Joan Walley

Given the reference in the statement to the skills accounts and the fact that students will be encouraged to shop around for colleges and courses, does my right hon. Friend agree that my constituents could be disadvantaged if we cannot find a way of retrieving the capital spend for the Stoke on Trent further education college? Will he work with me to try and find a solution so that we have proper facilities in-house locally?

— from debate entitled “Skills for Growth”

The three speeches/headings immediately before

  1. 1 earlier: Patrick McFadden

    I am happy to look at the constituency example that my hon. Friend cites. We made the Train to Gain budget more flexible during the recession by allowing it to be used for shorter courses and also for repeat qualifications, but we are making it very clear that in a world of constrained resources, looking to the future, we will want to focus that budget more readily on areas of future economic growth, and to use some of it to fund the level 3 technician apprenticeships that I have spoken about today.

  2. 2 earlier: David Drew

    I see that my right hon. Friend wants to simplify the organisational clutter of public bodies delivering skills policy. Will he look at what has happened to Renishaw and Delphi in my constituency, where we put in place some very exciting skills training for those on short-time working? That has taken place, but it has not been at anything like the level that some of us would have liked. Will he look into that to see if this is good learning point so that it can help future skills policy?

  3. 3 earlier: Patrick McFadden

    I take exception to Opposition Members attacking our record on capital spending in further education. Let me give the hon. Gentleman the facts: 700 projects in 300 colleges worth £2.7 billion in expenditure. Contrast that with the amount in the last year that his party was in power: no projects, no colleges, not a single penny.

Hide instructions

  1. Have a quick scan of the speech under the video, then press “Play”.
  2. When you hear the start of that speech, press “Now!”.
  3. The timestamped video will then appear on TheyWorkForYou – thanks from everyone who uses the site :)

Some videos will be miles out – if you can't find the right point, don't worry, just try another speech!

  • Sign in if you want to get on the Top Timestampers league table!
  • If the video suddenly jumps a couple of hours, or otherwise appears broken, let us know.
  • If the speech you're looking for is beyond the end of the video, move on to the next video chunk.
  • If you're right at the start of a day, it's quite possible the start of the video will be the end of the previous programme on BBC Parliament, skip ahead some minutes to check :)
  • Hansard is not a verbatim transcript, so spoken words might differ slightly from the printed version. And a small note – if the speech you are looking out for is an oral question (questions asked in the first hour or so of Monday–Thursdays in the Commons), then all the MP will actually say is their question number, e.g. “Number Two”.
  • The skip buttons move in 30 second increments (you can go back before the start point), and you can access a slider by hovering over the video.

Credits: Video from BBC Parliament and mySociety