Damian Hinds
MP for East Hampshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“There are moments in debates like the one we have had today that are difficult to sit through and listen to, but it is the most immense privilege to be a Member of Parliament and to hear some of these testimonies.”
“Today is once again a day of heavy responsibility for all of us to decide on what we in this House call “conscience issues”. Many of the people who we represent hold strong and immutable views, and we hear from them. However, we represent many others who hold much more nuanced views and we are less likely to hear from them.”
“Members who support the Bill should not have their motives questioned, Members who oppose the Bill should not have their motives questioned, and Members who have reached a different conclusion from one they reached at an earlier stage should not have their judgment questioned either.”
“We have heard from royal colleges and other professional bodies, many of whom have a neutral stance on the principle but raise significant questions about particular aspects. We know from Ministers that there would need to be some reprioritisation of NHS resources, but we do not know the extent.”
“If there is the prospect of the Parliament Acts being used, that would increase the importance and the salience of the text as it is now. Today, it is reasonable and entirely in order for hon. Members to consider information that is available now that was not available in those previous parliamentary deliberation.”
“The Government have said, rightly, that the time taken to implement other schemes is not directly comparable, because none are as in this Bill. This is a free vote on a matter of conscience—there is no party line on either side of the Chamber. No one, I suggest, finds this issue easy.”
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“There is no official count, but by the mid-2010s someone had counted up what they could find and said that, together with other, non-level 3 courses available to 16 to 18-year-olds, there were at least 13,000 possible qualifications that someone in that age group could do. It is not surprising that when the Independent Panel on Technical Education was created in 2015-16, it found that vocational education and training had become “over-complex”.”
“There were the 14 to 19 diplomas, which were not quite the same thing as the Tomlinson diplomas; the skills for life programme; and traineeships. Altogether, today, there are somewhere between 100 and 200 recognised awarding organisations, excluding those that only do apprenticeship end-point assessments. Now, just at level 3—the equivalent to A-levels—we have the following qualifications: tech levels as well as T-levels; applied generals; level 3 ESOL; level 3 NVQ, and access to higher education diplomas. There is a level 3 award, a level 3 certificate and a level 3 diploma—or someone might prefer a level 3 national certificate or a level 3 national diploma. There is also an extended diploma, a subsidiary diploma, and a technical introductory diploma.”
“There were national training organisations; the Learning and Skills Council; sector skills councils; the UK Commission for Employment and Skills; the Skills Funding Agency, or SFA, which would later be the ESFA—the Education and Skills Funding Agency—and, most recently, local skills improvement plans and the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. The infrastructure has been mirrored by a panoply of qualifications and awards. We have had traditional apprenticeships and then modern apprenticeships; the youth training scheme; the City & Guilds system; the technical and vocational education initiative; the National Council for Vocational Qualifications; NVQs, which are still in use; and GNVQs, which evolved into BTECs and diplomas.”
“It is right that successive Governments have been troubled by this situation and sought to fix it, but perhaps sometimes they have been a bit too quick to look for a fix. The story of our organisational infrastructure for technical and vocational provision is not one of stability. We have had industrial training boards, the Manpower Services Commission, the Training Commission, and training and enterprise councils—TECs. But those TECs were different from another TEC—the Technician Education Council, which existed alongside the Business Education Council, BEC. The two would eventually merge, of course, to give us BTECs.”
“How we run our skills system is also important, because there is a cadre of young people who are less orientated towards pure academic study but have talent and flair in technical pursuits, and they deserve just the same opportunities and life chances as those who take the academic route. In this country, although we are famous for aspects of our education system, including for our higher education—our universities—and increasingly for aspects of our school system, we are not, I am afraid, famous for technical and vocational education and training. When foreign Ministers come to Europe to look at vocational education, they tend to go to Germany, and if there is one thing we do not like in England, it is losing out to Germany.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered apprenticeships and T Levels. It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. UK productivity is well below that of the United States, Germany and France. That is not a new thing; it has been true in every year I have been alive. If we were able to fix that productivity gap, we could have higher living standards, lower tax and more tax revenue. There are multiple reasons for the gap and much academic literature has been written on it, but the level of skills in an economy is fundamental to productivity and therefore to growth.”
