NHS Pensions: Taxation

Debate between Elizabeth Truss and Nic Dakin

Monday 8th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

The workforce are the No. 1 priority in the NHS, along with delivering the NHS plan, but we seem to be dealing here with a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. When the right hand of the NHS is rightly commissioning Baroness Dido Harding to do a workforce plan, the left hand of Treasury policy is undermining that. Will the Chief Secretary make sure that Baroness Dido Harding’s work is fully integrated into the work she is doing on this.

[Elizabeth Truss]

Yes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Elizabeth Truss and Nic Dakin

Tuesday 11th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. We also need to make sure that we are sharing the best practice of those authorities that are successfully helping to keep children out of care. We are also using the initiative of the children’s Minister to ensure that we are using independent school facilities better and helping with mental health problems. We need to do all those things.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

4. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Education on the adequacy of funding for further education.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I regularly meet the Secretary of State for Education to discuss school and FE funding issues. We have protected the base rate of funding for 16 to 17-year-olds between 2015 and 2020.

[Nic Dakin]

The national funding rate for 16 to 18-year-olds has been frozen for five years. That is beginning to cause significant problems in delivering for this age group. Will the Government do something about it before it is too late?

[Elizabeth Truss]

What is important is that we are achieving better results for 16 to 18-year-olds. We are seeing more young people from disadvantaged backgrounds going to university and improvements in the quality of apprenticeships that are being taken up by young people. We are also putting extra money into the new T-levels, which are due to improve technical education.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Elizabeth Truss and Nic Dakin

Tuesday 22nd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

13. What assessment he has made of trends in the level of wage growth for young people over the last 15 years.

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Elizabeth Truss)]

From 2002 until the crisis, young people saw their real wages grow more slowly than the UK average. In fact, their wages fell more during the recession. Since 2014, young people’s wages have been rising faster than the UK average.

[Nic Dakin]

Young people are struggling to get a good start in the job market. They are earning less, working longer hours and commuting further than their parents’ generation. What are the Government going to do to transform their outcomes?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The most important thing is that those young people are in jobs, and under Labour we saw unemployment rise to 20%. Youth unemployment has reduced by 40% since 2010. I recognise that we need to see those young people get better skills. That is why we are investing in IT training, that is why we are developing the maths premium so that more students study science, technology, engineering and maths, and that is why we have developed the apprenticeship levy to get more people into apprenticeships.