Education: Careers Advice
Debate between Baroness Deech and Baroness Wilcox
Baroness Wilcox
We take this issue very seriously. We are putting new money towards it and ensuring that the youth contract will provide nearly 500,000 new opportunities for young people, including apprenticeships and work experience placements. The important thing as far as we are concerned, and our aim, is to get every unemployed young person earning or learning again. We do not think that careers advice has been good in the past and we think it can be improved upon. We are using the original Connexions system to help us to provide a better outcome than we have had thus far. With 1 million youngsters out of work, we know how important this is.
Baroness Deech
Does the Minister appreciate that the cuts in legal aid proposed by the Government will devastate the career prospects of young people, many of them from ethnic minorities, who wish to become lawyers? The possibility of earning a living with legal aid in interesting areas such as immigration and family law has been wrecked, not to mention tuition fees.
Baroness Wilcox
We are giving schools the power to decide in their area what is going to be right for the children in their schools. This is a very empowering thing to do. We have enormous confidence in our schoolteachers. We believe that our schools should be given this opportunity. Perhaps the noble Baroness would like to speak further on this to me. We will ensure that every opportunity is available to our children.
Sunday Trading
Debate between Baroness Deech and Baroness Wilcox
Baroness Wilcox
I can confirm that the Government have no plans to change the rules on Sunday trading at the moment.
Baroness Deech
Does the Minister recognise the gender imbalance in this Question, in that men will always want their pubs open on a Sunday and their sporting fixtures, whereas working women—indeed, women work seven days a week, but I mean those who work outside the home—would be greatly restricted if shops and so on were not open on a Sunday? We should all be allowed to choose our own day of rest—not to mention the diversity issue. Sunday is not a special day for everybody.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, it is right that everybody should be able to choose the way they spend their day of rest, and there is no pressure for women to be looked at as a special case at this time. However, I am sure that, with the work that the noble Baroness has done on equality, she will bring anything to my attention that she feels we can do something about.