Mr Toby Perkins
MP for Chesterfield · Labour · United Kingdom
“The hon. Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller) is absolutely right to say that what is behind this is the deep unpopularity of President Milei; it is not anything actually that the UK has done.”
“In Chesterfield, there will be unmitigated despair at the statement we have heard today from my right hon. Friend. For the authorities for which she is doing a review—the 14 that thought they had got their decision in July—could she clarify the basis of that review?”
“It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) on securing this debate.”
“The report spells out the link between degradation overseas and the impact here. The assessment lays out the consequences: food insecurity, economic insecurity, increased migration and refugees, increased interstate competition, conflict and geopolitical instability, all of which will threaten us here at home.”
“The Government are right to take their time and make sure that they get this right—we saw what happened when the previous Government did not do the work that was needed. This is a delicately balanced decision.”
“Thirdly, will the Minister consider bringing forward the fourth national adaptation programme? NAP3, published by the previous Government in 2023, was deemed ineffective by the Climate Change Committee. NAP4 is not due until 2028, but can we afford to wait two more years before we have an adequate plan?”
The complete record
Every one of 3,898 lines we hold for Mr Toby Perkins, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 33 of 78.
“As was revealed by my recent written question, £2.61 billion was invested in further education capital expenditure in the final five years of the previous Labour Government. In the following five years, the Government reduced that spending in actual terms by a shocking 64%. In all, colleges have endured a decade of cuts amounting to a third of their budget, while attempting to continue to be at the forefront of equipping young people and adults in every area of the country with the skills they need to succeed.”
“For so many, they are the road between school failure and academic and career success, and they have changed the life chances of people in my family. They are fundamental to our country having the skills it needs to cope with the twin threats to our economy of covid-19 and Brexit. We have heard during this debate a familiar refrain: that our colleges have been ignored too long by successive Governments, and that they must finally be taken seriously. However, I somewhat take issue with that lazy characterisation, and with the suggestion that recent announcements by this Government constitute some kind of golden age of FE. In welcoming the campaigning zeal of the hon. Member for Waveney I also want to ensure that the record of this Government is properly put under the spotlight, because it is not a case of “it was ever thus”.”
“I thank the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) for securing the debate. He is a powerful advocate for our colleges as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for further education and lifelong learning. It is clear that all contributors recognise the crucial role our colleges play. Many took the opportunity to specifically thank and acknowledge the work of their local colleges, and I have no doubt that all those contributions about the role of our colleges were genuinely felt. As I know from my regular visits to Chesterfield College, our colleges are the providers of second chances. They are the home of about 30% of all apprenticeship learning and the focal point for our skills strategy.”
“The Health Secretary’s attempt to divide and rule the Mayor and the Members of Parliament in Manchester is absolutely transparent. It is shameful that some of those Conservative colleagues, who have been working collectively, should collapse like they appear to be doing today. Does it not say everything about this Government that they should believe £7,000 a day is an adequate amount to pay consultants to work on his failing track and trace programme, but £8 per head is more than enough for people in Manchester and right across the north and the midlands to go into this tier 3 after the tier 2 programme has not worked?”
“I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham for introducing the Bill, which is an important piece of legislation. We all feel strongly about the importance of apprenticeships and skills, and we recognise that 16 to 19-year-olds are at a delicate stage in their lives. Anyone who has been the parent of a child of 16 to 19 knows—most Members here are too young—that it is quite a challenge. [ Laughter. ] Joking aside, they are at a vulnerable point in their lives, moving between childhood and adulthood. Also, in many areas, they are moving from the school education space to the workspace, and it is important to have clarity on what their rights are in relation to safeguarding.”
“I am glad that the hon. Gentleman took the opportunity to say that. Having read the Hansard record of the first debate, I know how many people spoke in it and that the intentions behind the Bill were widely supported across the House. When young people are in the space that encompasses both their education and their employment, it is important that there is clarity about what the responsibilities are. In the area of T-levels—an educational environment, but with very much a work focus—it is important that everyone understands and that independent learning providers realise that the expectations of them are exactly the same as they are for further education providers.”
“I could not agree more. It is important that children and young people with autism and the particular vulnerabilities that they face are not left out of our discussions. It is absolutely right that they need to be safeguarded. That is one reason that there is such support for the Bill. While this is a technical change, it is of real importance, because specifying and putting front and centre that safeguarding duty is absolutely crucial. We all know that ignorance of the law is not a defence in law, but making sure that fewer employers are ignorant is one of our responsibilities in this place. I think this Bill will achieve that. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham on introducing the Bill and I am glad that there seems to be such widespread support for it.”
