Manufacturing Skills
Meur ras, Sir Christopher; it is an honour to serve under your chairship. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley) for adopting this important debate. It will not surprise him that I am going to talk largely about Cornwall. Across Cornwall, our beautiful coastlines hide some of the deepest pockets of deprivation in the country. That deprivation and the lack of opportunity is felt most sharply by our young people. In my constituency, we have neighbourhoods where the child poverty rate is over 40%. Equally concerning is the number of young people claiming unemployment benefit, which is up 39% in the last year alone. But there is hope on the horizon for Cornwall. Our critical minerals sector offers an incredible opportunity to create well-paid, highly skilled jobs that our young people and communities need, all while strengthening the country’s industrial resilience and supporting the transition to a green economy. However, we will realise that opportunity only if young people are equipped with the skills that our local economy and businesses need. To that end, we are moving in the right direction. In September, the new Engineering Mining Academy was launched at Cornwall college, which has been rated outstanding by Ofsted, in partnership with Cornish Metals, based at the South Crofty tin mine. The academy’s location could hardly be better, as it is moments around the corner from South Crofty, which was the last tin mine in the UK to close and is now on course to reopen after 30 years. As projects like South Crofty and the Agratas battery gigafactory advance, demand for mining and manufacturing skills will only grow. I therefore welcome the academy’s focus not only on the engineering and technical skills associated with modern mining, but on transferable skills that create a clear pathway into apprenticeships, employment or further study: welding, construction, carpentry, electronics, plumbing—a lifetime trade for our young people with their hands. Those are the partnerships with industry that we must champion to support our critical minerals and downstream manufacturing sectors. They create good jobs and give young people the aspiration and opportunity to raise their horizons and to build their futures in Cornwall. I therefore ask the Minister to consider what further steps can be taken to realise Cornwall’s potential as the UK’s critical minerals skills hub.