House of Commons

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

Wednesday 21 July 2010

The House met at half-past Eleven o’clock

Prayers

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

1. What recent discussions he has had with CBI Scotland on the condition of the Scottish economy.

[The Secretary of State for Scotland (Michael Moore)]

I have had productive discussions with CBI Scotland and others on the Scottish economy, as has my right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, and I plan to meet them again in the near future. Our plan to cut the record budget deficit that this Government inherited is the key to ensuring a sustained economic recovery.

[Julian Smith]

In the years to come, it must be the private sector that creates the growth and jobs in Scotland; it is not realistic to have an ever-increasing public sector there. Does the Secretary of State agree that for my constituents in Skipton and Ripon to be funding an ever-expanding Scottish state is an unfair situation?

[Michael Moore]

Across the United Kingdom we inherited a huge deficit in the public finances, which we have to tackle. If we do not, it will not be in just the private sector but the public sector where difficulties will arise.

[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

Recent economic indicators show that the recession in Scotland has been shorter and shallower than in the rest of the UK, but the recovery is fragile. Does the Secretary of State therefore agree that the case for proper financial responsibility in Scotland to help drive economic growth makes sense?

[Michael Moore]

I quite accept the underlying figures that the hon. Gentleman refers to, and the situation in Scotland and in the whole of the UK is indeed challenging. However, as far as future financial accountability and other issues in Scotland are concerned, we believe that the Calman proposals, which we will bring forward in this House, offer the best way forward.

[Angus Robertson]

Professor Andrew Hughes Hallett, who advised the Calman commission, says that proper fiscal responsibility could significantly add to Scotland’s GDP. Is the Secretary of State looking closely at the proposals for growth and not just at a funding mechanism, which will not achieve that?

[Michael Moore]

I am sorry but I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s proposition, and nor should he ignore the others who sat with Professor Hughes Hallett on the Calman commission expert group. They have recently again made it plain that they believe these are the most appropriate powers to give to Scotland at this time.

[Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)]

In my right hon. Friend’s discussions with the CBI, did he recognise that it is very important to build on the success stories in Scotland in order further to advance the Scottish economy? To that end, with the north-east of Scotland providing so much revenue to the Treasury, will he ensure that all levels of government realise how important it is that there be no barriers to investment there, and that companies locating there benefit both the region and the UK?

[Michael Moore]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that, and in getting private sector-led recovery in this country, businesses such as those in the energy sector in the north-east will be absolutely critical. I take on board all the observations he makes.

[Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman is having meetings with the CBI, but does he understand that the Government’s cancelling the third runway at Heathrow will have a remarkable effect on Scotland’s air transport system? What is he going to do about that?

[Michael Moore]

We fundamentally disagree with the proposal for the third runway, as the hon. Gentleman understands; we do not believe that it is appropriate either economically or environmentally. The important point is that, by ensuring that we work with the private sector across the whole of government—be it our proposals in the Budget to reduce corporation tax, or the many others to do with banking reform—we believe that we will create the right conditions for the private sector and the transport sector to recover and have a sustainable future.

[Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)]

Scottish employers know that the future jobs fund helps people back into work. The Secretary of State for Scotland claims that it is unsustainable, but he will not publish a shred of evidence to back up his assertion. Employers, the unemployed and even Liberal Democrats in his own constituency support the future jobs fund. As unemployment continues to rise across Scotland, I ask the Secretary of State this specific question: will he now agree to lobby the Chancellor to maintain the future jobs fund in Scotland?

[Michael Moore]

We had this exchange during the last Scottish questions, and the right hon. Gentleman has repeated the phrase that I used then. If I may, I will repeat the point I made then. The future jobs fund was not sustainable in the form it was in. May I remind him, as I did then, that places are still available under that scheme, which will run through to March next year? Some 11,000 places have been funded, but they were temporary, short-term jobs. We believe that a new system of supporting the unemployed is the best way forward.

[Mr Murphy]

So, the Secretary of State will not publish a shred of the evidence behind his assertion, and today he has confirmed that he will not even listen to Scotland and meet the Chancellor in order to maintain the future jobs fund and help the unemployed in Scotland. Does he not share the sense of anger across Scotland about the policy immorality of a gang of millionaire politicians cutting support to the most vulnerable people across Scotland? The only surprise for many people in Scotland is that he, as a Liberal Democrat, is going along with it. But perhaps Scotland should not be surprised, because he is fast developing a reputation not as Scotland’s man in the Cabinet, but as the Tories’ salesman in Scotland.

