Damian Hinds MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  Unsurprisingly, my hon. Friend makes a very good point. More generally, in legislation one obviously tries to make language as tight as possible, but subtleties in language and meaning still matter in how it gets interpreted. The way the clause is drafted—that the “Secretary of State may prepare a standard if satisfied that it would be more appropriate”— does not sound like a tiny number of exceptional cases. It sounds like a judgment that could be made in every case: “Do I think it is more appropriate that I do it?”, or “Do I think it is more appropriate that we get somebody else to do it?” I just ask the Minister if the Government have considered using a different formulation in the wording. It could be something like, “That each standard must be prepared by a group of persons and then approved by the Secretary of State, unless it is necessary to do otherwise for the efficient operation or continuity of those courses and those qualifications.”

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

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  Why not just do that now? How hard is it to figure out the list of criteria that might weigh on the Secretary of State’s mind? Why must we have a statement about a future statement? Why can the Government not say now what those criteria would be, before the Bill completes its passage through the House of Commons?

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

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  It would be difficult to overstate the centrality of employer involvement in setting standards for technical and vocational qualifications. Earlier I mentioned Lord Sainsbury’s report and its finding that the then system of qualifications and courses had become “divorced” from the occupations that it was meant to serve. Several things are different about T-levels, compared with their predecessor qualifications. There is more time in college. There is English and maths and digital, alongside the core vocational discipline. When we talk to young people, however, they talk about two real differentiating, distinguishing factors that motivated them to do T-levels. The first is the industrial placement—nine weeks of actual work in an actual workplace—which also appeals very strongly to employers, because it is like a nine-week job interview. It is a fantastic way to see people coming through. Employers are investing in the next generation, but they are also getting to figure out which of the next generation they most want in their business. It is a way to instil so-called soft skills—there is nothing soft about soft skills—which are sometimes called employability skills. When employers talk about the education system and about people who are taking their first job, the thing they complain about most is the lack of such development, and all that can be helped during the industrial placement. The second distinguishing factor that people talk about is that they know that T-level standards have been designed by those that they want to go and work for. They have been designed by leading employers in the sector, and they have to be kept up to date. Clause 4 says that the Secretary of State may herself prepare standards, instead of a “group of persons”. It is worth dwelling on that. I am sure everybody knows this, but “group of persons” is a funny old phrase, because in this context it means employers. The clause says that the Secretary of State may insert herself into the process instead of that group of persons if she is “satisfied that it would be more appropriate”. The same is true for clause 5, on assessment plans. When the Bill was debated in the other place, Government amendments were made to try to calm concerns and answer some of the questions that were raised. Lords amendments 3 and 6—the Government amendments—appear here as clauses 4(5) and clause 5(5). They state that Ministers will publish something about the things that the Secretary of State takes into account in making a judgment about whether she, rather than the group of persons—employers—will set the standards. The suggestion from Ministers is that that would be interpreted in a very minimalist way. I am not doubting that, but at the moment it is only a suggestion, so we do not know. In other words, the Secretary of State would supplant businesses and employers only in the case of something minor—I say “minor”, but it may be an important thing—in its effect on the standard, such as a change in the regulation. I am still a little nonplussed, because I do not know why we would not want employers to be involved in working out what even a change in regulation would mean for what somebody doing this qualification would learn and how they would go about it. Will the Minister tell us what reason there could be for not wanting employers to be involved in setting those standards? Does she perhaps have a mountain of evidence showing hold-ups in standards because all these regulatory changes have had to be reflected in standards for qualifications and it has been impossible to do so? As my hon. Friend the shadow Minister said, in the case of rapidly changing occupations, it might be necessary for the Secretary of State to sign off changes so that they can happen quickly. But the most rapidly changing occupations and sectors—things such as advanced electronics or artificial intelligence—are probably the last ones for which we would want to say, “Let’s take employers out of the equation and let Government make the changes.” Generally speaking, employers are much quicker at spotting the changes that are needed and pushing for them. Amendments 3 and 5, in the name of my hon. Friend the shadow Minister, specify that the group of persons should include “an organisation that is the representative body for a sector.” That seems a very sensible and almost unarguable proposition. Amendments 4 and 6, in my hon. Friend’s name, require the body to take account of the needs and interests of both employer and employee. I was trying to imagine whether, if we were having this debate in a committee room of the Bundestag, we would really be debating whether the remit of the group of persons should include considering the needs of both employer and employee; and whether leading employers from those sectors should be included in the design of the qualifications. I suggest not.

