Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Catherine West and Lucy Frazer

Thursday 13th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

5. Whether her Department has made an assessment of the level of funding that will be required to meet its cycling targets for (a) 2025 and (b) 2030.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lucy Frazer)]

The Department estimates that a minimum of £4.4 billion is likely to be required to meet its cycling and walking objectives to 2025; and further, that a minimum of £5.5 billion is likely to be required to meet the objectives to 2030. The actual amount will depend on a wide variety of factors.

[Catherine West]

I am sure the Minister agrees that there is nothing nicer than seeing schoolchildren in local streets learning in a supervised way how to cycle safely, particularly as interest in cycling has grown post pandemic. Will she commit today to ensuring sufficient funding for every single local authority to maintain its cycling classes, so that children can learn and so that we can tackle air pollution together by having more children cycling safely on streets and being taught manners and the best way to cycle in our local environments?

[Lucy Frazer]

I agree that it is important to learn from a young age how to cycle safely. That will ensure that as children grow older, they are more willing to engage in active travel rather than being in cars. I can assure the hon. Lady that the Government will offer cycle training to every primary school child in England, building on the record of 500,000 training places offered in 2022-23.

Income Tax (Charge)

Debate between Catherine West and Lucy Frazer

Thursday 28th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

The hon. Member makes a valid point and I absolutely recognise that, but the way to solve that problem is not to give a tax benefit to a large group of people who simply do not need it, but to give discrete, directed support to those who do need it. That is what this Government have done: the hon. Member will know that six weeks ago we announced £500 milllion to support the most vulnerable families when they absolutely need it.

Members from all parties mentioned the support for families and for family hubs and welcomed the measures in the Budget. I was pleased to hear the support from my hon. Friends the Members for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) and for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris). My hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) made a good speech about how important it is to support struggling families, and I was interested to hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich said about the importance of not only supporting young families financially—we have heard how important it is to support recent mums and dads—but giving them emotional security as well.

I was disappointed to hear the shadow spokesperson, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South-East, speak about our lack of support for education, because we have invested significantly in education, not only in this Budget but in previous ones. This Budget provides a wide variety of support through the education system. We are increasing the core funding for schools, with an additional £1,500 per pupil, and providing catch-up funding, with an additional £1.7 billion bringing the sum up to £5 billion, In addition, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich said, we are increasing the funding for SEND provision, with an extra 30,000 places for pupils with high needs. Through our new Multiply programme, we are helping school leavers who did not get the maths skills that they ought to have got at school.

[Catherine West]

There are some really good measures in the education package, but does the Minister not accept that returning us to 2010 expenditure on education when we have more children to educate, a bigger population and a need to look at the workforce as well, does not really help us in terms of the productivity puzzle, which is key to making the Brexit challenge work?

[Lucy Frazer]

The £4.7 billion investment in core school funding will be welcomed by schools and will enable them to support their students over the coming years. I would like to take this moment to thank all those teachers across the country who have committed so much over the course of the past 18 months in very difficult and challenging circumstances. I know that, although schools are back, students have lost time and there is a huge amount of work to do. Our one-to-one tuition and other such measures will help with that. The mark of a good Budget is one that makes a difference to people’s lives, in many different ways, and I hope that this Budget makes that difference.

Let me turn now to skills. Supporting people does not just mean cutting their tax bill. If we want to build a stronger economy and spread opportunity, we need to do more to boost people’s skills. I have talked about education, but, in addition, we are spending £3.8 billion over the Parliament, with more hours learning for 16 to 19-year-olds, expanded T-levels, more traineeships, more Institutes of Technology funding for the lifetime skills guarantee, and a large increase for apprenticeships by the end of the Parliament. I was very pleased to hear the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) welcoming our boot camps, which are increasing skills for people across the country.

Every Government should aspire to provide greater life chances for future generations, but this Government not only have the ambition, but have already shown through their plan for jobs that we can level up and we will continue to do so with this Budget.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Catherine West and Lucy Frazer

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

What steps the Government are taking to respond to covid-19 outbreaks in prisons.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lucy Frazer)]

Throughout the pandemic, we have worked really closely with Public Health England to respond to any outbreaks in prison and to keep our staff and those in our custody safe. We are taking a number of measures, which include compartmentalisation—keeping separate the vulnerable, those who are symptomatic and those who are coming into prisons from outside—as well as increased testing and more use of personal protective equipment, including face masks, where it is appropriate.

[Catherine West]

During these tough times of covid, health and safety is more important than ever. Will the Minister consider introducing a hotline for staff so that they can report health and safety breaches, particularly around the covid question but in other regards as well, given that prisons are a difficult place to work?

[Lucy Frazer]

I thank the hon. Lady very much for her suggestion. There are a number of hotlines available to staff. We work very closely with the unions on a local level, as well as a national level, but I am very happy to take away her suggestion to see whether it is necessary.