Crisis in Iran

Stephen Crabb Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on also being sanctioned. That is, of course, because of the work that he and other Members are doing in calling out these actions, and calling for more action from the UK Government as well; but I think he understands that we cannot comment on some possible future actions, or on individuals.

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Murder and brutal repression internally, sponsorship of terrorism overseas, selling deadly drones that target civilians to the invading Russian army—the list of the crimes of the Iranian regime is very long indeed, and when we look at all these activities, it is the role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that comes up time and again. I do not expect the Minister to comment on specific sanctions measures, but will she at least pledge to the House that she will convey to the Foreign Secretary and her colleagues in the Foreign Office the message that it is the strong view of the House that the IRGC should be proscribed in full as a terrorist organisation?

[Gillian Keegan]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on being another of the seven individuals who have been sanctioned, and I thank him for raising these concerns again and again. We have made clear our own concerns about the IRGC’s continuing destabilising activity throughout the region, and the UK maintains a range of sanctions that work to constrain that activity. The list of proscribed organisations is kept under constant review. I will take back that message, but, as I know my right hon. Friend is aware, we do not routinely comment on whether an organisation is or is not under consideration for proscription.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Crabb Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart]

Going to Southport would be as great an honour as going to Crawley. I would be delighted to see how Southport is taking advantage of the £480,000 it recently received from the FE capital transformation fund.

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

20. What steps his Department is taking to promote lifelong learning and skills development.

[The Minister for Further and Higher Education (Michelle Donelan)]

We are supporting adults to get the skills they need through the adult education budget, and we are delivering on the Prime Minister’s lifetime skills guarantee, which includes the offer of free level 3 courses for jobs, skills bootcamps and, from 2025, the introduction of a lifelong loan entitlement, enabling more flexible and modular study across higher and further education.

[Stephen Crabb]

Giving people greater choice over how and where they study is one of the keys to improving the skills of our workforce and opening up new opportunities, especially for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government’s new lifelong learning entitlement has the potential to transform options for learners across the whole of their lives?

[Michelle Donelan]

I could not agree more with my right hon. Friend. The LLE is at the heart of our skills revolution and will open up higher and further education by allowing people to study in a more modularised fashion. With that extra flexibility, it will be much easier for people to reskill and upskill, which will in turn support our businesses, our productivity and job creation.

Budget Resolutions

Stephen Crabb Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be called on the final day of the Budget debate. I thought it was a good Budget; not only was it a responsible and appropriate response to the economic challenges created by the pandemic and the lockdowns, but it took major steps forward to tackle some of the longer term, more deep-seated issues that have at times held our economy back in recent years. It was a Budget that is good for the whole of the UK, and especially good for my constituency. I should start my remarks by thanking the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who is in his place, for including the Haverfordwest town centre improvement project in the first round of successful bids to the levelling-up fund. The bid put together by Pembrokeshire County Council, with my support, seeks to use regeneration of Haverfordwest castle and the riverside area as a catalyst to bring new opportunities and activity into the historic heart of the town.

In welcoming that project, I wish to take a moment to say something about the horrific and tragic events that happened in Haverfordwest town centre on Saturday morning, when three paddleboarders lost their lives on the river. I pay tribute to the emergency services and the speed of their response, and I wish to put on record my sympathies for the families of the victims, who are still coming to terms with the enormity of what happened at the weekend.

The project, which has the potential to renew Haverfordwest town centre, is not about nostalgia and looking to recreate a time, long since passed, when the town centre was full of shops and shoppers on a Saturday. The levelling-up fund is not about turning the clock back. We cannot turn the clock back on enormous economic forces shaping our town centres and retail environment. The levelling-up fund is all about intelligent, targeted investment that, together with harnessing local effort and determination, can make a difference in our communities, recovering some of the economic activity and civic pride that we need in all the communities we represent.

Levelling up is a mission written into the DNA of this modern Conservative party, and a continuous thread that we see throughout the Budget. Some of the criticisms of the levelling-up fund that I have read in recent days from Opposition Members have staggered me. The cynicism and churlishness about the fund shown by some demonstrate that they neither understand nor support the vision of creating a fairer economy throughout the whole country; nor do they understand this Government’s scale of ambition in terms of making a success and a reality of levelling up.

Levelling up is also about tackling poverty in this country—it has to be. If we look at the way deprivation and poverty are spread unevenly across this country, we see that levelling up has to mean tackling poverty as well. Our Government rightly emphasise the role of work and employment in tackling poverty, with work as a route out of a poverty, creating sustainable pathways to improving life chances. That approach is absolutely correct, so of course I welcome the enormous steps taken by the Chancellor in this Budget, including increasing the minimum wage, boosting the universal credit work allowance, and significantly cutting the UC withdrawal rate—the money people lose from benefit withdrawals when they move from unemployment into work. Together, those measures really improve the attractiveness of work in our economy; they strengthen the incentives for unemployed people to find work, and for people already in work to increase their hours and improve their earnings.

We have more than 1 million job vacancies in our economy, with employers in every one of our constituencies telling us that they need more staff and asking where they can hire them. With the tight labour market and the improvements to work incentives that the Chancellor has led with in his Budget, we have the best opportunity in more than a generation to really make a difference in tackling long-term unemployment in this country. About 350,000 people are long-term unemployed, and this is a great opportunity to reduce the number of children growing up in long-term workless homes. Almost 1 million children are growing up in a home where nobody goes out to work and brings home a wage. In the current circumstances, we have a great opportunity to make better efforts to reach those who are furthest from the labour market and put them on a pathway to sustainable employment. I am thinking about disabled people, lone parents, and others with caring responsibilities, many of whom want to work and to take on more hours. We have a good opportunity, if we can join up some of the initiatives in government, to really make a difference.

