Strength of the UK’s Armed Forces
Debate between Nigel Evans and Andrew Selous(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con) [V]
The strength of our armed forces does not just rest in the capability of our military hardware. It relies on the skills, dedication and years of experience gained through the training and deployment of the men and women of the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force. We do not just need to recruit enough of them to serve in our battleships, armoured personnel carriers and aircraft; we need to retain them for long enough to benefit from the experience and training, which in the case of highly skilled personnel, will have cost millions.
Those brave men and women love their country and the jobs they do to protect us and keep us all free, but they have families who are often massively impacted by the work they do. While service families take enormous pride in the work of their serving family members, it also the case that military personnel put their families through more separation, relocation and danger than any other public servant.
On top of that, when we add into the mix accommodation that is not always of the standard it should be, disruption to children’s education, health services that do not keep up with their frequent moves and the inability of their spouse or partner to keep their job as the result of frequent relocation, many service personnel, although wanting to stay in the armed forces, are not prepared to continue to put their families through those difficulties, so they leave, taking all their experience with them and often leaving major capability gaps as a result.
That is why I was so delighted to be asked by a previous Secretary of State for Defence to write a report on what could be done to improve life for armed forces families. Professor Walker, Dr Misca and I published the report, “Living in our Shoes”, last summer, with 110 recommendations. I am delighted that, at the end of last month, the Government accepted 86 of them in full and 20 of them in part, while only rejecting three, with one being for the armed forces charitable sector to respond to. The report and the Government response are both on gov.uk.
Overall, we called for the whole nation to take its responsibilities to the armed forces families more seriously, and we called for the Prime Minister to make the care and wellbeing of armed forces families a national priority. I am delighted that the Government have accepted that challenge—
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nigel Evans and Andrew Selous(8 years, 7 months ago)
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Andrew Selous
I am really pleased that the hon. Lady has mentioned that, because just as employment is important, so are self-employment and enterprise. We have schemes to encourage them, and various Government loans can be drawn down. The Mitie Foundation business challenge day in Durham was also about encouraging business to go down the self-employment route.
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)
I do hope that the Minister can assure the House that the prisoners he mentioned a few moments ago were given their tunnelling skills after they left prison, not as a means of departure. Has he looked at some form of apprenticeship programme within prisons to give vocational skills to those who need them?
Andrew Selous
I am very keen to develop the avenue down which my hon. Friend is taking me. We could certainly look at a traineeship, which is often the first step towards an apprenticeship, within prisons. I will shortly meet the apprenticeships Minister—the Minister for Skills—to try to take forward this matter.
Central Bedfordshire College
Debate between Nigel Evans and Andrew Selous(11 years, 12 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I am terribly sorry about that. It is a technicality, and it is perhaps something that the Procedure Committee could look into, at its own initiative.
Andrew Selous
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
As I was saying, there were then 57 colleges left, of which 45 were given financial assistance to prop up their balance sheets. That left 12 colleges out of the original 70 without any assistance for capital funding under the old Learning and Skills Council regime. I believe that Central Bedfordshire college is one of the very few colleges not to have received any capital funding under the three enhanced renewal grant capital funding rounds that the new Government have introduced.
I would like to know how many colleges benefiting from the Learning and Skills Council capital grant, which was allocated under the previous Government, have received further capital funding under the enhanced renewal grant funding process. I would also be interested to know how many colleges had their ERG applications approved when they were not able to meet the match funding requirement. Central Bedfordshire college was able to meet that requirement in each of the three ERG application rounds that it put in for.
To recap, Central Bedfordshire college has put in three ERG bids. The first was in July 2010, when it requested a £1 million contribution from the Skills Funding Agency to match a £3 million contribution from the college itself. That bid was unsuccessful. The second bid, in November 2011, involved the college requesting a £2 million contribution from the SFA to match a £4 million contribution from the college. Most recently, in September 2012, the college requested £3 million from the SFA to match a £6 million contribution from the college.
The college had been led to believe that its bid would be prioritised, as it had not received even a pound in capital funding from those earlier rounds. It has had no written feedback on the bid process, although it has been told that it can attend a surgery at the SFA regional office. There is some puzzlement among the people running the college as to how all this is worked out. If the process is not helping the neediest colleges, perhaps it needs to be looked at again.
I want to go into more detail about the feedback that has been received from the SFA on why the third bid was unsuccessful. Will the Minister tell me whether the due diligence exercise that is going to take place in relation to the colleges whose bids were successful could be applied to Central Bedfordshire college, to see whether it could be awarded a few more points? I understand that the bid failed by just one point, and if we could look again to see whether any additional points could be awarded, there might be a happier outcome. I understand that the college’s education case scored the highest number of points in the whole of the eastern region, and the third highest in the whole country. I am sure the Minister would agree that the education bid is at the heart of what further education colleges should be about. I wonder whether that part of the bid should have slightly more weighting than some of the more technical considerations relating to the building proposals.