“We could say that it is too hard and give up, but if we did that we would be giving up on advancing our competitiveness. The alternative is that we change culture in our country and say to companies that if they want to be a great success in their sector, and their sector to be a great success in our country, and our whole country to be a success in the world, we all have to invest both the resource and the time in the next generation.”
“For the upgrade that we needed in our country, in both productivity and opportunities available to all young people, T-levels had to become the principal college-based option—not the only option, but the principal or main college-based vocational qualification. And the T-level could not be grafted on to a market that already had thousands of qualifications; there was an incumbency advantage and even commercial interests attached to some of those. It had to replace a number—a lot—of qualifications. Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister, has been speaking about this quite recently. The other thing that was always going to be difficult about T-levels was finding enough industry placements. Lord Sainsbury found that we might need up to 250,000 industry placements for 17-year-olds, and that, of course, is hard to achieve.”
“It added: “Specifying the standards…is not a role for officials in central government but for professionals working in…occupations, supported by…education professionals.” It recommended that there should be improvements to apprenticeships and a new, largely college-based qualification, which would become known as the T-level. With T-levels, the knowledge, skills content and required behaviours are set not by somebody at the Department of Education but by employers. There is the core technical qualification, but there is also content in English, maths and digital. Crucially, there is a 45-day industrial placement. There are also more college hours than with traditional vocational qualifications and indeed more taught hours per week than for A-levels.”
“Both the apprenticeship and college-based routes would result in “the same or equivalent technical knowledge, skills and behaviours” to take into the workplace. The report said that this path “needs to be clearly delineated from the academic option, as they are designed for different purposes. But, at the same time, movement between the two must be possible…in either direction”. The report also recommended expanding the then Institute for Apprenticeships into an Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, so as to cover both apprenticeship and college tracks.”
“The panel was determined to address both the productivity gap and very clearly also the social justice gap, whereby some young people were being left behind. I stress that although the report was a blueprint, it was also a “redprint”: the panel was chaired by the noble Lord Sainsbury, the distinguished Labour peer. The report called for “a fundamental shift”, with “a coherent technical education option…from levels 2…to…5”. There would be 15 clearly defined sector routes, covering 35 different career pathways. Three of those routes would be available only through an apprenticeship; the other 12 would be available either through an apprenticeship or a college track, and there would be common standards for both.”
“Indeed—the hon. Member is absolutely right. Part of the point of careers advice is knowing which course to take and which qualification to pursue. The panel that I mentioned found that if someone was considering a career in plumbing, for example, there were 33 different qualifications that they might seek to take. It also found that in general the various qualifications were not providing the skills needed; they had become divorced from the occupations they were meant to serve, with no requirement, or only a weak requirement, to meet employers’ needs in those occupations. The panel’s report, which came out in April 2016, became a blueprint for a major upgrade of technical and vocational education in this country.”
“If the Government were serious about creating something new to join together the Home Office, the Department for Business and Trade, the DFE and everybody else, they would put it in the Treasury or perhaps the Cabinet Office. They would not just make it part of the DFE management structure. Worse than that is the loss of independence compared with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. There is legislation currently going through the other place that ostensibly creates Skills England, but it does no such thing. All it does is abolish the independent institute and move all of its powers into the Department for Education. The Secretary of State will now have responsibility for standards for T-levels. Imagine if that were the case for A-levels. If it is not all right for A-levels, why should it be all right for T-levels?”
“We need to think about them across Government, take the long view, listen to employers, listen to young people and have an integrated approach.” The Government have come up with this thing called Skills England, which they think will do that. Skills England will be the 13th new skills agency in five decades. If all it took to solve our skills and productivity problem was a change in the machinery of government, do the Government not think that one of the previous 12 might already have managed it? The instinct in difficult circumstances is to break glass and reach for a quango, but Skills England is not even a quango; it is nada—not quasi-autonomous, but a non-accountable departmental agency—and there is no reason to think it will be any better at working across Government, let alone across the economy, in solving these issues.”