[Michael Moore]

The immorality would be for us to do nothing about the legacy left behind by the right hon. Gentleman’s Government, which is undermining the public sector and any prospect of a private sector recovery.

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

2. What recent discussions he has had with the Deputy Prime Minister on the implementation in Scotland of proposals to equalise the size of constituencies; and if he will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for Scotland (Michael Moore)]

By equalising the size of constituencies across the UK, we will ensure that people’s votes carry the same weight. We have proposed the two exceptions of Orkney and Shetland and the Western Isles to take account of their special geographic circumstances. The Bill that we will introduce will also provide for an upper limit on the geographical size of a constituency.

[Graham Evans]

In Scotland, there are urban seats that have an electorate of between 50,000 and 80,000; that disparity cannot be justified by extreme geography. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is disappointing that the previous Government had so little regard for the fundamental principle that every vote should have equal value? [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. First, some questions are too long, and secondly, at this early stage, the atmosphere is far too raucous. Right hon. and hon. Members need to calm down.

[The Comptroller of Her Majesty's Household (Mr Alistair Carmichael)]

This is Scottish questions!

[Michael Moore]

Yes, we have a few traditions to maintain. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) on the basic principle that votes should have equal weight across the country, wherever they are cast.

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

Members of the House understand the unique geographical factors that affect island communities, but does the Secretary of State accept that it would be grossly unfair to Scotland’s great cities if their constituency numbers were artificially inflated as a result of that fact, to make up the difference, so that the Government can reach an arbitrary number plucked out by Conservative party central office? Surely the issue should be determined solely by the independent Boundary Commission, not the Conservative party that he seeks to support?

[Michael Moore]

The hon. Lady is trying to advance the very strange principle that across the country there should be different weights for votes, depending on where they are cast. We have to ensure that when we redraw the boundaries, we equalise out those votes to give them equal weight. If people need to register to vote, let us get on with ensuring that they do; there is a responsibility on all of us, and on local authorities, to ensure that that happens.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

3. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the effects on levels of employment in Scotland of ending the future jobs fund.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)]

All existing future jobs fund commitments will be honoured, and there are still places available. Next year, we will bring forward our Work programme, which will introduce better targeted and more effective support for young people and the unemployed.

[Ian Murray]

Until the recent worldwide economic downturn, youth unemployment in my constituency was all but eradicated. The future jobs fund created 11,000 jobs, and was projected to create another 20,000. What strategy does the Under-Secretary have on youth unemployment, or are the Government just hoping for a visit from the fairy job mother?

[David Mundell]

The future jobs fund creates temporary, short-term posts, and the grants do not include any incentives to move people into permanent jobs. Our investment will move young people into sustainable employment, rather than creating temporary changes to unemployment.

[Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)]

Will the Minister advise the House of the cost of each permanent job provided by the future jobs fund?

[David Mundell]

It is clear that the future jobs fund was not an effective use of resources. It was aimed at making temporary changes to unemployment figures, rather than moving people into sustainable, permanent jobs.

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

4. What recent assessment he has made of the recommendations of the final report of the Commission on Scottish Devolution.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

5. What the proposed timetable is for implementation of the Calman commission’s recommendations.

[The Secretary of State for Scotland (Michael Moore)]

As I outlined in response to questions from hon. Members on 16 June, I have asked officials to work for the autumn introduction of a Bill to take forward legislative proposals, with non-legislative recommendations taken forward under a similar time scale.

[Tom Greatrex]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that reply. He knows, or at least I hope he does, that one of the considerations in moving to a Scottish income tax, as proposed in a recommendation by the Calman commission, was whether Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs systems would be able to collect it. They currently cannot; how does that fact correspond with the comments that the Chancellor made yesterday about tax simplification?

[Michael Moore]

As I have set out, we intend to engage fully with the different sectors in Scotland that will be affected by the changes. As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, we are heavily engaged with the Treasury and HMRC to work our way through the changes that will come as a consequence of Calman, which I believe his party still supports.

