(3 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberI appreciate that the Minister is dealing with complicated and sensitive matters, and that she is anxious to give full answers to colleagues. She certainly is not avoiding questions, but is taking them head-on. Unfortunately, some of the questions are also rather long and complicated, so we have managed, in 40 minutes, to take questions from five Back Benchers. We will have to go a lot faster now, but in order that the Minister can give short answers, I need to have short and succinct questions. That way, we will cover everything eventually.
I welcome the statement. Many of those fleeing the Taliban will be highly skilled people who will want to integrate rapidly into the workforce so that they can become contributors, not just supplicants. Will the Minister unpack a little the £20,520 per person in core funding that she announced, and tell us what proportion of that she envisages being used for further education to enable people, where necessary, to upskill? What conversations has she had with her ministerial colleagues at the Department for Education to see what more colleges in localities can do to ensure that these people are able to do what they aspire to do, which is to enter the workforce and be contributors?
My right hon. Friend will be pleased to know that once we have dealt with the immediate emergency of moving 15,000 or so people from quarantine hotels into bridging accommodation—I hope and plan that that will be concluded this week—we can then start really to set in stone some of our plans for integration. There are all sorts of ideas, including equivalence qualifications involving the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure that we get people into the jobs market as quickly as possible. Of course, we will also be measuring English language fluency to help those who are a little bit further from the jobs market towards the jobs market so that they can be truly independent and have their own futures here in the UK.
(8 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberMy hon. Friend is right to say so.
Does the Minister accept that the only objection to this measure that the Government are putting forward is that it is in the wrong place? That appears to be a fairly slim argument. Can he assure people like me who are perhaps wavering on this matter that the terms of reference of the consultation that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport announced earlier will be sufficiently robust and give a steer on the Government’s good intentions on section 40, because then we might be tempted to be a little more patient in the hope that that consultation will result in an outcome that makes Baroness Hollins’s amendments redundant?