argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Education
Nicky Morgan (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I will certainly look at the report. [Interruption.] I thank the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) for helpfully prompting me, but I am able to tell when I have heard female Members of Parliament from both sides of the House make excellent contributions. As I was saying, I will certainly look at the report The overall point that the hon. Lady makes about a skills shortage is absolutely right. Those seeking employment or looking for engineers would have started their education under the previous Labour Government, but she has made her point and she is right to identify that we need more highly skilled young people, particularly in engineering.
Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Education
Richard Harrington (Conservative, Centre-right): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Let me welcome you back to the Chair I listened carefully to the maiden speech of the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson), and I commend him unreservedly for the articulate and eloquent way in which he told us about his constituency and some of the issues there. Having heard what he said about the constituency, which I must confess I have never visited, I think that he may have been wrong when he said that the Romans had been held there. From the sound of it, they may have found it so nice when they got there that they decided that they might as well stay and enjoy the food and the view; but, whatever the reason, they decided to stay. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is descended from the Romans, but, having seen him on television and having heard him speak today, I wish him a long and prosperous career. I am sure that we have not heard the last of him I shall try to confine myself to eight minutes as you asked, Mr Deputy Speaker. I shall restrict my speech to two specific issues, one of which I think is key to the development of skills among younger people. I refer to the development of university technical colleges. Contrary to some of the partisan comments that are made regularly by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), UTCs are a classic example of a project with a cross-party foundation. I commend both Lord Baker, a former Conservative Education Secretary, and Lord Adonis, a former Labour education Minister, for the help that they gave me with the setting up of a UTC in Watford. The Watford UTC is chaired by David Meller, a non-executive director of the Department for Education who is very well respected. It opened just 14 months after we had dreamt it up in a café in Watford, which shows that bureaucracy, like everything else, can be overridden with determination What struck me most during a conversation that I had with Lord Baker and Lord Adonis at the outset was a statistic that they have often produced. Apparently, 40% of people who work in bars and cafés in London are university graduates. I am not one to undermine universities; like many Members of Parliament, I was the first member of my family to go to a university, and it was a huge thing for me. The fact is, however, that many people have been driven to go to university without really thinking of it as part of a future career. Somewhat depressingly, I nearly always agree with the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), and I thought he was absolutely right to say that not enough young people either go to university or take up other options.
Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Education
Richard Harrington (Conservative, Centre-right): The response that people give on television quiz shows when they are not quite sure of the position is "Ask me one on sport." I may be able to give the hon. Gentleman an answer after listening to the debate on Monday, but perhaps I can help him for the future by saying that he might have asked a better question if he had asked whether I agreed that children who go to UTCs should not really be the kind of children who would consider going to university. I do not agree with that at all The advantage of the UTCs is the practical education that they provide. Their pupils are thinking about careers at the age of 12 or 13, which is really good. They can combine an academic education, studying for GCSEs like everyone else, with learning specific skills. The UTC in Watford is geared towards hotel and hospitality management, an area in which there are lots of good skilled jobs available, as well as IT skills, the need for which is universal. It is commendable that there are already 30 UTCs in England, with nearly 6,500 pupils, and by September 2016 there will be 25 more. I have met the principals of various UTCs, including Emma Loveland, the principal of the one in Watford, and their view of education is based on their belief that this country is under-skilled and that conventional education—notwithstanding the academies, which are very good—has been producing quite a lot of children who are either unskilled or not in a position to become skilled.
Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Education
Richard Harrington (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with everything that my hon. Friend has said. I am pleased that the UTCs are leading the way for the education system now to include ways of getting a job in the whole process, rather than that being an afterthought at a careers fair, as it used to be in the sixth form.
Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Education
Felicia Jane Beatrix Drummond (Conservative, Centre-right): Congratulations to all those who have made their maiden speeches. They have been fascinating, and it has been enjoyable to hear lots of them from all round the country. I will have them in mind when I start travelling I am very pleased to announce that a university technical college will soon be coming to Portsmouth. I rang up about it two years ago, and it is finally coming next year. Education is improving in Portsmouth, but there has been a lack of options for those who are not academically minded, so that initiative by Lord Baker and others will add to the choice for our young people Portsmouth is becoming a centre of excellence for maritime services and technology. We have BAE, Airbus, QinetiQ and many other engineering companies, alongside the Royal Navy. I am delighted that many of those companies, along with Portsmouth University, will be sponsoring the university technical college, as well as taking on more apprentices and providing more opportunities for further training. We must make sure that the qualifications are suitable, so I am delighted that the Government are bringing in the new technical levels advocated by Professor Alison Wolf, which will provide a vital stepping stone and ensure that employers can recognise that there is a gold standard as an alternative to A-levels. Vocational qualifications should be treated as equal to A-levels, and I am pleased that young people are going to university with a variety of BTEC qualifications. May I congratulate my own nephew, Cuthbert Shepherd, who recently got three starred distinctions in sports development, fitness and coaching? He will be taking up a place at Birmingham University to read sports science. One does not necessarily need A-levels to go to top universities However, university is not for everybody, so I welcome the massive increase in apprenticeships, many of which have been taken up by young people in Portsmouth in a variety of jobs. BAE is taking on 80 apprentices this year, up from 40 the last year. There are also opportunities in leisure, sport, travel and tourism. I have visited many schemes, including those at the Kings theatre, Portsmouth College and the Cathedral Innovation Centre, to name just a few. I know that an increase in apprenticeships and technical levels will add hugely to engaging our young people in Portsmouth and around the country, and I welcome the initiatives that this Government have introduced.
Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Labor
John Michael Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): May I say what a privilege it is to be called in this debate—first, Mr Deputy Speaker, to welcome you back to the Chair, but also to follow the excellent maiden speech by the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss)? She represents a fascinating area of the country and she gave a very good explanation of what has been going on there and her role in it. Her speech comes on the back of an enormous number of excellent maiden speeches, including those of the new broom, the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), and the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson), if I may pick out just two. The latter reminded me of my days as an archaeologist at the University of Edinburgh. I am very familiar with the Antonine Wall that he described I want to deal with apprenticeships. I can agree with the first bit of the motion— "That this House notes that improving education is imperative for the future economic growth of the country"— but not with the rest of it. If the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), who is no longer in his seat, wants a more bipartisan approach, it could start with this motion acknowledging that the apprenticeship programme has been a flagship programme of this Government and we have put £1.5 billion into making sure that it works The wording of the motion does not bear comparison with the situation in my constituency, where the advancement of the apprenticeships scheme is having an excellent result. One way of seeing that is to look at the unemployment figures in the constituency. The figures released today show that the total number of people unemployed across the whole constituency amounts to 244. That is a diminution in the number of unemployed on the previous month, and in effect it represents full unemployment and the normal churn of people looking for jobs. Most importantly, in the previous month the number of youth unemployed in the constituency was down to 30. I have every sympathy for those 30, but this represents a very good achievement for the Government. I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington), who is no longer in the Chamber, to his new position. He is right to stress the role of MPs in driving the process along; each of us has the ability to do that. In my constituency I have Henley College, which is a very strong player in providing training for apprenticeships and has been working hand in hand with companies to promote those apprenticeships.
Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Education
Angela Eileen Watkinson (Conservative, Centre-right): Will my hon. Friend join me in welcoming the increasing number of girls who are taking STEM subjects, which are leading to apprenticeships in engineering and technical subjects, and does he agree that we need more of them?
Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Education
John Michael Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): I absolutely welcome my hon. Friend’s comments. She makes a very good point that we all need to bear in mind At the time when the recession was at its deepest, I took the initiative in my constituency to get together a whole lot of players in this field, including Henley College, to help businesses cope with the fact that they were going into recession. Henley College rose to the challenge very well. It was instructive to find that many people in the room from firms that had done business in the area for 25 years did not know a single soul among the rest of those gathered there. I think that if I were to do the same thing now, that would not be the case. They know where they are going, and they are taking the lead in promoting apprenticeships Colleges like Henley can make an important contribution in encouraging the provision of training. This is to do with a lot of the work that companies are undertaking to find the best training providers to help them in delivering apprenticeships. I recently went to see two contrasting companies in the constituency to hear about the work they were doing in apprenticeships. One was DAF, the truck manufacturer, which is one of the biggest companies in my constituency and sits at the centre of a web of apprenticeships that goes right across the country. It has made great efforts to find the right training provider to help it in this—a college down in the west country with which it can work to deliver this training. It has degree-type award ceremonies at the end of the apprenticeship training so that people feel they have got something out of the whole process. I have been invited to the ceremony it will conduct in September, to witness it at first hand The other company I went to visit was Williams Performance Tenders. Despite the constituency being landlocked, Williams Performance Tenders is the biggest producer of boats by volume in the whole country. Having been on one of those boats, I know they are extremely fast. This company, too, has a very good apprenticeship scheme that it manages largely by itself. That scheme operates in the most deprived village in the whole of my constituency, and it is making a big difference to people’s lives As a result of all this, if we look back to the beginning of 2010, we see that there has been an increase of some 58% in the number of apprenticeships taken up in the constituency. That is an excellent achievement. I put on record my thanks to all the businesses that have participated in and are contributing to this.
Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Education
John Michael Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): That is a difficult question to answer. I attribute it partly to that, but the role of schools needs to be worked on further, because they can do more During the election campaign, I became aware of the way schools in the constituency still regard apprenticeships in an academic light as providing an academic training rather than a genuine life option for people.
Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Education
John Michael Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): I think I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but I would like more effort to be put into encouraging schools to focus on apprenticeships being self-standing as a life’s ambition that can be fulfilled. So many schools approach apprenticeships as though such people were going to university and deal with them in the same way—the careers advice process still encapsulates the whole thing—which is wrong. We need to ensure not just that providers and companies provide quality, but that the schools regard them as providing quality. To that extent, I fully agree with the hon. Gentleman. There is therefore an onus on the Government to redirect some of their efforts towards schools to encourage them to do this, and to move the debate on so that in a few years’ time people will have genuinely equal opportunities, whether they want to go to university, as I did, or have an apprenticeship, as so many young people in my constituency want. I welcome the Government’s emphasis on apprenticeships, and the important part that apprenticeships play in delivering the long-term economic plan.
Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Labor
Huw William Merriman (Conservative, Centre-right): We have created 2.2 million apprenticeships, which the hon. Gentleman doubts, and we have also created 2 million jobs. On that basis, are people not moving from apprenticeships into jobs, and therefore carrying on their training in the workplace?
Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Education
Huw William Merriman (Conservative, Centre-right): Coming from a very similar background to the hon. Lady, and having benefited from a sixth-form college, I will give her a different take. In my constituency, Bexhill sixth-form college continues to thrive and provide vocational education and to build people’s confidence. That is a very different pattern from the one she has just painted.
Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Education
Antoinette Geraldine Sherratt (Sandbach) (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Gentleman’s words might have more credence were Labour not doing the same in Wales to further education colleges there. It is clear that cuts are being delivered and that qualifications, particularly in STEM subjects, are not being achieved in Wales.
Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Macroeconomics
Nicholas Edward Coleridge Boles (Conservative, Centre-right): I will not give way My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister spent quite a lot of the past six to eight weeks opening his breast pocket and brandishing a letter from the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill, in which he said that there was no money left. We never wanted to cut public spending and never wanted to impose those difficult decisions; we have done so because of the legacy that he left us and made fun of in a letter—we are living with those consequences.
Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Education
Nicholas Edward Coleridge Boles (Conservative, Centre-right): I will not give way, as the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill has had his go We heard barely a word from Labour Members about qualifications reform or about our apprenticeship reforms, which are putting employers in charge of developing standards and controlling Government investment in apprenticeships. [Interruption.]
Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Education
Nicholas Edward Coleridge Boles (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me make it clear that I would be happy to give way to a Back Bencher, but I think we can all agree that we have heard quite enough from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) this week, in his not-so-pithy contributions to our debates We heard barely a word from Labour Members about our plans to ensure that anyone who has been failed in school and who has failed to achieve sufficient qualifications in English and maths should carry on studying them, through a further education college or whatever other route they take. That is a plan we have invested in and that we are developing.
