Speeches by Smith.

“On what the Leader of the Opposition said, I am not 100% sure of the quote, so I am not going to comment on that. I think it was taken quite significantly out of context. On the Bill Committee, I will continue saying it—[Interruption.] At the end of the day, I am the one here speaking this afternoon, so I am at least i…”

“Every Member in this Chamber shares a commitment to lifting people out of poverty, especially children; we just have different views on how to go about it. Children in workless households are nearly four times more likely to live in poverty than those in households where adults work. We know that work pays, yet we on t…”

“To be fair, by the sounds of it you are being incredibly kind if you are giving all that money and they are not able to spend it. A lot must sit somewhere in the Treasury.”

“What you are saying about those numbers is really interesting, Jamie. I represent a constituency that includes Plymouth, so obviously I am fully aware of the skill shortage. If you have 50,000 already, the defence cluster in Plymouth thinks it needs 25,000, so we are talking really big numbers of people who potentially…”

“We have already discussed the fact that the skills requirement for the transport manufacturing sector are not unique—that they are cross-departmental—but there is a question around whether it is realistic to believe that we can make better use of overlapping skills between transport manufacturing and other manufacturin…”

“Do you think business can do more to look at how one manufacturer could be supplying into more industries? I am thinking about Babcock, for example: it is often doing the defence piece. Is there a way that business could be even more creative? Maybe they are already doing that.”

“One of the things I have experienced in the south-west is that often with skills, particularly in FE colleges, the large employers effectively contract the college to provide all the skills that they need, which can then squeeze SMEs out. We obviously know that they are part of the ecosystem, particularly for manufactu…”

“Benjamin, you said that one of the challenges you have when transferring skills between industries is the difference between a recruitment process based on qualifications and one based on competencies. Is that something set in statute or something business could lead the way on and recruit based on the competencies the…”

“Thank you for humouring me on that; I thought there was something to be said. We have touched on this a little in terms of Government Departments working together to support the skills needed for transport manufacturing. How welcome is the Government’s recent move to share skills policy between the Department for Educa…”

“You mentioned how we could make Skills England more effective. If you have any comments around that in terms of the changes with DFE and DWP, please feel free to suggest them at this point as they would be welcome.”

“Are you effectively saying that a young person has no passport if they are not successful with one apprenticeship but might have some of the skills for another, and they need to know about the SMEs to be able to apply directly to them? There is no option for them to move around and say, “I have five of the six skills, …”

“Because of things like GDPR you are not able to share.”

“I want to open it up to anybody else before I hand back to the Chair.”

“There is obviously a growing push towards work experience post-16. We all suffer from the invitations to do that and have to figure out how to have year 10s follow us around, let alone 18-year-olds. To what extent do you think manufacturing companies and colleges are able to provide post-16 students with useful and mea…”

“It was about post-16. There is a push from the Government that every child should be getting it, which obviously puts a huge expectation both on schools and businesses to provide the placement.”

“It is not an internship either. It is five days and then they go, so it is different.”

“Q9. Last week, I invited the Prime Minister to match the Conservative pledge to scrap business rates for our high streets. However, he declined. Instead, he pointed me towards the small business strategy. Since then, businesses have been in touch to tell me that the strategy will make little or no difference to their f…”

“6. What recent progress he has made on reorganising the NHS.”

“Yesterday I met Lila, a sixth-form student at Coombe Dean school, who raised the issue of long waiting lists for mental health services for children and young people across Devon. What action has been taken as a result of the Government’s policy of reorganising the NHS to reduce the unacceptable delays in mental health…”

“Q5. Later this afternoon I will be launching a small business survey so that the 3,000 small and medium-sized enterprises in my constituency, which employ thousands of my constituents, can have their say about what is like to run a business under a Labour Government, and what their concerns are ahead of the Budget. How…”