Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry]

My hon. Friend is right: these have to be a collaboration between the Government, business and local decision makers. We will announce in the autumn which institutions will make up the country-wide network, supported by £170 million of funding for the institutes of technology. As we set out in May, the first pupils will sit the first of the new T-levels in September 2020.

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

One of the real challenges for the Government’s industrial strategy is how to ensure that investment is rolled out across all the regions and nations of the UK. How, practically, will the industrial strategy ensure that that happens—in particular, in regions that have failed to get the investment they deserve such as the east midlands?

[Claire Perry]

That is an excellent question, and the proof of all this will be taking our grand aspirations for the UK and making them work locally. I am pleased to tell the hon. Gentleman that we have fantastic local areas, often working cross-party—I am thinking particularly of Teesside and the west midlands—[Interruption.] The east midlands; thank you. We have really engaged local leaders and decision makers in pulling that investment through and developing their own local industrial strategies.