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

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  If there is a blanket ban on Ofqual regulating technical qualifications, can the Minister explain why there is a page on gov.uk—unless someone has hacked it—entitled “Information on how Ofqual is regulating the technical qualification component of T Levels”?

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

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  Clauses 7 and 8 are grouped, and I am sure there is a reason for that, but it strikes me that they are quite different, and I want to say a word about both. Clause 7 is about examination by independent third parties, which I think gives an opportunity to also talk about the overall principle of having independent evaluation of standards and making sure they are up to scratch. I am conscious that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes asked a question earlier, and we did not have the documentation to hand at the time, but I did not want to leave it hanging in the air. She asked specifically about whether the words that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, the shadow Minister, had used represented the exact phrase from the 2015 Ofsted report on the then apprenticeships regime. Helpfully, I have the precise words: “Inspectors found that in a third of the 45 providers visited, apprenticeships did not provide sufficient, high-quality training that stretched the apprentices and improved their capabilities. Inspectors observed, for example, apprentices in the food production, retail and care sectors who were simply completing their apprenticeship by having existing low-level skills, such as making coffee, serving sandwiches or cleaning floors, accredited. While these activities are no doubt important to the everyday running of the businesses, as apprenticeships they do not add enough long-term value to the individual companies or tackle skills shortages effectively. Some learners on low-level, low-quality programmes were unaware that they were even on an apprenticeship. As suggested by some learners during the survey, a question needs to be asked: are these apprenticeships worthy of the name?” I mention that for two reasons. First, this was a question that came up. Secondly, it is very important not only that we pay close attention to this position at any one moment in time, but that we create a system that is self-regulating and that does not allow for standards to be eroded. Independence of the body setting the standards and independent third-party checking of the standards alongside leading employers, who will benefit from employing these people, is the surest way of doing that. Clause 7 and the question about independent third parties examining occupational standards or apprenticeship assessments is a repeat of a debate we had on one of the earlier clauses. The probing arguments and challenges from us are the same as they were then. The Government say that third-party examination is not necessary in some sectors because, for example, in highly regulated occupations, the standard required is obvious—or, as the Minister said in the other place, because “an external review would be nugatory.” Is there not still some value in independent verification of that? And, if there is going to be verification, are not those in the sector the people best-placed to do it? Let me turn to clause 8. It is difficult, because in this place one does not want to reveal not knowing something, but I am nonplussed by this clause because, to be honest, I really do not know what is going on. The clause is about Ofqual and about why, and in what circumstances, it may accredit a technical qualification if the Secretary of State says that it is all right for it to do so. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston said it seemed most likely that the Government have in mind T-levels, and asked whether they would just spit that out. That is one possibility. My worry is the opposite—actually, let us call it a question, not a worry, and make it a neutral term. Ofqual already has a role in regulating T-levels—I was just reading the Ofqual page about how it is regulating the technical qualification element of T-levels. Now that the Government are saying that Ofqual can do that—if the Secretary of State says it is okay—does that mean that Ofqual might stop doing that, or that its approach for T-levels will be used for some other qualifications? That would not necessarily be invalid, but it would be a move away from the vision of Lord Sainsbury, who wanted a streamlining and simplification, and a broader understanding of technical and vocational qualifications, so that there would be an apprenticeship route and there would be a college-based route. Of course, there will always be some particularly specialist qualifications or students with special needs, for example, but for the majority of cases, the college-based route—these 15 routes—would be the T-level. I wonder if, buried in this difficult-to-penetrate text, there is something that the Committee really needs to understand, but which, right now, I do not.

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

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  Before I talk about clause 9 and amendment 7, if it is not out of order, may I ask a question relating to the previous clause? I do not want to relitigate the arguments, but I just want to ask the Minister to write to me or to the Committee—I do not know what the correct process is—because I am afraid that I still do not understand what the Government’s intent is with clause 8. I hope that that is possible. Turning to—

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

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  Forgive me on that front as well, Sir Christopher. In that case, I have only two questions specifically on the amendment. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston rightly asked about the public sector workforce. Specifically for the DFE, what impact do the Government expect on the postgraduate teaching apprenticeships and on persuading graduate teaching assistants to become teachers?

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

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  I may or may not.