“It has to be something that creates a net increase in the amount of training and development available. That brings me to Skills England. Now, Ministers like shiny new things, and some people will always lobby for things to change. A sweet spot is found in public policy when the two coincide: Ministers get lobbied to do something, and they think they have come up with a shiny new thing that sounds like it will achieve those ends. Skills England is one of those things; I am afraid that, without major design change, it is doomed to failure. I have no doubt that plenty of people who lobbied the Government when they were in opposition said, “We need a different approach to skills.”
“It is totally legitimate to look at changing what the levy covers, and it is good to refocus on young people—career starters. It is also reasonable to say that the levy could cover some things that are not apprenticeships, such as management development or traineeships, but there is huge value in maintaining integrity around what we mean by the word “apprenticeship”, and keeping a minimum length and quantity of college or off-work content. Whatever the Government do with the levy, they need to find a way to deal with the free rider problem. The Government will always be lobbied by companies saying, “We should be able to use the levy for this, that and the other”, but if “this, that and the other” means training that they would have paid for anyway, then the levy will not have achieved its goal.”
“There is an argument that we already make the word “apprenticeship” do a lot of work—it covers a wide spectrum. Arguably, there are three types of development of self and training, which have different needs: someone may be a career starter, career developer or career changer, and the specifications of the courses and qualifications are different. For example, a 50-year-old who is changing career does not need to learn as many things about what it is like to enter a workplace for the first time as an 18-year-old does. In truth, only one of those types of training is what a normal member of the public associates with the word “apprentice”: we think typically of people who are young and starting out on their working journey.”
“First, it raises the funds needed to pay for a big upgrade in apprenticeship provision. Secondly, it deals with the free rider problem, with which we will all be familiar: some companies in a sector have always strongly invested in young people, but three years later those young people leave to work for another employer that can offer to pay more but has not made the investment in the first place. The apprenticeship levy deals directly with that free rider problem, as economists call it, so that every sizeable company contributes properly. The new Government plan to change the scope of the levy and to introduce two new types of apprenticeship, which it is fair to say we do not know a huge amount about: foundation apprenticeships and shorter apprenticeships.”
“I appeal to Ministers to carry on the great work of shouting about T-levels and talking about these great opportunities and the upgrade they represent. There were two big changes to apprenticeships. The first ensured that there were minimum standards. Previously, as colleagues will recall, some apprenticeships were so thin and flimsy that the apprentices did not know they were on one. After minimum standards came in, apprenticeships would last at least one year and involve at least 20% of time off the job. As with T-levels, there would be an end-point assessment, which would feature standards set by employers. The second big change was the introduction of the apprenticeship levy. That has always been controversial with some employers, but it was there to do two things.”
“I am sure it is. I will come to apprenticeships in a moment, but I was just talking about industry placements in T-levels. From speaking to young people who are doing T-levels, colleagues will know that their most popular feature is probably the fact that young people get to do a real role in a real workplace. The placements are also popular with the employers that provide T-levels: first, the employers are investing in the next generation and helping develop all the things the lack of which they sometimes complain about—soft skills and workplace skills—and secondly, the placements are the most fantastic, longest-ever job interview, when employers get to see the people who may come and work in their company over an extended period.”
“The Government will obviously keep Skills England, but I ask the Minister to build into its design proper, full independence from her Department, and a proper, full guiding role for the businesses these occupations need to serve. I want Ministers not just to say that, but to write it into the legislation.”
“With apprenticeships, there will always be, as there always have been, firms that try to game the system. We can argue about what the levy should or should not cover, but it is a good thing and it needs to be designed and maintained to encourage a net increase in investment in this area and to deal with the free rider problem. There will always be some cost and downside when the bar of minimum standards is raised, as we did. We need to remember where we started, with the need to increase productivity and have higher expectations for all in the interests of social justice. We need to maintain those minimum standards to keep apprenticeships and T-levels equivalent, with the same levels of knowledge, skills and behaviours. Finally, the independence of the body that sets the standards, working with and for business, is key.”
“If the hon. Member will forgive me, I will continue. There is also no guarantee that business will continue to be involved in setting those standards. I am afraid that public and business confidence is set to be eroded—rightly, because everybody knows that the easiest way for the Government to increase the numbers of people doing anything in education is to erode standards to get more people through. I believe the Sainsbury report was—and still is—a good blueprint. Of course, the Government are entitled to evolve it, but they should recognise that the principles remain sound. With T-levels, it was always going to be hard to get sufficient industry placements and to overcome powerful objections that we need to change the system rather than just add to it.”
