Alison McGovern
Main Page: Alison McGovern (Labour - Birkenhead)Department Debates - View all Alison McGovern's debates with the Department for Education
(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jo Swinson
I commend the hon. Gentleman for campaigning against this vile and abhorrent crime. He rightly points out the action that the Government are taking on human trafficking. That is being done in conjunction with BIS, but the Home Office is obviously the lead Department on human trafficking. The Minister for Immigration has rightly been taking the matter forward. Both he and I spoke at a conference this week about human trafficking and the risks to the hospitality sector in particular. We will continue to work with business to raise the awareness of this issue and to clamp down on problems in the supply chain. It is a reputational risk for businesses and we must ensure that there is proper enforcement through the Home Office procedures.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
5. What assessment he has made of access to apprenticeships for young women.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Skills (Matthew Hancock)
The number of women starting apprenticeships has more than doubled since this Government took office. The tax cuts for low earners that were announced yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will take thousands of apprentices—men and women—out of tax altogether.
Alison McGovern
I thank the Minister for his answer, I think. It sounded lovely, but unfortunately the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee reported in November:
“Gender segregation remains a huge problem with only 3% of engineering apprentices”
being women
“compared to 92% of hairdressing apprentices.”
The Select Committee said:
“Such inequality, especially in a publicly funded scheme is not acceptable”.
Since November, what has the Minister been doing about that?