The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Pat McFadden)
It is a pleasure to open today’s King’s Speech debate on behalf of the Government. As His Majesty said yesterday, we are living in
“an increasingly dangerous and volatile world”.
This debate is about the labour market, so let us start with some facts. We have 332,000 more people in work than a year ago; the third highest employment rate in the G7; unemployment lower than most OECD countries and lower than the EU average; unemployment down in the three months to February; and economic inactivity down by over 350,000 since the election—it is lower today than in 13 of the 14 years of the previous Government. Since the general election, real wages are up by more than in the first 10 years of the last Government, and this morning’s growth figures were up by 0.6% in the first quarter of this year—services up by 0.8% and construction up by 0.4%. That is the fastest GDP per capita growth in four years and the highest GDP growth in the G7 reported this year. That is on top of GDP per capita growth last year, and on top of six interest rate cuts since the general election. Our economic management has put the UK in a stronger position, better placed to weather the storm of global shocks, and better placed to weather the volatility of which His Majesty spoke yesterday.
The leadership task for the country now is to lead the country through the consequences of what is happening in the middle east, because there is no doubt that the shock from the Iran war and the continued closure of the strait of Hormuz is real. It will affect prices, it will affect jobs and it will affect growth. Our Prime Minister took the decision to keep us out of that war, but the UK, like most countries, will be affected by its consequences.
However, none of those consequences were thought about by the Leader of the Opposition or the leader of Reform when they were urging us to get involved. What did the Leader of the Opposition say?
Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)
The Secretary of State and many of his Front-Bench colleagues keep reiterating that point. He keeps saying that, but I do not believe it is true. Will he explain exactly what he thinks the Leader of the Opposition wanted to do in those circumstances?
Pat McFadden
Let me read this out for the hon. Gentleman. The Leader of the Opposition said that the Government were
“too scared to make foreign interventions”.
She also said:
“I say to Labour MPs that we are in this war whether they like it or not. What is the Prime Minister waiting for?”—[Official Report, 4 March 2026; Vol. 781, c. 803.]
That is what she said.
As for the leader of Reform, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), he said:
“We should do all we can to support the operation. I make that perfectly, perfectly clear.”
Instead of trying to douse the flames, they sought to pour as much petrol on them as possible. They would have jumped in with both feet, displaying not only a failure of judgment but a total disregard for the price that will be paid by British consumers in higher prices and higher interest rates. That is how much they cared about keeping Britain working when it came to the biggest judgment that this country has had to make for a long time.
The Conservatives’ record when in office was: the lowest business investment in the G7; wages flatlining for their entire period in office; the worst Parliament on record for living standards; and the public finances trashed as debt soared. The reason I point that out is that month after month, and nowhere more than in the arena of welfare, the Conservative party finds things that it is outraged about in the system that it built, it designed and it created.
Before I come to the system itself, let me state something that is obvious but too often left out of these debates: the welfare system is often the end of a process in people’s lives, not the beginning. I will tell the House what contributes to higher welfare bills and to people not working: hollowing out the NHS and leaving one person in seven on waiting lists, with a higher likelihood that they are unfit for work; increasing child poverty by 700,000, making it less likely that children will be ready for work when they leave school; explicitly rejecting the post-covid education recovery plan, and doing nothing about rocketing absenteeism from schools; neglecting our town centres and high streets, leaving too many places without hope or confidence in the future; and presiding over a 40% decline in youth apprenticeship starts, kicking away the first step in the career ladder for those who lose out. You cannot do all that and then stand at the Dispatch Box and credibly express outrage about the rise in benefit bills. It did not come from nowhere, and if we are going to tackle this area, we have to understand that.
Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)
In that case, can the Secretary of State credibly stand at the Dispatch Box and talk about the impact of the rise in national insurance contributions and of the Employment Rights Act 2025 on employment? The Government are now paying companies to employ young people because of the mess they made.
Pat McFadden
If it was down to those policies, we would not have seen a rise of a quarter of a million in the NEET—not in education, employment or training—numbers in the last three years of the hon. Lady’s party’s time in office. My point is that this did not come from nowhere, and we have to understand that. If we are to have a serious response, education, health treatment, youth apprenticeships and changes to the welfare system itself all have a part to play.
