MP Maya Ellis Transcript of Speech – 25 Feb 2025

Ribble Valley MP Maya Ellis discusses the impact of the Lancashire and Cumbria Institute of Technology during the second reading of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill on 25/2/25

Link to video: https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/d01192ac-d88b-44e2-9296-18a5c763ba00, from approx. 17:50.

Transcript of speech:

We’re far too familiar with pressing skills gaps negatively affecting our economy. Twenty per cent of our UK workforce could be significantly underskilled for their jobs by 2030 and 1.5m jobs in England are at risk of at least some of their tasks being automated in the future. But there are businesses and organisations leading the charge and tackling this.

In my previous life away from this place I was privileged to work alongside the Lancashire Skills Hub and the Lancashire Digital Skills Partnership, who have long been pioneers for developing our skills landscape in this country. And I’d like to put on record my thanks to Michele Lawty-Jones and Kerry Harrison, who lead those services, piloting programmes like the skills bootcamps, which they made such a success of in Lancashire that the previous government rolled them out nationally.

Their hard work also secured the Lancashire and Cumbria Institute of Technology, which I was delighted to get to visit last week at their base in Preston College in my constituency. The principal, Simon Nixon, and many of the students spoke to me about the technical training they’d received in areas such as health and social care, construction, counselling and engineering.

Vitally, Preston College collaborates closely with industry experts and businesses to ensure its curriculum is up to date and reflects the needs of the economy and is working with around 950 employers who help design the curriculum, support assessments, offer mentoring and industry placements for its IoT students. A great example of this is their work with Leyland Trucks, who reported a need for electric vehicle training for its apprentices, so the college embedded a new module into its Institute of Technology course.
One key need the college meets is providing increased opportunities for adult education. And the upcoming devolution deal in Lancashire will undoubtedly allow organisations to have increased say in adult education budgets so they can boost local productivity and foster the right opportunities for the North West. However, they do have a concern, the college, around the reported reductions in adult skills budgets by around 2 to 3%. For colleges that have little adult work or where they’ve struggled to deliver against contract, this might be less of a problem. But for Preston College, in my constituency, they get around 20% of their income from adult provision and have been able to over-deliver for the last few years.

Any reduction that was simply applied across the board would hit Preston College’s delivery, particularly in key areas like construction and ESOL and is likely to add further to cost pressures already being felt. While we’re undoubtedly under severe financial pressures at the moment, we need to be careful that short-term savings don’t impact the long-term skills development we desperately need to lead us to a better financial outlook in future so I welcome the Minister’s comments on that. What really blew me away at Preston College though was the feel of the place. It felt inspiring, modern, a place to really grow. And I heard from students who’d had more negative experiences elsewhere but felt truly at home here.

That’s what government investment can do for the wellbeing of areas in need of growth and that’s the opportunity we have with this Bill.