“When the IfATE transfer of powers Bill comes to Committee stage in the Commons, please will the Government table an amendment to write that independence and the involvement of business into law? Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered apprenticeships and T Levels.”
“It has been a good debate. I thank everyone who took part for bringing their own perspectives. There is just one thing I want to say. We cannot legislate for parity of esteem; we can only earn it. High-quality apprenticeships and T-levels can do that, because young people know that the standards have been set by employers, and they are right for the levels necessary for success in those sectors. Crucially, to have confidence in the integrity of qualifications, they need to be set independently and, in the case of these qualifications, they need to be set with business. The Minister has an opportunity with a Bill going through Parliament at the moment.”
“My constituents use both Winchester hospital and Basingstoke hospital, as well as others, such as Frimley Park, the Queen Alexandra and Guildford. I understand that a clinical assessment was made about urgent treatment and services at Winchester, but there is a need for a new hospital in or near Basingstoke. In what the Minister said about a review of the new hospital programme, I accept he says a statement is coming soon, but will he confirm that it is about timing and that he or a colleague will come forward to the House soon with the certainty that people in Hampshire need?”
“For this generation, we need to make the duty of candour an established principle across the whole of public service, which is something in which we are all involved, in our different ways, as parliamentarians and members of the Government. Nothing can ever make up for all these failings, but we can at least ensure that the compensation scheme works as well as it can, and that we as a state face up to our failings and truly learn the lessons, so that we can have confidence when we say, “Never will this happen again.””
“We have talked about memorialisation and the national memorial. The inquiry also recommended that there be a memorial dedicated specifically to the children at Treloar’s, and that it be provided at public expense. I hope that the Minister can provide an update on that, either in his closing remarks or in follow-up correspondence. I hope that one of the positives that can come from this generation will be the instituting and institutionalising of a duty of candour, in both letter and spirit. The report recommends a review of the existing statutory duty of candour, which requires NHS organisations to be open and transparent about mistakes and harm in care, and requires leaders in health service organisations to be personally accountable for responding to concerns about safety. I think we all welcome the Bill appearing in the King’s Speech.”
“Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) rightly accepted Sir Brian Langstaff’s recommended five categories of pay awards and confirmed additional interim compensation payments. There now needs to be clarity about the basis on which claims can be assessed, and the speed of those payments. Campaigners have raised concerns about the information sources available, and I hope that the Minister can provide assurance that steps will be taken to ensure that there is easily accessible information to support people making compensation claims. I have been asked by former pupils at Treloar’s to ask about the compensation amounts of £10,000 and £15,000, which have been mentioned by the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford). It would be helpful to have on the record, and in Hansard , an explanation of those sums of money.”
“We were complacent about the risks of hepatitis C and slow to respond to the risks of AIDS, and we permitted research to be conducted on people without telling them—or, in the case of children, their parents—or informing them of the risks. In some cases, we failed to tell people that they were infected, thus closing down the possibility of their managing the progression of their disease or its transmission to others. In other cases, people were told starkly and insensitively about a diagnosis of HIV. There was defensiveness, a lack of candour, the active destruction of evidence and, of course, the absence of a meaningful apology or redress for so many years. In his statement on 21 May, my right hon.”
“I will quote briefly from his most recent message to me: “The camaraderie and unity of we former pupils—well the handfuls of us that are left…We have stuck together to get to the truth due to the promises and pacts we made towards our lost when they were living, as well as for their families.” We have been waiting a very long time for the truth about a string of failures, omissions and wrongdoing, starting with the failure to achieve domestic self-sufficiency, and the decision to allow the importation of higher-risk factor VIII concentrates, which in many cases were procured via commercial arrangements that made infection more likely because the products came from high-risk groups, including prisoners and drug users.”
“The inquiry heard that of the 122 pupils with haemophilia who attended the school between 1970 and 1987, only around 30 remain alive. I have spoken to a number of my infected or affected constituents over the years, including Adrian “Ade” Goodyear, a man who speaks with remarkable dignity and determination.”