On the health front, I have good news to report: waiting lists today are down by 110,000—the biggest monthly drop since 2008. Elective waiting time targets have been hit, and four-hour waiting time targets have been hit. This is how we get Britain working, whereas simply picking a number for benefit cuts, with nothing behind it, is not an answer; it is a press release. The Conservative party has shown no understanding of how people end up on benefits in the first place.
Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)
I would like to raise with the Minister the fact that we are looking at around 1,000 redundancies across the NHS in Devon, which is a significant employer. That is cutting the legs off employment in communities such as mine in Torbay.
Pat McFadden
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the figures that I just read out. For the first time in many years, the NHS is heading in the right direction. That is good for people’s health, and it is also good for getting people back to work.
As I said, the Conservatives show no understanding of how people end up on benefits in the first place. They are like a workman who wanders around someone’s house asking, “Who installed that?”, when the answer every time is that they installed it. The Conservatives say that the welfare bill is too high, but it went up by £100 billion when they were in power. They say that they want more face-to-face appointments, but they shut them down almost entirely, and then the right hon. Member for Central Devon (Sir Mel Stride), now the shadow Chancellor, signed off a bunch of contracts that allowed the assessors to work from home. The Conservatives say that there are too many people on health benefits, but they designed the system, they designed the gateways, and they designed the differences in income that have made that happen. We did not just inherit a mess; we inherited their mess.
In fact, the shadow Chancellor personally oversaw the biggest single increase in welfare spending on record during his time as Work and Pensions Secretary. Two weeks ago, the Leader of the Opposition railed against there being 1.5 million more people on universal credit. She was outraged by the figure, as she often is, but there was only one problem: around 80% of the increase was a legacy transfer from old benefits that was decided, organised and begun by the Conservative party. It is no wonder the chair of the UK Statistics Authority wrote to the Leader of the Opposition to correct her. Her letter said of the figures quoted:
“A substantial proportion reflects the ongoing transfer of claimants from legacy benefits to Universal Credit. This process has been a longstanding policy and has been implemented at scale by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) since May 2022, predating the current administration.”
When it comes to the Conservatives owning their record, they might as well be giving CV advice to the leader of the Green party.
As the King’s Speech made clear yesterday, reform of the welfare system is under way and will continue. Support must always be there for those who need it, but circling the wagons around the status quo is not the right answer. Nor do I believe that the system can act as a fantasy cashpoint for every cause going; instead, I believe that our task is to recast this system to put work and opportunity at its heart.
Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)
Twelve months ago, the Secretary of State’s predecessor, the right hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), attempted to cut the welfare bill and was sent packing by Labour Back Benchers. In the autumn, the Government had to get rid of the two-child benefit cap because of Labour Back Benchers. Is the truth not that the Secretary of State is incapable of reforming the welfare system because he does not have permission from his Back Benchers?
Pat McFadden
I will outline the changes to the system that we are making. At the heart of it, we have to change the question that the system asks in order to have a system that is suited better to the conditions of today. We should ask people not just what benefit they are entitled to, but how we can help them change their lives, and we have begun that task.
The change to universal credit that came into force last month narrowed the gap between the health element and the standard element. Crucially, it is matched by an increase in employment support. Another change is the provision of £3.8 billion to help people into work over the next few years, ensuring personalised help to maximise people’s chances of moving into a good, secure job. We have to change the old Tory habit of people being signed off and written off, and instead move to a system that more actively helps people into work. Nowhere is that more true than among the young, because the longer young people are left on benefits or out of work, the harder it is to come off and the worse the consequences are. The issue with the system is not just about monthly income; it is about the story of people’s lives and how we change it.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Secretary of State for enabling me to ask a question, and for the positivity in his comments so far. Like him, I am incredibly worried about whether young people are getting job opportunities, and many in my constituency unfortunately have not been. May I ask a question about apprenticeships? We need to get people into the building and construction sector, for instance, where there are opportunities because house building is continuing to grow, as is the Government’s commitment. Will he outline some of the good things that have been done for young people in relation to apprenticeships?