“The Chancellor’s response would have more credibility if he was not stood there following month after month of failure by a Government whose testing and tracing regime—whose entire approach—got us to this point in the first place. We all recognise how expensive this is going to be, but it has happened because of the failure that he and his party have facilitated.”
“There seems to be a basic dishonesty at the heart of these tier 2 plans. There is no support for pubs. They are being told that they are allowed to stay open, but the measures being brought in are making them unviable. At least with our approach what we would see is a short-term hit, but then a reduction in the rate and more of a chance for us to return to normality. Will the Chancellor at least admit that those pubs in tier 2 areas are not going to have viable businesses, and say something about what he will do to support them?”
“The hon. Member is absolutely right about the appalling health and economic consequences of this. Do he and his party support the advice from SAGE for a two-week circuit breaker so that we can get on top of this health crisis and try to give the Government time to get test and trace to work? Does he support what the Labour party has called for?”
“The Government have let people down. The strongest sign of that fact is how few Conservative speakers there have been in this debate. Just six Back-Bench Tories wanted to stand up and speak up for the approach the Government are taking. That speaks louder than any speeches we have heard.”
“In most cases, they would be better off not paying staff and staying closed than they would be opening under those terms, yet the Government say, “You’re allowed to open, so we do not consider we have anything else to do.” The Chancellor is fond of saying how much he has spent, but how much has he wasted? My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East alluded to a variety of things that are leaving people out in the cold. We all know 3 million self-employed people have been excluded, but what about all the self-employed people who were given money unconditionally when many of them were carrying on working? There was no conditionality on the self-employment scheme which said, “The money is there for you if you are forced not to work, if you are in a business that is unable to carry on,” yet 3 million people are left out in the cold.”
“Many people are confused. They do not know which area they are in. We look at Sky News and it tells us that Derbyshire is in tier 2. In actual fact, only a very small part of Derbyshire is in tier 2. The majority of it is in tier 1. I have people saying, “Well, am I allowed to travel into tier 2 to get a meal? Can someone from tier 2 come into tier 1?” because they have booked a table and want to meet their friends in an area where they are allowed to do that. There is utter confusion about what is actually happening out there. As I have said to the Chancellor previously, saying that pubs can stay open in tier 2 areas, but you cannot meet anyone there other than your own household is really disingenuous. All the publicans I speak to say that moving to that approach, on top of the other restrictions, simply makes their businesses unviable.”
“We have seen the approach that the Government have taken that has got us to this point and has been failing, and they then turn to us and say, “Don’t you realise there are costs to the economy of trying to get on top of this health crisis?” Of course we know that it is costing the economy: we have been saying that throughout the course of the past seven months. But we have now reached a point where the Government have lost control of coronavirus and only the measures proposed by the Leader of the Opposition yesterday, recommended by SAGE, are likely to get us back on top of the virus. So there is no naivety from our perspective about the costs that are attached to this, but we also see the costs that are attached to constantly, inch by inch, surrendering ground to the virus, as we have done over the course of the past seven months.”
“I was really frustrated by the sense, in some of the interventions on my hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor, that the Labour party, in making this extremely serious suggestion, was taking lightly the economic consequences of going into a circuit-breaker arrangement. We should not be starting from here. We have all been saying throughout the course of the past seven months that the approach the Government are taking is not working. They failed on PPE. They were slow into lockdown. The testing and tracing regime has been an expensive fiasco.”
“There are 365 Tory MPs—where are they? They are off in their offices hiding, while people in my constituency are being let down. [ Interruption. ] I accept that three have turned up, and I thank them for that, but I am talking about the rest of them. We all remember when Leicester first went into lockdown and everyone said, “Oh my God! The rate in Leicester is appalling—those poor people.” The infection rate was less than 100 per 100,000 then.”
“We will not find dedicated public servants being paid £7,500 a day or £1.5 million a year, but we will find a basic competence, a knowledge of their area and a desire to ensure that systems work before they are implemented. That is what we need right now in our system. It is telling that, in a debate of this importance, with every Back-Bench Member of Parliament invited to contribute, just three Conservative MPs wanted to put their name on the list and say, “I will go in and speak up for the Government, because I think they are doing a good job.” That is because people in their constituencies know what is happening, and Conservative Members do not want it to be on their record that they were the ones speaking up for the Government, so they leave it to us to come here and expose the reality. That is what is happening.”
