Business of the House

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot offer an immediate debate, but the hon. Gentleman will know that the House has often recently had occasion to ask questions about the rail industry and, in particular, to note the scale of the Network Rail investment in prospect. We are talking about a £38 billion investment, which is the largest rail investment in this country since the Victorian era. It is not just about High Speed 2—that is not even the largest part of it; there are schemes across the whole country, in response to the fact that the number of passengers on the railways has more than doubled since privatisation.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

Bombardier’s recent contract award for Crossrail will employ 30 graduates and take on 80 apprentices from around the Derby area. With next week being national apprenticeship week and with youth unemployment falling, will the Leader of the House facilitate a debate on what further steps this Government are taking to tackle youth unemployment?

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that, as she is absolutely right. There is some extremely good news in her constituency and neighbouring constituencies, and I am glad she is in a position to highlight that in the House. We are never going to be complacent about the number of young people who are not entering employment. That is why we are putting so much effort into apprenticeships, with 1.6 million apprenticeships planned during this Parliament, which is a significant increase. That will make a very big difference to young people in accessing the jobs that are coming through. Encouragingly, at the same time as we have record numbers of people in employment, we also have record numbers of vacancies, so people can be very optimistic about their prospects.