Pat McFadden
Apprenticeships are really valuable and important. I visited construction apprentices with the Prime Minister just a couple of days ago, so I heartily endorse what the hon. Gentleman says.
The issue of youth employment is really important to us because of the long-term consequences of young people staying on benefits. Let me illustrate this for the House. A young person under the age of 25 who is on the health element of universal credit is now less likely to get a job than someone over 55 on the same benefit. A 20-year-old on incapacity benefit is more likely to turn 30 and still be claiming it than to have held a steady job for a year. Perhaps worst of all, a young unemployed person is over 70% more likely than their peers to die prematurely. Changing those stories has to be at the heart of what we are doing.
There are practical ways of doing that. We know that many disabled people—young and old—and people with health conditions want to work, but have been held back by the fear of losing their benefits if things do not work out, so just last month we changed the law to bring in the right to try. Keeping people locked on benefits because they lack the confidence to work is in no one’s interests—not the individuals’ and not the state’s. The change means that entering employment will not automatically trigger a benefit reassessment. This is practical welfare reform and this is what getting Britain working looks like.
We also know that disabled people and people with health conditions need localised support to get back into work. There is no greater fan than me of the wonderful work that our elected local mayors are doing, so we are putting £1 billion of funding into local areas to help 300,000 people into employment over the next few years. That is what practical welfare reform looks like.
Today, the Department has published new figures on fraud and error. They show continued progress and a fall since the post-pandemic period, but this is an ongoing effort. There is always more to do because there are unscrupulous individuals who will try to game the system, but whether it is £5,000 or £5 million from an undisclosed source—possibly someone located abroad—people are expected to declare it. There cannot be one rule for some and another rule for everyone else.
In the coming weeks, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security and Disability will set out our plans to deliver our manifesto commitment to tackle the Access to Work backlog. This important scheme provides grants to thousands of disabled people to help them get into and stay in work, through things like specialist equipment, assistive technology and adaptations. Members from across the House have raised with me the issue of backlogs and waiting times that grew under the Conservative Government. Well, under this Government, we are changing that to reduce the backlog and to help more disabled people into work. This is practical welfare reform and this is what getting Britain working looks like.
We are restoring fairness in the system too. We are providing better value for money in the Motability scheme, with a target for half those cars to be made in Britain by 2035, so that this important scheme supports the British car industry too. We are stopping those who have not contributed from getting a British pension on the cheap. The work of reform will continue this year when, in the coming weeks, we receive interim reports from both the Milburn and Timms reviews, before they conclude later in the year. We will bring forward further proposals for reform, with work and opportunity at their heart, when those reviews have reported.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Reports suggest that unemployed people who are signing on are getting trained for jobs that do not exist, not for the jobs in the sectors where there are opportunities to work. Will the Secretary of State reform the system so that those who are unemployed and seeking a job are trained to do the jobs that are available?
Pat McFadden
That is precisely what we are doing, including by providing apprenticeship courses that are shorter than the usual eight-month minimum, because employers have told us that such short courses are exactly what they need. I am all in favour of more flexibility in the apprenticeship system to suit what employers need.
Getting Britain working is also about the levels of investment in the economy: it is about the roads and railways we build, the capital programmes in education and health, and the year-on-year modernisation of the country. Here too there is a contrast with what we inherited. Compared with the plans that we inherited, there will be £120 billion more public investment over the course of this Parliament. That is what getting Britain working looks like—building and modernising the country. Underpinning all of this are measures in the King’s Speech to raise living standards in every part of the country, to attract investment, to work in partnership with business, to take advantage of new trading opportunities, to reduce the burden of unnecessary regulations, to unlock airport expansion, to build the roads that need to be built and, finally, to deliver a fair deal for the north of England.
At the heart of our reforms should be the young, for the simple and obvious reason that if we do not get the young into work, there can be lifelong effects. We have almost a million young people not in education, training or employment. As I said in response to the hon. Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross), in the last three years of the Conservative Government, that figure went up by a quarter of a million. Although the numbers have barely moved since the election, they are still far too high.
Alison Griffiths (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)
On that point, will the Secretary of State give way?
Pat McFadden
I will proceed, if the hon. Lady does not mind.
