Asked by: Earl of Shrewsbury (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, following reports of people drinking alcohol-based hand sanitiser, what plans they have to withdraw those products from schools and replace them with effective alternatives.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department has developed extensive guidance for all settings across the education, childcare and children’s social care sectors on how to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak, including a range of protective and control measures for preventing the spread of the virus. There is information to support settings on their responsibilities that advises to clean their hands thoroughly, and more often than usual, as well as good basic hygiene, and the ‘catch it, bin it, kill it’ approach, which advises individuals to clean their hands with soap and water or use sanitiser: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/actions-for-schools-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak/schools-covid-19-operational-guidance#control-measures.
Ultimately, schools remain responsible for the products that they require and, as with other cleaning products, schools can access hand sanitiser through their existing supply chains. There are many alcohol- and non-alcohol-based hand sanitisers and surface disinfectants on the UK market and schools should base the use of any of these products on their own risk assessment, alongside existing guidance.
Our guidance signposts settings to the e-Bug COVID-19 website which contains free resources for settings, including materials to encourage good hand and respiratory hygiene. This information can be found at the following link: https://e-bug.eu/eng_home.aspx?cc=eng&ss=1&t=Information%20about%20the%20Coronavirus.
All education, childcare and children’s social care settings should follow the UK Health Security Agency, formally known as Public Health England, guidance on cleaning for non-healthcare settings outside of the home. The guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-decontamination-in-non-healthcare-settings/covid-19-decontamination-in-non-healthcare-settings.
Hand sanitisers and surface disinfectants are biocidal products. They are regulated by the Health and Safety Executive. The Health and Safety Executive publishes a list of authorised biocidal products, including hand sanitisers and surface disinfectants: https://www.hse.gov.uk/biocides/uk-authorised-biocidal-products.htm.
The Cabinet Office and the Department for Health and Social Care published product specifications and standards associated with personal protective equipment at the following link: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/927550/Essential_technical_specifications_PPE_and_medical_devices-v0.3_Oct2020_accessible.pdf.
Asked by: Earl of Shrewsbury (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what funding they intend to make available to enhance the availability of skills training at privately owned and operated skills training centres in the Midlands.
Answered by Baroness Berridge
The government previously announced on 31 August 2019 that it will invest an extra £400 million in 16 to 19 education in 2020-21. This is the largest injection of money in a single year since 2010 and represents an increase of 7% in overall 16 to 19 funding. As part of this, the base rate of 16 to 19 funding will increase by 4.7% in academic year 2020/21, from £4,000 to £4,188, for all types of 16 to 19 providers, including privately owned and operated skills training centres.
We are also continuing to invest in education and skills training for adults through the Adult Education Budget (AEB) (£1.34 billion in 2019/20 and 2020/21). From 2019/20 academic year, approximately 50% of the AEB has been devolved to 6 Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs), including the West Midlands, and to the Mayor of London, acting where appropriate through the Greater London Authority (GLA). These authorities are now responsible for the provision of AEB-funded adult education for their residents and allocation of the AEB to providers.
Independent training providers will have a key role to play in delivering the plans announced by my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor, on 8 July including for more apprenticeships, traineeships, and high value courses for school and college leavers. Additional funding is available to deliver these priorities and the way this will be made available will be confirmed shortly.
Any requests for information on the topic of adult provision for residents in a devolved area, such as the West Midlands, should now be directed to the individual MCA. The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) will continue to be responsible for the remaining AEB in non-devolved areas.
Both further education colleges and independent training providers are autonomous organisations and as such they are free to deliver provision to meet the needs of local learners and labour market.
Asked by: Earl of Shrewsbury (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to provide financial support to training and skills providers to ensure the provision of suitable resources to train, re-train and upskill those whose employment has been affected by COVID-19.
Answered by Baroness Berridge
We will continue to pay grant funded providers their scheduled monthly profiled payments for the remainder of the 2019/20 funding year and funding allocations for 2020/21 have been confirmed. Payments will be made in line with the national profile.
We have also invested £100 million to develop a National Retraining Scheme to support working adults prepare for future changes to the economy and to help them retrain into better jobs, and have committed £2.5 billion for a National Skills Fund over the course of this Parliament, which will support people to learn new skills and prepare for the economy of the future.
We are introducing new T levels from this September – high quality, practical courses designed by employers that will provide a credible alternative to A levels and prepare students for skilled work or further study.
We are currently reforming and simplifying the qualifications system so that learners can easily find high-quality qualifications that give them the skills they need. With our proposals, any qualification, including existing ones, can be approved if they provide learners with the knowledge, skills and behaviours that employers need.
We have also been working across government to build a package of support measures to boost skills among those who will be hardest hit by the labour market impacts of COVID-19. On 8 July my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced measures across a range of targeted work-based training offers to support people to build the skills they need to get into work. This amounts to investment of £1.6 billion in employment support schemes which will substantially expand existing provision. This includes:
Asked by: Earl of Shrewsbury (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have any plans to legislate to allow partners of the opposite sex to form civil partnerships.
Answered by Lord Nash
The Government carried out a consultation on the future of civil partnerships in 2014. Views were invited on three options: abolishing civil partnerships; phasing them out; or extending them to opposite sex couples.
The review found that there was no clear consensus on the future of civil partnerships. A majority of respondents to the consultation were against extending civil partnerships to opposite sex couples and several significant stakeholders thought it was too soon to consider making changes to civil partnerships until the impact of extending marriage to same sex couples is known. Given the lack of any consensus, the government did not change the Civil Partnership Act 2004.
The decision not to change the law was judicially reviewed last year and the Government won in the High Court. The Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal against the High Court judgment this week and confirmed that the Government’s approach is lawful.
We welcome the Court’s ruling. Before we take any action on this issue, it is right that we evaluate the impact that same sex marriage has on the take-up of civil partnerships. We will also carefully consider this judgment and its implications before deciding on our next steps.