Politics

The thirty ministers of state in this coalition could be forgiven for feeling a bit unloved. They are notionally the most senior members of the government after the Cabinet. But every time there has been a Cabinet vacancy, they have been passed over. The three Cabinet positions that have become available have gone to a backbencher and two parliamentary under secretaries respectively. Judging from the talk around Westminster, Cameron and Clegg’s respective decisions to bypass the ministers of state has left them feeling a bit sore and rather nervous about the reshuffle, currently expected post-Olympics. Many ministers of state regard this reshuffle as their last chance to make Cabinet. One

If there are ‘no votes in skills’, as the old dictum goes, there seem to be some in apprenticeships. Hence David Cameron’s call this morning for apprenticeships to become a ‘gold standard’ qualification ranking alongside degrees from the best universities. His goal is to rectify Britain’s shockingly poor performance on mid-level skills compared to world leaders such as Germany. So how hard would it be for us to catch the Germans? The numbers speak for themselves. Of every 1,000 employed people in England 11 are apprentices; compared to 40 in Germany. Here, fewer than one in ten employers are training an apprentice; in Germany it’s roughly a third. Although the

The coming release of Abu Qatada on bail is going to put bellows under the whole debate about the European Court of Human Rights. In his recent speech to the Council of Europe, David Cameron rightly protested about a situation with terror suspects in which ‘you cannot try them, you cannot detain them and you cannot deport them.’ We will now find out how quickly Cameron is prepared to act on this issue. If Cameron wants to makes changes to the Courts and the Convention, then he is going to have to get agreement from every member of the Council of Europe. There’s no guarantee that he’ll be able to

House of Lords reform is one of those subjects that make most people’s eyes glaze over. But it is going to dominate the next parliamentary session. The Queen’s Speech will include a bill for elections in 2015 for 20 per cent of the seats in the Lords using a ‘Proportional Representation’ voting system. This bill will take an age to get through the Commons, where it has to start if the coalition is to use the Parliament Act to push it through, let alone the Lords. One of the things that’ll be fascinating to watch is how large a Conservative rebellion there is on the issue. There are already Tory

I was immensely proud to co-host an event at the House of Commons with Robert Halfon, the Conservative MP for Harlow, to promote apprenticeships in parliament. The workaholic Mr Halfon came up with the idea of launching a Parliamentary Academy last year after taking on an apprentice in his own office. To me it seems the ideal way to get MPs to put their money where their collective mouth is, which is why my charity New Deal of the Mind has  started a pilot scheme with four apprentices in and around Westminster in partnership with the National Skills Academy for the creative and cultural sector and North Hertfordshire College. To