Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between John Hayes and David Nuttall(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
I am sure the whole House will be disappointed that my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) was unable to ask about space flight, so will my right hon. Friend the Minister please set out what steps he is taking to ensure that the UK becomes the world leader in commercial space flight?
Mr John Hayes
Ah, the final frontier! And who better to take us there than Britons? Our journey to the stars will be informed, and we will become the premier site for satellite launches and lead the way in commercial space flights, as we set out in our document earlier this week. Mr Speaker, I see you as Captain Kirk and me as Mr Spock. Other parts will be played by members of the cast.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between John Hayes and David Nuttall(8 years ago)
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Mr Hayes
I imagined that the hon. Lady would ask that question, because she has tabled a number of written questions in a similar vein. She rightly says that a local discount scheme will operate on the Mersey Gateway bridge. The Government have said that they were looking to extend those discounts, as she also said. Let me be clear: officials are currently working through the character and effect of that extension, and no decision has been made upon it. Of course, I will give full consideration to the arguments she has made on behalf of her constituents and others.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Is a toll being considered for the proposed cross-Pennine road link?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between John Hayes and David Nuttall(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
16. What steps he plans to take to provide offenders with relevant skills and training in order to help them find work when they leave prison.
The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)
On 18 May, to great acclaim, I launched “Making prisons work: skills for rehabilitation”, the report on offender learning that I commissioned last summer. It sets out a substantial programme of reform to increase the positive impact of offender learning on reoffending rates and on former prisoners’ capacity to reintegrate successfully into civil society.
Mr Hayes
Yes, I do recognise that, which was why, in the review that I published, we put the emphasis on employability skills. For someone to leave the life of crime, another life must pay for them, which means getting and keeping a job. I met National Grid this week, actually, to discuss skills issues, and I congratulate it on its work and my hon. Friend on championing the issue.
Mr Nuttall
Does my hon. Friend agree that the longer the period for which an offender is able to benefit from training programmes, the more likely it is that they can acquire the skills necessary to find work when they leave custody?
Mr Hayes
I learned early on never to stray outside my purview or pitch above my pay grade. Suffice it to say that progression is critical, so what people learn in prison must be progressive. They must be able to take up and complete their studies when they leave, so that they can get qualified, get a job and get on.
St George’s Day and St David’s Day Bill
Debate between John Hayes and David Nuttall(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Hayes
My hon. Friend is certainly right. Although we cost such proposals in a clear and empirical way—and notwithstanding my comments about utility—it is right that we should consider the matter in the round. We should assess the effects, both good and bad, on business, because clearly many businesses will benefit from an additional holiday. The tourist business, many of our resorts and parts of our leisure industry would benefit. However, there would be other costs to business, and it is right to listen to what business organisations say. Indeed, I will describe what they have said as we progress through this short but important debate.
The history of bank holidays will help us to draw some conclusions. Bank holidays are a relatively new phenomenon, of course. Before 1834, the Bank observed about 33 saints’ days and religious festivals as holidays, but in 1834 the number was reduced to just four: 1 May, 1 November or All Saints day, Good Friday and Christmas day. Frankly, in my view, that was rather a meagre ration. In 1871, the first legislation relating to bank holidays was passed when the banker and politician, Sir John Lubbock, introduced the Bank Holidays Act 1871, which specified the days as holidays.
I understand that Sir John Lubbock was an enthusiastic supporter of national and local cricket, and was firmly of the belief that bank employees should have the opportunity to participate in and attend matches when they were scheduled. Dates of bank holidays are therefore dates when cricket games were traditionally played between villages in the area where Sir John was raised. It is that rather partisan approach to bank holidays, built around Sir John’s personal tastes, which forms the basis, or at least the origins, of the matters we are speaking of today. Nevertheless, people were so glad to be given time off, whether it was to watch cricket or not, they called the first bank holidays St Lubbock’s days for a while. That did not perpetuate, but I hope that politicians of note might consider that, at least in popular if not official terms, special days could be named after them; one never knows, but if my hon. Friend’s Bill were to be successful, his name might, at least colloquially, be attached to the day’s holiday that people enjoyed. However, that rather self-interested motive of course has nothing to do with his bringing the Bill to our attention.
As is often the case, Scotland was treated separately because of its separate traditions, and so, for example, new year’s day was a holiday there whereas Boxing day was not. The 1871 Act did not specify Good Friday and Christmas day as bank holidays in England, Wales and Ireland because they were already recognised as common law holidays, and common observance had meant that they had become customary holidays since before records began.
Exactly a century after the 1871 Act, the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971, which currently regulates bank holidays in the UK, was passed. The majority of the current bank holidays were specified in the 1971 Act, but holidays for new year’s day in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and for May day were introduced later. From 1965, the date of the August bank holiday was changed to the end of the month. Curiously, there were a few years—for example, 1968—when the holiday fell in September, but this no longer occurs, presumably reflecting a change in the way of defining the relevant date. The Whitsun bank holiday, Whit Monday, was replaced by the late spring bank holiday, which was fixed as the last Monday in May in 1971.
Under the 1971 Act, certain holidays are written into legislation. Those which are not are proclaimed each year by the legal device of a royal proclamation. A royal proclamation is also used to move bank holidays that would otherwise fall on a weekend, so adding an additional one-off holiday, as was the case this year. In that way, holidays are not lost in years when they coincide with weekends. These deferred bank holidays are termed bank holidays in lieu of the typical anniversary date and in the legislation are known as “substitute days”. Although we have fewer public or bank holidays than many other European Union member states, they do not always have substitute days and so, in some sense, the comparison is misleading. That point has been made by a variety of speakers today, including the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central.
To give those north of border a chance to have a longer celebration at new year, 2 January was made an additional bank holiday in Scotland by the 1971 Act—the rest of the country was given the chance to celebrate, less enthusiastically perhaps, by having new year’s day off instead. May day is the most recent of the eight bank holidays and is thought by some to be a controversial choice. It was introduced by the then Employment Secretary, Michael Foot, in 1978, just before he went on to lead the Labour party. At the time many opposed the move, saying that the May day holiday was essentially a communist idea because most countries behind the iron curtain enjoyed it, but it is now in the calendar and a fixture in bastions of communism such as the United States. I think we can assume that those charges did not bear as much weight as their advocates suggested.
The first bank holiday Act was a welcome innovation—
Mr Nuttall
On the point of the May day bank holiday. Does the Minister agree that one solution to the problem of finding an extra bank holiday for St George’s day would be simply to move the May day bank holiday to 23 April? That would resolve the problem of a loss to the economy, which has been discussed, and it would create a day around which we could all unite for St George’s day.