Speeches by Hinds.

“I had probably better go on a little, but I would love to hear from the hon. Gentleman. I promise that the Committee will have a chance so to do. Unsurprisingly, that panel found that the technical and vocational education and training landscape in this country was over-complex. The example of plumbing was given, with …”

“Yes, but the Bill does not do that, and if the hon. Member thinks it does, I am afraid he is mistaken. Some years ago, I used to sit on the Government Benches and was a Minister at the Department for Education, as the hon. Member said, and on many occasions I have had a close interest in these areas. There was a cross-…”

“I have not forgotten another one, have I?”

“I am very grateful; who knows where this conversation might take us? Last time I looked, 1563 was not in the past five decades. The hon. Lady says that every generation should try to reform, and that may well be true. I do not know how many generations she calculates there are in a 50-year period, but as sure as anythi…”

“I have missed one!”

“We are debating clauses 1 to 3 stand part and schedules 1 to 3. The Minister, in her opening remarks, talked a lot about the intention to create Skills England, how it will operate and so on. That is not in clauses 1 to 3. The Bill is all about transferring functions from the independent Institute for Apprenticeships a…”

“The hon. Member is right: of course those things are different, but with the dawning realisation I had back then, I started to wonder who else might take a zero-hours contract? Yes, it is true that disproportionately they are young people, but for quite a lot of people a zero-hours contract is for a second job. I would…”

“I rise to speak to the measures on zero-hours contracts, and Opposition new clause 83 and amendment 283. It is absolutely right that we should pause to consider the effects of these changes on employment tribunals, but it is also right that we should pause to consider their effect just on employment. Of course, there a…”

“I think that is right. The other thing I was struck by in some of the sessions was the great unity of views. Whether it was trade unions, charities, parent groups, doctors or parents, there was a great commonality of view about what needed to be done. I understand what happens sometimes with private Members’ Bills and …”

“Our children’s use of phones and social media give us many things to worry about, but broadly speaking they are grouped into three categories. The first is about content, going from pornography and violence and the insidious effects of curated lives, influencers and celebs on our children and their sense of self-worth,…”

“Effective.”

“That is an unexpected turn to this conversation, because this topic has come up in this Committee before, and it is usually members of the Committee who say—and it is true that the licence fee situation is a bit of an outlier and there are particular questions about the number of women who are criminalised and so on be…”

“Within the commercial income streams, where do you see the most promising lines of growth?”

“A lot of businesses struggle with that balance—reinvesting in the business versus dividends for shareholders.”

“It may be that Tom wants to come back on the licence fee, but I want to ask about commercial income. Your organisation has a very enviable stock of IP, from the mother brand to individual pieces of creative output. There has been a strain on licence fee income, but I think that the bigger drop last year was in commerci…”

“Speaking of consuming things online, you love it when people come to the iPlayer or your website or some other owned property, but there is continued growth in consumers going for news as well for entertainment to social media or news aggregators. The truth is that when you ask them where they saw something, they do no…”

“Yes, but in the scheme of things, people who say, “I’m going to find BBC Verify” are—”

“And BBC One is still the biggest single vehicle, but it is a minority.”

“To be clear, I am optimistic, too—or certainly hopeful—because I think your role is more important than ever.”

“On a related but different question about the business model, in a parallel industry—the music industry—there was an enormous revolution moving away from physical format music and everyone thought the industry had been changed forever. Then it turned out it was only temporary. Downloads had replaced physical format, bu…”