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Tag: 2021

  • Angela Rayner – 2021 Comments on Treasury Select Committee Report on Greensill

    Angela Rayner – 2021 Comments on Treasury Select Committee Report on Greensill

    The comments made by Angela Rayner, the Leader of the Labour Party, on 20 July 2021.

    The fact that David Cameron apparently did not break any rules during the Greensill scandal proves that the rules that are supposed to regulate lobbying are completely unfit for purpose.

    The ACOBA system is pointless and toothless. As this case shows, it causes more harm than good by giving a veil of legitimacy to the rampant cronyism, sleaze and dodgy lobbying that is polluting our democracy under the Tories.

    Labour will ban former Ministers from lobbying government for at least five years after they leave office, and overhaul the current broken system and replace it with an Integrity and Ethics Commission that will close the revolving door and stamp out sleaze.

  • Bridget Phillipson – 2021 Comments on Regulations for Non-Bank Lenders

    Bridget Phillipson – 2021 Comments on Regulations for Non-Bank Lenders

    The comments made by Bridget Phillipson, the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, on 20 July 2021.

    The Select Committee say the Treasury should have encouraged more formal lines of communication with David Cameron – but it was the Treasury itself that failed to communicate with the British Business Bank about the concerns surrounding Greensill, leading to the firm getting access to £400 million of government-backed loans.

    The cronyism, recklessness and sheer waste under this Conservative government has to stop.

  • Kate Green – 2021 Comments on Children Missing School

    Kate Green – 2021 Comments on Children Missing School

    The comments made by Kate Green, the Shadow Secretary of State for Education, on 20 July 2021.

    The Conservatives have abandoned the nation’s children with no action taken to turn the tide on rising cases in schools.

    Parents and schools have been crying out for help, but the Conservatives have washed their hands of their responsibility to keep children learning.

    The Government must take action to keep children learning for the last week of term, and ensure that by September schools have the support they need to avoid further disruption to children’s education.’

  • Liz Kendall – 2021 Comments on Social Care

    Liz Kendall – 2021 Comments on Social Care

    The comments made by Liz Kendall, the Shadow Minister for Social Care, on 20 July 2021.

    After more than a decade in power – and two years after the Prime Minister made a clear promise on the steps of Downing Street, we are still no closer to seeing a plan to ‘fix the crisis in social care.’

    Every day the Government delays their plans for fixing the crisis in social care is another day that staff don’t get the pay and training they deserve, another day that thousands of people go without the basic help they need, to do things like get up, washed, dressed and fed, and another day that families are pushed to breaking point. Ministers must now put in place a ten-year plan for investment and reform that puts social care on a sustainable footing, and provides all older and disabled people with the dignity and security they deserve.

  • Gillian Keegan – 2021 Statement on Level 3 Qualifications Reform

    Gillian Keegan – 2021 Statement on Level 3 Qualifications Reform

    The statement made by Gillian Keegan, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education, in the House of Commons on 14 July 2021.

    Today, I am pleased to announce the next stage of the Government’s reforms of post-16 qualifications at level 3 in England.

    Reforming post-16 education and skills is at the heart of our plan to build back better and level up the country by ensuring that students everywhere have access to qualifications that will give them the skills to succeed. We have already improved the quality of level 3 study by reforming A-levels, redeveloping apprenticeship standards and introducing T-levels. This work is vital to the reforms and will create a coherent system in which all classroom based qualifications that sit alongside A-levels and T-levels are good quality.

    These reforms build on the Skills for Jobs White Paper, which set out our ambition to improve the opportunities for young people and adults to progress into skilled employment by linking technical qualifications to employer-led occupational standards. These standards form the core of new T-levels and the reforms published today will ensure that this will also be the case for other technical qualifications on offer at level 3.

    High-quality qualifications are essential to helping everyone, whatever their age, to get good jobs and realise their ambitions. Whether they want to go into skilled employment or into higher education (HE), achieving a level 3 qualification will be an important stepping stone. The system also needs to be adaptable, so that we train people for the jobs of the future.

    We are grateful for the thoughtful contributions to our second-stage consultation on level 3 qualifications, and for the high level of interest in these important issues. Though our goal of a slimmed-down, higher-quality system remains the same, we have listened carefully to feedback on the range of qualifications that are needed. Our policy statement sets out where we see the value in qualifications that can be taken as part of mixed study programmes alongside A-levels, as well as the limited range of subjects where it is justified to take specialist alternatives, such as in performing and creative arts.

