Industrial Strategy Consultation

Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

The Chair of the Education Committee is absolutely right. I hope that he and his Committee might make a contribution to the consultation to help us as we establish precisely that pathway, which starts in school but goes beyond people’s commencement of work, because people often need to retrain and take on new skills during their working life.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

I welcome the desire to transform technical education—something of a recurring theme ever since the days of Prince Albert. In trying to help the Secretary of State to make it a success this time, may I ask him to pay greater attention to the 14 to 19-year-olds at university technical colleges like the one at Aston University? Could I persuade him to give the training levy to the newly elected regional mayors, who can then make strategic training decisions that are appropriate to the regions they represent?

[Greg Clark]

The right hon. Lady makes two important points. First, as others in the past have recognised, it is vital to recognise the importance of technical education and to improve it, and that is certainly our intention. On the particular proposal that she mentions, if she would care to discuss it with me, we could feed it into the consultation.