on which RSG is based is calculated by looking separately at all the different elements of local authority activity, the RSG settlement itself takes the form of a block grant.Specific sums of money are not set aside for specific purposes and local authorities are free to determine their own priorities and to allocate the funds received under the RSG arrangements to individual services in accordance with their own policies and wishes, subject to carrying out their statutory duties. In doing so they are of course answerable to their local electorates.
Despite its local character, the careers service as a whole forms an important part of our national manpower machinery, hence the provision in the Employment and Training Act for the Secretary of State to give authorities
guidance of a general character",to quote the specific words of the Act. The current general guidance in the form of a booklet is contained in a memorandum that was issued to local authorities in April 1975 by the then Secretary of State for Employment. It provides both formal statutory guidance and, additionally, much useful background information and advice to supplement the guidance. It covers such matters as the 982 title and general aims of the service, the performance of functions by careers officers and matters of organisation, premises and staff.I should add in passing that the existing guidance and advice is now being revised by my Department's officials in consultation with local authority associations, the Institute of Careers Officers and other interested parties. When completed, the new version will take into account the experience of operating the careers service gained over recent years.
On the subject of staffing the general guidance states:
Careers Officers should be appointed and provided with adequate supporting staff".In the advice section which follows, the relevant sentence reads:It is for authorities to determine the staffing levels which are appropriate to the needs of their own Careers Services".The memorandum then goes on to describe the method of assessing staffing requirements used by the inspectors of the central youth employment executive in earlier years, before the present Act came into force. This method involved a formula which took into account variable factors such as the specific needs of handicapped youngsters, local levels of unemployment and numbers of immigrants, as well as an allowance for general administration of the service.By using this formula, at that time, it was thought that local authorities, having regard to their particular local circumstances, should aim at a ratio of one careers officer to every 400 14-year-old school children. The average for England and Wales at 31 March 1974 was in fact one officer for each 427 14-year-olds. With the raising of the school leaving age it subsequently became more appropriate to relate the ratio to 15-year-olds, as the hon. Member has mentioned, and the average number per careers officer has fallen to 375.
This represents an improvement in the staffing of the service. It is, however, important to stress that, at the same time, the burdens on the careers service have also increased as have general levels of careers service activity. While adjusting to the new institutional framework created by the Act and the new relationship between local and central government which was involved, the service has had 983 to accommodate to the very large and sustained increases in youth unemployment over the period, caused by economic recession and compounded by large numbers of youngsters leaving school.
As is shown by the report on the Careers Service 1974–1979, recently published by my Department, the service has responded with some impressive achievements. The total volume of vocational guidance interviews in schools and colleges rose by 30 per cent. to nearly 1.2 million in 1978; vocational guidance to unemployed young people increased by more than 200 per cent. to 274,000 interviews; total placings of young people in employment were maintained at around 200,000 a year and additionally—and very significantly—136,000 young people were recruited by the careers service to the Manpower Services Commission's youth opportunities programme in its first full year of operation. As the report says:
Taken together these figures provide a measure of the impressive performance of the Careers Service throughout the country during a period of severe challenges and growing expectations about its role".It is right, therefore, that, on behalf of the Government, I should pay tribute to the careers service nationally and emphasise once again the continuing importance we attach to its work. As tangible evidence of their support the Government have maintained, and indeed enlarged, the special scheme to strengthen the staffing of the careers service in those areas of the country most affected by high youth unemployment. This scheme provides for the appointment of specialist staff to work with unemployed young people both to help place them in jobs and to recruit them to the youth opportunities programme. It is wholly funded by specific grant from the central Government to the employing local authorities and at present allows for a total of 740 staff in Great Britain as a whole; this is of course, additional to the 5,700 regular careers service staff employed by authorities in Great Britain. Moreover, in my reply to the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme on 20 March, I indicated that our RSG forecast for 1980–81 allowed for an increase in real terms in expenditure on the careers service.Nevertheless, as I made clear in replies to parliamentary questions from the hon. Members for Newcastle-under-Lyme and 984 for Leicester East, on 17 March and 25 March respectively, it is the Government's policy not to exempt any services, except where the preservation of law and order is concerned, from their call for a reduction in public expenditure. An overall reduction and the transfer of resources to the wealth-creating parts of the economy are necessary for the development of the economy and the future prosperity which we all desire. Local authorities responsible to local electors must be free to determine how best to effect economies across the general range of their services in the light of their own varying circumstances. The careers service cannot be excluded from this general principle.
This is not to say that the central Government should not interest themselves in the response of individual authorities, but there is a delicate balance in which local autonomy must not be infringed and the need for difficult choices has to be recognised. As the Layfield report on local government finance said:
The rate support grant was intended to give local authorities greater freedom in the disposal of the financial resources available to them.It is against that background that we have come to consider the decision of the Leicestershire county council to reduce its careers service budget for 1980–81 by £135,000. There is no disagreement as to the main effects. Staff numbers will be reduced by about 30 from the previous level of 83, and the effect will be to reduce the staffing ratio from 1:430 15year-old pupils to about 1:750. This will be more unfavourable than that of any other authority, and will come at a time when levels of youth unemployment in Leicestershire are unlikely to improve. The effects will be only partially mitigated by the maintenance of the present four and a half specially funded posts to which I referred earlier and which are allocated to the authority. The Government are particularly concerned that the Leicestershire careers service may be unable to give sufficient attention to the youth opportunities programme to ensure the achievement locally of the two undertakings to school leavers and the longterm unemployed.I understand that the authority hopes to offset these careers service reductions to some extent by greater activity on the part of careers teachers. I would only 985 say that while the precise relationship between the careers service and careers education in schools is for local determination, the respective functions are essentially complementary and not interchangeable. In particular, careers teachers are not generally trained and experienced in the work of vocational guidance as are professional careers officers, and of course they cannot be expected to maintain the same close links with employers and an up-to-date knowledge of the local industrial situation.
My officials have held discussions with the leader and other elected members and senior officers of the Leicestershire county council to establish the facts and the consequences of the decision. I have recently met the council leader personally. As a result of these various contacts, I well understand the difficult choices facing the authority as it prepared to revise the budgetary estimates in keeping with the need for overall savings. Its problems were made worse by the fact that there had been a considerable overspending on the education budget, from which the careers service is financed, in the previous year. Savings to be achieved on the school meals service have proved notably less than was earlier hoped. It thus had very little room for manoeuvre and decided that cuts in the careers service were unavoidable.
986 The immediate prospect, therefore, is that the Leicestershire careers service will be affected both by the cuts and by the adjustments they will entail. The hon. Gentleman may, however, take some measure of encouragement from the fact that the leader of the council has undertaken to me that he will be monitoring the effects of the reductions on the actual performance of the careers service, and I have asked him to try to ensure at the very least that the service's existing structure will be kept intact. As a matter of course the careers service inspectorate is currently conducting an inspection in parts of Leicestershire, and will be ready to advise and assist in whatever way it can. Furthermore, I have been informed that, if circumstances permit, the council hopes that the rebuilding of the strength of its careers service can start in the 1981–82 financial year.
Although, therefore, I share the hon. Member's concern about the reductions in the Leicestershire careers service, I know from my own discussions that the county council is equally concerned and we shall be maintaining close contact with it to monitor developments and prospects over the coming year.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned acordingly at twenty-seven minutes to One o'clock.