    Our reforms are bold and will lead to significant change from the current system. We continue to be unapologetic about both the need and our commitment to raise standards in technical education, as we have already done for GCSEs, A-levels and apprenticeships. It is vital that in a fast moving and high-tech economy technical education closes the gap between what people study and the needs of employers. We are proposing to put many of these changes into law through the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill.

    We will streamline and improve the quality of the level 3 system. We are strengthening the pathways to progression, creating clearly defined academic and technical routes with qualifications leading to academic study, and/or skilled employment. This clarity of purpose will allow students to see more easily how their study will help them to progress.

    We will ensure that all qualifications sitting alongside A-levels and T-levels provide progression for learners, respond to the needs of employers and meet rigorous quality standards. Funding approval will be removed for technical qualifications overlapping with wave 1 and 2 T-levels from 2023, and with wave 3 and 4 T-levels from 2024. We have listened carefully to feedback on the pace of implementation of these reforms and will phase the introduction of reformed qualifications, starting with a digital pathfinder for introduction from 2023, scaling up in the following year and completing the reforms by 2025.

    The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (the institute) and Ofqual will work to ensure that qualifications approved for funding are high-quality, meet the needs of employers, and stay up to date with our evolving economy. The Education and Skills Funding Agency will continue to have overall responsibility for funding decisions.

    We also recognise that getting a quality offer at level 2 and below is key to making sure that students have clear lines of sight to level 3, apprenticeships, traineeships, and directly into employment. As a result, we want to improve study at level 2 and below alongside our reforms to level 3 qualifications. We are considering feedback to the call for evidence which ran from 10 November to 14 February and will consult on proposals for reform later this year.

  • Caroline Dinenage – 2021 Statement on the Online Media Literacy Strategy

    Caroline Dinenage – 2021 Statement on the Online Media Literacy Strategy

    The statement made by Caroline Dinenage, the Minister for Digital and Culture, in the House of Commons on 14 July 2021.

    I am pleased to inform the House that the Government are today publishing our “Online Media Literacy Strategy”. This strategy is a complementary measure to the proposed Online Safety Bill and will play a critical role in allowing us to meet our ambition of making the UK the safest place in the world to be online.

    Through this strategy, we want to improve media literacy across the country by providing direction to the sector. We also seek to highlight the challenges that all citizens face in navigating an increasingly complex media landscape, with an amplified focus on vulnerable and disabled users.

    The strategy sets out our plans to ensure a co-ordinated approach to online media literacy education. We have established a media literacy framework that enumerates the skills we want citizens young and old to learn in order to navigate the online media landscape safely. We set out the key user groups on which we will direct particular focus to ensure an inclusive approach to media literacy. We lay out six media literacy challenges to provide direction to the media literacy sector. We also highlight the specific issue of misinformation and disinformation, and the potential for media literacy by design to assist media literate online behaviour.

    We have engaged with a broad range of stakeholders from academia, regulators, civil society and industry, drawing upon their expertise to inform the strategy. This is only the beginning of our engagement with the sector, and we will look to work even more closely with these organisations and more to ensure the maximum possible impact from media literacy activity.

    As our attention turns to delivery of the strategy, we will focus on taking forward a number of different initiatives. Alongside the strategy we are publishing the first annual Online Media Literacy Action Plan for the Financial Year 2021-22. The action plan sets out a number of initiatives to enact the strategy, from establishing a cross-sector media literacy taskforce, to working with teachers to help embed media literacy in schools, to collaborating with the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Administrations through a UK media literacy forum.

    It will be important that we work productively with other key stakeholders across the sector. Ofcom has an existing statutory duty to promote media literacy. The Government’s efforts in the media literacy landscape will play a supportive and complementary role to that of Ofcom, by providing focus for organisations across the sector. We will continue to engage closely with Ofcom where there is a potential to increase the impact of our efforts.

    Media literacy is a devolved policy and so the initiatives contained in the strategy will only apply directly to England. However, we are working closely with the devolved Administrations and intend to establish a UK media literacy forum to engage with our counterparts in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast and ensure we are achieving the greatest possible impact across the whole UK.

    A copy of the strategy will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

  • Anne-Marie Trevelyan – 2021 Statement on a Green Workforce

    Anne-Marie Trevelyan – 2021 Statement on a Green Workforce

    The statement made by Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth, in the House of Commons on 14 July 2021.

    As we look ahead to publishing our comprehensive net zero strategy and hosting COP26 in the autumn, we must focus on how we invest in the UK’s most important asset—our workforce—so that people have the right skills to deliver the net zero transition and thrive in the jobs it will create. This builds on the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan for a green industrial revolution set out in November 2020—the first step in capturing the once in a lifetime opportunity to lead the charge and pursue a global green recovery, level up the country, and support jobs throughout the UK as we accelerate on our path to reach net zero by 2050.

