Speeches by O'Brien.

“The hon. Member has brilliantly anticipated a point I was going to make, and if he looks at the text of the amendment he will see it is carefully drafted exactly to allow carve-outs for those who need them, for example as health devices, so I hope he is reassured on that point. Attempts by the tech industry to lobby, t…”

“We have heard some superb speeches this afternoon. The Chair of the Education Committee, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), gave a brilliant and thoughtful speech, which ended with her talking about the welfare reforms that the Government will propose tomorrow. Our proposal for a ban on smartph…”

“I want to concentrate today on our new clause 36, which would ban phones from our schools. The new clause would also write into law some of the content of the very good private Member’s Bill drafted by the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), because this does not need to be a party political is…”

“The Minister talks about using this power where there is “undue delay”. What is an undue delay? What would be too long, roughly?”

“Clause 9 has been included because of the level of disquiet about the Bill in the House of Lords. There was literally not even a mention of Skills England in the Bill when it was introduced. We will return to this issue when we debate new clause 1 from the Liberal Democrats, and our new clauses 2 and 3, in which I seek…”

“As I said, I am absolutely ready to hear detailed thoughts and to have the detailed discussion about how one improves all these different things, and I am pleased that the hon. Lady’s local college seems to be highly successful in delivering these things. Every year, on average, twice as many people started apprentices…”

“So far in the debate on clause 7, we have not heard any examples of the requirement for an independent assessment causing a long delay. I thought the Minister would give us an example of the introduction of such and such a qualification being delayed for a year because of the requirement to get an independent view on i…”

“That is exactly the point I was making. In some instances, the Government can say, “Look, there is already this formal official third party”—perhaps a royal society or some part of the medical profession—“so we do not need this.” I can see why the Government would write that into legislation, but Ministers’ intent clea…”

“I have a specific question. Skills England does not bring the whole skills sector together. There are other excellent bodies, for example, the Migration Advisory Committee, which has a skills component. Other bodies, such as the Construction Industry Training Board and the Engineering Industry Training Board, impose le…”

“This is an extremely sensible amendment, which we welcome. Although I am not a liberal, one of the great strengths of the liberal tradition is its knee-jerk suspicion of centralisation. The Bill represents centralisation in many different ways. It takes lots of brakes off, and we keep hearing in our sittings that, “We …”

“I beg to move amendment 7, in clause 9, page 4, line 13, at end insert— “(c) the impact of the exercise of the relevant functions on the provision of level 7 apprenticeships in England”. The Government are completely reversing the direction of apprenticeships policy. Where we lengthened apprenticeships, they have cut t…”

“I want hon. Members to imagine a hypothetical scenario in which there is a future Government unrelated to this one. Let us say that that hypothetical future Government have passed a Budget that is a bit of a turkey, and it has not done good things to the economy. That hypothetical Government are taking a bit of money o…”

“The Government’s argument is that the requirement to review—they do not have to rewrite, just review—qualifications every three years is excessive. I wonder whether that is really excessive in the eyes of most of the users and employers involved in these schemes. Elsewhere we have seen bureaucratic collapse, with the O…”

“The Minister says that this is an excessively onerous requirement. Could she give us some sense of the volume of work required as a result of this section in the 2009 Act? What does “onerous” mean? How many are having to devote how many man hours to doing what? How many people are employed purely to do what? What is th…”

“I would be delighted to. I hope that we will get an answer on that point about level 6: is the Minister going to rule out kiboshing level 6 in the way that she is doing with level 7?”

“This is one of the strangest bits of the Bill. It is pretty baffling why the Government do not want to regularly review the approval of technical educational qualifications. Without rigorous independent oversight, there is obviously a risk that standards for technical qualifications could be lowered or might not stay a…”

“I thank the Minister; I think that very clearly did not rule out the Government doing exactly what are doing to level 7 apprenticeships to level 6. It was not quite phrased in that way, but clearly Ministers are keeping their options open. Given that Ministers are clearly looking to keep their options open, not just on…”

“It seems like a strange argument, in response to a clause that requires the production of more evidence, to say, “It is all fine because Skills England will be so evidence-led.” That is the entire point of our amendment. I do not think the Government want to talk about what they are planning to do on level 7 apprentice…”

“This clause could be drafted very differently. It could say that where there are only minor or technical amendments to be made, or where we have a clear judgment from a single professional body about what is needed, the Secretary of State can prepare a standard. But that is not what it says—it just says that they can p…”

“Sometimes professional bodies overlap, even in the medical profession. When I was a Health Minister, I was acutely aware of that. For example, there are two different ways to become a dentist in this country—there are two different professional bodies that can accredit someone. Were there to be a dispute between them, …”