“East Hampshire is home to Treloar’s, a non-maintained special school and college that delivers outstanding education, nurture and care to children with some of the most profound disabilities. However, it was also the place where there was a terrible concentration of victims of this scandal. Because 40 to 50 haemophiliac patients were there at any one time, it came to be seen as a unique opportunity to study the disease, and a haemophilia centre was established at the nearby hospital in 1972. Towards the end of the 1970s, the hospital still catered to the needs of the wider community, but the haemophilia centre was relocated to the school grounds. The inquiry report dedicates an entire chapter to the experiences of pupils at Treloar’s, and to how research objectives often outweighed the best interests of the children.”
“This truly has been one of our nation’s worst ever scandals and injustices. Thousands of patients contracted HIV or hepatitis viruses, or both, from contaminated blood, and this was not an accident or something that could not be avoided. Nor was it down to pure negligence or people not being sufficiently attentive, although there was plenty of that. The report is clear about the “systematic, collective and individual failures” in identifying and managing infection risk from blood products, and in the response of the health service and the Government. This issue affects the constituents of very many MPs, but it has a particularly tragic depth of salience in my constituency.”
“I agree wholeheartedly with the Minister about the benefits of the cadets, so why have the Government cut support to cadets, even as they were launching a national youth strategy? His colleague said earlier that the Government would have a review. The question is: can that gap in support be plugged and the school staff instructor grant be restored so that more children—hopefully, many more children—in state schools can benefit from joining the cadets?”
“Again, I am sure that the Government will not think about cutting that programme—it would be unthinkable to do so—but what will they do? When will they give visibility to secondary schools and special schools about how they will grow the support for breakfast clubs in schools in the future?”
“They also talk about breakfast clubs as if they were something novel, whereas in reality there are thousands in schools across the country already. So when they say they need to move slowly because they need to have a pilot, what does the Minister think needs to be piloted? Is it the type of bowl or the angle of pour of the cornflakes, or is it just that they are trying slow down the roll-outs? Most importantly, I want to ask about secondary schools and special schools. Among the thousands of breakfast clubs, including those supported by the national school breakfast programme, are those in secondary schools and special schools. If we are talking about impacting something like attendance, we can have more of an impact with breakfast clubs at secondary school.”
“What will the Government do to keep entitlement at around the same level as now even after universal credit roll-out has concluded? Secondly, I want to ask about the holiday activities and food programme, which has been successful for young people. I am sure the new Government would not dream of cutting it, but a lot of local areas—I know that one in Yorkshire has been discussing the matter very recently—want some reassurance and some forward visibility about what will happen with the HAF programme after the end of this year. Finally, I wanted to ask about breakfast clubs. The Government have talked a great deal about primary school breakfast clubs and people are quite disappointed about the scale of what they have heard so far. The total percentage of primary schools in England covered by the first phase is, I think, 4.5%.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I commend the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for securing this broad-ranging debate on barriers to education opportunities. There are many things that we could talk about, but in 150 seconds I will restrict myself to three things. The first is about free school meals. Labour Members said some pretty terrible things in 2018 about what we would do to eligibility for free school meals. It did not happen. In reality, the number of children eligible has risen from about one in six in 2010 to one in three most recently, and that is despite employment, the number of children growing up in workless households and the number of people in work and on low pay having come right down.”
“Before the Minister moves on, my main question on breakfast clubs was about what happens to the national school breakfast programme for secondary and special schools. We have heard a lot about primary schools, but we have not heard much about secondary and special schools in disadvantaged areas. Is she in a position to tell us a little more about that?”
“Has the Minister had the chance to visit the DWP library, and has she made a note of how many drives there have been over the years to take up pension credit, and whether any of them ever reached as high even as three quarters of those who are eligible?”
“The Secretary of State is right: the world has changed, and with the enormous prevalence now of electronica and social media, there is a bigger premium than ever on getting more young people out playing sport, doing music, joining uniformed groups and getting involved in all sorts of purposeful activity—even perhaps public speaking and debating. We need to make sure that we make full use of the assets and facilities we have, and successive Governments have tried to get schools to open up more. In some areas we have had renewed progress with the holiday activities and food programme and wraparound care, but what more can be done to ensure that those great facilities throughout the country are fully utilised?”