Unlike the Conservatives, who did nothing about the number of young people not in education, training or employment, we are doing something about it, because we will not leave a young generation behind. We will not give up on young people, and that is why our youth guarantee is so important. It will invest £2.5 billion in support for young people and employers over the next few years. From June, there will be hiring bonuses of £3,000 for employers who take on a young person who has been out of work for six months. For small businesses, there will be a hiring bonus of £2,000 to take on a young apprentice, and the Government will pay for all the training courses for young apprentices employed by small and medium-sized enterprises. [Interruption.] Youth hubs across the country will take support out of the jobcentre to where young people are, giving them access to community-based advice, skills training, mental health support, housing advice and careers guidance. In the spirit of generosity, I will give way to the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths).
Alison Griffiths
I thank the Secretary of State for giving way and for his astounding shopping list of action that he is taking, but the Conservatives can make life easy for him: if he had not put 2% on national insurance, increased the national minimum wage and used the Employment Rights Act 2025 to remove the option of zero-hours contracts, businesses in my constituency and across the country would not have been forced to remove jobs focused specifically on young people. It is this Government who are responsible for the increase in youth unemployment.
Pat McFadden
I have to disappoint the hon. Lady. If this Government were responsible, it would not be case that youth employment never in a single year reached the pre-financial crash levels when her party was in power. If this Government were responsible, we would not have seen the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training rise by a quarter of a million.
Beyond the hiring bonuses and the youth hubs, we are offering more work experience or workplace training with a guaranteed interview, designed in partnership with employers. For those who have been out of work for 18 months, we are offering a six-month paid job placement of 25 hours a week at national minimum wage rates. The reason we are doing all this is that we will not stand back and allow young people to graduate from school to a life on benefits. There has been too much of that in recent years, and to do that would be to accept the scarring effect for the rest of their lives and to accept the huge cost to the country and to businesses in lost talent.
Changing this situation should be a cause for us all, and it should certainly be a Labour cause, to give hope to the country’s young people and to show that we believe in them, we back them and we want them to have a better future. This is a generational challenge. Of course it is an issue for young people, but it is also an issue for their parents and grandparents, because they all want a better future for young people, and so do we. There is an urgency about this issue. As the population ages and net migration falls, we need the young people of this country more than ever. They are our greatest resource and our greatest asset, and an investment in them is an investment in the future for all of us.
In the volatile times that His Majesty spoke about, people look for security, and rightly so, but the future is not just about security; the future is about building opportunity too. It is about not accepting so many young people being written off and about giving them a chance to change the story of their lives. That is the message at the heart of the King’s Speech and that is what is at the heart of our youth guarantee. It is at the heart of all the changes in welfare reform that I have listed, and it will be at the heart of the changes to come, and I recommend them to the House.
Saqib Bhatti (Meriden and Solihull East) (Con)
It is a privilege to close this debate on behalf of His Majesty’s official Opposition. I praise all Members for their contributions; while I did not agree with all of them, I recognise the passion with which they were delivered on topics that Members care about. In particular, I praise my hon. Friends the Members for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) and for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths).
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton that Labour is taking this country in the wrong direction, which is a sentiment agreed with by the newly former Health Secretary, who said in his resignation letter that
“where we need vision, we have a vacuum. Where we need direction, we have drift.”
That is a damning indictment of a Government who are saying that they want to get Britain working again.
The Conservatives are absolutely committed to getting Britain working again. We got a record 4 million more people in work between 2010 and 2024, which allowed millions more people to have the security of their own income, empowering them to own their own home and look after their families. [Interruption.] The Minister chunters from a sedentary position, but we created 800 new jobs a day in those 14 years.
The situation has taken a dire turn since the change of Government. Since Labour took office, unemployment has risen to 5.2% and payroll jobs have reduced by 110,000. The Office for Budget Responsibility has even raised the unemployment rate forecast for 2026, 2027 and 2028. There is only one conclusion: Labour is letting people down and consigning more people on to welfare instead of good, honest work.
I will focus particularly on young people and their prospects, where unfortunately an even bleaker picture is being painted. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire, who said that this Government are failing young people. I have heard a lot of Members talk about getting young people back into work, but the youth unemployment rate is 15.9%—up by 2.7% since the Labour party took office. It has been in power for two years, and that has been the consequence. One in six young people are now unable to find a job.
