Ian Sollom

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Parliament's party history for this member: Liberal Democrat (4 Jul 2024 – present).

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1. 3 Nov 2026·Parliament·Ian Sollom

   Young People and Work: Milburn Interim Report

   It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wrexham (Andrew Ranger) on securing this debate. Alan Milburn’s interim report is a thorough and, in places, uncomfortable piece of work, but it is an important foundation for anyone serious about tackling the waste of a million young people’s talent, not least because it takes apart some myths. Some 54% of young people who are NEET told the review that they want to work, and another 30% want to get into education or training. These are not lazy young people: as the report puts it, they are “exhausted”. The mechanisms that used to bring young people into work are working less well. The first rung has thinned. The share of 16 and 17-year-old students doing any paid work has fallen from 35% in 2006 to just 19%.

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2. 3 Nov 2026·Parliament·Ian Sollom

   Young People and Work: Milburn Interim Report

   I agree. Opportunities have been thinning for a long time, and that is a big part of the issue. Employers ask for experience, but the pathways through which experience was once gained have narrowed or gone. The report is blunt about why the system is failing. Britain has not ignored youth employment. It has had the new deal for young people, the future jobs fund, the youth contract and kickstart, but each was abolished once the immediate crisis passed. Milburn describes what we have as “parallel play”: education is accountable for attainment, welfare for benefit flows and health for treatment, but nobody is accountable for the pathway from childhood to working life. The clearest sign of that is what the report calls the “hidden cohort”: about 314,000 NEETs aged 18 to 24 in England, nearly half of whom claim no benefits at all. They are in no caseload, and no institution is responsible for them. The system needs a long-term commitment through a permanent architecture. That is why the Liberal Democrats advocate a wholesale overhaul of jobs coaching so that every young person has a real person who sits down with them several times a year and helps them to plan where they want to get to, building on models from the Netherlands and Germany. Such support has to be delivered locally, because labour markets, transport and employers operate locally. The risk, Milburn warns us, is that without a national framework, devolution can become a delegation of failure. Skills England ought to be part of that national framework, but in its short life it has already been moved from one Department to another, and it remains simply an Executive agency. It needs supercharging; it should become a genuinely independent body with the standing to work across Government, including local government. The Milburn review estimates that for every £1 the Department for Work and Pensions spent on employment support for young people in 2024-25, about £25 was spent on benefits. In its words, “The UK’s approach for decades has been to pay the bill for…youth inactivity, rather than invest in preventing it”. Milburn argues that the Treasury’s usual value-for-money tests do not look far enough ahead to capture the lasting damage of time out of work or training at a young age. Once that is counted, early intervention pays for itself many times over. In the Budget last week, the Chancellor announced that from the next spending review there will be a ringfenced budget for prevention. The question is whether the support for young people at risk of becoming NEET will go in that ringfenced budget. The report shows that we can already identify many of those most at risk while they are still at school, but the pupil premium stops when a young person turns 16, at exactly the point that the risk peaks. Extending it to post-16 learners, including those in further education, is a long-standing call from the Lib Dems. I hope we see it in Milburn’s prescription. We would also like to see a guarantee to every young person of 100 hours of work experience before they turn 18, so that it no longer depends on who their parents happen to know. That brings me to who else needs to be part of the solution. Milburn has said that there is a contract at the heart of all this, referring to the relationship between young people and the state. I suggest that the contract is missing a signatory. For most young people, the first job is offered not by the state but by an employer. If the final report’s recommendations are to work, employers must be part of the bargain. Milburn’s own evidence makes the case. He argues that as the cost of employment rises, the case for taking on someone inexperienced becomes harder, unless employers are given the support to offset the risk. On cost, the national insurance changes of the Government’s first Budget undoubtedly added to the pressure on part-time, entry-level roles, especially in retail and hospitality. That is why we Liberal Democrats have called, at the very least, for a lower rate between £5,000 and £9,100, but cost is only half of it. A large employer can absorb the risk of a young recruit who needs supervision and support; a small firm often cannot, however cheap the hire. That is why we have proposed skills co-operatives as part of the solution, with SMEs pooling training and pastoral support so that no single business carries the whole risk of giving a young person their first start. I realise that the Minister will not pre-empt the final report, so I have three questions of principle. First, the report highlights that no institution is responsible for this. Does the Minister accept it as principle that someone must be, and should that responsibility be with a named local body working within a national framework that guarantees a minimum standard? Secondly, will employment support and post-16 provision for disadvantaged young people count as preventive spending when the new ringfenced budget is set? Thirdly, before any new obligations are placed on young people, will the Government ensure that the support offer is in place? The report says that inaction or tinkering at the edges is itself a decision—a costly one. I hope the Minister will tell us that the final report will be met with something much more than that.