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

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  I apologise for my misreading of the groupings earlier, Sir Christopher. Clause 9 is the new clause inserted by the Government in response to the other place. It requires there to be a report on the exercise of the Secretary of State’s functions and for the report to be made within six months and laid before Parliament. It will cover which functions are going to be done through Skills England and the impact of the exercise of the relevant functions on apprenticeships and technical education in England. New clause 2 proposes that all the functions of IfATE go to Skills England. The obvious question is: why not? Why would they not go to Skills England? When we come to the debate on new clause 2, there will be an opportunity for the Government to explain that to us. We have heard a bunch of times about how there has been all this preparatory work—that it has been a long time in the making, that Skills England exists in shadow form and that the Government thought about it a great deal. Why can they not tell us now which functions are going to go to Skills England? On the impact of the exercise of the relevant functions, is it really right for the body itself to talk about what its impact has been? Should there not be some external validation to consider the effectiveness of the body? I have three questions for the Minister. We know that the report will be laid before Parliament, but what will its status be? Will Parliament be able to debate it? Will it be binding in some way? What if this Secretary of State or a future Secretary of State takes a different view, bearing in mind that under this legislation they would be allowed to? If they take a different view, will a new report be required and will Parliament have any say in that?

• 11 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is right: of course those things are different, but with the dawning realisation I had back then, I started to wonder who else might take a zero-hours contract? Yes, it is true that disproportionately they are young people, but for quite a lot of people a zero-hours contract is for a second job. I would be interested to hear from the Government their assessment of that. It turned out, when we looked at this in 2016, that one of the biggest users of zero-hours contracts in the country was none other than the national health service, so that it could cope with increases in demand. These were people who had a permanent job as well, but who could, as bank staff, supply other hours when that was needed. For this Government, it is totemic to do something about zero-hours contracts because of that Labour mythology. For the unions, there is also another reason. This is classic insider-outsider theory, with a shift in remuneration from people who are not in work to people who are already in work, and it pushes up what is called the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment. In plain English, it is bad for jobs. The Chancellor of the Exchequer must know that because, as we all know, she is most definitely an economist—she has worked as an economist, she has trained as an economist and she is an economist—and this is classical economic reality. For whom might zero-hours contracts work well? They work well for any employer with an unpredictable, variable need for workers—from the events business to the NHS, as I have mentioned—and there are other obvious cases in tourism, agriculture and food. However, some people may just choose to have that flexibility. Over the last two years it has been a seller’s market to go into teaching, but some people have still chosen to become a supply teacher because, for whatever reason, for them that works well. The other group for whom this may work are those furthest from the labour market, who have perhaps been out of work for a very long time, who perhaps are ex-offenders, or who for some other reason find it difficult to immediately land a regular, full-time job. When this is combined with universal credit—which, by the way, the right hon. Member for Islington North also wanted to abolish—it can work very well, because the top-up payment can be adjusted according to how much someone earns week to week. This Bill is bound to have unintended consequences. We do not know exactly which ones they will be, but I will suggest some of them. It could suppress seasonal peaks in employment—for tourism in the summer, but also at Christmas time—because employers will not want to take on the liability from the reference period. It could deter people from second jobs, which will be bad for growth. It could mean people move from contracted employment to self-employment or casual work. It could mean a move from permanent contracts to temporary contracts and, yes, it could hit our national health service and other important public sector employers. I do not doubt that this piece of legislation will be good for unions, but it will be bad for the economy and bad for growth, and it will be especially bad for people in the hardest circumstances who so badly want to get back to work, and for whom this kind of contract can also be that important first step.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I rise to speak to the measures on zero-hours contracts, and Opposition new clause 83 and amendment 283. It is absolutely right that we should pause to consider the effects of these changes on employment tribunals, but it is also right that we should pause to consider their effect just on employment. Of course, there are bad employers and those who would seek to exploit, which is a very bad thing. We should bear down on them, but there is no reason to believe that the measures the Government are bringing forward will achieve that. I suggest that the Government want to get rid of zero-hours contracts not because intrinsically there is a great problem attached to them, but because of the special place zero-hours contracts have in Labour mythology. I want to take us back to the glory days of the modern Labour party when the leader of the Labour party was the current leader’s immediate predecessor, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). I see the then shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) is with us in the Chamber, and as it happens, I was the Minister for Employment at the time. When our Government came to power, unemployment had been 8%, and it then rose a little bit to 8.5% at the end of 2011. From then on, it came down, and it kept coming down. By late 2016, it was under 5%, and it would fall further still. However, that did not fit Labour Members’ narrative. They wanted to be able to say that this reduction in unemployment was not real: it was all fake employment or low-quality employment. That was not true, but it did not stop them saying it. In fact, three quarters of the increase in employment was in higher-skilled occupations, and three quarters of the jobs growth was in full-time work. At that time, employment was growing much more quickly than self-employment, and the No. 1 sector for employment growth was construction. However, Labour Members still kept saying that the jobs being created were all low-quality ones, and at the top of the list of things to call out was the zero-hours contract. The then Leader of the Opposition used to talk about it weekly at Prime Minister’s Question Time. There were a couple of awkward moments, such as after his glorious appearance at Glastonbury, when it turned out that the Glastonbury festival—guess what?—employed people on zero-hours contracts. There was further embarrassment when it turned out that there were people working for none other than the Labour party conference who were on zero-hours contracts. At the DWP we did some research, and it turned out that less than 3% of people relied on a zero-hours contract for their main employment. On average, it delivered them 25 hours of work a week, while, strangely, they had above-average job satisfaction, and most were not looking for more hours. People said the number had grown, but it is actually much more likely that that was because of growing awareness of the term “zero-hours contract”. Thinking about our history, it has long been the case that far more than 3% of people have had irregular income patterns, where they have not had guaranteed hours of work or levels of salary—from casual labour to piece work, catalogue agents and commission-only sales. At a certain point, it dawned on me that my own first job had been washing dishes on a zero-hours contract—or at least it would have been, had a contract been involved at all.

