Apprenticeship Levy Scheme

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Liddle

Thursday 16th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As the noble Baroness will be aware from our debate last night, it is not the Government’s plan to micromanage schools in terms of how they celebrate. We are promoting apprenticeships in schools and colleges through our ASK programme—the Apprenticeship Support and Knowledge programme— the Get the Jump programme and the Skills for Life programme. She may have seen some of the materials from Get the Jump recently, which were very engaging.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I respect the Minister’s good intentions, but how does she account for the catastrophic fall in the number of entry-level apprenticeships at intermediate level in the past five or so years? It is no good pointing to figures that show that we have done a bit better than we did in the disastrous Covid year. Let us have a look at the long- term position. She says that the department regards this as important, but what conclusions is it drawing and what is it going to do about it?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Our conclusion is that we listen to employers and respond to what they ask for. I shall give the noble Lord one example. Employers have told us that they need young people to be more work-ready. Therefore, we are funding up to 72,000 traineeship places over the next three years.

Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Liddle

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 19th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful for being allowed to intervene. Had I realised the procedure, I would have made some Second Reading remarks myself at an earlier point. I support the Bill. It is a modest measure that takes us nearer what I think should be the public objective of a universal service of high-speed broadband. It therefore has my general support.

There are two points from the Minister’s summing-up on which I would like to press her. The first concerns the question that my noble friend Lord Adonis asked about the future of BT Openreach. I am afraid I did not fully catch what the Minister said in reply because of connection problems, but I regard this as a subject of fundamental public interest. I would like to be assured that the Government will also regard it as such and will not just say, “This is a matter for BT to decide what it wants to do in terms of its own private interests and its shareholders’ interests”. I would like an assurance that this is regarded as a matter of great public interest.

My second point relates to the final section of the Minister’s legal bit at the end about who is and is not entitled under these arrangements to press for better connections. I shall look at this question in a very practical way. I am very concerned about young people, including students, living in short-term lets in multi-occupier buildings—for instance, in old council blocks where someone has bought a flat to rent it out and their main occupiers are students on short-term tenancies. I should like an assurance that this provision applies to young people and students whatever the basis of their living in that kind of accommodation. It is fundamental that young people have access to high-speed broadband. This has been brought home to me as chair of Lancaster University, where we are now doing our teaching online. Even when the Covid-19 crisis comes to an end, a much higher proportion of university teaching will be online, and this applies to many other vital spheres of life. There is a practical concern here. I ask the Minister to go back to the department, think about all the circumstances in which young people and students rent accommodation in blocks of flats and multi-occupier properties, and say whether they have an untrammelled right to ask for better provision and whether the process will be so rapid that a student on a short-term tenancy will want to see it through.

[Baroness Barran]

I thank the noble Lord for his additional questions and I apologise to your Lordships. There is a certain irony in my signal not being quite strong enough for this Committee stage.

In answer to the noble Lord’s question about Openreach, what I tried to say in response to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, when he put this point, is that any sale is a matter for the BT Group, but the department’s understanding, based on further articles in the press, is that the original Financial Times article was inaccurate. We continue to engage with BT and Openreach, but ultimately it is a private company, albeit subject to all the competition laws and wider legislation that might be relevant.

In relation to students, the noble Lord makes a very important point. I spent quite a lot of time recently talking to young people, including students, about the impact of Covid on their lives. The points he makes are definitely reiterated by them. As the noble Lord knows, students will live in a range of different types of accommodation with different arrangements. Where they are occupying accommodation such as an assured shorthold tenancy or an assured tenancy, they will be covered by the Bill.

The noble Lord’s wider point was about thinking through the practicalities, which is what my officials have spent much time doing. This was explored extensively in the other place. The balance we need to strike is between the three parties—the landlord, the tenant or leaseholder and the operator—and that is what this legislation seeks to do.

Shared Rural Network

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Liddle

Monday 28th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran]

I hear the noble Lord’s extremely valid concerns about the county of Cumbria. I cannot confirm 100% coverage from the Dispatch Box today, but I am happy to confirm that in writing. However, I stress that those areas of the country which historically have had much poorer coverage, in particular Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, will be the greatest beneficiaries of this investment.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, may I follow up on some of the previous questions? As I understand the proposal, the idea is that, in return for this commitment to spend money, mobile phone companies should no longer have coverage obligations imposed by the regulator. I declare an interest here as a Cumbria county councillor. Despite the efforts that have been made in our county to improve broadband coverage—they have been considerable, and I myself have been a beneficiary of them—unacceptably large numbers of people are still not covered either by broadband or proper mobile access. That is of economic significance because, if we are going to get new business into these areas, as the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, said, they have to have this degree of coverage. So what obligation will the Government impose on the operators? When Royal Mail was introduced in the 19th century, it was given a universal service obligation; when radio and television were introduced, there was a universal service obligation; when electricity was nationalised after the end of the Second World War, a universal service obligation was imposed on the companies. Why should these companies be completely free of a universal service obligation?

[Baroness Barran]

I am concerned that I may have confused—I hope I have not misled—the House, so I will try to correct any confusion. The companies will have individual service obligations. Each operator will be at 92% individual coverage by 2025, with a combined footprint of 95%—I hope that the noble Lord has the Venn diagram in his mind. Part of the increase in coverage comes from the mobile operators, part comes from the investment of the Government in total not-spot areas, and part comes from the use of the emergency services network. So there will be individual commitments, there is an aggregate commitment, and a greater aggregate footprint, with coverage in areas that today have none whatever.