Skills and Growth — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Education
Nicholas Edward Coleridge Boles (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sure the hon. Gentleman is aware that, unlike under the Government he supported, when sixth forms in schools received much more money per pupil than sixth-formers in other institutions, we have an absolutely equal funding system. Whether someone is in a sixth form or school, or a further education college or a sixth-form college, they will receive exactly the same amount of money per pupil, as he should know well We do not believe that we have a monopoly on good ideas, and we are not remotely complacent about the state of education for 14 to 19-year-olds, but we will oppose the motion because a review or, God forbid, the royal commission that one Labour Member called for would distract the Government at a time when we are making real progress. We are making progress in ensuring that everybody secures that vital passport to success which is a mastery of English and maths. We are making progress in reforming qualifications so that they are rigorous, respected and backed by employers. We are making progress with apprenticeships, not just by increasing their number to 2.2 million in the last Parliament, but by introducing reforms that got rid of programme-led apprenticeships, which the last Labour Government introduced. Those involved no employer, no job and a few months of training in a college, yet Labour dared to call them apprenticeships. We have got rid of those and our reforms will continue We are making progress with the introduction of university technical colleges, and I was glad to hear support for the concept from Opposition Members. We want UTCs, spearheaded by one of the greatest Education Secretaries that any Conservative Government have ever had, to be within reach of every city. But we want them to flourish too, and we will be looking to make sure that every UTC can succeed, both financially and educationally We are agreed on one thing at the end of this debate: we have huge ambitions for our education system, and they are not yet met. We have huge aspirations for every young person going through school and going into a further education institution in our country, and those aspirations are not yet guaranteed. We will not rest until everybody in this country, in this one nation—in Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland—is able to leave school and college with qualifications that equip them for a life of work; a life that is fulfilling and rewarding and that helps to make this country one of the greatest countries on earth Question put.
Productivity — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Macroeconomics
Gregory William Hands (Conservative, Centre-right): Surely the hon. Gentleman must admit that, given that the Chancellor was here yesterday at Treasury questions, and able to answer questions on productivity, and that he was here again today as First Secretary for Prime Minister’s questions, and able to answer questions on productivity, he has been available in this House to answer questions.
Productivity — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Macroeconomics
Simon James Hoare (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman is being a little churlish. I am sure that we can all be accused of all sorts of things, but over the past five and a half years my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has focused with Exocet precision on making the economy grow, increasing jobs and getting us on the move again. Such churlishness belies the hon. Gentleman.
Productivity — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Macroeconomics
Mark Robert Timothy Garnier (Conservative, Centre-right): The shadow Chancellor is absolutely right: productivity is incredibly important. The Treasury Committee and The Economist have been banging on ad nauseam about it, certainly during my five years as a Member of Parliament. Why has he picked up on it only in the past six months?
Productivity — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Macroeconomics
Andrew James Bridgen (Conservative, Centre-right): The shadow Chancellor talks about productivity and the need to invest in plant and machinery, and the need for cross-Chamber support, to improve our productivity. Does he therefore support the Conservative Government’s maintenance or increase of capital allowances for businesses, giving them a clear incentive to invest in their businesses?
Productivity — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Labor
Michael Louis David Fabricant (Conservative, Centre-right): I commend the hon. Gentleman for introducing this debate on an important subject. Does he accept that in certain areas and segments, such as car manufacturing, UK productivity is high? At Nissan, for example, productivity is as high as at any car manufacturer in Europe. Will he applaud the Government’s proposals to create 3 million apprentices? Nissan and other manufacturers accept that it is through the apprenticeship schemes that productivity will be raised.
Productivity — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Government Operations
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): This is a very important debate, and we can learn together about how we can do better. During the 13 years of the Labour Government, there was practically no productivity gain whatever throughout the whole public service. Why was that, and what can we learn from it?
Productivity — House of Commons, 2015-06-17
Topic: Macroeconomics
Chris Ian Brian Mynott Philp (Conservative, Centre-right): The figure that the hon. Gentleman has not mentioned is, of course, the productivity figure for 2009—the last year in which Labour was in government—and in that year it dropped by a staggering 2.6%, the highest for the last 25 years.