Skills and Training Facilities

Debate between Stephen McPartland and Karen Lumley

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. This is an important debate about improving skills and training facilities in small cities and towns, and the subject is close to my heart. In my maiden speech four years ago I said that

“here in the UK, it is possible to help a child out of poverty and improve their chances in life if they receive a good education. However, we are not doing enough; we are not lifting enough people out of poverty. In my constituency, like in so many others across the UK, there are children who have tried so hard in school. There is a cadre of dedicated and professional staff who have helped them along the way and invested so much of themselves in helping those children try to improve their life chances, but the system does not seem to work. Those children are being forced through an education system that pushes them out the other end with little chance of getting a job, as they do not have the skills that local employers want.

We need to encourage employers to work with local schools and colleges, to get fully involved in education, to highlight the skills that are missing and even perhaps to take preventive action, possibly by designing some of the more vocational courses. Perhaps the prize at the end of the course should be a job or an apprenticeship with the employer. We need to be innovative and flexible, so that courses can reflect the skills gap locally and more local people can get local jobs.” —[Official Report, 1 July 2010; Vol. 512, c. 1063.]

When I said that four years ago I set myself a target—to help 1,000 young people into apprenticeships.

[Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that Members of Parliament can help by holding apprenticeship fairs, such as the one that I will be holding on Friday in my constituency? Companies such as Jaguar Land Rover will be taking part.

[Stephen McPartland]

I could not agree more. Apprenticeship fairs are powerful tools. I held a jobs fair recently in my constituency at which a large number of people—employers, people from educational institutions and young people—came together. That led to a number of people getting apprenticeships.

Local Media

Debate between Stephen McPartland and Karen Lumley

Wednesday 14th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea. I am grateful that the Minister is here to respond to the debate. He and I usually discuss high-technology issues, but today we will talk about low technology and local newspapers in print form. I am pleased to be able to talk about the importance of local media to small towns and cities.

Stevenage has a number of media outlets, including The Comet, the Stevenage Advertiser and Jack FM—a good local radio station on which I will be holding a phone-in surgery on Saturday, because it has a wide impact in the local community and reaches many people. The importance of local newspapers to small towns and cities lies in community cohesion. They are valuable assets to local communities. In my area, they report everything from Stevenage football club’s meteoric rise from non-league football two seasons ago to league one and its furthest ever placement last week against Tottenham in the fifth round of the FA cup at White Hart Lane, where it unfortunately lost, to stories about the Rainbows, the Guides, grass-roots football and other small local charitable organisations that have no opportunity to put forward their message elsewhere. I am pleased to be able to support local newspapers and media outlets.

I want to talk about some facts. We know that 33 million people in this country read a local newspaper every year. We also know that there are thousands of titles—well over 6,000—that 71% of adults read a local newspaper and that 14 million more people read a local newspaper than read a national newspaper. Local newspapers have a huge spread in local communities.

[Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea. I thank my hon. Friend on obtaining this important debate. Does he agree that papers such as the Redditch Advertiser and the Redditch Standard, which are local free sheets and the only newspapers that we have in Redditch, are vital to local people, especially the elderly who would otherwise be cut off from local news?

[Stephen McPartland]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the valuable titles in Redditch. Local newspapers reach some of the most vulnerable people in our communities and push forward a positive message on everything: Government news, local authority news, planning permissions, charitable events and what is going on in the local community. The Prime Minister said that

“local papers are hugely important in helping to build a bigger, stronger society. There is a massive gap between the state on the one hand, and the individual on the other, and local papers help fill the space in between, galvanising readers into action.”