Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Halfon Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

These are indeed important matters, and officials from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy have spoken to academics from Scottish universities—including, I think, from the University of Dundee—about the future. It is important that we have a guarantee until the end of the Horizon 2020 programme. Of course, what happens with future programmes will be a matter for us to agree with the other nations.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his new position. Has he had a chance to read the Social Market Foundation report, published today, on the problems of snobbery between higher education and technical education? Does he agree that universities need to do a lot more to embrace technical education students and degree apprenticeships and that financial incentives should go towards those universities that encourage degree apprenticeships and encourage students with BTECs into technical education?

[Damian Hinds]

I confess that I have not yet read this morning’s report, but I look forward to consuming it when I have the time to do so with proper attention. My right hon. Friend mentions something on which he has consistently campaigned throughout his time in Parliament, and it is so important that we do not have some sort of wall between the academic and the technical and vocational. Things such as degree apprenticeships are a great opportunity for more people to benefit from certain types of education and to make sure that we widen participation as much as possible.