This Government are pushing more young people on to benefits, which has deeper long-term consequences. There are now nearly 1 million 18 to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training. Among graduates, the Centre for Social Justice estimates that around 700,000 people are out of work and claiming benefits, and the impacts of that cannot be overstated. Every month spent out of work means that people take more than they give to the state.
I have been campaigning in local elections across Meriden and Solihull East, and I can tell hon. Members that young people want to work, because there is dignity and hope in work. Every month that a young person spends out of a job makes it harder for them to get back into employment. While their peers are developing critical skills in the workplace, those out of work fall behind. It also weakens their ability to save and put money away for the future, making it harder—for example—to save for their first home, for their family or for their retirement.
The number of young people out of work is a calamity, and the Government must do much more to address it, but nothing they have set out has reassured me that they understand that. The Employment Rights Act, passed in the previous parliamentary Session, has already started to have a catastrophic impact on the jobs market. That disastrous piece of legislation has increased costs for businesses and discouraged hiring, especially of young people. Having listened to the previous speech, I say to Labour Members that business owners are not just there to be squeezed until their pips squeak—they are the ones who take the risk, invest and create the jobs.
I will, of course, also challenge the Government in the educational space, because I believe they have been completely ineffective. Just this week, the Prime Minister has made new pledges on apprenticeships and skills in an effort to turn his failing premiership around. Perhaps he recognises what I do, because from the data on apprenticeships, the picture is mixed at best. The Department responsible for work should be a shining example of the Government’s commitment to more apprenticeships, but regrettably, it is far from it—the number of apprenticeship starts at the DWP has actually fallen. The Government’s broken promises on apprenticeships are best shown in relation to level 7 qualifications, which are high-quality pathways—[Interruption.] I am talking about level 7 qualifications; the Secretary of State may want to pay attention.
Those high-quality pathways allow people to get into professions such as accountancy, engineering and architecture without accumulating the same debt as graduates. However, the Government continue to restrict level 7 funding for those over 22, meaning that they are missing out on those opportunities and also putting level 6 apprenticeships at risk. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State is very audible. In opposition, when she was shadow Education Secretary, she promised graduates that they would pay less under Labour. That has turned out to be nothing but another broken promise, because not only is it now harder for graduates to get into work, tuition fees have gone up twice. Those who are paying those fees are now doing so with no promise of valued work at the end of it all.
I also want to address the SEND Bill—the education for all Bill—proposed in the King’s Speech. Given the time I have today, I do not have the luxury of asking all the questions that parents have wanted me to pose to the Government, but there are a couple of questions that I do want to ask. [Interruption.] I am happy to take an intervention from the Secretary of State.
The Minister for School Standards (Georgia Gould)
It is an honour to close today’s King’s Speech debate on behalf of His Majesty’s Government. I thank everyone from all parts of the Chamber for their thoughtful and wide-ranging contributions. I will come to some of their comments in detail, but I start by saying that it is a shame the shadow Minister did not ask for the help of the work experience student who supported the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) in developing his statistics today. The shadow Minister might have been a bit more accurate if he had. As we have already heard, under his Government, apprenticeship starts for young people went down by 40%. Under this Government they have gone up. This year, we have seen more than 300,000 people get into work. Just this morning, we saw the UK have the fastest growth of the six G7 countries that have declared. We are taking action on employment, on apprenticeships and on growth, but I will come to those detailed questions later.
First, I will talk about some of the issues that have been raised in the Chamber today. Members have shown the importance of growth and opportunity in every single community. We heard a powerful speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae), who talked about the importance of investment in towns. We heard from the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths) about the importance of coastal communities, and from the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) about the importance of rural communities. It has been so powerful to hear MPs bringing the voices of those different communities into this Chamber.
I also thank those who raised the critical issue of support for children with special educational needs and disabilities. I assure the shadow Minister that that is the purpose that the Secretary of State and I are focused on every day. I spent this morning speaking to special schools. Yesterday, I was speaking to families. We are listening to the voices of children and young people. We have a generational opportunity to get this right, and we will continue that work, led by the Prime Minister. It is a critical issue; we heard from a number of hon. Members how important it is for their constituents.
