Speeches by Hinds.

“It was good to hear the Minister confirm that the scheme will be kept under review. Two definitional matters will certainly need to be kept under review: first, what counts as being “at the direction” of a foreign power or specified entity, and secondly, in respect of the political tier, what is the extent of the defin…”

“Of course we should be listening to colleges such as Bournemouth and Poole college. We heard the Government announce earlier that thousands of people were going to go into construction, but then say that they could not do anything until they created this body and subsumed the functions of IfATE into it. I do not see ho…”

“My right hon. Friend makes a very important point, which stands on its own merits.”

“He is not, no; he is saying something different. Of course there is value in all sorts of training. In my working career, I did various stints of training but they were not called an apprenticeship. We do not have to call something an apprenticeship for it to be a worthwhile piece of training. Already, we ask the word …”

“Would the hon. Gentleman extend that principle to the academic route? I have asked the Minister this question a number of times now. I do not think we would stand for anyone saying that the standard and specification for A-levels should be set in Sanctuary Buildings by the Department for Education. If we would not do i…”

“The truth is that there is always a balance about apprenticeships. Of course, there can be abuses: in the past there were abuses of the apprenticeship system with the lower rate that could be paid, although many employers pay the full rate to people of whatever age who are doing apprenticeships. However, it is also tru…”

“I want to make a short contribution to this Report stage debate, particularly in favour of new clause 4 and amendment 6. On the train coming up to Westminster, I typed into my tablet “Short IfATE speech”, and every time I did so, it kept changing it to “Short irate speech”. Unfortunately, I am not very good at irate sp…”

“I could not resist the hon. Gentleman.”

“HAF is the holiday activities and food fund. We should spell that out for the benefit of everybody here.”

“Who is “you”? I suppose that is the question: who does it? Who spots that fact that middle-aged men playing football is fine and will always get funded but kids playing some minority sport will not? There may not be an obvious answer—in which case we can say in our report, “There is not an obvious answer, but this prob…”

“Can I come back to girls? Stephanie, you mentioned the skills gap even at Year R. What do you do about that?”

“But with writing skills, we have figured out that in the early years foundation stage, we need to have a real focus on writing. It is more about holding the pencil and so on. Is that the issue when we talk about the skills gap, or is it more about stuff at home and cultural things? What is the combination?”

“That would be the opposite of what a lot of people would think. That is worth dwelling on. Do you want to say more about why it might be important to separate boys and girls for some of the time?”

“You have teed me up for two other questions I was going to ask. It was an interesting question about all these extra sports that are available now that did not used to be. Dodgeball is a big thing for kids at the moment. Also, lots of girls play cricket, football and so on. One big question is to what extent that then …”

“For my last question, I want to go back to the question about the drop-off in girls’ participation in sport. Notwithstanding whatever the gap may be at age five, we know that in the teenage years, there is quite a substantial falloff. Stephanie mentioned concerns about mental health, and so on. These things are becomin…”

“Are there any particular sports the provision of which has shown to reduce the drop-off in schools?”

“Can we come back to working with schools? It is probably worth saying—I do not know if you agree—that some of the national governing body programmes are 10 times better than they used to be when I was growing up. It is like night and day. Some work better than others, and I am interested in your thoughts on the success…”

“To working with schools, and sometimes that means using school facilities, but sometimes it means getting the kids out of school to come to the club or doing things before and after school, working in partnership.”

“Who should? How do you make it happen?”

“Andy, your organisation does some of that. Do you want to unpack that a bit?”