George Galloway
Main Page: George Galloway (Workers Party of Britain - Rochdale)Department Debates - View all George Galloway's debates with the Department for Education
(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberI am grateful to my hon. Friend for working with his local further education establishment and for highlighting the opportunities available to young people. He is right that we need more SMEs to be involved. That is why I commissioned Jason Holt to conduct a review of how we can be more helpful on bureaucracy and on allowing people to navigate the system more straightforwardly. It is also why we introduced cash incentives of £1,500 for every young apprentice that an SME takes on. My goodness, the previous Government could not have dreamed of that kind of record.
New Labour in Bradford has achieved the seemingly impossible by presiding over secondary schools in the city that are even worse than they were when the Conservatives ran them. In the youngest city in England, we are the eighth worst in the country—eighth out of 150. What special measures can the Government take these schools into to save the youngest city in England from the perdition of ignorance?
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that case. I know that during the by-election, which he won, the state of education in Bradford was one of the issues on which he campaigned. I offer him the chance to meet me at the Department for Education, where we can discuss some of the initiatives that we have in mind.