Damian Hinds MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Apr 2025 · Digital Landlines: Rural Communities · Hansard source

  More

  I do recognise that, and hopefully I will be able to come on to it. While broadband and mobile connectivity have improved markedly in many areas, there is still a big gap between towns and rural areas. With electricity, the key point is that we have been having storms more frequently—and in our sorts of rural areas, with storms comes damage to powerlines.

• 1 Apr 2025 · Foreign Influence Registration Scheme · Hansard source

  More

  It was good to hear the Minister confirm that the scheme will be kept under review. Two definitional matters will certainly need to be kept under review: first, what counts as being “at the direction” of a foreign power or specified entity, and secondly, in respect of the political tier, what is the extent of the definition of “political influence”? Up until now we have tended to think in terms of influence over elections, parliamentarians or Government decisions, but given the continuing development of technology and new media we can also see the potential for more direct action—direct to the public—which could conceivably have very high-impact effects. Will the Minister keep both those matters under review?

• 31 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

  More

  I could not resist the hon. Gentleman.

• 31 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

  More

  He is not, no; he is saying something different. Of course there is value in all sorts of training. In my working career, I did various stints of training but they were not called an apprenticeship. We do not have to call something an apprenticeship for it to be a worthwhile piece of training. Already, we ask the word “apprenticeship” to cover a lot of things. As I was saying, in most countries it typically means younger people starting their career. Here, it covers career starters, career developers and career changers. If anything, we ought to be thinking about how we can refocus and differentiate between the requirements that people have at different times of their career, and the requirements their employers have as well. The Bill is not about to fix that or address that, but I am hopeful—this is where I started—that the Government have indicated that they have heard the message on the two key elements needed when certifying and specifying qualifications: independence and a guaranteed business voice. New clause 4 would create precisely that independence. New clause 1, which was moved by the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom), has a lot of merit. He put a great deal of thought into it in Committee, but the additional point about statutory independence is fundamental. If the Minister is minded to accept just one amendment—I hope she will accept two; what do we think?—it should be new clause 4.

• 31 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

  More

  My right hon. Friend makes a very important point, which stands on its own merits.

• 31 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

  More

  Of course we should be listening to colleges such as Bournemouth and Poole college. We heard the Government announce earlier that thousands of people were going to go into construction, but then say that they could not do anything until they created this body and subsumed the functions of IfATE into it. I do not see how all those things fit together. Yes, we want more people going into construction, and a long list of other sectors too, but that does not necessarily mean an apprenticeship in every case. There is a whole suite of existing technical and vocational courses, and T-levels are still ramping up as well. On breadth versus depth, IfATE has a huge range, with more than 600 occupational standards for apprenticeships, T-levels and higher technical qualifications. Skills England is initially looking at a narrower set of sectors, but has a much broader remit for them, so it does more than IfATE. There are three big things on its list. The first is to identify where skills gaps exist, which is itself a very significant task. It may at first glance sound obvious, but it really is not. First, there is a question of what time horizon we are talking about. Are we talking about today, or planning five, 10 or more years into the future? More significantly, I am sure people would generally say that we could train more people to go into the social care sector. The issue is not so much whether we have the training courses available, but whether people are willing and happy to go into the sector. That is a broader question. Secondly, Skills England has to work across Government with the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council and the Migration Advisory Committee, as well, of course, as with the Labour Market Advisory Board, under the DWP. The MAC is a well-established body, having been around for a number of years, that has a remit on immigration; it will not necessarily have the same perspective as Skills England. As the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire rightly said, the ISAC is going to be given its own statutory footing, which begs the question of where in the hierarchy Skills England will be. We want this to be a body that is able to speak authoritatively right across Government. Thirdly, Skills England is going to identify the training that should be accessible via the growth and skills levy. That, again, is a huge task. What can be funded from the levy is a huge strategic question. What specific skills should we rightly expect a firm to provide, and what should be generalisable skills for the economy? Even after all that, there is still the big question about supply and demand at college level—this may come back to the point the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) made about listening to colleges, on which he was absolutely right. We do not currently stop people doing courses because there is a surplus of people in such and such a sector and a shortage somewhere else, but some hard questions are going to come up around the funding formulae for these things to ensure that we do have enough people going into construction, social care and so on. My contention is that each of those functions is enormous. Amendment 6 would, therefore, perform a useful role. It is not about dither and delay, but about allowing Skills England to establish itself and to carry out those key strategic functions that it is there to do, and then to be able to subsume the functions from IfATE.