As I have said, this is the third enhanced renewal grant that the college has not been successful in securing. It has been acknowledged by officials in the Skills Funding Agency that the college is one of the neediest, if not the neediest, college in the country. In May this year, I was present when the outgoing SFA chief executive, Geoff Russell, visited Central Bedfordshire college, and he commented that the college did not need just an ERG; he would have liked to have seen a complete rebuild. Speaking as the local MP, I believe that the learners in Central Bedfordshire college deserve just as much support for creating a conducive learning environment as other students in other colleges throughout the country.
If the process is not helping the neediest colleges, we should have a look at how that process runs. I shall discuss four specific technical areas where we think the bid has lost out. The SFA commented that the refurbishment element had not been properly environmentally assessed. The primary objective of the college’s bid was to construct a new centre for hair, beauty, holistic therapies and hospitality and catering, with a focus on green technology in the curriculum and skills development. In order to achieve the new build in the optimum campus location, the college had to relocate other curriculum elements, with a small amount of associated refurbishment. The college understands that it was marked down because that latter refurbishment element did not have a full environmental assessment—unlike the main new build. That refurbishment element represented only 3.3% of the total project budget. It is simply an enabling element for the project itself, and the overall project has been environmentally assessed. The college feels unhappy about that aspect of its bid’s assessment.
The second aspect of the bid was the savings in estate costs over a 20-year period. The college was advised that other bids demonstrated larger savings over the project life of 20 years. The college, however, has come in the top quarter for national estates cost efficiency, as demonstrated by the SFA’s own data collection, which I understand is known as “e-Mandate”. That makes it hard for the college to demonstrate a huge decrease in building costs related to the bid, because it starts from such an efficient base. As a result, its savings are likely to be at a lower margin. That efficiency has been achieved by the college being very prudent and managing its projects from within its own estates department, for example. Again, the college feels that this rather crude assessment fails to take into account the efficiency point that it has already reached, even for a 50-year-old building, so it believes that it has been unfairly penalised for doing the right thing, as it were.
The third technical aspect on which the bid was marked down related to the costs of the proposed project build against the SFA’s own cost plan. The feedback stated that the bid was 10% adrift from the SFA’s cost plan norms. In simple terms, the bid comprised the following three parts. First, there is the demolition of the old F block, dating back to 1959, as I told the Minister at the start of my speech. That F block was going to be replaced with a new build centre of excellence for green catering and for hair, beauty and holistic therapies. That did fall within the SFA’s cost norms. Secondly, there is the partial demolition of the B block and the construction of a new media studies centre, together with associated works, which also fell within the SFA cost norms.
It was the third aspect that I think caused the college problems: the creation of a new surface-level car park and access road from the public highway. The project costs are required to conform to the appropriate SFA cost model for the type of college establishment. The first two elements of the bid, the demolition of the F block and the partial demolition of the B block, accorded with the SFA’s criteria. It was the third element, the car park, that did not accord with its indicative costs and is being regarded as abnormal.
The college has commented that it is required to dispose of a portion of its estate in order to release capital to contribute to the cost of the project. It has also said that the land to be disposed of currently houses a significant proportion of its car-parking provision, and that because it is not practicable for it to operate effectively without replacing that lost parking provision, it must be replaced elsewhere on the campus. The replacement of the car park and the provision of a new access road are a fundamental component of any redevelopment scheme that relies on capital release from the sale of land to the rear of the college to enable the college to make its substantial contribution to the overall project costs.
It was recognised at an early stage in the preparation of the stage C cost plan that the creation of the new car park would show the project costs at an unacceptable level of variance to the cost model, and for that reason two cost model comparisons were prepared and included. The first compared project costs associated with the B and F block works and their associated external works, and the second compared all project costs, including the creation of a new car park and access road.
The fourth element was health and safety, on which the bid was marked down. The college has said to me that the reason a significant improvement was not shown was that it had already taken care of that aspect of the bid. It had worked very hard, with its own money, to deal with all the health and safety issues that might have arisen, and not a great deal of further progress could have been made.
I hope that I have helped the Minister by giving him some feedback from the college. I hope that I have managed to explain why it feels aggrieved. In particular, I hope that I have managed to explain why the car park is necessary to the release of that significant extra contribution. The Minister has heard something of a litany of complaints, but I want to end on a positive note by telling him about the excellent things that the college is doing, notwithstanding the difficulties which I have outlined and which I hope he will be able to address when he responds.
Central Bedfordshire college is the proud sponsor of the new Central Bedfordshire university technical college, which is one of only two UTCs in the country that opened in September this year. It will have 600 students, and I am immensely proud that the only UTC in the east of England is in my constituency. It is a fantastic innovation, and it is exactly what the country needs to drive it towards a prosperous future.
Under construction in another location is the Incuba centre, a £5 million facility to help new businesses to develop Dunstable with a focus on the green economy. That is very welcome. It will help to re-energise the industrial base in Dunstable and Houghton Regis, and also the wider economy. Central Bedfordshire college is at the heart of that.
