Angela Rayner's Speech for UCU Conference

Angela Rayner MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Education, delivering a speech for the UCU Conference, said:

Thank you Conference.

It is always a pleasure to be here, not just as shadow education secretary but as a fellow trade unionist, as I was when I joined you on the picket line last year to demand that you keep a fair pensions.

That is the difference between Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party and the Tories. They pick your pockets, we back your pickets.

And I know that without the support of my union, I would not be standing before you today.

And it was your members who gave me my second chance in education, when I took a sign language course at my college and later gained my first formal qualifications in care.

With my hand on my heart I wouldn’t be where I am today without both my trade union and my local college.

So Conference, I wouldn’t’ve have got here without people like you.

That’s why I’m so proud that the lifelong learning you provide will be at the heart of Labour’s National Education Service.

That concept is based on the values and principles I believe we share not just in the Labour Party but in the labour movement.

The same values that built NHS. That was founded on the principle that our society as a whole is better when free healthcare is available for all who need it, from cradle to grave, funded through progressive taxation so that we contribute according to our means.

It is those same principles we want to put into practice in education. That we are all better off in a society where we work together for the common good; where wealth and power are shared equally between us; and where public services are provided freely and for all.

That same vision led us to develop Labour’s National Education Service: an integrated set of institutions offering a free service, from cradle to grave, to all citizens, and for the public good.

That is why we will end the cuts and privatisation in our schools and bring them back into a properly publicly run system.

But a cradle to grave education service must go well beyond schools.

It is why we will create a new public service providing high quality early years education, while reinventing and reinvesting in Sure Start. 

And that radicalism will apply to the services your members provide as well.

Because our National Education Service will make education a right, not a privilege, to be enjoyed at every stage in life, whether to sixteen or eighteen year olds or adults retraining or seeking more knowledge years after they first leave education.

And your union and its members, teaching in both further and higher education, and the role of the trade union movement in delivering UnionLearn, will help make that a reality.

We have said before that we will develop our policy on doing this through a Lifelong Learning Commission, and we will be announcing more on that imminently.

But today I want to set out the principles of our National Education Service, and the first steps we would take to implement them with you.

Because at the heart of our plans is a complete transformation of how we approach education in this country.

For too long, the Tories have under-valued it and under-funded it.

And nowhere has that been starker than in further education - the only sector to have suffered cuts every single year since 2010.

Over £3 billion lost in real terms cuts since 2010, the promised T-Levels funding years away, while more cuts to the base funding rate continue.

These cuts have consequences.

We have seen the number of adult learners fall by one million since 2010 and overall spending on adult skills fall by almost half, just at the time when we need to develop a skilled workforce more than ever.

Yet there was not one word or a single extra penny for further education in the Budget. The Education Secretary has provided just £38m pounds in capital funding for the supposedly flagship T-Levels. Last year, I was proud to celebrate ‘Love Our Colleges’ week.

But colleges have had neither love nor money from this government. 

A Labour government will be different.

We will restore funding for 16-18 year olds, bring back the EMA, fund the sector to deliver free lifelong learning and give T-Levels the investment they need, ensuring they are a genuine gold standard in technical education.

But austerity is not the only dogma that Conservative governments have imposed.

For too long they have treated education, further and higher education especially, as a commodity for individuals to buy in a marketplace.

The Tories have unleashed a failed free market experiment, which is now coming home to roost with potentially disastrous consequences.

We have already seen the terrible toll of Tory rule on further education colleges.

Now there are reports of universities on the brink of bankruptcy, and of others relying on loans “just to survive.”

And when I challenged him on it earlier this week, the Universities Minister said that neither the government nor the regulator would act to save a university or college from failure.

In fact, he openly expects a few providers to “exit the market”, and committed himself to doing nothing. That is the cold logic of free market theory.

But Universities do not simply exit a market.

Educating hundreds of thousands of students across the country, employing tens of thousands of staff, and playing a vital role in the social and economic life of their communities.

These are not private companies to be left at the mercy of market forces, and Ministers cannot simply bury their heads in the sand when faced with what it would mean for even one of these vital institutions to be lost.

Students would be left with immense uncertainty about their futures, yet the Minister cannot even say that every university has a student protection plan in place.

Entire communities would lose one of their major academic, economic, and social institutions.

Yet the Universities Minister is happy to allow this to happen in the name of the free market.

The Tories’ obsession with free market dogma has gone too far, and conference as we all know it will be hard-working staff and students who pay the price.