• 31 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

  More

  The truth is that there is always a balance about apprenticeships. Of course, there can be abuses: in the past there were abuses of the apprenticeship system with the lower rate that could be paid, although many employers pay the full rate to people of whatever age who are doing apprenticeships. However, it is also true that providers are getting four days a week—not five—of work from somebody, and a form of learning is involved. It is the same, with the opposite proportions, when someone is doing a T-level, which is partly done at college and partly on an employer’s premises. There is always a risk that if we make that gap too narrow, fewer people may be afforded that opportunity in the first place. That balance has to be got right, but I take my hat off to all the many employers who have invested very strongly in their young people, particularly in the way the hon. Member outlines. Clearly, quality cannot be guaranteed just by the structure of the Government Department or Executive agency that oversees it, but quality is less likely if we get that structure wrong. The two key things with IfATE—key to this debate and for the amendments we are considering —are, first, its independence from the Government, and secondly, that there was the guaranteed business voice. I am talking in the past tense already, but I mean that it is independent and there is a guaranteed business voice. Which Minister is not going to say, “We’ll listen to business”? Of course, Ministers will say, “We’ll listen to business. We want business to be at the heart of our plans and designing them.” They will say that, but it is not guaranteed in what the Government plan to set up, and just saying they will listen is not enough. Such independence gives people, meaning the employers, the young learners and everybody else, the confidence of knowing that the Government—and it might not be this Government—could not erode the standards because they wanted to artificially increase the volumes of people on those courses. It has been a feature of the broader debate to have Labour colleagues saying, “We’re going to get the numbers of people getting apprenticeships up.” Well, wahey, of course they are going to get the numbers up. That much is blindingly obvious. I am reminded of a time in the past when many apprentices did not know they were on an apprenticeship, so loose were the requirements. The Conservative Government raised the minimum length of time for an apprenticeship and raised the minimum amount of time in off-the-job training. In college-based education, the Sainsbury review reported that in many cases qualifications had become divorced from the occupations and sectors they were there to serve. We are already seeing, with the change in the minimum length of apprenticeships from 12 months to eight months, the rowing back or erosion of that standard. There is plenty of training in industry that does not require a 12-month minimum and there always has been, but if somewhere is going to have a short course, just do not call it an apprenticeship. That training is very worth while, but that does not mean it is the same thing. In Germany, which is the country people usually look to as the international standard on these matters, an apprenticeship typically lasts for two or three years, with two days a week—not one day a week—in college. In those two days a week, young people typically do a full timetable of what we in this country call general education or academic subjects, as well as vocational education. In Germany, people can do an apprenticeship to become a food and beverage manager, but if they want to be a bartender there is not an apprenticeship for that role, because it does not take that long to train to be a bartender—they do another kind of training. In this country, we have come to a strange position with the apprenticeship levy. There is lots of lobbying to count more and more things as an apprenticeship, so they can be paid for out of the apprenticeship levy. That is not the right way around. Already, we ask the word “apprenticeship” to do a lot. In most countries, it means young people aged 16, 18 or 21.

• 31 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

  More

  I want to make a short contribution to this Report stage debate, particularly in favour of new clause 4 and amendment 6. On the train coming up to Westminster, I typed into my tablet “Short IfATE speech”, and every time I did so, it kept changing it to “Short irate speech”. Unfortunately, I am not very good at irate speeches—it is not really my thing—so I will make a slightly disappointed speech, but with a hint of optimism, because I hope this Minister may take this opportunity to do something of significant benefit for the technical and vocational education and training system in this country. I know why the Government came forward with the idea of a new quango—it is not even a quango, but a sort of semi-quango—called Skills England. They did that because they were going to have to talk to British industry about a lot of other things. They knew deep down that they would be doing things that were really very unpopular, such as the Employment Rights Bill and the massive hike in national insurance contributions and business rates, and that aspects of those things are bad for employment and unpopular with employers. With Skills England, Ministers—then campaigners, but now Ministers—had come up with something they thought business would really like and want. In truth, however, if the Government are going to fix the two big underlying issues in our system—the productivity gap we have in this country compared with France, the United States and Germany, and the parity of esteem we all say we want, and that the Conservatives do want, between academic learning and vocational learning —we need to make technical and vocational education better. We also need to make it simpler and more appealing, but above all it needs to be made better. That is entirely what the Sainsbury review—spearheaded by the noble Lord Sainsbury, a Labour Lord—was all about. It was about giving us a simpler, more appealing system, led by business, which would deliver the highest quality of technical education.

