Skills in the Recession

Part of Opposition Day — [11th Allotted Day] – in the House of Commons at 3:48 pm on 18 May 2009.

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Photo of Eric Illsley Eric Illsley Labour, Barnsley Central 3:48, 18 May 2009

I hope to do that a little later. For now, I just want to address the hon. Gentleman's point about young people not in education, employment or training. It is not true that the Government did not make efforts to reduce the figures. My area of Barnsley has traditionally had a low take-up of post-16 education and training; last year, however, it managed to reduce its number of NEETs from about 15 to 8 per cent. thanks to the valiant efforts of the Connexions service and Government funding. If a constituency such as mine can do that, other areas obviously can. We managed to do it through Government funding and very hard work by our local Connexions service.