To make it worse, Ministers have now admitted that the Treasury is handing the post-1992 universities a bill for 222 million pounds over the next two years for higher pension contributions, and without any financial support from government they must meet the cost themselves.

The Conservatives have said they can’t intervene, because universities are private institutions.

I respect the independence of universities, but we cannot pretend that this simply gives government an excuse to wash their hands of the challenges facing the sector, and leave it to the whim of the market

Because, yes, universities are independent, but they provide a public good, and they are publicly funded to do it.

Even under the Tories’ system of tuition fees, we know that nearly half of the debt will be written off, and so it is the government, and the public, helping to fund these institutions. The recent decision of the ONS on how to account for student loans makes even this clearer.

So these are institutions that are largely publicly funded, delivering a public good, and their failure would be against the public interest. So there is a duty on government to support them, and to ensure that they are sustainable.

Education is a public good, and should be treated as such.

That is why a Labour government, unlike the Tories, would not simply allow providers to collapse in the face of market forces.

We would ensure that the regulator is specifically instructed to prevent that disastrous outcome, with the powers to match, using its budget to provide support to universities that need it.

That does not mean a blank cheque for poor management at the top. We would ensure that there are sanctions in place for senior managers where there are financial failings. But the cost should not be borne by ordinary staff, students and society as a whole.

Our movement fought for education as a right for all, and we will protect this right. We fought to open up higher education to working people, to the many not just the privileged few.

Our universities are for all of us. They are there to serve us all, as learners and as communities.

They are a public good, and a Labour government will treat them as such.

***

As everyone in this room knows all too well, in both further and higher education, this government is not giving staff the support they need.

In higher education, the free market experiment has led to the casualization of a highly-skilled professional workforce.

In fact, there were nearly seven thousand academic staff on zero hours contracts last year.

And a total of over 11,000 staff in higher education on zero hours contracts as a whole.

Staff in our universities deserve better, and that is why Labour will end zero-hour contracts and offer you a fair deal at work.

But the need for fairness in your workplaces go wider. I want a National Education Service that not only works in the interests of the public but also represents the public too.

When it comes to gender, race, class, region, disability, sexual orientation I know we need to do more, and that requires leadership from the top.

Because too often our universities, like so many of Britain’s institutions, do not truly reflect or represent the society they serve.

I know that as a union, and as educators, you want to do more to make our universities truly representative.

We can all agree that when it comes to gender, race, class, region, disability, and sexual orientation our universities must do much more.

UCU recently published research on the experience of black female professors in the UK. I was struck by the astonishing fact that there are just twenty five of them. At the same time, two third of professors are white men.

Frankly, we face similar challenges in politics where it’s unusual enough being a working class woman. In both of our worlds, we need to lead the demand for change.

We are already committed to bold action on equality in the workplace and in our society, but we will also propose concrete steps to ensure transparency, fairness and a clear path to progress in academia specifically.

There is a similar issue when it comes to economic fairness for all staff.

Because while your members have suffered pay restraint and had your pensions threatened, top pay has shot up by tens of thousands of pounds since 2010.

Yet the government has taken only token action, again leaving it to the market to decide.

So Labour will end this endemic inequality. 

We will extend the policy of 20:1 pay ratios between the highest and lowest paid members of staff to universities, reflecting their role as institutions there to serve the public good, and receiving public funding to do it.

We will ban vice-chancellors from sitting on their own remuneration committees, to ensure that decisions are fair and seen to be fair, while giving staff and students a voice in those decisions.

In both higher and further education there need to be voices for staff when decisions are made.

We will give staff a voice on the board of the Office for Students, to ensure that they play a role in decision making that affects the sector they work in.

That too must go for staff in further education, which is why we will ensure that further education has a representative on the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, and ensure there is a voice for staff.

And we will support teaching staff in further education by ensuring that all further education teaching staff will have a teaching qualification within five years.

But unlike the Tories, when we make a promise to you, we will also ensure there is the funding needed to back it up.

Because we have seen the consequences of Tory cuts in the workforce.

Further education teaching staff have seen their pay fall by thousands of pounds in real terms, and their numbers drop by ten thousand since 2010.

This is simply unacceptable. You are vital and valued public servants, and a Labour government will give you the support you need.

Because our public services are nothing without the dedicated staff who work in them, who provide services that are essential to our lives and to our country.

That too goes for the many staff who weren’t born in this country and now face an uncertain future thanks to this government.

Their shambolic handling of Brexit risks creating a national crisis, and that is certainly true in our universities.