• 7 Mar 2025 · Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill · Hansard source

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  I think that is right. The other thing I was struck by in some of the sessions was the great unity of views. Whether it was trade unions, charities, parent groups, doctors or parents, there was a great commonality of view about what needed to be done. I understand what happens sometimes with private Members’ Bills and the need to make progress and to have Government support, but I say to the Government that this is a huge missed opportunity. If the Minister looks behind him, he will see all his colleagues who have rearranged their Fridays and rearranged their surgeries and all their appointments because they believe in this subject. He should heed the list that his hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington read out of all the organisations that came together in support of action in this area. It is so worth doing, and we have made good progress with the Online Safety Act, but there is further to go. There are things we can do with a private Member’s Bill that it is harder sometimes to do with Government legislation, because of the party political controversies that come in. This is a missed opportunity, because this may well be the only private Member’s Bill with a good chance of success in this area, being at the top of the ballot, in this entire Parliament. The Bill as drafted is unlikely to require this House to divide, because there is not much in it that anyone could disagree on. I will, if I may, focus my comments on the things that the Bill envisages, such as the CMO’s advice for parents on the use of smartphones and social media, and the plan for research that the Secretary of State will prepare on the effect of the use of social media on children and the appropriateness and effectiveness of the so-called digital age of consent. I will say one very simple thing to the Minister about that research: the evidence is not perfect today; it will not be perfect in one year; it will never, ever be perfect. If we hang around waiting for perfect evidence, we will never act in the way that we should. Why is it not perfect? Because this is a phenomenon that has happened across the entire world at the same time. There is no control group. Given that this is such a huge topic, the studies that there are, which try to narrow it down to something manageable, tend to end up looking at either Facebook or Twitter, neither of which is particularly relevant for teenagers. When we have proxy studies, they are generally inadequate. For phone use in schools, studies tend to look at a school that has a phone ban and a school that does not. That is a totally invalid scientific comparison, because there could be all sorts of other things going on, and the sort of school that is likely to do well in GCSEs is also likely to bring in a phone ban, so we cannot prove the direction of causality. People will also tell us that there has not been enough time, because the technology is constantly developing. It may have been around for 20 years or so, but the current version of it has only been around for 18 months, so there has not been time to say conclusively what the effects are. None of that is about to change. The evidence will continue to be imperfect. However, the evidence that we do have is pretty clear. We know, as the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who chairs the Education Committee, mentioned, that there can be some benefit from relatively small amounts of screen time. The 2019 programme for international student assessment—PISA —study covered this in some detail, looking at multiple countries. It talked about a “Goldilocks” effect, whereby about an hour of screen time a day seemed to be correlated with increased wellbeing. But the same study found that in almost every country studied, with the fascinating exception of the Dominican Republic, high levels of internet usage were associated with lower levels of life satisfaction. There are lots of other studies, which colleagues have referred to, that look at happiness, quality of relationships, eyesight, sleep, concentration and so on. Then there is the rising prevalence of mental ill health in young people. Often, when people look at the numbers on mental ill health, particularly in teenagers, they reach immediately for their preferred explanation for why teenagers are having these difficulties, and sometimes it gets quite political. It is important to note that the rise in teenage mental ill health is not a uniquely British phenomenon. On the two main measures of mental wellbeing used in the 2021 UNICEF-Gallup “Changing Childhood” study—“How often do you experience feeling worried, nervous or anxious?” and “How often do you experience feeling depressed or having little interest in doing things?”—the UK was broadly in line with the average of 21 countries, including France, Germany and the US. Actually, it was slightly better on most of the measures. There are ample other studies from around the world, including the World Health Organisation’s multi-country “Health Behaviour in School-aged Children” study, France’s EDC—I will not attempt the language—study, which is quite a long time series, and the shorter time series in the United States, “Trends in Mental Wellbeing”. The best study of all is the NHS’s “Mental Health of Children and Young People in England”. I say in passing to the Minister that I do not think we have yet had a commitment from the Department of Health and Social Care to carry on with that time series. It is incredibly valuable, and that is a relatively simple thing that the Government could do. I have said that the rise in teenage mental ill health is not a uniquely British phenomenon. It is also not only about covid. A lot of the studies in recent years have set out to answer the question, “What happened to children’s mental health during covid?” That is a perfectly legitimate question, but if we look at the shape of the curve, it looks very unlikely that it started in covid, and in the NHS study, it carries on growing long after covid, up until the most recent wave. The Minister said this in a debate in Westminster Hall the other day, and he is right that it is entirely invalid to infer causality from correlation, but the Bradford Hill criteria, which his hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington mentioned, are relevant, particularly the criteria of consistency, strength, plausibility, coherence and analogy, as well as temporality. In any event, it seems odd that we allow something to happen to our children because we cannot 100% prove that it causes harm, rather than because we can prove that it is safe. That is not the way in which we deal with children’s toys, food or medicine. I turn the question around and say to people who query the direction of causality: with something like self-harm, are you honestly trying to tell me that incidents of self-harm in our country are nothing to do with the prevalence and normalisation of imagery around self-harm on social media? As I say, I worry that if we continue to seek perfect information, we simply will not act as we should. I have pages more to say, but I will not say them, because I know that many colleagues wish to speak.