    Today, together with the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), we welcome the publication of the independent Green Jobs Taskforce’s report. The report brings together evidence on the skills needed in the green economy and sets out their independent recommendations for how the Government, industry and a wide range of stakeholders can work together to meet the important challenges and grasp the opportunities they have identified.

    We are also pleased to announce the formation of a cross-cutting delivery group to maintain the momentum generated by the taskforce and drive action across the green skills agenda.

    BEIS and DFE convened this taskforce of 17 individuals from diverse backgrounds in industry, academia, unions, and the education and skills sector to come together to advise the Government, industry and the education sector. The Government will now consider the taskforce’s rich evidence base and comprehensive recommendations ahead of setting out, later in the year, our net zero strategy.

    But we are taking the first steps to ensure that green jobs are good quality, that they can be accessed by people of all backgrounds and in all parts of the country, and that workers in sectors and industries undergoing change can reapply their skills and expertise towards this new challenge.

    In England, the reforms to the skills system set out in the recently published Skills for Jobs White Paper provide the foundation on which we can build. This programme of reform, which placed employers at the centre of our technical education system, includes the introduction of new T-levels, flexible apprenticeships, skills bootcamps and occupational traineeships. Earlier in the year, we marked a major milestone in the lifetime skills guarantee, with the roll-out of almost 400 qualifications which are now available and fully funded for any adult who has not already achieved a level 3 (A-level equivalent) qualification.

    We will ensure that these programmes are directed to support more people to get the skills they need to move into green jobs, and consider where we might need to go further or faster to fill skills gaps identified by the taskforce. We are already making progress—skills bootcamps will, from July this year, support flexible training in key green sectors such as construction and nuclear; a green apprenticeship advisory panel is identifying existing apprenticeships that best support green career pathways; our free courses for jobs offer is supporting more adults to study fully funded qualifications in subject areas crucial for green jobs, such as construction, forestry and engineering; and a new emerging skills electrification project will identify cutting-edge skills in the battery/electrification sector, develop short, modular content to meet the needs of employers, and upskill the teaching workforce.

    This report also highlights how supporting people to develop the right skills to thrive in this transition cannot be the responsibility of the Government alone. We want to see businesses step up and invest in training the green workforce, and so we urge them to reflect on the taskforce’s work and use it to inform how they can benefit from and contribute to the green industrial revolution.

    The Government will continue to work closely with industry to ensure the employer-led skills system we are building through our ongoing reforms meets employers’ needs and reflects the fast changing shape of the UK labour market.

  • Ed Miliband – 2021 Comments on Flooding in Europe

    Ed Miliband – 2021 Comments on Flooding in Europe

    The comments made by Ed Miliband, the Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, on 16 July 2021.

    Reports of extreme flooding across Europe are extremely distressing. Our hearts go out to all those affected by this appalling situation, including the families and loved ones of those who have lost their lives.

    We need governments around the world – including our own – to focus on delivering climate adaptation measures, including flood resilience. And crucially we need strong action to cut emissions because every extra fraction of a degree of warming makes extreme weather events more likely.

    This awful tragedy, following extreme heat in Pakistan and Canada, shows that while the climate crisis is the biggest long-term threat our world faces it is already happening now with devastating effects. No country is doing enough – and future generations will not forgive us for standing by.

  • Paul Scully – 2021 Comments on the UK Hospitality Industry

    Paul Scully – 2021 Comments on the UK Hospitality Industry

    The comments made by Paul Scully, the Business Minister, on 16 July 2021.

    The pandemic has meant we’ve had to stay apart, and this has had a big impact on the hospitality industry, which exists to bring people together. We’ve been working with hospitality businesses throughout the pandemic to understand what support they need to not only reopen, but change and improve how they do things to meet changing consumer demands and protect jobs and livelihoods.

    We want young people to see the hospitality sector as a go-to option for long-term careers, and that’s why we will explore new options for vocational training and help further boost the creativity and environmental friendliness of the sector through the first-ever government strategy for the hospitality industry.

  • Dominic Raab – 2021 Comments on UK Carrier Strike Group Deployment

    Dominic Raab – 2021 Comments on UK Carrier Strike Group Deployment

    The comments made by Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, on 16 July 2021.

    The Carrier Strike Group deployment marks the start of a new era of defence cooperation with allies in India and the Indo-Pacific.

    By visiting 40 countries and working alongside our partners, the UK is standing up for democratic values, seizing new trading opportunities and tackling the shared threats we face together.

    The deployment will interact with India, strengthening our already deep ties for the benefit of both our peoples’ security and prosperity.