I will go in order through the Members who spoke. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), who I hugely respect, was on the frontline in trying to keep schools open for most pupils during lockdown, alongside me and many other Members. She made the problems with the catch-up programme very clear, which my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) and the Front Benchers reflected on. There is a cross-party view that the catch-up programme, as it is, may not be fit for purpose, particularly the Randstad part of it. As I said, I urge the Government to look at that, and I am encouraged by what the Minister said.
My fellow Education Committee member, my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge, talked powerfully not just about the catch-up programme, but about skills. What she said about universities is absolutely right. We have had a mantra in this country of university, university, university when it should have been skills, skills, skills. There has been an imbalance and I welcome the moves that the Government are making to change that. That was an important point and I am glad that she mentioned the statistics relating to Germany’s much more vocational education.
I thank the shadow spokesman, the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), for his kind remarks. He was right to highlight the problems with Randstad. He talked about breakfast clubs. Again, I am not asking for more money, but, if the Government were to use just £75 million of the £340 million raised from the sugar levy, that could reach 50% of the most disadvantaged pupils and expand the existing breakfast provision. That is quite important.
I welcome what the Minister said, particularly about the weekly meetings with Randstad and trying to get the catch-up programme working properly. It is important to acknowledge that the overall amount for the tuition programme is £5 billion, not just £1.8 billion. That is a sizeable sum of money in this economic climate. I do not mind at all where the Minister gets the money from for the “ghost children”, but we have to get those 100,000 kids back to school. If there is no underspend, that is fine, but it has to be a proper priority for the Government and there needs to be a serious effort and plan. I am glad that the Minister has explained about the target of 65% of disadvantaged children.
Finally, I do not understand why teaching degree apprentices still have to be graduates. We allow policing degree apprentices and nursing degree apprentices who have not been to university first, so why not teaching degree apprentices?
As I said in the closing remarks of my speech, we need a long-term plan. The Ministry of Defence has a strategic review; the NHS and the Department of Health and Social Care have a long-term plan for health and a funding settlement. If we had the same in education, a lot of the problems that we have talked about today could perhaps be better solved.
Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54).