• 7 Mar 2025 · Protection of Children (Digital Safety and Data Protection) Bill · Hansard source

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  Our children’s use of phones and social media give us many things to worry about, but broadly speaking they are grouped into three categories. The first is about content, going from pornography and violence and the insidious effects of curated lives, influencers and celebs on our children and their sense of self-worth, their body image and so on through to dodgy news and views propagated across the internet not by worth, let alone veracity, but by engagement and likes. All of those things have vortexes that children can get sucked deeper and deeper into. The second is about contact. Contact includes, in the worst cases, child abuse and the generation of child sexual abuse material, and goes through to, at a lower level, contact that can be from other children, such as what we call in this House cyber-bullying, although no child ever uses that phrase; they just talk about people being very mean to each other online. The third is about the sheer amount of children’s time that gets sucked into these activities. It is the compounding factor, because it is the thing that makes the other two things, content and contact, worse and more risky. It also has an effect on children’s sleep, on their concentration and even on their physical development, and it crowds out the other things that we want children to be doing and that children themselves want to be doing, when they do actually do them. If we ever do get a child away from their phone for a full weekend, they talk about how wonderful the experience was with their friends. The Online Safety Act 2023 did some good things on content and on contact. There was more to do, but it made some good progress. We have a lot more to do, in particular on the topic of time and the addictiveness of social media, and that is where I think the work of the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) has been incredibly valuable. I commend him on all his work in the lead up to this point and his use of convening power to bring together so many individuals and organisations. Those conversations, some of which I had the opportunity to attend, covered a huge range. Obviously the Bill we have in front of us today is, shall we say, somewhat thinner than the Bill envisaged.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Iranian State Threats · Hansard source

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  I welcome what the Security Minister said about the inclusion of Iran in the enhanced tier of FIRS. Can he confirm—I hope that the ISC will look at this—that as that system operationalises, it will also cover more complex situations in which it is not as straightforward as somebody taking instruction from an organ of that state or from some other organisation, including under FIRS, or indeed situations in which there is no actual instruction or relationship at all but somebody chooses to act on that organ’s behalf?

• 3 Mar 2025 · Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Relief · Hansard source

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  That is what I just said.