• 31 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

  More

  Would the hon. Gentleman extend that principle to the academic route? I have asked the Minister this question a number of times now. I do not think we would stand for anyone saying that the standard and specification for A-levels should be set in Sanctuary Buildings by the Department for Education. If we would not do it for A-levels, why would we think it is right for T-levels? What is the answer to that?

• 20 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Go on then.

• 20 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  I am very happy to—

• 20 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  It is good to see you in the Chair, Ms Furniss, for these proceedings today. I rise to speak against Government amendment 1 and, by extension, in defence of clause 12 as it came out of the other place. To be clear, we want Skills England to succeed, and clause 12 as drafted will help Skills England to succeed. It is a breathing space clause, allowing Skills England to operate for a year before it has to absorb IfATE’s functions. The Minister just described it as disappointing that this clause was inserted by the other place. I do not think it is disappointing at all. It is a very good thing. It is not anti-Skills England. It is a pro-Skills England clause to give the new body its best chance of success. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston and I did not confer in preparing our notes for this morning, but I, like him, was very struck by what another former Sheffield MP, the noble Lord Blunkett, said in the other place. He noted that with the transfer of functions, close to 200 people would transfer from IfATE over to Skills England and, in his words, “there is a real danger that IfATE will swamp Skills England at birth.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 21 November 2024; Vol. 841, c. GC98.] Skills England has a really important function to perform. Were it to be hampered in that because of operational complexities and difficulties, that would be deeply regrettable. To understand why this is significant, it is important to note that Skills England and IfATE have different shapes—as an analogy, think about different depths and breadths. Skills England will, at least initially, prioritise 10 sectors: the eight sectors identified as growth-driving sectors in the industrial strategy. Added to those we have construction and health and care, which are also essential to some of the Government’s other missions—so eight plus two makes 10. It will develop skills needs assessments for each of those 10 priority sectors to feed into the industrial strategy planning process. In the noble Baroness Smith’s very helpful letter to peers on 18 March, she says that work is under way on the eight growth-driving sectors identified in the industrial strategy. That begs the question: what about the other two? They are also identified as being crucial to Government missions. Another question: what about the other volume sectors of employment in the economy? I worked in hospitality for almost 20 years before coming to this place. Hospitality is a fundamental part of our economy; hospitality and retail along with care form the biggest employers in our country. There is sometimes a danger with being mission-led that, if something falls slightly outside the scope of the mission, it gets slightly overlooked. I know that many in those sectors would be keen to hear more about that. On top of the three big volume sectors of hospitality, retail and care, we could also add admin and support—four sectors that collectively historically have accounted for about a quarter of gross value added in this country, but account for about three quarters of the people in the country who are low paid. For many social justice and equality reasons, those sectors need to have proper focus. That is what Skills England is currently planning to do. IfATE does something rather different and is on a different scale. That goes back to what I was saying about the difference between depth and breadth. IfATE creates and maintains over 600 occupational standards for apprenticeships, T-levels and higher technical qualifications. It works with employers to develop, approve and review occupational standards. It creates and maintains the occupational maps, which group together occupations into 15 routes. It approves, reviews and ensures the quality of approved technical qualifications and their alignment with the occupational standards, and it develops, reviews and approves apprenticeship standards. Skills England is initially looking at a narrower set of sectors, but with a much broader remit for those sectors; that is what I mean about the difference between breadth and depth. It does more than IfATE, and each of the additional things will, in its own right, take a lot of work to properly establish. That is why I say that clause 12 as currently drafted is a pro-Skills England clause: it seeks to give Skills England the best opportunity to achieve those ends. Each of the three elements of Skills England’s remit is big. It will, first, identify where skills gaps exist and, secondly, work with the Industrial Strategy Council and the Migration Advisory Committee to address them. Those are the two bodies that have typically been mentioned in the Government documentation, although recently Ministers have also started mentioning, importantly—it should not be overlooked—the Labour Market Advisory Board, which the noble Baroness Smith spoke about in the House of Lords recently. Thirdly, Skills England is to identify the training that is accessible via the growth and skills levy. Each of those is a very large undertaking that will take time to establish. Let us take them in turn. First, Skills England will identify skills gaps. On the face of it, that might sound straightforward, but it is not. The first question is: what constitutes a skills gap, and what level of detail are we talking about? Are these individual job roles, groups of job roles or industries? It is also necessary to distinguish between skills that need to be provided systemically, in our education and training system, and skills that firms themselves should be able to train for. We all know that filling vacancies can be