Speeches by McFadden.

“My hon. Friend brings valuable experience to this matter, including his experience of teaching engineering apprentices at the University of Nottingham. We are committed to ensuring that disadvantaged young people have access to high-quality apprenticeships and can benefit from the new jobs being created in places such …”

“I know that my hon. Friend has spoken movingly about his own experience with ADHD. I assure him that Alan Milburn, a former Health Secretary who is carrying out this report for us, is in regular contact with the chair and secretariat of the independent review into prevalence and support for mental health conditions, AD…”

“The hon. Gentleman will find that graduate unemployment is an international issue. If we want more non-higher education skills, he should support our plans to stop the decline that we saw in youth apprenticeship starts when his party was in power and to direct more money to youth apprenticeship starts. That is precisel…”

“I appreciate the value of skills bootcamps. They can play an important role in the mix of policies we are talking about today. I hear the representations the hon. Lady has made for more funding. All I would say to her and her party is that if we have more funding, I hope they support whatever revenue-raising measures t…”

“Since the last Work and Pensions questions, we have had Apprenticeships Week, when I visited Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead and London Underground’s Acton Works in west London. I attended the youth guarantee jobs fair in Blackpool, which connected over 3,000 local people with 90 employers; had a roundtable with b…”

“Whatever Department I am in, I hear the same question from the Liberal Democrats. They support all the extra spending that is funded by revenue-raising measures, but they oppose all the revenue-raising measures themselves. If the hon. Gentleman wants NHS waiting lists to fall and if he calls for more spending every wee…”

“The hon. Member is right to point to the disparity of information that there sometimes is for apprenticeships compared with university courses. It is something that we need to address by improving the information available and ensuring that young people embarking on an apprenticeship are treated with just as much estee…”

“I very much agree with my hon. Friend’s final point. I think Anas Sarwar would make an excellent First Minister, and I look forward to supporting him in the campaign to come. The youth guarantee, to which I have referred, extends to Scotland. We want young people in Scotland to have as many opportunities and as good op…”

“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the retraining scheme that he is running for former Conservative MPs, although I am not convinced that a change of colour is really a change of heart. Let me come to the heart of his question. We do believe that if people have worked here and have contributed over the years, they…”

“My hon. Friend asks an excellent question. The fact that net migration is falling to lower levels than we have seen for some time gives added urgency to a question that has often been posed: why do we not do more to train our own workers? That is precisely why I am prioritising youth apprenticeship starts, which fell b…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I am very happy to make sure that he gets a meeting with me or another Minister in the team.”

“That is of course a hugely important industry for the UK. The hon. Member will be aware that a transition is taking place, but oil and gas will be part of the mix for a long time to come. The Chancellor met those in the industry last week, and I assure the hon. Member and her constituents that the industry’s importance…”

“We do want to support jobseekers now. As I said, there is a long-term challenge with youth unemployment, which we are responding to through the measures I have outlined. If we can be more ambitious than those measures in the future, we very much will.”

“I have already praised Rugby once during this session; let me do so a second time. I cannot promise to attend my hon. Friend’s jobs fair, but I can say that such fairs play a valuable role in bringing together employers who need staff with potential employees who need jobs. I saw that myself in the very sizeable Blackp…”

“The whole House will be aware that the women who lived in the mother and baby homes sometimes went through terrible experiences. I commend my hon. Friend for his campaign for some measure of justice for those women. We are examining what we can do in those cases. A small number of those women live in the UK, and I assu…”

“We are all going to have busy diaries after this session. I pay tribute to the Cornish hospitality sector. My hon. Friend is right that those are great opportunities for young people, and I will make sure she gets a meeting with someone.”

“The truth is that the Conservatives presided over a huge post-covid rise in the number of young people not in education, employment or training, and they did precisely nothing about it. They also presided over a huge rise in the number of young people going on to sickness and disability benefits and did precisely nothi…”

“I shall if the right hon. Lady shows a little patience. Around 60% of the families affected by the current policy are in work, and of those who are not working, a significant number are affected by serious health conditions or caring responsibilities—circumstances in which any of us could find ourselves. As I have said…”

“Not at the moment. We spent plenty of time in opposition writing those lists—we had many years to do it—only to see them turn to dust on the morning of an election defeat. Good intentions were written off by the voters because the hard yards of winning their trust on the essentials of exercising power had not been done…”

“My hon. Friend is right, and the point she makes is that we also tackle these issues piece by piece and over time. I turn now to the question that people have asked: “Why not do this right away?” Here is the difference between government and opposition. The truth is that in opposition, it is easy to tally up everything…”