Business of the House

Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

Any unnecessary death is clearly a tragedy, and everything possible should be done to avoid them. In fairness, I need to point out that, partly due to the NHS’s extensive preparation for winter, excess winter mortality last winter was down on the previous year, and earlier this month NHS England and Public Health England launched their Stay Well This Winter campaign, which last year reached 98% of the over-65s. The NHS is very much alive to these risks, and is taking action to alert elderly people to what they can do to keep themselves warm.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

May I also associate myself and my Social Democratic and Labour party colleagues with the comments of the Leader of the House on our late colleague, Jo Cox? We must all respect people with different religions, politics or ethnicities.

Yesterday, the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) and I launched the first report of the all-party group for the visitor economy. It was about supporting skills and apprenticeships in the hospitality and tourism industry. Many different types of evidence were submitted to us. The report said that there were core issues affecting apprenticeships in the fourth-largest service industry, involving the school curriculum, lack of proper career guidance, and lack of encouragement to people to go into cheffing and the catering industry. May we have a debate on this significant industry, which is important to tourism in many constituencies, and has a direct relationship with the economy?

[Mr Lidington]

I was glad to hear about the report that the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) have prepared, and she has highlighted an important issue. The Government’s commitment to 3 million apprenticeships needs to include tourism as one of the sectors to be assisted. She is right to draw our attention to the need for those apprenticeships to have proper preparation and the right content, so that the young people concerned can be seen to be readily employable. I have talked to directors and senior managers in the hospitality industry, and I find it troubling that they often find it difficult to recruit UK citizens who are properly skilled for the work on offer, which is why they often look to people coming in from other countries. As a country, we need to address that challenge.