I agree with the call from my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow and Gateshead East (Kate Osborne) that we must ensure that we really hear families’ voices. The Secretary of State and I and other Ministers have been travelling around the country talking to families. We have heard that too often they have to fight for the support their children need. The system that we have—a system that we inherited—is failing too many families; it needs to change. Support needs to go in earlier, and we need to ensure that we are supporting every child to develop their opportunities to the best of their ability.
I thank my hon. Friend for sharing her diagnosis. Everyone across the House will agree that she is an important role model for people with neurodivergence. She shows how important it is that people with autism take up roles across our society and provide that leadership. I will commit to meeting her to discuss the issues she raised.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) for her contribution on early intervention, the importance of Best Start hubs, support for breakfast clubs, and how critical it is to support families with children with special educational needs and disabilities at the earliest possible point. My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) made important points about accountability. Again, we are talking about those issues with families.
I welcome the promise of partnership and scrutiny from the hon. Member for South Devon. This is such an important issue, and our commitment is to work cross-party to ensure that we are getting it right.
Peter Swallow
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; I tried to intervene on the shadow Minister but was not successful. On that cross-party consensus, was she as surprised as I was to see no commitment at all on special educational needs in the Conservative party’s so-called alternative King’s speech? Does she share my concern that that demonstrates its complete lack of seriousness on that really important issue?
Georgia Gould
The Opposition have been remarkably silent for a long time about the failures in the system. They have been quick to ask us to take action, but less quick to set out what they would do differently. This is an issue that they failed to grip for years. We are tackling it head on, introducing legislation and putting investment right now into our communities. We had mention of the Experts at Hand service and the investment in new special schools that is making a difference today.
Almost every single hon. Member talked about youth unemployment and how important it is to get behind our young people and support them into work. My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland talked about the scarring impact of youth unemployment and my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) talked about the impact in his community. This is absolutely at the heart of the Government’s agenda. It is why we have introduced the youth guarantee, and it is why we are investing billions of pounds to support that.
At the heart of the debate is how we restore opportunity to the British people after decades of that being denied to them. As we heard from so many hon. Members, a job is about more than just a salary; it brings choice, control, agency and freedom over our lives. That is what is at stake here. We want to build a country in which opportunity is open to all. Rather than a privilege of birth or background or the product of luck or circumstances, opportunity should be the right of anyone and everyone willing to work hard and grab it with both hands.
That is what getting Britain working again means to me and to this Government, with the opportunities created by our modern industrial strategy open to everyone. That is the story we tell ourselves in Britain: if you work hard, you can get on, no matter who you are. Aspiration should be for all. It is a privilege to serve as Minister for School Standards in a Department driving that forward every day, led by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. It is in education that we can make that a reality, restoring opportunity to people of all ages in every village, town and city and building the economy and society of tomorrow. That is what this Government are doing, and it means reaching young people who are not working or in training. As we have heard today, there are almost a million of them—a million reasons why this Government’s youth guarantee is so important.
I have been travelling around the country to speak to families and young people about SEND. I spoke to an 18-year-old who loved computing, who had been out of school and who had applied for hundreds of jobs, but they had been turned down for every single one of them. My hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland (David Smith) talked about that feeling of hopelessness. [Interruption.] Sorry, I just need to take a second.
Saqib Bhatti
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to recognise the wonderful work that the Doorkeepers do around this House. I do not think they get enough credit, and I would like to ask for your wisdom on how I can put that on the record.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Thank you for bringing to our attention the fantastic work that the Doorkeepers do. I would personally like to put that on the record, mostly because I would not be able to do my job unless I acknowledge the work that they do. That is absolutely the right thing to do.
Has the Minister finished her speech?
Georgia Gould
I will finish. I am really sorry—I have a two-and-a-half-year-old who kept me up all night, and I was feeling a bit faint.
I want to conclude by setting out how important it is for this Government to support the next generation and to support young people. As we bring forward our Bill, we will have young people in our minds, particularly those with special educational needs and disabilities and those who have been let down. We will do everything in our power to support them.
Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Claire Hughes.)
Debate to be resumed on Monday 18 May.