Further Education
Debate between Catherine West and Anne Main(9 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
It is interesting to follow the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who says we should bring back night school. I would like to know where he would get the funding for it. It has been gone for a long time in a lot of areas.
Mr Deputy Speaker, you missed being lectured for 15 minutes by the Scottish National party spokesperson in a debate that its Members did not even bother to sit around to participate in afterwards. That is a real shame, given that we have an Opposition day debate today. I feel sorry that we were lectured like that when they could not be bothered to stay to listen to the meat of the debate.
I want to focus on apprenticeships, because the motion says that this Government are risking the country’s prosperity, yet it leaves out apprenticeships. The right hon. Gentleman did refer to them, but I was disappointed to hear him say that they are not worth the paper they are written on. I have been working with my local college, Oaklands college, which has apprenticeship week in March; I met many providers who were encouraged to make sure that apprenticeships are worth while. That is why I wanted to speak in this debate. I cringed when I heard the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) sneer—I can use no other word—about an apprenticeship; she seemed to be saying that using the till in a bakery was not worth while.
Mrs Main
I am not giving way to the hon. Lady, because she has plenty on her own side who wish to speak. Many young people, my own son included, want to go into an apprenticeship and they will be feeling today, “If I take up an apprenticeship at the lower level and learn some of the skills of interacting with other people, using the till, and learning to get up to get to work on time, to make myself presentable and to make myself work-ready, somehow I am not—
Catherine West
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it possible to come back on a particular point?