Speeches by Dixon.

“I agree. Closing the gap in pay will be vital, particularly if we look at vocational areas where industry salaries are higher. In construction, engineering and digital, FE teachers earn around 11% less on average than their peers who work in industry. Even when colleges do manage to recruit, they are quickly enticed ba…”

“I commend my hon. Friend for being such a champion for Bolsover and wanting to secure opportunities for her constituents to get the education that they deserve. I am sure that the Minister heard her words. By improving education across the board, including further education, we can increase social mobility and address …”

“I will take the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) first.”

“I thank the hon. Lady for making that point. It is important that the general funding available in education for those taking on disadvantaged students is reflected in things such as the pupil premium. FE certainly plays a huge role in widening participation of learners from disadvantaged backgrounds, such as by offeri…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for her excellent intervention, pointing out some of the cuts that her constituents are experiencing at the hands of the SNP Government in Scotland. It is incumbent on them to ensure that all children and adults have the opportunities to learn and continue to update their skills. In conclusion, I…”

“My hon. Friend is setting out, in a very eloquent way, the amazing work of the Labour Government. I am proud—I hope he agrees—of the previous Labour Government’s achievements in setting up and rolling out Sure Start. Independent research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed what amazing outcomes children had late…”

“Absolutely; it is vital that we get more capital as well as more revenue funding into FE.”

“The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point—I was about to come on to the pay gap between teachers in schools and those in further education colleges. Teachers in further education colleges earn an average of £8,000 a year less than schoolteachers. I was not aware of the gap with higher education, but it is clearly imp…”

“Does my hon. Friend agree that disabled people have been written off by the Conservatives for too long? They have not been given opportunities to access work and good jobs, and they have been blamed by the Conservatives, for the sake of cheap headlines. Does he also agree that the Labour Government’s proposed transform…”

“I guess that is why we also need to invest in defence, to bring some security to the world—but we won’t go there. You have committed that you will publish the equality impact assessment, showing the impacts of the cuts on different protected groups. Will that include age and, in particular, children? I have received ev…”

“Older people and children are often overlooked in a lot of the development programmes.”

“On mainstreaming women and girls, which has been a policy moving away from dedicated programmes, all the evidence is that it offers huge value for money to invest in development support specifically targeted at women and girls, and gender equality. How are you ensuring that, both now and through the cuts, you are going…”

“Or two—sooner rather than later! I went to Zimbabwe and there are some wonderful colonial heritage properties that have obviously been in the ownership of the British state for a very long time. How are you balancing the needs and deciding, in these big projects, between selling up some of what might appear to be herit…”

“Could you give me and the public a sense of what happens if you do not get it right? You have some confidence intervals and a fixed allocation. If you do not make the necessary efficiency savings, the sales at the values you need and all the other things, will you trade off and have to raid other budgets outside estate…”

“So you will be monitoring specifically and evaluating whether there is a change in terms of the outcomes and impacts?”

“Do you have a view at this point about what proportion of your total expenditure would be operational? Given that it is a shrinking budget, are you aiming to maintain the operational spend as a proportion of that—i.e. for it not to grow?”

“I think that is a common theme from a number of the projects that this Committee has looked into, such as HS2 and Sellafield, but we did have the benefit of going to Buckingham Palace and seeing its restoration and renewal project, which we were impressed with. Obviously, with heritage properties such as the one you de…”

“The basic point you started with is that the humanitarian need is overwhelming the global humanitarian response.”

“And publishing?”

“It would be very good in your next publication to make transparent the different impact of allocations on protected characteristics, if you are monitoring that data.”