“I spent an early part of my career in the sales industry, selling in the IT sector. I just wish that at some point I had come across a customer with as much money as this Government, and one so easily impressed and willing to give money to suppliers and then to defend them when they let them down, but I never came across a customer nearly as naive as this Government. Occasionally, a story seems to demonstrate a much wider point. So it was today with the scoop revealed by Ed Conway of Sky News that the Government are paying £7,360 per day to the management consultants at Boston Consulting Group, who are in charge of test and trace. That is the equivalent of a £1.5 million salary to preside over this shambolic system that is letting down all the people in my constituency and so many others.”
“Yes, I do, and I had an experience of that recently. Leicester had a rate of 100 per 100,000 when it went into lockdown. In Chesterfield, we have a rate of 143 per 100,000, and we are still in tier 1. The scale of how bad this must be before the Government are shocked is changing all the time. I was recently in self-isolation because a friend told me that he had been diagnosed with coronavirus four days before Test and Trace got in touch with me. The date that Test and Trace had was nine days after I came out of self-isolation. The whole system is not working, and when you experience it yourself, you can see why this failure is happening.”
“The Iranian regime routinely commits human rights atrocities and abuses against its people, with, recently, the execution there of Navid Afkari. It plays an appalling role in the destabilisation of the whole region. Does the Foreign Secretary not think that the UK should be more robustly condemning that regime and the pernicious role that it plays across the middle east and against its own people?”
“The Minister is right to say that apprenticeships are more important than ever, but for all the rhetoric, the way that the Government introduced the apprenticeship levy saw level 2 and level 3 apprenticeship numbers falling to their lowest level for a decade before coronavirus. Since then, we have seen generous incentives in the new kickstart scheme and much less generous incentives for apprenticeships. For all that the Minister says, why do this Government consistently introduce policies that have the effect of reducing the numbers doing level 2 and 3 apprenticeships?”
“The Prime Minister will be as aware as anyone that people do not generally go to the pub to meet their own wife; they go to the pub to be with other people. In the current programme that the Prime Minister has put together, there is no support for those pubs, so he is saying that he will cover and support pubs that are forced to close, but many of those pubs will find their business model and their businesses untenable. Will the Prime Minister do more to support those pubs that might be open but, frankly, are not able to make a living?”
“I accept what the Secretary of State has said about the science, but he must realise that there were many publicans who were really struggling to get by before this, and the new things that have been put in have just made their businesses untenable. Does he accept that getting support for the measures that he has put in place has to come with a financial package that supports our publicans to remain open after covid?”
“It has come as a hammer blow for non-league clubs such as Chesterfield that are in the national league to discover that having taken on all the players, and facing all the costs that are normally associated with running its season, it will not now be able to bring fans in at the start of October. Will the Secretary of State take us through his plans to ensure that we do not lose all the national league clubs that are facing a very precarious financial position?”
“Although I await with interest the Minister’s responses to my questions, I also look forward to supporting this very worthy initiative.”
“I welcome the commitment from the ECITB in its three-year plan to equip the industry with skills to ensure that relevant sectors are able to deliver the net zero carbon economy by 2050. Does the Minister believe that we are on target? Should we be being more ambitious? In the light of covid, does she have any reservations about our capacity to achieve that? Is there an argument for greater accountability of the ECITB going forward? How does the DFE monitor and evaluate its aims and objectives, and to what extent does she feel that it is a successful model? We welcome this fine example of a trade body being willing to invest in the skills of the future. Its recognition of their value is far-sighted and reflects well on the industry and its members, particularly given the financial pressures that have been brought to bear on the sector.”
“Given the impact of covid on employers, has consideration been given to whether there should be the option of a staggered levy, paid over the course of the year rather than in one instalment and with one month to pay? How will the Department for Education levy be used to support the training and development of staff working for smaller firms as well as of those working for larger ones? The Minister will be aware that, although only 18% of the levy in 2016-17 went towards apprenticeships, 54% of respondents to the survey believed that apprenticeships were the most valuable component of the levy expenditure, so does she have any plans to ensure that more of the levy is spent on apprenticeships?”
“Member for Midlothian—I would be interested in any communications with the devolved Administrations and whether any specific issues have been raised about those markets. Have the plans and the proposals changed or been updated at all following the advent of covid, and has there been any assessment of whether they need to be? I was very pleased to read that £500,000 will be made available from the grant scheme for diversity and inclusion training for managers, and interventions to support under-represented groups. What key performance indicators will monitor the impact of those programmes to encourage women, black, Asian and minority ethnic and disadvantaged or under-represented groups into the industry?”
