Damian Hinds MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  The hon. Lady is, of course, right. My constituency is not quite as rural as hers, but it is true that, while it sounds great when people talk about reaching 95%, 97% or 98% of households, hon. Members in this Chamber represent the 2%, the 3%, and the 5%, and we absolutely need a robust, reliable solution for them as well.

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

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  I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that we need to find robust solutions.

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

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  I have heard that suggestion; it is interesting and something to be explored, but I do not think it is a substitute, particularly for elderly and infirm people who need that contact at home. My focus today, however, is not only on the elderly, infirm and the vulnerable; it is on anyone, because anyone can be vulnerable at some time. Anybody can need to dial 999, and anybody who lives in the sort of rural area that is prone to more frequent, sustained power cuts is someone we should be concerned about. Since we were born, we have all been used to the idea that, even if there is no power, we can still pick up the phone and be in touch. In emergencies, that landline can literally be a lifeline, but digital telephony needs its own power supply.

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

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  First, my sympathies to the hon. Gentleman’s constituent’s family in that terrible case. I do agree, and those are points I will come on to. Identifying vulnerable users is vital; some will already be known to the communications providers, but the list of vulnerable customers is further expanded by data-sharing agreements with local authorities and housing associations. That is not a perfect process, and there is no complete picture of that user group, which leaves some elderly and disabled users exposed to non-voluntary migration. The previous Government did make important progress with the PSTN charter in 2023, with steps that the industry should take to protect vulnerable consumers and a pause on non-voluntary migrations unless a customer had not used their landline in the previous 12 months. That came after several incidents where medical alarms had failed to function on digital landlines, with tragic results. The March 2024 network operator charter, a voluntary agreement between the Government and the communications providers, aimed to ensure a smoother transition.

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

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  I hear him. The hon. Gentleman is right—I cannot claim coastal for my area, by the way, but I can claim rural. Telephony is a fundamental service, most acutely for contacting emergency services whenever that need arises, but there is also a broader question about people just being able to stay in touch. Although the word “voice” is often used, including in Voice over Internet Protocol, the telecoms network is also used for other connections, including medical devices and security alarms.

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

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  I agree entirely about the importance of communication. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) said, it is important for businesses as well as vulnerable consumers to understand some of those implications. When we communicate things, we need to think about people who do not use the internet. Organisations like Citizens Advice could play an important role in that, along with local authorities. Government Departments need to work with each other to make this infrastructure transition work. The Department for Energy Security, Ofgem and the energy sector need to work hand in hand with the Minister and his Department, regulator and sector, because electricity and communication are no longer two separate utilities—one relies on the other. Crucially, communication providers must find a way for all customers in areas that have a high incidence of power cuts—especially those that do not have a good mobile signal either—to provide a decent power back-up without additional costs to them individually. Those costs should be considered part of the fixed costs of the network as a whole, not for that individual household. Given that I do not have that data, I cannot work out how many postcode areas that is, or how many individual homes, but it must be a manageable number, because from what the Department for Energy Security has told me in answers to written questions, we have one of the most reliable energy systems in the world. Therefore, presumably the number of homes getting significant numbers of power outages must be relatively small. My final ask to the Minister is: please do not say, “This is an industry-led programme”. Ultimately, it is for the Government to ensure that people are not totally cut off and can contact the emergency services in their hour of most pressing need.

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

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  I do. It is a major infrastructure change and there are particular considerations around the elderly and the vulnerable. I have heard from many constituents who have shared their concerns about the switchover, mostly about fear of losing that means of contact during a power cut and not having a mobile phone signal to fall back on. Elderly people often speak of their phone—their landline, as we would call it—as their lifeline, not only for their health support, but to be able to be in touch with friends and family, their support network. One constituent who has had the changeover talks about having her landline cut off, in her words, and replaced with a battery phone, which she says is too bulky for her to carry around and which does not reach all parts of the house. Because she lives alone and is disabled, she has relied on having multiple phones in the house, including a landline extension in her bedroom. The new phone has to be placed on a charger overnight, and the charger is located in a room up steps that she struggles to reach, so she no longer has a phone within reach of her bed.

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

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  I am aware, and I do agree.

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

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  The Minister is right that the most vulnerable people must be at the very top of our list of concerns, but can I be really clear that this debate is not only about that group? It is about anybody who is cut off in a storm and may need to phone the emergency services, because anybody—they may not even be elderly—might have a medical emergency. That has not been getting enough attention in his remarks so far.

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

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  Absolutely. I found it difficult to get reliable data for a local geographic area on the instances of power outages but, like the hon. Member, I can say from my personal experience, as well as from constituents’ reports, that in my constituency we do have power cuts—as we would call them in old language—that are frequent and can be of significant and sometimes long duration. In the last few years we have had power cuts of multiple days at a time. With the PSTN charter, the previous Government asked communications providers to work with Ofcom to provide solutions going beyond the minimum of one hour of continued uninterrupted access to emergency services in the event of a power outage. I understand that Vodafone is now providing back-ups with four to seven hours of usage time free of charge to vulnerable customers. I am grateful to Vodafone for letting me see that technology and to ask about it further. For other customers not on the vulnerable list, however, those back-ups come at the customer’s own cost. In September 2024, Ofcom issued updated resilience guidance setting an industry expectation that power back-ups for newly installed fixed network cabinets should last four hours. As I understand it, however, although the Government continue to encourage providers to go further for householders, the actual minimum requirement remains at just one hour. That is simply not nearly enough for people experiencing power cuts of the duration that we have been talking about. I have the following asks. There must be much greater awareness about the digital switchover, through a nationally led campaign, alongside the telecare national action plan. Some of the fears people have could be allayed through just understanding more about what will happen.

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

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  This may be the last thing in the debate, but it is important to say that in many of our constituencies, there are places where people cannot make a voice call on a mobile telephone indoors. That is what an elderly person would be trying to do. It is not about a data transaction; it is about being able to make a phone call.

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

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  Will the Minister give way? I know he is very short of time—

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

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of the switch to digital landlines on rural communities. It is good to see you in the chair, Mr Betts. You are correct that a 30-minute debate is normally a two-person debate. This subject has attracted more attention than is normally the case. I come at this from this from the perspective of my beautiful rural constituency, with places such as the Candovers and the Tisteds, Binsted and Buriton, Froxfield and Privett, Hawkley and East Meon, but the debate is deliberately is not entitled “East Hampshire”; it is entitled “Rural Communities”, because the impacts and the issues are much broader. Colleagues from all parts, possibly all four nations of the United Kingdom, with us today may therefore wish to intervene, and I have trimmed my remarks to make sure that colleagues can intervene—within reason, obviously—should they wish to. Analogue telephony will soon be no more. PSTN, the public switched telephone network, uses technology that is outdated, with copper wire infrastructure nearing the end of its life and spare parts becoming harder to source. Britain, like other places, will thus be digitising its phone network. What follows will in many ways be better—more resilient, more scalable and more flexible. The roll-out of VoIP, Voice over Internet Protocol—we sometimes hear different names such as Digital Voice—is an industry-led initiative, but some of the issues that we will be talking about today go beyond that. They are issues for our society and therefore for the regulator, and ultimately, they are issues for the Government.

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

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  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

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  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

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  I could not resist the hon. Gentleman.

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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  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

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  Go on then.

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

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  I am very happy to—

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

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  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.