• 3 Mar 2025 · Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Relief · Hansard source

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  As always, it is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Vickers. I thank and commend Mr Beckinsale and the other 114,948 petitioners, including 611 in my constituency of East Hampshire, for bringing this very important subject to Westminster Hall today. After all that we have heard today, we might ask, “Why? Why would the Government do this?” The measure is a revenue-raiser, but in the grand scheme of things it is not the most enormous revenue-raiser. It is already causing all sorts of disruption in children’s education, and there is more disruption ahead. So why are the Government doing it? I think the answer is fairly straightforward. The Government were genuinely in the market for tax rises, especially tax rises that did not break the rules they had set for themselves on income tax, on VAT and—I say this with a cough—national insurance contributions; and when they looked down the list, this one looked quite popular. It is certainly popular with Labour members and it is very popular with the left wing of the Labour party. I think the Government thought the measure could be sold quite easily to the British public. They could link it to definable things—to the provision of breakfast clubs, mental health support or recruiting 6,500 teachers. None of those things is new, though. There are already breakfast clubs in thousands of schools supported by state funding. As far as I can tell, this Government’s programme for mental health support continues the previous Government’s programme for mental health support, and recruiting 6,500 teachers to the state sector is a material slowdown compared with the number of teachers recruited in the previous five years. The Government will have calculated that many schools will absorb the increase; they think that some families might be priced out, but that the number will be relatively minor, and that it will be massively outweighed by the revenue anyway. They also think—we have heard this line so many times from a Government spokesperson—there are so many places that are free and empty in the state sector that pupils can be easily absorbed. Many Opposition Members think that taxing education is just wrong in principle—we value diversity and believe in the sanctity of parental choice—but from a Labour point of view, given everything I have just listed, it is so far, so good. I think the Government have made five crucial errors. The first is the belief that schools might be able to absorb such a tax increase. Economists know—the one thing we know about the Chancellor is that she is an economist, very definitely; periodically she reminds us—that when we get an increase in an indirect ad valorem tax, that does not get absorbed fully by the producer. It gets shared between the seller and the buyer. With a tax increase of this degree—20% added to the price of a service—that is clearly going to be very difficult for any organisation, but organisations such as schools just do not have those kinds of margins to fall back on to be able to absorb such an increase. To the extent that they can absorb the increase, they can do so only by cutting their service to families, which therefore increases the displacement effect of children from the private sector to the state.

• 3 Mar 2025 · Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Relief · Hansard source

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  On faith-based education, the Minister is quite right that there are large numbers of faith-based schools in the state sector. However, there are some denominations and particular religious traditions for which there are not large numbers of schools, and whose actually charge fees sometimes considerably below the average cost of a state school place. Does he recognise that there may be a case for an exemption in such cases?

• 3 Mar 2025 · Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Relief · Hansard source

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  I am coming to that. I am grateful to the hon. Lady—she can keep teeing me up. The Government’s second error was to fail to consider the cumulative effect of all the different cost pressures added on to schools; as well as VAT, there are also business rates, which are mentioned in the petition. There is also the increase in the employer contribution for the teachers’ pension scheme—before somebody says it, this was introduced by the previous Government to come in this year—which is material for schools in that scheme. Now, of course, we have employer national insurance contributions as well. The hon. Lady is right that the amount added through VAT would not be quite 20%; it might come down to 15%, but all those other things add cost as well. The third error the Government made was to ignore the existence of geography. There may well be thousands of places available in the country, but they are utterly worthless from this perspective if they are not in the right places and the right age groups for the children who will be displaced. Overall—this is a great simplification —the effect of the measure in primary schools will be relatively small because there is a lot of capacity in primary schools in not quite all, but almost all, parts of the country. In secondary, though, there are lots of areas—in places like Bristol, Bury, Salford and Surrey—where there just are not enough places to accommodate significant numbers of children being displaced from the private sector. The Government’s fourth error was to fail to segment the market. By the way, the media do this as well: whenever there is a story about this topic, it is always accompanied by a picture of children in exotic headwear, as though wearing a boater or a top hat represented the only type of private school available. It is true that there is probably plenty of VAT to be had from the parents of boys at Eton, and the elasticity of demand is probably quite low—those famous old schools, by the way, will also benefit disproportionately from being able to reclaim VAT on capital; that is actually a benefit for them—but what the Government have ignored is the existence of another tranche of schools. For a low-fee faith school, for example, the Exchequer makes somewhere between £500 and £1,000 VAT per child a year, but every one of those children displaced into the state sector will cost £7,000 or more. That figure is higher again when we are talking about children with special educational needs or disabilities, whose parents in many cases have just found a place that can accommodate their child, that can cater to their needs and where their child is happy. In many cases, parents are making huge sacrifices to fund the fees, but they are doing so willingly. For some of them—not all of them—this will push them over the edge; they will not be able to afford it any more. The cost per child for those children in the state sector is that much more. In extreme cases, parents will be unable to afford to send their children to their school, which might be very expensive, so they will go to the local authority and get an education, health and care plan; and the local authority will deem that they have to go back to the same school, but now the state will be paying, including possibly for their transport. The fifth error that the Government made was to ignore the effect on specific groups of children and families who we should be seeking to support and encourage, for example through the continuity of education allowance for our armed forces—there has been a partial mitigation on that. There has also been a partial mitigation for the music and dance scheme, which drives forward the talent of tomorrow and our creative industries, but only for families with a household income below £45,000. As has already been said, this change makes our country an outlier—almost unique in the world in putting a tax on learning. It does not level the field between the state and the private; it makes private schools more exclusive than they were before, and therefore widens the divide. It risks losing teachers from the profession. The biggest effect of all is that it is going to make class sizes in state schools bigger, fill up more state schools and therefore, in the end, make it less likely that parents get their children into the school of their choice. This has now happened—it happened in January. It is done, but it is not too late for the Minister to say that he will keep an open mind. The Government could review the effects on revenue, the displacement of children, the disruption of education, and the number of extra education, health and care plans after two years of the policy being in place. If it turned out that those effects have not all been as they expected, would they reverse this move?

