A Brighter Future for the Next Generation

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Thursday 13th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)]

I thank all hon. and right hon. Members who have taken part in today’s debate. There have been many valuable contributions.

The year 2020 and the early part of 2021 have been a time of enormous difficulty, and our nation’s resolve has been tested by the pandemic. There has been huge disruption to the lives of young people, whose futures we are debating today. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) rightly said, a lost year for us cannot be compared with a lost year of learning and development for them.

With the end of the EU transition period in January, the UK began a new chapter in its national story—one of great change and even greater opportunity. This must become the spur to do things differently and better, and, in doing so, create more opportunities for young people. We have to use this shift to shatter the stasis that has led to decades of underproductivity and disconnection between decision makers and communities. With UK politicians now being more accountable for delivery, we will pursue policies that work for young people across the UK, with huge investment in early years, post-16 education, skills, infrastructure and technology. With freedom of intellectual challenge, we hope to create a more outward-looking and dynamic economy.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) made a compelling speech on the skills agenda, to which he has committed so much campaigning energy, and he welcomed our lifetime skills guarantee. I am grateful to him for the way in which he has engaged with me on civil service apprenticeships. I see those apprenticeship routes as fundamental to our talent pipeline for the digital and data specialist roles that we are creating across Government to lead our drive to improve online Government services for citizens. I appreciated the excellent suggestion by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) on special educational needs and development hubs, and I have just raised it with the Secretary of State for Education.

I was very interested to hear the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) criticise the English education system when Scotland’s performance on the PISA league tables has drastically slipped and the attainment gap has increased. Meanwhile, UCAS data show that just 9.7% of those from Scotland’s most disadvantaged areas have been accepted at university, compared with 17% in England.

I want to wish my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) a very happy birthday and thank her for her tireless commitment to the early years agenda over 25 years. As a relatively new mum myself, I can say that what she said this afternoon, especially on maternal mental health and support, resonated. That has been a real challenge for many new parents during the pandemic, and I wish her the very best on her work on “The 1001 Critical Days”, which has now been recognised and supported by Government.

It is fantastic to hear of the input into that project from my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson), who draws on huge experience, and the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). I am sure that the wisdom and warmth that the hon. Lady brought to that role was invaluable. She raised an extremely important point about cancer services, and I know that the question of NHS delays caused by the pandemic is an area of great focus for the Cabinet Office in its work on public sector recovery and reform. That will also be tackled in new health legislation.

This afternoon, I learned to my surprise that my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) is the House’s No.1 champion of hedgehogs. I was glad to hear of his support for the ambitious environmental and animal welfare measures in the Gracious Speech. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) raised the potential of COP26 to inspire and provide opportunities in green tech for young people. In our sponsorship of COP, the Cabinet Office agrees; we are tremendously ambitious in this area. The London Gateway freeport—in my region and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price)—will help to spur new green investment and jobs, and our work on new T-levels, apprenticeships and skills will help local young people to take advantage of them.

As others have said, levelling up is not only for the north.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) talked of retaining flexible working from the pandemic to help families. The Cabinet Office is actively exploring that in areas such as public appointments and civil service HR. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) spoke movingly about illiteracy, and I hope that our lifelong learning initiatives will help to address it. The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) supported our education plan and our kickstart scheme, and raised the issue of apprenticeships. I hope she engages with our skills for jobs White Paper and recognises the enormous investment we are making in skills, including a £3,000 incentive for firms to take on apprentices.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) is absolutely right about the emotional commitment we all feel towards the future of the Union. Our family of nations has faced the great challenge of the pandemic together, through protections to the economy, support from our armed services, the procurement of vaccines and more. This is not the time to tear us apart.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) is right to highlight the futures of young girls beyond our shores, where this Government are investing hugely in their education, as the key to tackling a whole range of global challenges, and the importance of stable public finances to all our finances, which was underlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock. She also made an oft overlooked point that outcomes and not money spent ought to define success in our public services. That is why the Cabinet Office wants to use procurement reforms and digital transformation to improve the performance of our services to all citizens. She also talked of our proposals against violence towards women and girls and to improve online safety in order to protect young people.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) raised the important issue of forced marriage, and I really praise her for her campaign. My hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle talked of not only the importance of new homes and infrastructure to young people’s futures, but the crucial new legislation we are bringing in on fighting knife crime, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) and the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes). That issue affects far too many young people. It is with deep sadness that we lost Daniel Laskos to knife violence in my constituency on Friday, and his family have been in our hearts this week. I pay tribute to the work of local police officers on this case, and I hope that new powers will help them to do their vital work so that no more lives are lost to senseless violence.

A number of hon. Members referred to the levelling-up agenda and its importance to young people in their constituencies, and one rather dubious reference was made to Chumbawamba. The Government are committed to boosting funding for communities in all parts of the UK, with the £4.8 billion levelling-up fund and another £220 million to invest in local areas, ahead of launching the UK shared prosperity fund in 2022, and a series of infrastructure initiatives of the kind that my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) mentioned.

