Oral Answers to Questions

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

There are no cuts. The cuts are a figment of the hon. Gentleman’s imagination. We are putting an extra £6 billion of funding into this scheme by 2020. It is more than any Government have ever spent on early years childcare.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

6. What steps she is taking to improve the social mobility of children and young people.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Justine Greening)]

We are driving up social mobility by levelling up opportunity. That is why it is so vital to drive up standards in education, in terms of both academic routes and technical education. Opportunity areas are also in the vanguard of our approach.

[Mr Cunningham]

I am interested in the Secretary of State’s answer to that question. Further education, which produced lots of apprentices and highly skilled people in industry—particularly in manufacturing—has been cut by 28%. How can the Secretary of State say that she is doing a lot for highly skilled education?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware—or perhaps he has missed it—that we are bringing the Technical and Further Education Bill before Parliament on Second Reading later today. It matches the fact that we have aspirations to drive up standards in further education in the same way as we have done in academic education routes.