Oral Answers to Questions

Gareth Snell Excerpts
Monday 14th May 2018

(6 years, 5 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Nadhim Zahawi Portrait Nadhim Zahawi
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Placing any child or young person more than 20 miles away from their area requires the agreement of the director of children’s services. Children should always be placed where appropriate and the director of children’s services must make that decision.

Gareth Snell Portrait Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
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9. Whether he plans to increase funding for further education providers; and if he will make a statement.

Anne Milton Portrait The Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills (Anne Milton)
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We protected the 16-to-19 funding base rate for all types of further education providers in the 2015 spending review. I should point out that the additional investment for the new T-levels to increase hours of learning from 600 to 900 per session will result in £550 million by the time of their roll-out. We are also spending £20 million to help teachers with T-levels, and there is a host of other funding going into FE, not least the restructuring fund—£726 million was made available by the Treasury. There is also the local growth fund for capital and the strategic college improvement fund.

Gareth Snell Portrait Gareth Snell
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What the Minister really said there, in a very long-winded way, was that there is no new funding. T-levels do not exist yet, and the funding she has re-announced already exists. Some £1.3 million would have been available to the colleges and further education establishments in my constituency had the Department not redirected the underspend between 2014 and 2017. I simply ask her: can we have it back, please?

Anne Milton Portrait Anne Milton
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As I pointed out earlier, we have a post-18 funding review going on and we are looking at the resilience of the FE sector—

Gareth Snell Portrait Gareth Snell
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indicated dissent.

Anne Milton Portrait Anne Milton
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The hon. Gentleman can shake his head—

Gareth Snell Portrait Gareth Snell
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I can shake my head, yes.