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3. 28 Oct 2026·Parliament·Ian Sollom

   Higher Education Funding

   It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) on securing this debate. Sheffield is an excellent place to ground this debate because it has two great examples of the origin stories of many of our universities. The University of Sheffield is a civic university in the truest sense. When it sought its charter in 1904, steelworkers, factory workers and other local people raised over £50,000 in penny donations to support it. Sheffield Hallam traces its roots to the School of Design, which was founded in 1843 to train designers for the city’s industry, and became a university in 1992. One <span id="150WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="150WH"></span>red brick, one post ’92: both serve the city and both embody the idea of universities as anchors of their community. That idea is now at risk. Later today the Chancellor delivers his first Budget; every signal is that universities should expect very little from it. We cannot continue to ignore the stark choice before us when it comes to university policy. Either we carry on with a managed decline—courses cut, talent lost, places left behind—or we can choose transformation with universities as engines of learning throughout life, as innovation hubs driving economic growth and as civic institutions embedded in the places they serve. The Liberal Democrats would choose transformation, and I hope the Government will do the same. At the moment, too many universities are fighting for survival. More than a third of English providers were in deficit last year. The Department’s own costing study found that universities lose about £3,000 on every home undergraduate they teach. Research is worse: universities now recover only two thirds of research costs. According to the Russell Group, universities put in £6.3 billion of their own money into research last year. For many years now, the funding gap has been filled by international students, but that income is now also falling away. Visa applications in August—the peak month—were down by 17% on a year ago. Of course, education as a great British export is about much more than money, but the business model that has saved the Government from spending more on home students and research is being undermined. The Government have said that they intend, in the Finance Bill that will follow today’s Budget, to legislate for a £925 levy on every international student. Only a tiny sliver of that money will go to the maintenance grants put forward as a justification for it. This crisis does not simply affect an ivory tower elite who sit apart from our communities: in many towns and cities, the university is one of the largest employers and the source of the next generation of teachers, nurses, engineers and members of many other professions. Such universities produce graduates who are likely to stay and work locally and serve the students who are often least able to move away to study. When a nursing course or engineering department closes in such a place, it does not relocate; it disappears from the region. With it goes a route into a profession for everyone who cannot simply up sticks and leave. Post-’92 universities carry a burden that their older neighbours do not. For no other reason than institutional history, they are tied into the teachers’ pension scheme, for which employer contributions reached 28.7% last year—roughly double what many older universities pay, and about £8,000 extra a year for a typical member of staff. In July the Government ruled out any help, but part of solving this crisis in the sector must include working towards a single, fairer pensions framework. There is also the question of what happens when one of these institutions does not survive. The Office for Students told the Education Committee that 24 institutions could exit the market within a year. The Committee recommended a special administration regime so that a failing university could keep teaching while its future was resolved, but the Government have said that they are “not currently persuaded” because legislating would be too complex. I would say that that is an argument for starting now, not for doing nothing.<span id="151WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="151WH"></span> Further education colleges have had a special regime since 2019, and having no regime has its own risks. With no orderly way to fail, many simply assume that the Government will step in. Sir Philip Augar has said that a handful of universities are already getting secret bail-outs. When I asked Ministers about that, I was told that emergency support is not provided, but also that officials meet universities and their banks regularly in confidence. Discussing potential rescues behind closed doors gives us all the moral hazard and none of the transparency. Liberal Democrats see universities as essential national infrastructure, not cost centres to be squeezed. That means a new settlement: in the short term, reform the levy before it reaches the statute book; reprofile student loan fee payments to ease the cash flow; offer low-interest loans for restructuring; and remove the VAT penalty that stops universities from sharing back-office services, so that they merge finance and HR rather than cut teaching. We need to fund the breadth of subjects in every region and make sure that public research grants actually cover the 80% of costs that they are supposed to. But this needs to come alongside obligations on universities. The money alone will not fix the problem. After 2030, the number of 18-year-olds will fall by 17%, yet 82% of the growth in priority occupations in the industrial strategy sectors will require a higher education qualification. Put those two facts together, and a model built around school leavers simply will not work in the long term. Many of those who will fill the jobs in that growth are already in work and will need to retrain as technology reshapes what they do. Universities need to open up to adults through modular lifelong learning, which we suggest needs to be through lifelong skills grants, not simply loans. Universities also need to work hand in hand with further education colleges, with credits that transfer between them, and they need to turn British research into businesses that stay in Britain.