“I am interested to know whether the Minister feels that that scheme is enough currently, whether she feels confident that all of that money will be spent, and whether she thinks there will be a need for further investment to encourage more apprenticeships and training schemes for young people in the light of the huge drop-off in apprenticeships that we have seen in recent months. In its recent three-year plan, the ECITB set out its commitment to a graduate programme, which is very welcome. However, it would be useful to know how the most disadvantaged young people will be encouraged into the industry, so I have a number of other questions that I hope the Minister can respond to. Have the relevant devolved Administrations been consulted about this order? The Minister mentioned the hon.”
“Since the previous order in 2017, the ECITB’s grants consultation summary report sets out that in 2016-17 30% of the grant expenditure went to management and professional training, 18% went to apprenticeships and 15% to technical training. The consultation and the truly overwhelming support within the industry for a levy on itself were a recognition that the levy was an investment not only in the staff of particular companies but in the entire industry’s future pipeline of workers. That is a really positive sign and a really positive development. I also welcome the £4.5 million scheme announced in June by the ECITB to support the retention and development of key skills in the industry, in particular its new scholarships to support trainees embarking on an engineering construction career.”
“Today, engineering construction is often made up of short-term and project work. For that reason in particular, investment in upskilling and retraining is especially vital for both the industry and its workforce. As the Minister said, pre-covid 190,000 people were dependent on engineering construction. The EICTB’s three-year plan outlined that it was consulting on a tier one provider model, including exploring course in a box product and online training courses, and funding a pilot programme for providers to develop and evaluate virtual learning and training solutions. In the light of covid, it would be helpful to know the extent to which those plans have been accelerated since the report was produced.”
“Friend Gordon Marsden—the previous Member for Blackpool, South—gave his approval to then order in 2017, he said that the ECITB and its associated board, the Construction Industry Training Board ‘have been an excellent example over more than 50 years of bodies in the industry coming together voluntarily to work with Government to make progress.’ —[ Official Report, Fifth Delegated Legislation Committee, 21 March 2017; c. 6.] I share that assessment. As Members will be aware, industry boards such as the ECITB were set up in the first place to encourage young people into the industry and to address skills shortages. Given the current economic challenges, which the Minister has just laid out, those needs are greater than ever. Industry has changed significantly since the initial creation of industry boards back in 1964.”
“Thank you very much indeed, Ms Bardell, for calling me to speak; it is a great pleasure to serve under your fledgling chairship. I also congratulate my counterpart, the Minister, on her virgin voyage, and I thank her for setting out the order, as published. I do not intend to detain the Committee for too long. I am pleased to outline our support for the order, as we have supported it for many years previously. As many hon. Members may remember, when my hon.”
“The Government’s own commissioner for further education has warned that as many as 40 colleges are currently at risk of running out of cash, and despite the measures that the Minister has just spoken of, the Association of Colleges is warning of a £2 billion cash shortfall. We also know from the May report that the Government have inadequate mechanisms for identifying colleges in crisis, so the truth is that all those measures that the Minister speaks about simply are not enough. We need far greater action if we are going to see our colleges and their pupils and staff not being let down and left in financial crisis this autumn.”
“The people of Chesterfield are concerned that HS2 has put in an objection to the recent planning application by the Chesterfield Canal Trust, describing the two projects as currently incompatible. Will the Leader of the House arrange a debate in Government time on governance and decision making at HS2, so that the Government can ensure these two vital projects do not interfere with each other but work constructively together and that we have can have a sense that the Government have a grip on HS2 and a real commitment to it?”
“Alongside the need to increase capacity, there is a real need to make sure that what is already there is working properly. In Chesterfield, I have had many people contact me over the summer to say they have been waiting four or five days to get a test result back. I have also had people who have applied online and been told to go for testing 20 or 30 miles away, when there is a testing centre in Chesterfield. With Chris Hopson of the NHS Providers organisation saying that the current system is not even “fit for purpose, much less world class”, will the Secretary of State tell us what he can do to ensure that the system is ready when we approach the potential increase in cases in the autumn and winter?”
“I echo the Secretary of State’s tribute to the professionalism and commitment of our armed forces. I also wish to reinforce the point made by the hon. Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) about our historical allies in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, who not only feel that threat from Daesh, but feel that there is sometimes a difficult relationship with those in Baghdad. Will the Secretary of State tell us more about what we can do and what he can do to amplify the commitment of this House to our friends in Kurdistan, and about the work we can do to make that region not only safe, but prosperous in the future?”