• 26 Feb 2025 · Family Businesses · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman and other Ministers have constantly come back to the point about the higher rateable value commercial premises, saying that they include distribution centres for online giants. What proportion are they of the total?

• 26 Feb 2025 · Family Businesses · Hansard source

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  What about the corn laws?

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

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  Which hoops is the hon. Gentleman looking forward to the removal of?

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

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  We cannot just wish it into being, we cannot assume it or assert it, and we cannot legislate for it: esteem is in the eye of the esteemer and parity of esteem is earned. In technical and vocational education and training, that requires a clear and understandable set of qualifications with high standards and specifications that people know cannot be fiddled because they have been set independently. It also requires equipping the individual with what they need to know and what they need to be able to do to succeed in a trade, craft or sector because those standards have been set by employers in that trade, craft or sector. Those things were at the heart of the blueprint set out for technical and vocational education in this country, which has been followed for the last number of years. I say the blueprint, but it was also a red print, because it was the vision of Lord Sainsbury, a Labour peer. In his landmark report, he set out that we needed to reform the system so that we had a streamlined set of qualifications with clear paths to vocations. His recommendations included: a minimum length of time for apprenticeships, along with a minimum length of time off the job; for T-levels, a minimum length, which was much longer than usual for industrial placements; and standards set by employers. There was also the expansion of the remit of what was then the Institute for Apprenticeships to become the broader Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, linking apprenticeships and T-levels. Lord Sainsbury was also absolutely clear that specifying standards was not a job for Ministers in the Department for Education. It was a job for employers in the industries that would employ those apprentices. We thought that those principles had become a matter of cross-party consensus. I am sorry to say that we were wrong. We have already had from this new Government a rowing back on the streamlining of qualifications. They have said that they will have shorter apprenticeships but still call them apprenticeships. Now, in the Bill, they will abolish—not reform or evolve—the body that is independent of Government, which sets the standards and ensures the integrity of the system. Over 50 years in this country, we have had industrial training boards, the Manpower Services Commission, the Training Commission, training and enterprise councils—TECs—which were different from another TEC, the Technician Education Council, which existed alongside the Business Education Council, or BEC. BEC and TEC would eventually get together to give us the Business and Technology Education Council, or BTEC. There were national training organisations, the Learning and Skills Council, sector skills councils, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills and the Skills Funding Agency, or SFA, which would later become the Education and Skills Funding Agency, or ESFA. Lately, we have had local skills improvement plans and IfATE. Now we will have Skills England, which will be the 13th skills agency in 50 years. I say to Ministers that if all it takes to solve our skills challenges is a new body, a machinery of Government change, do they not think that one of the previous 12 would have managed that already? Ministers, especially those in new Governments, like to create something new, and, in this case, they think that they have something new that business wants, which is a quango—except Skills England is not even a quango. I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for indulging me thus far in talking about all these things, because none of them is in the Bill. This Bill is not about Skills England. There are, I think, two mentions of Skills England in the text of the Bill and I think that they were both inserted by the House of Lords. This Bill is about abolishing the independent institute that sets standards and passing those powers not to Skills England but to the Secretary of State. That is what Skills England is. Ministers are bandying about all these fancy terms about agency this, and agency that, but it is part of the Department for Education. When it comes to working across Government, I have no reason to believe that this new part of the DFE will be any more equipped to work across Government, let alone across the whole economy, in solving some of these issues. I love the Department for Education deeply, but, honestly, to operate across Government, to exert leverage and to get things done, I am afraid that the new body has to be in the Treasury or possibly in the Cabinet Office—not in the Education Department, the Business and Trade Department, or some