Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tim Farron and Gillian Keegan

Monday 29th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. Bexley’s apprenticeship event on 5 February will be a fantastic opportunity for local people to learn about the apprenticeships on offer in his constituency. We have transformed our apprenticeship system. People around the world look at us and say, “How on earth have you done that?” I am very happy to work with anybody, but all that is at risk. The Labour party would halve the number of apprenticeships, taking us back to square one.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Sadly, the Government did not intervene to save Cumbria’s agricultural college. However, will they decide to invest in agricultural degree apprenticeships, working with the University of Cumbria and Cumbria’s further education colleges, to make sure we have a pipeline of new leaders who can feed us and care for our environment through farming?

[Gillian Keegan]

When I was apprenticeships and skills Minister, we worked together to ensure we had the right college offer in the area that was sustainable. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education will be very happy to work on that. We are looking to expand degree apprenticeships. We have provision in place to work with providers to offer many opportunities, including in agriculture.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tim Farron and Gillian Keegan

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his continuous campaigning on this subject. I do not know how many meetings we have had, but I see his passion to get a UTC in Southampton. I recently met Becky Smith, one of the fantastic former students of UTC Portsmouth, who is now a degree apprentice studying mechanical engineering at the University of Chichester in my constituency. She was full of praise for her time at UTC Portsmouth. We are currently considering the applications we have received. I have seen them all, and I have been through them in great detail in the latest free school wave, including Portsmouth’s bid for a new UTC in Southampton. We hope to announce the successful applications very soon.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Hospitality and tourism is an industry worth £3.5 billion a year to Cumbria, and it is our biggest employer. Apprenticeships are an important way into a career within that sector. The problem is that T-levels are a useful stepping stone into apprenticeships, yet the Government have again kicked into the long grass the T-level on catering, having already taken out the hospitality element of that. Will the Secretary of State meet me and representatives from Cumbria Tourism, so we can talk about how she can change that policy, and so that more young people can enter that important profession?

Higher Education Reform

Debate between Tim Farron and Gillian Keegan

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

My hon. Friend knows that we have already looked at that in careful detail. It is kept under review, and we recently made changes to the taught course route.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Of course students deserve high-quality education at university. They also deserve to be cared for during what is, for most of them, their first time away from home. Does the Secretary of State agree with me, and with the families of young people who have tragically taken their own lives at university, that higher education institutions should do more to look out for and protect those students, including by having a statutory duty of care?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tim Farron and Gillian Keegan

Monday 12th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

What I am doing is ensuring that the quality is better. It is very easy to chase numbers and targets. The Labour Government did that a lot—some of the things in which they used to invest for skills were not of any value at all, either to the individual or to a single business in this country. We are ensuring that we work closely with employers. We have worked with them to design the T-levels qualification. We have worked with 5,000 of them to build the apprenticeship standards. We have had 5.4 million apprenticeship starts since 2010, and all of them are of a high quality that will give people the skills they need to get the jobs they want.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The hospitality and tourism industry is the biggest employer in Cumbria and is worth £3.5 billion to the economy every year. Yet those businesses are suffering a huge staffing crisis: 63% of them are operating below capacity because they cannot find enough staff. One solution is to recruit and train our own young people into the industry, and a T-level would surely be one way of doing that, but sadly, the Secretary of State’s Government have decided to kick the catering T-level into the long grass. Will she rethink that and bring it back front and centre of her campaign to ensure that young people get into that important industry with the right qualifications?

[Gillian Keegan]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that that is a vital industry, not just in areas of tourism but across the country. We have many full-time hospitality and catering courses at various levels and lots of apprenticeships as well. We will bring forward and look at T-levels and at what more we need in that area, and potentially at management in the sector as well; I know that businesses are looking for more skills in that.