difficult. In my constituency, which has had very low levels of unemployment over the past 10 years or so, it is the No. 1 thing that businesses talk about. It is obviously related to skills gaps, but it is not necessarily the same thing as skills being absent. The Minister talked about the need to home-grow our labour, but a key question for firms that are importing labour—this is relevant to some of the sectors I mentioned—is whether they can be persuaded to make the investment and take on, in some cases, the risks involved in not bringing in labour from abroad. That is a question for individual firms. It is also a question for some whole sectors or sub-sectors. A real example is social care. Most people would say that it is perfectly possible to train people up to work in social care, but for a potentially complex set of reasons—I do not intend to go into it today, and we do not have time for it—people do not want to go into social care. When business leaders complain to us about the lack of skills, they are typically not talking about the sorts of things that can be certificated. They do not say, “Not enough people have grade C or above GCSE maths,” and they do not say that not enough people have a BTec in such and such or an apprenticeship in something else. They mostly talk about soft skills, or what are called soft skills—some soft skills really are soft skills, but some of them are what in business terms are more properly called behaviours: self-discipline, turning up to work on time and so on. It is not clear to me how that set of soft skills—in my experience, the No. 1 thing that businesses talk about—relates to the work of Skills England. To come back to the specific questions about the skills required for particular sectors or individual job roles, there is also the question of how far into the future Skills England is looking. Is it talking about how we fill the skills gaps we have today, or about the future effect of artificial intelligence on the labour market, and what we should be planning for 10 or 15 years hence? There is also a question about the level of ambition. There is a certain set of skills required—craft skills and so on—to fill the vacancies we have today, as jobs exist today. But it is also true that this country has a productivity gap against the United States, Germany, France and others. By the way, that has been true every year since I have been alive—I think I said that last Thursday as well. I am 55 today—I do not mean it is my birthday today, but I am 55 now—so that is quite a long time. If we were being really ambitious, we would not ask what skills we need to fill the jobs that we have today, but what we need to do to make up that skills gap, and what skills are needed to fulfil that. In identifying where skills gaps exist, Skills England will also have to deal with localities, because jobs exist in certain places. It will have to work with devolved Administrations and with mayors, and mayors will have their own views about the skills gaps in their areas. Will there be a hierarchy of analysis? At what level is Skills England going to identify gaps, and to what extent will that fall to the local area? I will come back to that later. It is also true—I have experienced this myself when talking about the adult education budget, for example, with mayors and local authorities—that, quite rightly and understandably, local governance structures and leaders often want more power to be devolved to their local area. Skills England will have to find its place in what can be a tense area. There is also the question of LSIPs—local skills improvement plans and local skills improvement partnerships. In the debate on this subject in the other place, Lord Lucas said: “The word I hear is that LSIPs have been a real success, as they are effective and flexible. It takes a couple of years for the DfE to evolve a qualification but LSIPs can do it in weeks, because they are so focused on the actual local employer need and work closely with a provider.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 21 November 2024; Vol. 841, c. GC125.] The Liberal Democrat, Baroness Garden, said: “I think it is important that the Secretary of State must set the priorities for LSIPs and review them regularly to ensure that their priorities are reflected in national strategies for the creation of standards”. —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 21 November 2024; Vol. 841, c. GC106.] The Minister herself, Baroness Smith, said: “LSIPs and the employer representative bodies that develop them will also provide important intelligence to Skills England to inform its assessment of national and regional skills, both now and in future. They will work with Skills England to resolve skills gaps.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 21 November 2024; Vol. 841, c. GC128.] However, in her letter to peers two days ago, she wrote that Skills England is now—already—responsible for oversight of LSIPs and relationship management for all 38 of the designated employer representative bodies, but also that LSIPs will be a joint responsibility between mayoral authorities and those employer representative bodies. Devolution is increasing, so the other part of the background is the English Devolution White Paper. At the same time as we are creating Skills England to be the uber skills authority in the land, the foreword to the White Paper, in the hand of none other than the Deputy Prime Minister herself, says: “We will give Mayors strong new powers over...skills, employment support and more”. The White Paper states: “The majority of the Adult Skills Fund is devolved…but we need to go further”, continuing: “Strategic Authorities will take on joint ownership of the Local Skills Improvement Plan model, alongside Employer Representative Bodies, which set out the strategic direction for skills provision in an area.” The question for Skills England, therefore, is how that will work in practice. Clearly, it will take a lot of time and work to make the new structures operational, at a time when the structures themselves are changing in so many areas, with the devolution White Paper being implemented. This is complicated architecture anyway, but potentially something is still missing: ultimately, how we match up demand and supply.

