Rolling out technical excellence colleges is one way that Labour is rewiring our skills system, to unlock opportunity for our young people and drive growth for our country, and alongside techs for construction, clean energy, digital and advanced manufacturing, they will build the talent pipeline to deliver our industrial strategy. Applications for defence technical excellence colleges will open shortly, creating pathways for engineers, cyber-experts, and technicians.
I thank the Minister for his response. Recently I have been engaging with fantastic defence companies such as Rowden Technologies. Its owner, Rob, is keen to support me setting up a technical college in Swindon to support our emerging drone cluster, so will the Minister meet me to see whether we can push that further?
I appreciate my hon. Friend championing the work of local businesses such as Rowden’s, and other defence industries across the UK, and I will gladly ask my noble friend the Minister for Skills, who I am sure would welcome the opportunity to meet him in the coming weeks.
The Government’s new relationships, sex and health education guidance will help to ensure that young people learn about healthy, respectful relationships, and understand that consent is essential. That supports our unprecedented mission to halve violence against women and girls within a decade.
Many parents are concerned about how schools address the sensitive issues of consent and sexual violence. What action is the Department taking to ensure that those subjects are being taught in schools by appropriately trained professionals, to safeguard both pupils and teachers?
That is exactly what our new RSHE guidance aims to do, to give schools the support they need to ensure that our young people are taught about healthy relationships, and to learn about critical concepts such as consent.
I know the Minister will share my concerns about some of the rise in regressive attitudes to sex, relationships and women among some subsets of young men, but far from being the drivers of that problem, young men should be the solution. Fantastic groups such as Beyond Equality show that at their heart, by giving young men spaces to explore their own sense of self, manhood, and healthy relationships on their own terms, they can have incredible and transformative impacts on gender attitudes to sex and a wider relationship ethos. How can we ensure that as part of our reforms we create more opportunities for those spaces at the heart of every young child’s education?
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for all the work that he does on this important topic. I agree with him wholeheartedly, and I very much hope and expect that our work with schools to ensure that healthy relationships are taught in them will mean that young men get the exact space that he is asking for.
The Secretary of State for Education (Bridget Phillipson)
LabourHoughton and Sunderland South
Tackling child poverty is a moral mission for the Labour party, because we believe that someone’s background should not determine what they go on to achieve in life. Scrapping the two-child limit will mean that we can deliver the largest reduction in child poverty in a single Parliament, and we will publish the child poverty strategy in the coming weeks.
The Government’s very welcome decision to end the two-child cap on benefits will, alongside free school meals and breakfast clubs, transform the lives of 2,500 children living in my Dartford constituency, and contribute to our manifesto goal of tackling child poverty. Will the Secretary of State tell the House when more schools in Dartford will be eligible to join the roll-out of free breakfast clubs to primary schools across the country?
Labour’s free breakfast clubs have already served 5 million meals, including in Knockhall primary school and Sedley’s primary school in Dartford. Applications are now open to join the next wave from April, with 2,000 more schools set to join in the next financial year, making the clubs available to half a million more children. I encourage eligible schools to get their applications in by the end of the week, so that we can give children in Dartford, and across our country, the best start to their day.
I welcome the announcement that the two-child benefit cap will be scrapped, lifting hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty. However, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research and Praxis, there are an estimated 382,000 children in poverty whose families are subject to no recourse to public funds and who will not be helped by that measure. Will the Secretary of State promise me that the child poverty strategy will include extra assistance for migrant households?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising her concern. We are working with the Home Office and with colleagues across Government in developing the child poverty strategy. We will focus on ensuring that vulnerable children are protected and their welfare is safeguarded, and that vulnerable migrant children receive the support they require.
Rural areas have deep pockets of deprivation, and nearly 18% of children in Glastonbury and Somerton live in poverty. How will the Minister ensure that the child poverty strategy sufficiently focuses on child poverty in rural areas?