More recently, the college bought a former Volkswagen garage in the Luton road in Dunstable which it is turning into the most fantastic motor vehicle training facility. A real, live, state-of-the-art garage facility, in a building where a commercial garage was operating only a few months ago, will enable my constituents and people from the wider area to train to become motor mechanics in excellent conditions.
I know that the Minister is particularly interested in the college’s work with local employers. Again, it is doing all the things that he is asking colleges to do. It has, for instance, worked very closely with the Morrisons supermarket. I was proud to attend an event hosted jointly by the college and Morrisons. The college had provided up to 100 local unemployed people with a specific training course over the summer. If they completed it, they would be guaranteed a job interview at the new Morrisons branch that was opening in Houghton Regis. That initiative has been hugely successful. It has been excellent for the local unemployed people and excellent for the supermarket, which has really appreciated it. The college has done a fantastic thing.
The college is also working with other employers, including BAE Systems and Liebherr, engaging with them to develop an employer-tailored curriculum. It is working with Center Parcs, too, another new major provider of employment in central Bedfordshire, and with the developer of the new housing development north of Houghton Regis, which will require lots of construction skills.
It is a bugbear of mine that when there are major construction projects, the jobs often do not go to local people. It upsets me when people come in from miles around to take the jobs. Unemployed construction workers come to see me at my surgery. I am determined, as is Central Bedfordshire college, that many of the jobs created in the building of thousands of new houses to the north of Houghton Regis to help pay for the Dunstable northern bypass will be taken by local people. That is very important. CBC is at the forefront of providing the skills for the construction companies contracted to carry out that work.
The college also works with London Luton airport in delivering cabin crew and baggage-handling skills. It is working with Luton Town football club and the Bedfordshire football association to deliver coaching and football qualifications. It is also working with our local train company, First Capital Connect.
I hope the Minister will therefore see that the college has heard the Government’s message and is mustard-keen to provide the skills our local economy needs to help UK plc compete in the global race in which we are engaged. We just need a little bit of help with the capital funding. I think we have had a bit of a rough deal for a while now, but I know the Minister is a fair man, and I know he will look seriously into these issues. I look forward to hearing what he has to say.
Public Confidence in the Media and Police
Debate between Nigel Evans and Andrew Selous(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
All of us should approach this debate with a degree of humility before we stand in judgment over the press and the police, given the collective black mark that we MPs received in the last Parliament because of the expenses scandal. We are right to comment on these matters, and to draw and learn lessons, but we should remember and put on record that our collective performance in the previous Parliament was not terribly good on certain scores.
It is wholly unacceptable that Rupert Murdoch was attacked in the Committee yesterday. If we want witnesses to come before Select Committees of this House—it is important that they do—they must have the assurance that there will be no repetition of such incidents. I am pleased to learn of the Speaker’s inquiry into the matter.
I have to raise a few points put to me by my constituents, who are urging us collectively to learn the lessons, move on, and deal with the serious bread-and-butter issues that face them day in, day out—jobs, public services, the economy, and what is happening in Europe. We are right to focus on the issue and learn lessons, but I think that they are collectively saying to us, “Remember what’s happening in our lives, day in, day out.” I just want to put that firmly on the record.
We need to accept that it is not a crime for politicians and journalists to talk to each other, and it will not be in future. Politics matters; it is about the conveyance of important ideas. We want politics to be in the newspapers, and the media and journalists enable our message to get out to our constituents. We want a healthy, open, and transparent relationship in future. No more entering Downing street through the back door. It is not a crime for a journalist to go into No. 10 Downing street; it just needs to be transparent and open, and I hope that we are moving into an era in which it is.
I remain extremely concerned about payments to the police from journalists, about which we have heard a certain amount today. I want briefly to illustrate that with three true stories that have been brought to my attention recently. A former Member of the House who went on to have an important position in public service was accused of fraud. At the time of his arrest at 6 o’clock in the morning at his family home there were television crews around his house. He was later found to be innocent and there were no charges to answer. It became obvious that an officer involved in the investigation had tipped off the press and camera crews to record what was obviously a traumatic event for him and his family. That is absolutely wrong.
Another person known to me over the last few years did fantastic service by fostering difficult teenage children in his home. One night there was an incident and one of the teenage children whom he had fostered made an accusation that he had been molested by my friend, who was then arrested by the police. Next day that matter was on the front page of the Daily Star in very lurid terms. There was no charge against my friend; he was wholly innocent. No action was taken, but considerable damage was done. Again, a quick backhander from a journalist to the police to get that story. That is absolutely not right. I am focused on ensuring that we have complete transparency and ensure that payments from journalists to the police do not continue. We need real systems to ensure that such payments cannot be made in future. That is something that the police and the press need to concentrate on.
We have heard about apologies made by newspapers. When the press do admit that they have something wrong or have maligned someone, there is a tiny reference to that on page 2 or 3—a small column on the side of the page—when the original story was on the front page—