• 20 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  The question is how.

• 20 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  I am very grateful for your guidance, Ms Furniss, and of course I will ensure I do. In my defence —obviously I am not arguing with your judgment— I am trying to illustrate the large number of things that this new body will have to figure out. As Lord Blunkett said, if, at the same time, it is taking on the enormous existing role of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, with 200 people coming on board, that makes it harder to figure all these things out, with which I think we all wish the new body and its leadership the very best. But of course I take your judgment.

• 20 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  That is not really the way we do it in Parliament. You respond for the Government.

• 20 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Of course I do, Ms Furniss. The different parts of Government that the new body will deal with include the Migration Advisory Committee, which is a well-established part of the machinery of Government but takes its commissions from the Home Secretary. This is a quote from gov.uk: “The MAC bases all recommendations on what it sees as being in the interests of the resident population, taking account that migration has different effects on different groups.” There will be conflicts between that aim and the aims of Skills England, and who will resolve those conflicts? The new body will also work with the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council, which is an expert committee reporting to the Business Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer; it is made up of experts, as the name suggests. Interestingly—we will perhaps come on to this in relation to some of the new clauses—the Government will legislate to establish that body “in statute when Parliamentary time allows”, which raises the question of why they will do so for that one and not Skills England. It suggests that there is perhaps a hierarchy of these bodies. There is also the Labour Market Advisory Board. It reports to the DWP’s Secretary of State and its aim is to support the DWP “to better understand the current state of the labour market, to help design policies and strategies to address key challenges”. I will not go through all the things that it is supposed to do— [ Interruption. ] The Government Whip encourages me, but I would not risk your wrath, Ms Furniss, despite her best efforts. Suffice it to say that there is again a cut-across, because of course, in terms of getting people back into work, which the DWP is focused on, there is some tension. Will Skills England be able to ask, for example, for changes in the conditionality regime operated by the DWP and the jobcentre network, to improve skill matching? Will there be better join-up between DWP work coaches and the National Careers Service? Finally, the third thing the new body is to be responsible for is potentially the biggest and most controversial of all. In the rubric that the Government put forward, they said the new body would “identify the training” that is accessible via the growth and skills levy. I do not think they actually mean “identify”; I think they mean it will specify what is available to be paid for through the growth and skills levy. I will not go through all the arguments about the levy, but the new body will have to, and the 12 months envisaged under clause 12 would be a good time to do that. It will have to think about the levy’s real purpose and the distinction between firm-specific skills and training, sector-specific skills and training, and generic transferable skills and training. The levy’s purpose was to increase the total amount of investment in human capital in this country, to help our productivity gap and fill job vacancies, and the new body will need carry on with that purpose. I hope I have given us a flavour—there is more—of the enormous strategic challenges and the enormous job of work for these very good people. There are some very encouraging signs in the appointments the Secretary of State has made, but what these people have to take on is enormous, and we want and need them to succeed in this endeavour. It would be far better to stage the approach, so that Skills England is established first, then takes on the great strategic roles working across Government and throughout the economy, and then, 12 months later, subsumes IfATE.

• 20 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  The Minister may be about to come to this, but what will be the relationship between LSIPs, and whatever strategies they draw up, and Skills England?

• 20 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Fortuitously, Ms Furniss, we do now have an opportunity to ask about something in the letter, which the Minister is going through now. I am struggling a bit with this thing about, “If the Secretary of State deems it appropriate.” That is not because I question that judgment, but because I do not really understand what the intent is. What does the Minister believe will be the practical change that comes about as a result? For example, is it about more new qualifications coming in? Is it changing the balance between T-levels and other TVET qualifications?

• 20 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  In encouraging the Minister to write to him about the effect of the level 6 and level 7 restrictions, will my hon. Friend also ask her to comment on the potential effect of those restrictions on schools—the sector for which the DFE is responsible—and in particular on the postgraduate teaching apprenticeship?