We in the Cabinet Office are also committed to ensuring that the administration of government is less Whitehall-centric, by locating more civil service roles in the regions and nations of the UK, through our ambitious places for growth programme. The civil service needs to be visible in and representative of the entire UK, across all Departments, functions and professions. This will also play an important role in demonstrating our commitment as a Government to maintaining the integrity of the Union. The Cabinet Office has recently announced that our second headquarters will be located in Glasgow, with 500 officials to be located there in the next three years. A number of other Departments have also announced their plans to increase the UK Government presence across the UK. That includes the Department for Transport building on its presence in Leeds and Birmingham, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government establishing a second HQ in Wolverhampton, Leeds becoming home to second HQs for Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Work and Pensions, and new Treasury economic campus in Darlington. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will have heard the passionate bid for a Home Office HQ from my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) and for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon), who have listed the huge investments already made in their city. We want opportunities for young people to go hand in hand with these moves. Again, I am particularly focused on using the tremendous talent in schools and colleges across the UK to get British students into exciting digital and data roles in the heart of government.

Of course the brightest futures can be built only on solid democratic foundations, which is why the Government are bringing forward our elections Bill, as set out in Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech. This Bill will deliver on multiple manifesto commitments and hopes to ensure that our democracy remains secure, fair, modern and transparent The potential for voter fraud in our current system strikes at a core principle of our democracy: that your vote is yours and yours alone. Any instance of or potential for electoral malpractice damages the public’s faith in our democracy and has to be taken seriously. The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) and a number of other hon. Members use language outside this place to talk about straightforward proposals to request that voters prove they are who they say they are when they take up their sacred right to vote, calling that simple principle “voter suppression” in typically hyperbolic fashion designed to frighten and scaremonger. I completely agree that the vote is a precious right, which is why this Government believe that we should make it harder for those who seek to interfere with it.

Setting aside the fact that every voter will be able to secure a voter card from their local council for free if they want one, and that many people already have that kind of identification in the form of a passport or driving licence, the demands for evidence that voter fraud is a problem do not show an understanding of what happened in Tower Hamlets when I was a councillor there. In that borough, disinterest and complacency from authorities about electoral corruption and fraud meant that it was left to four ordinary residents, risking legal bills of hundreds of thousands of pounds, to challenge the election of the mayor in 2015. It was not easy, and I pay tribute to them and people such as Councillor Peter Golds, with whom I worked at the time and who raised with the Electoral Commission our serious worries about voter fraud.

The tireless work of those residents and their barrister, Francis Hoar, exposed how easily the system can be exploited when authorities are just too nervous about taking action. Through their courage, they had the mayor’s election overturned. I do not wish to see other communities go through that simply because of reticence on our part to introduce a very simple check that a voter is who they say they are. Indeed, I noticed that Mr Hoar himself tweeted last week that he had been subject to personation at the ballot box, so I regret that the idea that there is nothing to see here is wide of the mark.

The Opposition are not naive and inexperienced on this matter. They will know that in many council elections, the margin of victory at ward level can be exceptionally slim, yet we are electing people who will be stewards of public money and services for some of the most vulnerable in our communities. I know full well that Opposition Front Benchers understand the importance of identification at key votes, because they ask for it to be produced for their own party’s elections and even to attend Labour Live, in so far as there is any demand. Our plans simply bring us into line with Labour’s elections, and with the Labour Government’s introduction in 2003 of voter identification in Northern Ireland, where participation has not been affected.

[Cat Smith]

We are discussing the importance of voting and democracy in a debate about the bright future for the next generations. Given that 16 and 17-year-olds have the right to vote in Scotland and Wales, how does the Minister defend the status quo in England, where 16 and 17-year-olds are not given equal voting rights to their Scottish and Welsh counterparts?

[Julia Lopez]

That is subject to lively debate, and I know that it is being explored by the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith). I will take that point away to discuss with her while she is away.

I thank all hon. Members for their thoughtful contributions to this debate on future opportunities for young people. From huge investment in the skills agenda and early years to measures to keep young people safe in the street and online, work on issues of passion to younger generations such as the environment and animal welfare, and giving freedom for vigorous intellectual debate that challenges and hones ideas—our own in-house political poet, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), set that out superbly—Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech sets out an ambitious legislative agenda to put young people at the heart of our national recovery and economic renewal. I commend it to the House.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Rebecca Harris.)

Debate to be resumed on Monday 17 May.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We look forward to 17 May, so that we can visit pubs and restaurants without fear of getting wet or, indeed, catching hypothermia —the glorious 17th.

Will those leaving the Chamber before we go on to the Adjournment please do so in a covid-friendly manner? I ask that the Dispatch Boxes are sanitised while Alexander Stafford opens the debate. The Minister is not going to touch the Dispatch Box until that has been done. Thank you very much, everybody—and thank you, Minister.