THE North-East has "very good" further education (FE) colleges which could be "destabilised" by a Government overhaul, the region's MPs have claimed.

Ministers have launched a series of area reviews across the country which will decide how the further education sector will be restructured.

The Government says it wants "fewer, often larger, more resilient and and efficient providers".

The issue was discussed in Parliament this week at a debate called by Bishop Auckland MP Helen Goodman, who accused the Government of "destabilising" further education colleges in the region by firstly cutting the education maintenance allowance and now launching this review.

She added: "If there are failing FE colleges in some part of the country, he (Skills Minister Nick Boles) can review them all he likes, but that is not the situation in our region."

MPs heard that the Tees Valley review had already begun while the North-East review was yet to start, creating this risk of arbitrary boundaries, according to Mrs Goodman.

She added: "When the Minister announced the reviews, he said that he expected policy options to include rationalising the curriculum and considering opportunities for specialisation, merger, collaboration and closure.

"Improving the curriculum is always a good idea, as is collaboration, but closure is unacceptable and particularly problematic in a rural area."

Hartlepool MP Iain Wright questioned why the review included FE and sixth-form colleges, but not school sixth forms, 16-to-19 free schools or university technical colleges.

Darlington MP Jenny Chapman said she was not opposed to area reviews.

She added that Government policies in recent years had lead to "sharp practices" taking place in her town.

"In my area, we have the ludicrous situation that students have been enticed by offers of free travel to study at colleges further from home, when they could just as easily have studied the same courses in their home towns.

"That is not a sensible use of public money. Colleges are incorporated, but they are funded by the state, and taxpayers would expect such practices to be discouraged.

"My fear is that area review actually encourages such a lack of co-ordination and collaboration and that, once colleges agree whatever they agree with the area review team, the situation will deteriorate."

But in his response, Mr Boles suggested Labour MP speeches that raised the prospect of forced closures and "people having to trudge hundreds of miles through the snow to get to a course" risked destabilising colleges rather than the review.

He added: "Absolutely nothing could be further from the truth and when they have literally no evidence at all for any of the fears they are trying to awake.

"We simply do not have the power, nor do we want to have the power, to tell them to merge, close or do any such thing."