• 20 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  I rise to speak in favour of the new clause in the name of my hon. Friend the shadow Minister. He is right; of course, we have just voted on something quite similar, and that vote was lost by the classic 11 to four margin, with which we have become familiar. But that does not mean the Government cannot do this, and indeed there have been some signs and indications that they might make Skills England a fully independent body on a statutory footing. Most people talk about Skills England in their speeches, but that is not what the Bill, as introduced, does; it abolishes something without actually creating something else, and hands the powers to the Secretary of State, in whose gift it is to hand on. There was also the question that came up last Thursday about Ofqual, and what the Bill does to that, which I do not think we were 100% clear about. I think the Minister was going to write, but I do not think I have seen that letter—that is not to say it has not come, or been sent, but I am wondering if when the Minister comes to speak, if she could confirm whether that letter has come. There have always been two fundamental questions about the Bill and the creation of Skills England: the first is about independence, and the second is about who should set the expectations and standards for various occupations—should it be the employers in those organisations or somebody else? There is also a third point, which is relevant to independence, about the heft of this body, putting skills right at the heart of cross-departmental work, and what statutory independence would do to the status of this body. Particularly in education and training, one of the reasons that we have independent bodies is so that everybody knows that the standards are robust, they cannot be subject to political pressure, and there cannot be a temptation to make it a bit easier to get over a hurdle to make the numbers look better. We have had that system of independence for a very long time, and do to this day, and still will in the future for academic qualifications. As I said the other day, I think independence of this body is important to underpinning parity of esteem. IfATE is legally established as a non-departmental public body, whereas Skills England will be, as things stand, an executive agency. As a non-departmental public body, IfATE does therefore have some independence from the Department for Education because its functions and responsibilities are set out in legislation approved by this Parliament, whereas Skills England, as things stand, will simply be an integral part or unit within DFE. When Skills England was first talked about in the King’s Speech, it seemed that it would be established as an independent body. As well as my question on Ofqual, the first of my other questions to the Minister is, what has changed? If that was the intent—perhaps we have all just misread the text—what is different now, that it should not be? Finally, if it is right for the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council to be put on a statutory footing, why is it not for Skills England?

• 20 Mar 2025 · Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Hear, hear.

• 19 Mar 2025 · Down’s Syndrome · Hansard source

  More

  It truly is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Turner, and it truly is a pleasure and a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft)—I do not know if I can. There are times in this place when it is a real privilege to have heard from a colleague, particularly when they share something very personal that helps to inform our democracy, and she has just done that many times over, and I thank her. Indeed, I am sure we all thank her very much for it. I also thank and commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) for securing this important debate. As the hon. Lady said, we are coming up to World Down Syndrome Day. It is already Down’s Syndrome Awareness Week, so it is particularly apt that we should be having this debate. It is my honour to co-chair, with the hon. Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper), the all-party parliamentary group on down syndrome. Down syndrome was not something I knew a lot about beforehand; it just so happens that the co-founders of the National Down Syndrome Policy Group, Ken and Rachael Ross, happened to be constituents of mine. But my God, through that link I have come into contact with the community that the hon. Member for Thurrock was just talking about, which is the most enormously wonderful thing. We had an event a couple of weeks ago over in Portcullis House. There was a flash mob in Portcullis House, there was dancing and there was singing, but there were also challenging speeches from members of the Down syndrome community, who it is always important to hear from directly. In the APPG, we have heard a number of testimonies about people’s frustration with the education system. I am pleased that Down syndrome is now included as a category in the school census, which means that it is possible to take a more targeted approach, but those issues carry on into employment, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness said. There is so much work to be done, but the Down Syndrome Act 2022, which was carried through by Sir Liam Fox, was a really important milestone and a really important achievement to build on. I do not really have time to say it all, so I will just very quickly commend Sir Liam again for the work he did then and for his continued advocacy today. I also want to recognise the work of Ken and Rachael and everything they did to support the Act through Parliament, and everything they have done since. That includes their work locally with Portsmouth hospitals on a Down-specific maternity pathway, which I know as a constituency MP; in a completely different way, their work with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts to make sure that the voices of people with Down syndrome are heard in mainstream films; and also their work on special schools and making sure that more children with Down syndrome can be in a mainstream setting when that is right for them. I also want to recognise the work of all the MPs involved, including the Minister, who was on the Bill Committee with Sir Liam Fox to consider his private Member’s Bill. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness said, it is now several years since that Bill was enacted. It is really important that we press on with the guidance and that it is specifically about Down syndrome. That is not in any way to reduce the issues faced by people with a broader set of learning difficulties or disabilities, but this is specifically the Down Syndrome Act 2022, to look at those particular issues and challenges. We need that ministerial cross-departmental taskforce, to make sure that the guidance is as sound as it can be and is produced as quickly as it can be. I also thank the Minister’s colleague, the Minister for Care, the hon. Member for Aberafan Maesteg (Stephen Kinnock), for his continued engagement. We continue to extend an invitation to him, and to the Minister, to join us in the APPG when they can, to hear further from members of the community about how important all this work is to them.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Free School Meals · Hansard source

