Speeches by Dixon.

“Are you confident, then, that by both making it more attractive and doing your public awareness campaigns you are going to close the gap? At the moment, half of prospective pupils are still unaware of T Levels. Where do you expect that to be in another year’s time?”

“My constituency has Shipley college, which is offering T Levels. One challenge that it has raised with me is that part of the reason for having T Levels in these sectors is the sector shortages, but that also makes it extremely difficult to hire the tutors. I really wanted to probe on two elements to follow up what has…”

“What about the funding rate though? The industry exchange sounds like a good initiative, but what if the basic funding rate is not there to cover the cost of the tutors?”

“Does the Minister share my constituents’ anger at the failure of the Tories to back up any of their promises about new hospitals? Will he reassure me that my constituents who are served by Airedale general hospital will finally get a new hospital to deal with the RAAC in an affordable, deliverable timetable, unlike the…”

“I represent a very beautiful part of the Yorkshire dales, in Wharfedale, and Yorkshire Water has been responsible for hundreds of thousands of hours of sewage spills into the rivers. It was fined £47 million by Ofwat for its poor performance in 2023, only for that to be repeated in 2024. Will the hon. Gentleman welcome…”

“Bill payers in my constituency of Shipley are facing an 18% hike in their bills. By 2030, the increase could be as high as 35%. About 19% of those bills already goes towards servicing the debt of the holding company that owns Yorkshire Water. Is it not the case that our customers are paying the price for the failure of…”

“I recently met representatives of Morrisons, the fifth largest supermarket chain in the country, which is headquartered in Bradford. Since 2021, it has been owned by a private equity firm. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to ensure that we retain family-owned British companies? When they are sold to private equit…”

“Does the hon. Gentleman agree that schemes such as the Great Northern Railway trail, which provides a secure, segregated green cycleway and walkway linking towns, villages and local schools, are where active travel investment should be prioritised? As the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) mentioned, we m…”

“Constituents of mine value the role of the credit union, and the Bradford credit union in particular, for small savers on low incomes. Does the Minister see a role for credit unions alongside building societies in helping to encourage not only saving, but making early steps into investment, as we have discussed in this…”

“My hon. Friend makes excellent points about the older generation and their decision making on what to invest in. At the moment older people are often over-saving, particularly in cash ISAs or very low-risk products, because of the lack of funded social care. They are having to hold on to a lot of cash just in case they…”

“I welcome that we are at the beginning, and I pay tribute to the chief executive, the council leader and the head of children’s services for the progress they are making in extremely difficult circumstances to turn this around. It is really important to recognise that, while in some councils there is a history of finan…”

“Local authority leaders would probably be pleased to hear that plans are being put in place for strategies on all those demand areas, and about the reforms you mentioned earlier on local government financing. But there are councils, like Bradford council, that are already in exceptional financing because half their bud…”

“We have heard a lot about local government having less of these ringfenced pots of money and greater flexibility. Will you be extending such flexibilities to allow greater pooling of budgets and allocating of resources between health and care, as the NHS Confederation propose?”

“Extending the flexibilities around things like the better care fund, for example.”

“One of the other join-ups is between health and social care budgets locally. We received evidence from the NHS Confederation expressing frustration that pooled allocations, particularly around the better care fund, are often coming out late and are not joined up with when local government hears about its funding and wh…”

“One last thing: we have talked so much about demand-led and statutory services, but almost nothing about the very important discretionary services that make a huge difference to my residents’ day-to-day quality of life, whether that is parks, arts and culture, library services, or waste management. In its local governm…”

“On the point about data requests to other Government Departments, it is brilliant that the Government have given extra money for potholes—they are an issue that my constituents are concerned about—but is that basically because they have not had a grip on what the condition of roads has been? How are you going to contin…”

“But somebody has to push back on Ministers.”

“I would just point out the slight paradox in that response and the earlier response, when we were talking about adult social care and the market sustainability and improvement fund, where the view was, “No, we can’t tell them or ask them; it is entirely up to local government.” So we are scrutinising the spending on po…”

“I think there needs to be consistency across Government Departments and across areas of spend, so there are appropriate levels of accountability and assessment to give reassurance nationally, while recognising that there is local accountability.”