Of course, our Government are rightly emphasising that the days of relying on a continuous stream of migrant labour, particularly for lower skilled positions, are over. I am open-minded about people coming to this country, bringing their talents and work ethic, but given the changes that have happened post Brexit, we are in a new reality where there will be less migrant labour, so we have to find more workers from within our own potential workforce. The imperative is on the Government to make progress in improving the disabled employment rate and helping more lone parents and those with caring responsibilities into work. This is not an option any longer; it is imperative that we do it. The measures taken in the Budget provide important tools to help do it.

I welcome the Government’s recognition of the role of social security in supporting people into work. The last time we debated UC in this Chamber, on 15 September, we were debating the removal of the £20 uplift. I concluded my remarks by saying that we could not leave the issue at that point, and that we would need to come back to it and make further changes, so I am pleased that the Government have done some fresh thinking on UC and made these changes, which are absolutely welcome.

I say gently to my Front-Bench colleagues that a strategy for employment and work is not exactly the same thing as a strategy for tackling poverty. With the shadow of inflation hanging over the economy and many families on low incomes having to bear increasing living costs through this autumn and winter and into next year, we must have an honest discussion about the adequacy of welfare in this country. The £20 uplift brought in at the start of the pandemic was kind of an admission that basic levels of working-age benefits were too low. The measures we have more recently introduced to support families on the lowest incomes, and the moneys to be distributed via local authorities, are also kind of an admission that levels of welfare, particularly for working-age people, are too low. We have to come back and discuss that further, because the changes announced in the Budget do not cover everybody who was on UC. I will finish my remarks there, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am grateful to have been given time in the Chamber to make them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Crabb Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

This is extremely important. We are very aware of the specific problems for children with SEND. We are working very closely with a number of providers to make sure that this is available. We have made adjustments on apprenticeships. We will continue to make adjustments to make sure that T-levels are available for all.

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

One of the most effective engines of social mobility in this country remains the Army. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, contrary to what some are saying today, our schools should remain open and welcoming places for members of our armed forces to come in and inform, inspire and give good career advice to young people, especially those from working-class backgrounds?

[Damian Hinds]

Yes, I do. Those partnerships are incredibly important and can provide very important role models.

Education and Social Mobility

Stephen Crabb Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

For me, social mobility is one of the most fundamental objectives of an education system and a Government—it runs deep in my veins. Last week, I had to give a tribute to my father, who recently died of mesothelioma. Without his commitment to my education, as somebody who, like my mother, left school at 16, I would not have had the opportunity to break free from a pattern of manual work, work in service or growing plants, as he did.

Each morning when I leave my flat, I see a framed letter from King George VI in 1943 to my great-great-aunt Maud, who worked as a maid in Buckingham Palace. I regard the fact that, in three generations, members of my family can move from being maids to Members of Parliament as a function of the social mobility that should exist in our country. Before it is suggested that, somehow, being a Member of Parliament is the summit of human achievement, let me say that I certainly do not believe that that is the case.

What I do believe is that education is about choices. I want to address the core motivation that may exist in the minds of those who sought this debate—that grammar schools somehow restrict social mobility to a chosen few, consigning children who go to non-grammars to a future without such opportunities. It is my contention that education is not about the type of school, but about instilling a fundamental belief in the value of hard work. It is about access to high-quality teaching for all and about rigorous standards in education, whatever the type of school. It is also about parental support and encouragement—something we have not heard much about today.

My father passed his 11-plus and he got some O-levels, but whereas his parents fundamentally did not see the point of further study, his grandsons see a very different focus, as my sister and I try to take advantage of every learning opportunity. So let us conceive of education and social mobility not simply as a function of school type. Let us value the framework that surrounds school attendance—the teaching, resources and esteem.

I also want to challenge the notion of stigma—the belief that, if one does not pass the 11-plus, one is consigned to a different life trajectory. It is said by some that such a child is labelled a failure. That is not my experience, looking at the eight secondary schools in my constituency.

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about 11 not being the cut-off point that defines a child’s future. Does he support the proposal, which some colleagues have referred to, that there should be multiple entry points into any new grammar schools?

[John Glen]

Absolutely. I totally welcome that point. I welcome the value that we see in university technical colleges, studio schools, academies and the range of other options that exist. There is a lot of mobility between those schools and a lot of transferring to grammar schools at sixth form.

It is wrong to suggest that we should have targets for where children go when they leave school—a target of a certain number going to university. We need to work hard in the House to generate parity of esteem for apprenticeships, higher-level apprenticeships, vocational education and all types of higher education. We should enable movement to these different settings at different stages.

The fact that so many of Salisbury’s young people go to the grammar schools for sixth form is testimony to the enduring quality of those schools’ academic A-level offer. However, the fact that other young people choose the excellent free sixth form is a reflection of how it provides for the diverse needs that grammars do not provide for and of how grammars do not suit all children.

We need to recognise that social mobility is achieved by embracing the broadest possible range of options, by encouraging specialisms and diversity and by valuing the widest context for learning for our young people.