‘Let’s turn failed unis into schools for plumbers ’
UNIVERSITIES that go bust should be turned into vocational colleges to train up plumbers and electricians, a Tory MP has suggested.
Shaun Bailey, 28, won Labour legend Betty Boothroyd’s old seat for the Conservatives for the first time in the last election.
The West Bromwich West MP said he and other Tories won because they respected the values of their constituents, and has vowed to give them the opportunities they need to prosper.
Mr Bailey, whose teachers predicted might be “selling drugs on the corner” by the age of 17, said he had overcome hardships and others could too.
He was brought up in a council house and in his maiden speech in Parliament he described how his mum “survived terrible domestic abuse” and “saved me and my sister”.
Attacking education priorities, Mr Bailey dismissed as “completely nuts” getting 50 per cent of young people in England into university, a target set by former prime minister Tony Blair. Instead, he wants universities that go bankrupt because of the expected fall in foreign student numbers and the switch to online teaching due to coronavirus to be the backbone of a new era of vocational education. He said: “We should seize the opportunity and turn them into vocational colleges that train people in the new and ancient skills of productive work. We need plumbers, electricians and bricklayers and while we’re at it we should put law and accountancy in the vocational colleges.”
The Black Country MP is also passionate about good social housing, arguing that children need space to do their homework. He does not want a “rehash of austerity” and he says the “courageous people who work in care homes should have a status of honour” and not “be prey to contracting out”.
Mr Bailey studied law and French at Aberystwyth before working as a trainee solicitor but now wishes he had not gone to university, declaring that “working with your hands is just as rewarding and just as respected as working in an office”.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, he said, will struggle to connect with voters. He said: “I know what it’s like to live with practically nothing. He just doesn’t have that level of cut-through.”