  More

  It is wonderful to see you in the Chair, Mr Dowd. I congratulate warmly the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis), and I commend everyone who has taken part in the debate, including the hon. Members for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy), for Redditch (Chris Bloore), for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne), for Winchester (Dr Chambers), for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) and for Twickenham (Munira Wilson). Of course, I also commend the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). Today is a big day for him, because it is the day that Parliament will finally debate whether St Patrick’s day should become a UK-wide public holiday. We are doubly grateful to him for joining us this morning ahead of that moment. This is a very important debate on a very important subject. Nutrition for children is clearly fundamental, for all the reasons that the hon. Member for Strangford talked us through. Later today, colleagues will have a chance to discuss the welfare system overall—what it is designed to do and what it does well. We should note that free school meals, in economist speak, are a particularly efficient benefit, because they are a benefit in kind. They go directly to people with a demonstrable need and provide a direct benefit, which helps them in their schooling. I was proud that the last Government extended free school meal eligibility more than any previous Government. We took spending to over £1 billion a year to deliver, by the end of our time in government, free lunches to the greatest ever proportion of children—over a third, compared with one in six in 2010—despite unemployment coming down by 1 million, 600,000 fewer children growing up in workless households and the proportion of people in work but on low pay halving as a result of the national living wage. By the end of our time in government, more than 2 million pupils were eligible for benefits- related free school meals, a further 1.3 million infants in years R, 1 and 2 were eligible for universal infant free school meals, which were introduced in 2014, and 90,000 disadvantaged students in further education were eligible for free meals. With any benefit or programme as important as this, of course there will always be things that we need to keep under review and update, and there are always issues. I think there are eight principal issues, which I hope the Minister will speak to; most of them have been covered by colleagues in the debate. The first is the per-meal funding rate of £2.58, which clearly needs reviewing over time, particularly in the light of the Budget changes, including measures such as the increase in national insurance contributions, which have raised costs. Colleagues have talked about the quality of school meals, and it is right that standards are kept under review. Indeed, the Minister’s colleague, the Minister for School Standards, committed in this place on 7 May last year that Labour in government would look again at the guidance on school food standards. There have been calls—we heard them again today from the hon. Member for Twickenham—to change the £7,400 threshold. I should be clear that that is earned income, not total household income. Again, in this place on 7 May last year, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), a distinguished Labour MP who is now a Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, asked about that. There have also been calls to make school meals year-round—the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby mentioned that—and to copy the example of London by making all primary school pupils eligible for free school meals. Indeed, I believe that the Minister said at the Labour party conference in September that the Government and his party were looking carefully at the London example to see what could be learned and derived from it. There is also the question of children who are educated otherwise than at school, which we have debated in Westminster Hall, including with the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby—it may have been the last time, or almost the last time, that I was sitting on the Government Benches. On that occasion, we made it clear that we would put into the guidance the eligibility and the reasonable adjustments requirements. It would be good to hear how that is working operationally. There is a good case for auto-enrolment. Some local authorities are running pilots; the Government should learn from that and seek to implement auto-enrolment. Historically, it has been hard to do, because of legal reasons and systems issues. The systems issues have ended, because technology has moved on, and a legal basis can be found, so I hope the Minister will be able to move forward with that. Finally, on the question of eligibility, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate mentioned the transitional protections under universal credit. There was a campaign in 2018—let us euphemistically call it a creative deployment of the truth—that suggested that the then Government were about to remove free school meals eligibility from hundreds of thousands of children. I remember it well, because I was a Minister at the time. It was not true; in fact, what has happened with universal credit transitional protections is that many more children have become eligible for free school meals. In fact, that is a major reason why one in three children is now eligible for free school meals. The big question for the Government is this: will they take steps to keep the number of children eligible for free school meals at roughly a third of children? Perhaps the Minister can say a little more about how they will do that. Beyond lunch, there are other aspects of meals at schools. In addition to the school fruit and vegetable scheme, there is also the holiday activities and food programme, which often takes place in schools and which the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby mentioned. We are proud to introduce that programme, which will be backed by over £200 million of funding and eventually extended to all 153 local authorities in England. Then, of course, there is breakfast. We introduced the national school breakfast programme in 2018. Although Ministers often talk about school breakfast provision as if it was a new idea, by the end of our time in government, 2,694 schools were involved in the national school breakfast programme, serving about 350,000 pupils. It was targeted, including by area deprivation, and eligibility was on a whole-school basis. The formula gave a 75% subsidy for the food and delivery costs. Crucially, programme remains available to this day to eligible secondary schools, as well as primary schools. We worry a lot these days, rightly, about school attendance. Breakfast provision has a bigger effect on school attendance in secondary schools than it does in primary schools. I think the Government have confirmed that they are retaining indefinitely the national school breakfast programme for secondary schools. It would be helpful to hear the Minister confirm whether that means that at least the current level of support will be retained. There are many more breakfast clubs than those in the national school breakfast programme. Some have a modest charge; some have a universal element—for example, every child can have a bowl of porridge, but other things are available. Some schemes use the pupil premium to subsidise it. Of course, just as with any wraparound provision, if a pupil being at breakfast helps to support a parent to go to work, typically the parent would be eligible for reimbursement of up to 85% of any costs through their universal credit payment. On 24 February, the Secretary of State for Education said in the main Chamber that one in seven children in the pilot schemes has no current before-school provision. By my basic maths, that means that six in seven of those children do, so breakfast clubs in schools are quite widespread. The Government say that the current programme is a pilot. Given that there are thousands and thousands of breakfast clubs in schools across the country, some of us were wondering what they were piloting—perhaps it was the angle of pour of the cornflakes, or some other difficult, technical detail. It seems that they might be trying to pilot how little they can get away with. The Government like to say to parents that they will save them £450 a year through breakfast clubs. Now, £450 per year divided by 190 school days—can anyone do that live?—is £2.37 a day. There are one-off costs being provided for schools—£500 plus £1,099—but the per pupil rate is as little as 60p per day, although it is a little higher for pupil premium pupils. I would say that there is a big old gap between the 60p a day that the Government will give to schools and the £2.37 that they say they will save for parents, and I would like to know how they expect schools to make up that gap. I have no doubt that the Minister will say, “Ah, but it’s only a pilot,” but will he commit to increase the rate if it turns out to be too little to cover schools’ real costs?

