Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, for securing today’s debate. I will focus on an area too often treated as niche, but which I believe tests our whole approach to skills, vocational training and further and higher education. I am talking of the training pipeline for professional dance. My researcher, Emilia Braddon, as part of the King’s College London parliamentary internship programme helped produce our report called “Creating the Next Billy Elliot”. It found that specialist dance training, though an internationally renowned area, is under real threat from funding pressures, policy blind spots and declining access. Dance and the performing arts contribute over £11 billion in gross value added to our economy, yet the pipeline behind that contribution—the music and dance scheme and the centres for advanced training—face rising costs, no real-terms funding increase, one-year cycles that leave families unable to plan and lost outreach grants that once found the talent in the deprived and disadvantaged communities that we are focused on in today’s debate. Talent is, sadly, not enough. Geography matters. A child in Wakefield or Bradford can reach training in Leeds; a child of equal talent in Bournemouth without the means to travel to London often cannot. Nor is this an England-only regional issue. The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland offers training of genuine international standing, but a child in the highlands faces the same barriers as one in Cumbria. Because skills policy is devolved, our funding schemes and our data on where the gaps lie stop dead at the border. I would therefore advocate a pan-UK mapping exercise and far greater cross-Administration co-operation. Underpinning everything is funding stability. It is disappointing that the Government have yet to confirm funding beyond the current 2026-27 cycle when MDS schools are auditioning for 2027-28 right now. Funding for outreach must be treated as infrastructure, not as an optional extra, or the pipeline will never reach the children who need it most. Finally, strengthening regional growth in all postcodes across the UK requires genuine four nations co-operation. Westminster, Holyrood, the Senedd and Stormont need to share data, best practice and—where it makes sense—co-funding routes. None of this is about one art form or one sector, region or nation. It is about whether a talented child, wherever they are born, has a fair, funded and stable route to vocational success.