Matthew Lynn
Some smooth patter. A little easy-going charm. And a flexible relationship with the truth – at least where properties are concerned. The qualifications for a successful career as an estate agent have always been fairly straightforward.
But the Labour Party, which will almost certainly be in government very soon, wants to add something extra to the list. A university degree. Likewise, it thinks child-minders need to attend university, and perhaps very soon plenty of other professions as well. The trouble is, that is the very last thing the economy needs. All it will do is drive up costs, and rack up even more student debt. Labour’s plans to professionalise Britain could, in reality, put us all out of business.
Most of us have probably had a moan about estate agents from time to time. Perhaps they failed to mention the train line running through the back garden, or cheerfully described what many would consider a broom cupboard as a bedroom. We have all learned to take the glossy brochures with a generous pinch of salt. Even so, it seems unlikely that anyone ever came back from a viewing complaining that the person showing them around didn’t speak three languages or understand the finer points of post-feminist theory.
But shadow housing minister Matthew Pennycock has now tabled an amendment to planned housing legislation that would require all agents to have at least one A level, and for directors of agencies to hold an undergraduate degree. Agents will suddenly need to be a lot better educated.
Seriously? There are so many problems with the British housing market, from hopelessly inadequate supply, to petty building regulations and stamp duty, but estate agents lacking a criminology A level probably isn’t one of them. Even if the case were to be made for better regulation of estate agencies, minimum educational requirements are not the answer.
It doesn’t stop there. Labour’s shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said last year she wanted nurseries to be “graduate-led”, a move designed to “reduce inequality”. All of that comes at a time when there has been a huge rise in the number of jobs that require increasing levels of formal education, from race horse trainer to social worker. We are not quite at the point where you need a degree in chemistry to serve cocktails, or a doctorate in psychology to answer the phone at a call centre. But perhaps we should just give Labour time.
Continually demanding more and more qualifications for every job creates three big problems. First, it forces young people to get degrees, and rack up huge debts in the process. Who would want to go into an estate agency at 18 if the avenue to becoming a manager or director is blocked off? Instead, teenagers will be forced to rack up thousands in debts for a qualification that could be completely irrelevant to their work. The average estate agent earns £34,000 per year, and the average childminder is on £28,000. And looking after small children in a nursery requires kindness and patience, and many other skills which cannot be acquired in a lecture hall.
Next, it will push up prices for consumers. The costs of childcare are already crippling for many young couples, and are putting many of them off having children, or forcing one or other parent to give up their career so that they can stay at home themselves. Likewise, the costs of buying and selling a home are already too high. And yet demanding more qualifications means salaries will have to rise to pay for all the extra student loans, and in turn those costs will have to be passed onto the customers.
Finally, it will make staff shortages even worse. Most employers already can’t find enough people to do the work that needs to be done, largely because there is such a mismatch between the roles that people are now being trained for, and the jobs that are actually available. There are currently around 900,000 vacancies, a number which has remained stubbornly high in the post-Covid era. Mandating extra qualifications will only make that even worse.
What the UK needs right now is fewer students, and more generous funding for universities for those that do go on to higher education. And it needs more satisfying, well-paid careers that are open to people who prefer to start their working lives at 18 instead of 21.
Decades after Tony Blair’s ill-conceived 50 per cent target, Labour is doubling down on its graduate dream. It is a terrifying insight into what will, without question, be the party’s entire approach to government, imposing yet more intrusive rules and regulations, worsening our financial position, and exacerbating staff shortages for business. It might satisfy backbenchers and party activists, who are now overwhelmingly drawn from academia. But it will prove a catastrophe for the economy – and for the teenagers who are forced into paying for degrees that they don’t need.
