Lord Watts
Main Page: Lord Watts (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Watts's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(1 day, 10 hours ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Lord makes a fair point, which is why at level 3 we want to ensure that there are three clear routes—through A-levels, T-levels and V-levels—while at levels 4 and 5, which is where HNDs sit, we want to improve our current position, where insufficient numbers of young people go on to get qualified. That is why the Prime Minister set the target of two-thirds of young people achieving level 4 or above, and V-levels are an important route to that further study that the noble Lord was talking about.
Lord Watts (Lab)
Does the Minister agree that it is not the recent tax increases that have damaged the economy but the cost of Brexit, which cost £100 billion? That is another mess that has been left by the previous Government.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The only thing about which I disagree with my noble friend is that that is not the only mess left by the previous Government that we have had to clear up.