“They are businesses, but in one sense they are unlike other businesses. Their biggest asset is not something they have bought and is not something they intend to sell, so in that sense they are more like custodians of an asset than owners.”
“Most of all we must never forget that we rely on these men and women for our food. Land yield really matters; it matters to them as agricultural businesses, but it also matters to us. The one asset we cannot increase in size is the total amount of land that we have in the country. It is in our national interest to support the farming sector to be able to get the most production possible out of the land. I urge the Government, genuinely, to think again about how they support this sector with the farming budget, with having a formal target for food security, and of course with rethinking their terrible move on inheritance tax. There have always been different types of farms—large and small, owner-occupied and tenanted—but family farms have always been at the heart of our agricultural sector.”
“I ask Ministers to look again at how the affordability ratio and the overall formula work and seek to ensure that the new housing that gets built, not just the existing stock, is truly accessible and affordable to local people, not just creating very large numbers of new five-bedroom executive homes which will be just as out of reach as those already there. My final point, which I know all Members will make tonight, is about the importance of farming. Nobody here needs to be told about the importance of farming; it is not quite the same thing as rural affairs but there is such a heavy overlap, and we rely on farmers for so much—for land stewardship, biodiversity, and managing the attractiveness of the countryside for the visitor economy. When we get snowed in in Hampshire, we even rely on the farmers to clear the roads.”
“Over time, as there is disproportionate development outside, that discrepancy will grow. I hope the Minister will discuss this anomaly with his colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and that it can be fixed in the national planning policy framework rethink. The situation is exacerbated by the massively higher housing targets now coming for rural areas, with the change in the formula meaning much higher targets for areas such as mine but with targets reducing for parts of London, where clearly there is a major, and in most measures a greater, housing affordability issue.”
“We need to see more on that, but in the meantime we need to ensure that consumers who are changing system are made aware of the position. My second topic relates to housing and affordability. It is quite a niche topic nationally, but it is definitely not niche in my constituency, where we have an area that is partly in a national park and partly outside it. The housing targets are set for the whole district, but there are severe restrictions on what can happen inside the national park, so there is a great deal of pressure on development and therefore on services just outside it, in places such as Alton, Four Marks and the southern parishes of East Hampshire. It is also an issue inside the national park, because there is already an affordability discrepancy between inside and outside.”
“Another thing to add to the list of differences in rural areas is the weather, which means that electricity lines get knocked over more often. We still have power cuts in rural areas, with a frequency that people in cities might find hard to believe. Sometimes they last for a few hours, but we had one in East Hampshire in the past few years that lasted for more than three days. The proposal to get rid of traditional telephones, which are a lifeline in such cases, and replace them with internet telephony that relies on a one-hour power back-up was never going to work in rural areas. I am pleased that there has now been a pause, and I am also pleased that some operators, including Vodafone, which I spoke to the other day, are looking into a much better power back-up.”
“On connectivity, things have improved a great deal, but many Members of this House will have had, or heard about, the experience of having to go to the end of the lane to receive a text message verification code that has already expired by the time they get back. Thankfully, such things continue to improve, but there is still a big gap between our rural and urban areas. This is a broad topic. We could debate any of the issues that I mentioned, but to avoid being repetitious of other Members, I will restrict myself to three disparate topics. The first relates to connectivity, not for broadband or mobile but for an older technology that often gets overlooked: the phone. Rural areas have a particular angle on the upcoming roll-out of the voice over internet protocol, which will replace the public switched telephone network.”
“Rural Britain is different. The rural economy is different, quality-of-life issues are different, the profile of crime is different—almost everything is different. In some ways it is better—we have somewhat better air quality, and we spend less time sitting in traffic—but there are also many challenges. The sheer distances involved affect so many things, from people’s ability to access regular specialist healthcare treatment to their ability to get the right T-levels placement for their career. That, in turn, has an impact on health inequalities and social mobility. The costs of provision mean that many of our constituents are off mains drainage, and many more again are off the grid. That has implications for their costs and, indeed, for decarbonisation.”