of the others that could have been picked. Therefore, far from reflecting what business needs, what this legislation does is remove the requirement for business to set the standards for what their future employees will learn. Following the vote in the House of Lords, the Government say that they will amend the Bill to be clear that they will still listen to business. I have the amendment here. What it says is that they will be clear about the times when they will listen to business and when they will not, which is not quite the same thing. In any case, if we are to make use of that business voice—if it is really going to mean something—it has to go hand in hand with the independence of the body. As things stand, even if the DFE is listening to business, it will still be the convenor. There will be no other body. Therefore, it will be the Government who are setting the standards for T-levels and for apprenticeships. I have asked the Minister this question twice already. We would not allow the Department for Education to set the standards for A-levels. We would always have that independently done and verified. Therefore if we would not let it happen for A-levels, how can it be right for T-levels? That is a rhetorical question, but it is a rhetorical question that Ministers should try to answer. Baroness Smith of Malvern set out all the things that were being done to make Skills England something other than just another unit—a mini department—within the DFE. Today, the Secretary of State has set out some of her appointments, which sound like good appointments, to that body. But none of that is in legislation. That was all news to us. News of this set-up and the appointments of these individuals has come out since the announcement of Skills England. We are voting over the course of the next few weeks, as the Bill passes through its stages, on what will be an Act of Parliament. All that Act of Parliament will say is that those powers are coming to the office of the Secretary of State for Education, and it will be for them to decide in the future how to use them. It may well be that this team of Ministers is in power for 25 to 30 years, or it may not. I encourage all colleagues to think about that. When we legislate, we do so not just for the next 12 months, or even for the next four or five years; we legislate the law of the land, which, all other things being equal, stays in place. I have some good news. I confidently predict that the Government will hit all their targets on the numbers of young people going through technical vocational education and training and attaining. That is because I think back to the 2000s, and the key target of more children getting five or more GCSEs at grade C or above, including in English and maths. Year after year they made that happen, even though, as we knew subsequently, we were tumbling down the international comparison tables. About a dozen different ruses made those figures look better every year, and that was achieved even without having final control over the specification and what counted as passing or getting a particular grade. Let us imagine what the Government could achieve now. The Government want a new body—fine. But to give it a chance to succeed for our economy and, crucially, for the young people who this ultimately is about, that body must be independent. I call on Ministers to take the opportunity, as this legislation goes through the House, to write that on the face of the Bill. We were encouraged by the Secretary of State saying earlier that, in any case, within two years they will review the status of Skills England with a view to perhaps making it a statutorily independent body. I encourage Ministers to take the opportunity in Committee to write that into the legislation.

• 24 Feb 2025 · Social Media Use: Minimum Age · Hansard source

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  I confessed myself a sinner at the start, Mr Stringer, and I will now come to a close. In the Online Safety Act, we covered a lot regarding content and contact, but we need to do more on the issues of time and addiction, and I am pleased to see some of that in the work of the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister). In the meantime, as others have said, we also need to do more on parental controls. I would like to see NHS advice to parents, which can be very powerful, on what an appropriate amount of time would be for children. We also need to enforce the existing age limits, particularly the one at age 13, and to recognise that some people who falsely proved they were 13 when they were eight, nine or 10 are now showing up on social media lists as being over 18, when, in fact, they are still in their much earlier teens.

• 24 Feb 2025 · Social Media Use: Minimum Age · Hansard source

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  The Minister would be making perfectly adequate points if we were talking only about this country. We could make all sorts of points about what Government policy was and what happened to Sure Start, the curriculum and youth clubs, but those things did not happen in France, Germany or the United States.

• 24 Feb 2025 · Social Media Use: Minimum Age · Hansard source

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  I know I am going on for way too long, Mr Stringer.