“The Minister now says that he is willing to look again at all aspects of the Bill, which is precisely what my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) asked him to do half an hour ago. Across the House, there is an understanding about the desire to get away from these vexatious claims, but what Members on both sides are telling him is that there are unintended consequences from the way that the Bill is currently structured. He should listen to prevent veterans being penalised while he is trying to do something that we all support.”
“The Government sat on the Dame Mary Ney review of the funding oversight of our further education colleges for nine months. The written statement that the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills provided could have been written in nine minutes. May we have a proper debate and statement on the findings of that review, which exposes how the job cuts throughout the civil service in the Education and Skills Funding Agency have prevented the Government from having proper oversight of our further education sector?”
“If he will publish a comparative assessment of the availability of covid-19 testing for (a) care home residents, (b) home care recipients and (c) care home staff in Scotland and England.”
“Some 1,431 people were discharged from Scottish hospitals into care homes by the Scottish Government. In Scotland, the proportion of care home deaths is much higher than that in England, where it is also too high. Will the Minister assure the House that when the inevitable public inquiry happens, the question of Scottish care home deaths is not lost in the wider questions about the Government’s response but is given very serious attention, because thousands of families will demand that those Scottish care home deaths are investigated?”
“I understand that the Secretary of State has acknowledged the appearance of bias. My hon. Friend is making a compelling case. If, in fact, the Secretary of State is entirely innocent of everything that has been suggested, there is a simple way for this to be resolved, which is for him to provide complete transparency. If only he showed the documents, he could prove his own innocence, and we could all get on to other matters.”
“The Secretary of State says that he is pleased to have this debate and started his speech by saying that he was going to release all of these documents. Why is he doing that today? He is releasing them because he has been forced to come here by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North. If the Secretary of State wanted some transparency, instead of having to have this dragged out of him, he would have done it weeks ago.”
“First, the Home Secretary, in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), conflated something that the previous Labour Government had apparently said about people who were here illegally with the Windrush generation. One of the reasons that what happened with the Windrush generation caused such public outrage was that they were all here legally, and it is important that we do not conflate those two matters. Secondly, on the time that it is taking, the Home Secretary is clearly committed to this and is taking on these cases herself, but can she do more to convince us that she has the resources at her disposal? Frankly, she should not have to have a file with all these cases on her desk; she should have people who are working for her who can process them.”
“I do not know why that answer could not have been given to my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), who asked a very similar question but got no sort of answer. The Government must realise that leaving students who have missed level 4 in maths and English out of the catch-up funding is abandoning them at the very time they need such help the most. How can the Government justify leaving them out of that announcement given that a plan for schools was in place last week?”
“I am grateful to the Solicitor General for giving way. I am also grateful to him for recognising the position of my colleagues on the Labour Front Bench. He is absolutely right to say that we are united in this House. There is no difference in this House when it comes to the safety of the British people and the extradition of those who need to be extradited. We may disagree on the best way to achieve that, but we are united in that aim.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate, which is incredibly important. I am a great defender of the BBC and will happily defend the licence fee. I feel strongly that one of the things the BBC gives us that would be lost in its absence is regional accountability—the ability for people to find out what is happening in their local area, so that they can hold their politicians to account. The BBC risks losing that if it carries on in this way, so I support the hon. Gentleman’s argument. Does he think we should say to the BBC that if it wants to continue to justify the licence fee, it needs to protect the things that are precious about the BBC?”
“That is the role that “Sunday Politics” plays, and there is no way that a politics programme for England would be able to do that. The idea that the issues that my constituents care about in Chesterfield and the local issues in the north-east or in Cornwall are all the same is just nonsense. The local holding to account that “Sunday Politics” does is incredibly important.”
“Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), I think it is incredibly important to recognise the contribution that the BBC makes in my area, not just with “Sunday Politics”, but also with radio stations such Radio Sheffield and Radio Derby and, of course, to recognise the broader role of local media such as the Derbyshire Times and Peak FM, which ensure that, as local Members of Parliament, we are held to account and that we can communicate with our local communities and be on the receiving end of some wise and frank advice from our local constituents about the issues. It is incredibly important for our democracy that we are not just 650 people here to serve our parties, but we are people here to serve our local communities, to hear about local issues, to be asked about those local issues and to respond to those local points.”
“I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) for securing this debate. The level of interest that there has been shows the desire across the country to protect this incredibly important institution. He was encouraged by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) to lead the campaign by setting up a Zoom call for us all to contribute to, but it seems to me that he has created a sort of face-to-face Zoom call that might be familiar to some of us who were here before the coronavirus era. It is a way for us all to get into the same room and discuss this, and that is great. Taking up the challenge set by the hon.”