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Work and Skills

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentioned redundancies. Does he agree that, particularly with the announcement of redundancies for people who are middle-aged or older in the jobs market, it is unfortunate that in the past couple of years the Government have begun to focus further education funding on training for people who are under 19 and certainly under 25? FE's traditional role to reskill people in their 30s, 40s and 50s after involuntary redundancy has been lost, and that will impact materially on the ability of those people to retrain and to get jobs in this difficult economic climate.