Nearly 36,000 academic staff in higher education are from the EU; almost one in five.

We know that a no deal Brexit would be an absolute disaster for higher education in England.

Ministers know it too, yet they continue to keep the irresponsible and potentially catastrophic option of a No Deal Brexit as part of their strategy.

A desperate strategy to play for time by playing with people’s jobs and people’s services.

So let me be clear, Labour, in opposition and in government, will do absolutely everything in our power to avoid leaving the EU without a deal.  

We have said time and time again that we will not accept a Brexit that leads to a reduction in the rights of those EU nationals who have made their lives here as our students, our colleagues, and our friends.

So we will protect the rights of every EU citizen who now make such an important contribution to our universities.

That is not the only cause of uncertainty, of course. The Government’s independent review threatens more back-door cuts to universities, while I fear that further education will be neglected entirely.

Labour’s National Education Service will stand in stark contrast.

For too long, despite playing a vital role in our education system, further education has been under-appreciated and under-resourced by central government.

The promised “parity of esteem” between vocational and academic learning isn’t worth the press released it was published on.

For too long further education has been treated as the poor relation in our education system.

Perhaps if there were more senior figures in the Conservative Party who did not go to university this would not be the case.

Conference I am tired of hearing the majority of young people in this country referred to as “those who don’t go to university”, as if the route they have taken is any less valuable to them or to our country.

It could not be clearer, after years of cuts, that under the Tories we will never see further education given not just the resources, but the respect that it deserves.

But Labour’s National Education Service will end this.

We will finally give the sector the investment, in funding to provide courses, in facilities, and in staff, that it needs.

When we promise free lifelong learning, that means in both further and higher education, and fully funded by the government.

In higher education, we will abolish fees and bring back maintenance grants.

In further education, we will also abolish advanced learner loans, and bring back the EMA.

Under a Labour government, austerity really will be over for both further and higher education.

***

But austerity isn’t the only different choice we would make.

The Tories’ attitude to our services goes to the very heart of their ideology.

Of a system where market logic is imposed on public goods; where the forces of competition run rampant at the expense of students, staff, and communities.

So it is with the role they have created for their new regulator.

Only this government could set up an Office for Students without thinking that they need to put a student on it.

But what the Tories have set up is a body designed at best to be consumer regulator in a market, and at worst to promote the very ideology of the free market itself, at the expense of students, staff, and our higher education sector.

One of the first duties the government placed on the Office for Students is to promote competition.

When we all know that it is cooperation, not competition that is essential to helping every student succeed.

That is why a Labour government will end the duty to promote competition, and replace it with a duty to promote collaboration, both between universities themselves, and between universities and other parts of the education system.

Our National Education System will be a unified system, with genuine cooperation between higher and further education, and we will ensure that the regulator delivers this.

On degree awarding powers, we see exactly the same instinct.

New providers being given degree awarding powers on day one is an ideological move, designed attract new private, profit-making, providers.

But the reality is that this would put the education of students at risk, who would be gambling on a new provider with no guarantee that they would end their time at university with a valuable degree, or in fact a degree at all.

So Labour will reverse this change, and ensure that new providers have to be sponsored by an existing university before they get their own degree awarding powers, protecting the value of the university title.

This would protect not only the interests of students, but the public interest as well.

***

We will unwind the Tories’ failed free market experiment.

Treating education as a public good that benefits us all, not a commodity to be bought and sold for private gain.

Because education should be the right of every citizen, not a privilege for purchase.

I know that from my own life. Returning to further education after the birth of my son was an opportunity that changed my life. I want that opportunity to be open to others, throughout their lives.

So that is our National Education Service. Offering lifelong learning, for the public good, for all and for free.

Because a society where education is free, is a society where people are free.

The next Labour government will build a fair and equal economy, and we will redistribute power along with wealth.

Because I can tell you poverty isn’t just about being penniless. It’s also about being powerless.

Powerless compared to your employer, your landlord, big business and even the welfare system created to support you but which the Tories have turned against you.

Knowledge is power, and power belongs to the many, not just the few.

As a trade unionist I fought for workers to earn the reward of their labour to have power over their own lives and workplaces. That too is my purpose in politics.

The sum of human knowledge is the result of thousands of years of human labour. The discoveries of maths and science; the great works of literature and art; the arc of human and natural history itself; and so much more that there is to learn.

All of it should be our common inheritance.

That is our vision of a National Education Service.

It is a vision I believe we can make real.

And we can do so together.