Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [Lords]

Marsha De Cordova Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 15th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nadhim Zahawi)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

In my previous role as Vaccines Minister, I set out how as a nation we would work our way back to normality by delivering an incredible vaccination programme—the product of evidence, expertise, commitment and, of course, collaboration. I am now here, I am very pleased to say, as Education Secretary, but I make it clear that my first and foremost aims remain the same. I am determined to focus on evidence, data and delivery, and on realising the huge potential in our most valuable resource: the human resource, our people.

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State refers to evidence and data, which all of us in this House rely on. Given the evidence and expertise from professionals about the move to get rid of the BTEC qualification, is it not time that he rethought that proposal?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I hope, as I did in the weekly briefings that I gave as Vaccines Minister, to convince the hon. Lady tonight that that is incorrect. We are not getting rid of BTECs.

I know at first hand how important education is. As colleagues who have known me for a long time will know, I came to this country with my family at the age of 11, without a word of English—and here I am now in this Chamber. With the right education, opportunity abounds.

Unfortunately, we are still feeling the aftershocks of the pandemic and we still have many challenges ahead. We need to recover economically; we need to level up our country. I am glad to say that we are already making headway with levelling up. The Chancellor’s Budget is putting the money where it is needed, with £374 billion of direct support for the economy over this year and last year. The Prime Minister’s plan for jobs is working, with the peak of unemployment forecast to be 2 million lower than was previously predicted. Wages are growing, and we will build on that by having skills at the very heart of our plan.