Further Education

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

As my hon. Friend says, Professor Alison Wolf is also on our panel looking at technical and professional education.

I want to remind the House that the reason we spend almost the same amount on servicing our debt as we do on the entire schools budget is the financial mismanagement of the Labour party. Its recklessness means that we have been forced to make difficult decisions to balance the books and live within our means, because if we had not, our education system would have fallen into the chaos that we have seen in countries that have failed to balance the books—thousands of schools closed in Greece; teacher and lecturer pay slashed in Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain; an exodus of talent.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Is my right hon. Friend surprised that nobody has yet mentioned our ambition to have 3 million apprenticeships by 2020? There has already been a significant increase in my constituency.

[Nicky Morgan]

My hon. Friend is pre-empting what I am coming to. I would like to say that I am surprised that Labour Members have not so far mentioned apprenticeships, but they would not want to bring attention to our track record in the last Parliament of delivering double the number of apprenticeship starts than that delivered by the last Labour Government.