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

  More

  Intervene and tell us!

• 18 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend is certainly right that over the years, there have been many brilliant, far-sighted people in the Labour party who have overlooked their political tradition and said, “We must just do what is best for the children.” I do not think there has ever been a universally accepted consensus on academies; until very recently, there have been groups actively organising against schools becoming academies, with leading members of the Labour party involved in those movements. There has always been a strand, which turns out to be wider than we realised, of the Labour party that believes that unless there is control from the top, through councils, and unless schools are told what to do, the system is inconsistent. Some consistency in education is very important, but that is not the same as uniformity, and certainly not the same as top-down control. It turns out that Government Ministers do not want transparency and choice. They do not want diversity. In particular, they seem to want to curtail the improvement in school performance that has been made possible through academy trusts. The Government have already stopped new free schools. This Bill can not only stop academies growing in size, but can stop them staying the same size, even if they are popular with parents. We all know that the Bill erodes freedoms, starting with the qualified teacher status requirement. It is not as if schools are going around willy-nilly, recruiting people without qualifications off the streets. They are not putting cards up in Tesco saying, “Apply now to teach, no prior experience or qualifications required”—of course they are not. Equally, though, a headteacher who is trying to do the best for his or her school and its children might have a reason to bring in somebody from a profession. They might want to bring in somebody with a sports background, somebody from the private sector, or somebody from another country to help with their school’s language programme, but no, we do not trust headteachers to make those decisions. We have to write something into legislation to stop them doing that. Turning to the national curriculum, again, it is not as if schools are going around willy-nilly saying, “We’re not going to teach children English, maths, geography and history. We’re just going to make it all up.” In fact, Ofsted-inspected schools—which all state schools are—cannot do that, because they are judged on having a broad and balanced curriculum. The quickest way to achieve that is to follow the national curriculum, but there are schools that want to innovate and to deviate somewhat from the national curriculum. We see no harm in that, so long as those schools maintain that breadth and balance. It has been said by a few colleagues that it seems to put the cart before the horse to say that all schools must follow the national curriculum rigidly before we have the outcome of the review. Just a few hours ago, we had a publication connected to the review, but not the final report. It is beside the point, however, because whatever the review comes up with—on which we must wait and see—the Government are not obliged to adopt it and could adopt something else. Even if they do adopt it, this Government or any subsequent Government could decide to do something different. Having the ability for schools to deviate somewhat gives us a safety valve against the over-politicisation of schools and what is taught in the curriculum. It also gives some reassurance to faith schools and parents.