   Hansard source
4. 28 Oct 2026·Parliament·Ian Sollom

   Higher Education Funding

   A lot of the interventions that I have suggested on the university side are cost-neutral and would involve restructuring. I have three questions for the Minister. First, will the Government update their impact analysis to reflect this year’s fall in international recruitment and publish the effect by region and type of institution of the international student levy before the Finance Bill is debated? Secondly, will they think again about special administration before rather than after a university fails? Thirdly, will the <span id="152WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="152WH"></span>Government commit to working with the sector to end the pensions penalty on post-’92 universities? Universities did not get to this position overnight and they will not recover overnight, but today’s Budget is a chance to stop the managed decline and start the transformation. I hope the Chancellor takes it.

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5. 26 Oct 2026·Parliament·Ian Sollom

   Prostate Cancer Screening

   It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Dr Murrison. I am particularly proud to have my constituent Dave Young in the Gallery today. Dave was diagnosed with prostate cancer without symptoms in 2024, following a PSA test, and he has since dedicated himself to helping other men catch theirs early. Around 350 men have been directly tested through his campaigning in and around St Neots, and at an event in September, 122 men were seen in a single day. Of the six investigated afterwards, four have had cancer confirmed, so I thank Dave. The best tribute that we can pay to Dave and other campaigners like him is to get the policy right. I challenge the Minister on whether the National Screening Committee’s modelling back in May actually did that. The committee judged screening against a threshold of £20,000 per quality-adjusted life year, but since April, NICE can approve a medicine for advanced prostate cancer at up to £35,000. Analysis commissioned by Prostate Cancer Research showed that treating a man diagnosed at stage 4 costs roughly 10 times as much as stage 1, so the NHS will pay more to treat this cancer once it is incurable than it is prepared to pay to find it earlier. That does not seem consistent. The case against wider screening rests on harms, overdiagnosis and unnecessary treatment. I will not repeat what Members have said on the statistics for that, but I would like to ask whether the screening was judged as the NHS would actually deliver it today, with MRI scans, or as it was delivered 20 years ago. Can the Minister publish the model on terms equivalent to NICE, so that independent experts can test it and give a dated timetable for reconsidering the decision? Dave and other men campaigning on the issue would very much appreciate that.

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6. 22 Oct 2026·Parliament·Ian Sollom

   Business of the House

   On Monday, the Children’s Commissioner—a statutory role created by this House to protect children’s rights—launched a report that declared a state of emergency for children across England. I am disappointed that the Education Secretary has not come to the House to make a statement on that report. Will the Leader of the House ask the Education Secretary to do so, and also schedule Government time for a debate on the Children Commissioner’s recommendations, so that we can discuss them fully?

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7. 20 Oct 2026·Parliament·Ian Sollom

