Speeches by Nandy.

“Certainly, yes. As I set out when I came to the House to announce the national youth strategy and the decision around NCS, one of the things that I was keen to stress was that this was not an ideological decision. We know that NCS did very good work and it had over a million young people through its doors, many of whom…”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“It was about how we spend money well in the current context. There was no youth strategy across Government when we took office back in July. Different Departments fund different things around young people. Most of the programmes that I inherited had been pet projects for various Prime Ministers, Secretaries of State an…”

“What we are trying to do through the national youth strategy is to make sure that we are really gripping the challenges facing this generation of young people.”

“That means putting the right support in place. I cannot justify, for example, spending the vast majority of my Department’s budget for youth on a summer camp for young people when, as yesterday—”

“No—NCS. I am talking about the NCS, Damian.”

“Of course I had discussions with the Education Secretary about the areas of crossover between our Departments. That was not our programme. It was not in my gift to decide what was prioritised and what was not. The problem we have is that we inherited a disastrous economic situation with very poor public finances, very …”

“We have been working very closely with the Home Secretary and the Education Secretary on this. You are right to say that the intention of youth futures hubs is to bring together all those things that young people want and need in one place. We are piloting a couple of models around that, for which funding was provided …”

“We have not made any decisions or announcements around the length of the school day. The curriculum review that Professor Francis is leading for us will look at whether the curriculum is working well for young people. One of the things that I did recently was to go and look at some grassroots music venues in Ipswich wi…”

“Yes, but we have seen a huge drop-off in the numbers of young people choosing to take arts, music—”

“—all those subjects at GCSE. We think that we could do better. We are going out and consulting. We are looking at the curriculum as a whole. We have already committed to protecting PE. Like you said, the last Government were also very well aware of the value that PE in school can make to the lifetime of a child if you …”

“It is an ambitious target but it is one that we think we can meet. The top priority for me is addressing the skills shortages in the visitor economy. We have a lack of capacity at the moment. We have around 100,000 vacancies in the UK visitor economy. Addressing those workforce shortages and creating a talent pipeline …”

“I think that point about the absence of a T-level in tourism specifically is a good one. I will take that away and come back to you on it. I think that is a point well made. We are also reforming the apprenticeship levy to make it easier for the creative industries to access. I accept the point that you made about mark…”

“I think the honest answer to that, Rupa, is that that would be a conversation that I will need to have with the Home Secretary. She has to consider the overall numbers of people coming to the UK. She has to think about the entry requirements and national security and balance that against our shared desire to make sure …”

“I will have a look at it and I will look at the debate as well.”

“You have a private Member’s Bill on this, I think.”

“There is a lot of expectation out in the country as well. Certainly, the Competition and Markets Authority, as you know, has announced that it is investigating Ticketmaster over the Oasis sale, which was one of the catalysts for this, although there are lots of parliamentarians who have been campaigning particularly on…”

“Yes. We have the Gift Aid system, which is one of the most generous in the world and we are strongly committed to keeping that. I have asked the Department to work up a place-based philanthropy strategy. I have been struck by some of the work that the previous Government did in some parts of the country like Grimsby, f…”

“Obviously we have had the Media Act and we and Ofcom are now in the process of implementing the Act and things are broadly on track with that. Ofcom’s road map was published earlier this year. It delegates certain powers, as you know, Tom, to me and to Ofcom in terms of designing in-scope services and developing guidan…”

“I think, broadly, yes. We are operating in a very fast-moving, fast-changing environment and across the board, particularly for Ofcom, they often find themselves at the sharp end of that, in terms of regulation. They are aware, as expressed to me in the meetings that I have had with them since I was appointed, of the n…”