LOCAL MP TO CONVENE SKILLS SUMMIT

Tony Baldry MP will invite Minister to address summit on post-16 skills training

North Oxfordshire MP, Tony Baldry, will host a summit next year on skills training.

The move follows the loss of hundreds of jobs at Alcan in Banbury.  Outlining the summit in a speech to Parliament, Tony Baldry says his vision is for the summit to bring together business, colleges, and young people so that access to funding and skills training can be improved.  Tony Baldry has also written to Ministers outlining his concerns on skills training and will invite a Minister to address the summit.

Tony Baldry MP said:

"Next year, I intend to organise a skills summit in my constituency bringing together local employers and business leaders to ask them what skills they need in the M40 corridor between Oxford and Warwick as we go further into the 21st century. I hope that by next summer the machinery of Government will have sorted itself out so that we know who in the Government is responsible for FE and skills training and we can invite them to the seminar. It is pointless having a Bill on educational opportunity to tackle the question of what are described as NEETs—young people not in education, employment or training—and cutting benefits to youngsters if the Government have no coherence on FE provision, post-16 funding and skills training provision."