   Manufacturing Skills

   It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley) on securing this important debate. I start with some numbers we should celebrate: UK manufacturing produces output worth £220 billion and supports 2.6 million jobs, paying on average 8% more than the rest of the economy, and it accounts for 42% of our exports and almost half of all business research and development. It is a sector of skilled, well-paid careers that we are rightly proud of, but it is also a sector that could do more if it had more of the skilled people it needs. Skills England identifies advanced manufacturing as having the third highest proportion of skills shortage vacancies of any sector, and projects that 84% of the additional jobs in its priority occupations to 2035 will need qualifications at level 4 or above. The businesses in Cambridgeshire that kindly shared their insights with me in advance of this debate described problems that I suspect Members from every part of the country will recognise. One electronics firm, Cap Air, told me that although electronics is the largest manufacturing sub-sector in our region, the county is a dead spot for the sort of technical education it needs, with training necessitating travel outside the county. There is no occupational standard for much of the work the company does. As Cap Air put it, “You cannot fund a course for a job the system does not recognise.” That is a national problem for Skills England, but lack of local provision is something places could fix for themselves. I hope the Prime Minister’s well-known enthusiasm for devolution extends to giving areas like ours the skills, powers and capital funding to do it. Another manufacturer in my constituency, ZEISS, which makes electron microscopes, makes a related point about the future. Advanced manufacturing now combines traditional mechanical and electrical engineering with automation, software, data and AI, and we need to <span id="308WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="308WH"></span>build those capabilities now before they become critical shortages, not just fill today’s vacancies. In 2024-25, there were over 46,000 starts in engineering and manufacturing in England, but level 2 manufacturing starts fell by 80% in the five years to 2023-24. That is a significant problem in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. The Liberal Democrats have long called for the apprenticeship levy to be replaced, so we welcome the Government’s move to a more flexible growth and skills levy, but we recognise that progress has been slow. Apprenticeship units have been available since April, yet the skills charity Enginuity found that a fifth of manufacturing SMEs have never heard of them, and only one in 10 think that they will fill their skills gaps. On the Department’s own forecasts, apprenticeship spending is due to fall after this year, even as levy receipts rise. Employers tell me that the system needs to be straightforward for employers to use, responsive to changing industrial needs, and attractive to young people as a genuine alternative to university, but too often it is none of those things for smaller firms. The apprenticeship model may work for large employers, but a firm of 20 cannot easily release a young employee for two or sometimes three days a week to a college that might be miles away. It is also difficult for them to carry the paperwork that comes with. Another manufacturer in my constituency, Domino Printing Sciences, pointed out that employers pay into the levy but cannot use it to cover much of the real cost of employing and developing an apprentice, as the funding bands for many engineering apprenticeships simply do not cover the cost of delivery. As a result, we have employers with skills gaps, young people who need good routes into careers, and apprenticeship funding that is not fully used. As hon. Members might expect me to say, there is a lot that the Government could take from Liberal Democrat policy. We would like to introduce skills tax credits with enhanced relief for priority sectors to reflect the fact that skills are an investment. We would also establish structures for skills co-operatives—I know the Prime Minister likes co-operatives—so that smaller firms can pool training resources and even rotate apprentices between them. We would also expand higher technical routes, such as higher national certificates, higher national diplomas, foundation degrees and higher apprenticeships, building on the investment already made in FE colleges and institutes of technology. We would like Skills England to be a truly independent body with employers at its heart. Already in its short life, it has been moved from the Department for Education to the Department for Work and Pensions. It remains an Executive agency in that Department and is not the independent voice for skills that employers really need, so I urge the Government to look again at giving it genuine independence. I have three questions for the Minister. First, levy receipts are forecast to be £4.5 billion this year, but after the devolved nations’ share and England’s £3.3 billion budget, about £700 million will not be returned to the skills system but will stay with the Treasury. On the Government’s own spending predictions, that will rise to about £1 billion next year. Will the Minister commit to ensuring that the money raised for skills is spent on skills and is not clawed back by the Treasury? Secondly, will the review of funding bands address the shortfall of up to £8,000 per apprentice that employers face in engineering and manufacturing? Thirdly, will the <span id="309WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="309WH"></span>Minister press Skills England to develop occupational standards for a wider variety of manufacturing roles, such as printed circuit board assembly, which the system currently cannot see? Nyobolt, a battery manufacturer in my constituency, put it well: the opportunity now is to make sure the skills pipeline develops at the same pace as the technology. Skills, like manufacturing investment itself, require multi-year, long-horizon decisions. Industry needs a long-term, stable plan from the Government, and I hope the Minister will tell us that it is coming.

   Hansard source
8. 19 Oct 2026·Parliament·Ian Sollom

   Controlling or Coercive Behaviour: Sentencing

   It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Mundell. My constituency has one of the highest numbers of signatures on today’s petition, showing a clear desire to support Paris Shears’s campaign. I am pleased to be here to show my support and urge the Government to put victims at the heart of every stage of their approach to tackling domestic abuse. In Cambridgeshire last year, 16% of all recorded crimes were related to domestic abuse. There were 59 arrests per 100 such crimes, and 31 cases of domestic abuse per 10,000 females were deemed high-risk enough to be discussed at multi-agency risk-assessment conferences. Those are deeply concerning statistics. We all want to reduce those figures to zero, so it is alarming that virtually none of them has significantly reduced in Cambridgeshire in the past five years. Particularly pertinent to today’s debate is the number of high-risk cases that are repeat issues. In Cambridgeshire, 38% of cases are repeatedly discussed at multi-agency risk assessment conferences, compared with 29% nationally. Our area has been consistently above average in this regard for the past five years. It may be that higher repeat referrals reflect agencies getting better at spotting repeat victimisation—I hope that that is part of it—but those figures also suggest that too many of the most serious cases are coming back around and that something in the system is allowing the cycle to continue. The idea at the centre of the debate—sentence reductions for guilty pleas—is good in theory. There is a huge court backlog, which has worn away public confidence in the criminal justice system and has allowed criminals to get away with their offences. A graduated system of sentence reduction provides little reward to the offender for waiting to change their plea and speeds up proceedings where a guilty verdict may have been reached anyway, but in Paris’s case and in so many others, the unique and insidious nature of domestic abuse means that what should be a way of clearing the case backlog for simple cases has been repurposed by abusers into a tool to maintain control over their victim until the very last minute. We cannot let that continue. The Sentencing Council’s guideline is clear about why a discount exists: a guilty plea normally reduces the impact of the crime on victims and spares them from having to give evidence. In most cases, that holds—even a late plea spares a victim the witness box—but coercive control is different because the wait itself is part of the harm. Every month for which a perpetrator maintains a not guilty plea is another month in which they shape their victim’s life. A guilty plea on the morning of the trial does not undo that; it is often the final act of control. The guideline’s assumption that a late guilty plea still benefits the victim simply does not fit these cases.<span id="270WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="270WH"></span> The law already gives courts room to recognise that. Section 73 of the Sentencing Act 2020 requires courts to consider not only the stage at which a guilty plea was indicated, but the circumstances in which it was given. Will the Minister ask the Sentencing Council to look specifically at how those circumstances are assessed in controlling or coercive behaviour cases and whether tactical delay by a perpetrator should reduce the discount or remove it altogether? Paris’s campaign speaks to wider concerns about the lack of support in place for victims of domestic abuse, including controlling or coercive behaviour, throughout the judicial process. This goes beyond the criminal courts. Several constituents have contacted me about serious problems in, for example, the family courts, where victims are failed by irregularities in the provision of special measures. It was welcome that automatic eligibility for measures such as protective screens and curtains, support persons and private testimony was expanded to domestic abuse victims in 2021, but that counts for little if those measures are not actually in place on the day. In much the same way as we have discussed in relation to a last-minute guilty plea, the continual failure to put appropriate protections in place for victims when they attend court is simply allowing their abuse and emotional distress to continue. Has the Minister considered making special measures standard in courtrooms in order to ensure that no victim will ever be without them, and what does he think to recommending that proceedings be suspended where promised protections have failed to be put in place? A 2021 report from the Victims’ Commissioner noted huge gaps in our understanding of the demand for and supply of special measures and recommended that the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office develop a national protocol for data collection. That protocol has been in place since 2024, and I would appreciate hearing how the data is being used to make improvements in the provision of those measures. Victims need to be put first at every stage, and in every bit of guidance, through real measures to protect them both in court and outside it. The Government have committed to updating the controlling or coercive behaviour statutory guidance before the end of 2026, and I hope that they will keep that promise, for Paris and the thousands of others who are being and have been failed by the system.

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9. 19 Oct 2026·Parliament·Ian Sollom

   Points of Order

   On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Today the Children’s Commissioner has published a report indicating that children in England face a state of emergency. Has the Secretary of State for Education given any indication that she intends to come to the House to give a statement and allow Members to question her on the Government’s response?

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10. 15 Oct 2026·Parliament·Ian Sollom

    National Care Service

    My constituent Maxwell has spinal muscular atrophy and needs a significant amount of personal care. He has just started a graduate job, but because of the frozen £23,250 capital limit, any savings he builds up go on care charges, so he cannot save a deposit for a home or for the safety net that his disability demands. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) said that we assume this to be the case, but will the Minister confirm that free personal care will be included for working-age disabled adults such as Maxwell? Until it arrives, would she unfreeze and raise the capital limit so that we are not placing a limit on his aspiration?

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