[Lindsay Roy]

Does the Secretary of State agree with the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the Scottish Parliament, Tavish Scott, when he says:

“Politicians should not be able to take easy spending decisions without the responsibility of accounting for this money. Blaming Westminster should not be a get-out clause”?

[Michael Moore]

I am in complete agreement with the hon. Gentleman.

[Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that the devolution settlement in Scotland depends on having free and fair elections to the Scottish Parliament? Does he not see that the integrity of those elections is in danger of being undermined by the Government’s deciding to hold a referendum on the alternative vote on the same day as elections to the Scottish Parliament?

[Michael Moore]

I regret having to disagree with my hon. Friend. We propose a referendum on the change to the voting system for this place on the same day as an election to the Scottish Parliament. We believe that that is entirely sensible. It will reduce cost, it will be more practical and it is on the same way of voting as in elections to the Scottish Parliament, so we will be able to cope with that without too much difficulty.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

6. Whether he has had discussions with the Deputy Prime Minister on the West Lothian question.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)]

My hon. Friend will be aware that the coalition agreement specifically commits this Government to establishing a commission to look at the West Lothian question. We will bring forward proposals in the autumn.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

The biggest threat to the United Kingdom comes not from Scotland but from the resentment that people in England feel at the current constitutional settlement. My right hon. Friend and I both stood on a manifesto promise that we would stop Scottish MPs voting on matters in this House that related only to England. When will that happen?

[David Mundell]

As I said in my answer, a commission is to be established. This coalition Government, unlike the previous Government, are determined to deal with the issue.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

Can the Under-Secretary justify to his constituents the fact that he will not take part in such debates and such votes when he knows only too well that his constituents depend on health service provision in Cumbria and further education support from Cumbria? Is it not right that he takes an interest in what is happening this side of the border?

[David Mundell]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I will be taking an interest in the resolution of the West Lothian question. The hon. Gentleman agreed with Lord Derry Irving when he said that the only answer to the West Lothian question was not to ask it.

[Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

7. What recent discussions he has had with the First Minister on the relationship between the Government and the Scottish Executive under the devolution settlement.

[The Secretary of State for Scotland (Michael Moore)]

I am regularly in contact with Ministers from the Scottish Government, including the First Minister, on a range of matters.

[Mr Amess]

I am delighted that the Prime Minister visited the Scottish Parliament on the third day of the new Government, unlike his predecessor who never visited there, but will the right hon. Gentleman have a word with the Prime Minister to encourage him to visit the Scottish Parliament again to have further discussions with the First Minister about the relationship between the Government and the Scottish Executive to see whether the new miracle cure for prostate cancer can be made available throughout England?

[Michael Moore]

I absolutely agree that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister took an important step when he visited the Scottish Parliament to meet the First Minister at such short notice after the coalition was formed. I understand the anguish, not just in Lockerbie and Scotland generally but across the world, about what happened in the course of the release of the Lockerbie bomber, but I believe that the medical decision was taken in good faith.

[Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

Given what the Secretary of State has said, will he press all relevant UK Government Departments to release all papers relating to both the negotiation of the prisoner transfer agreement between the UK and Libya and the concurrent commercial contract between BP and Libya?

[Michael Moore]

The Prime Minister in his discussions with the President of the United States and other senior American politicians has put forward the proposal that the Cabinet Secretary will review the papers that exist, and we believe that that is a very important step forward, and one that, hopefully, will find support across the House.

[Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)]

8. What discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on tax relief for the computer games industry in Scotland; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)]

My right hon. Friend is meeting the hon. Gentleman and representatives from the industry next week to discuss how best to stimulate further growth and expansion in this important sector.

[Jim McGovern]

We are actually meeting tomorrow, not next week. How can the Government justify a £110 million tax break for the film industry, but not allow a £50 million tax break for Dundee and the games industry?

[David Mundell]

I am glad that the Government are dealing with the issues that the hon. Gentleman raises with even more urgency. As he knows, the major package of reforms to business taxation in the Budget is designed to make the UK the most competitive tax regime in the G20 and that will substantially help the video games industry.

[Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)]

9. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the effects on Scotland of ending the future jobs fund.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)]

I refer the hon. Lady to the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray).

[Gemma Doyle]

I am disappointed that yet again the Minister has failed to address the substance of this question. I have listened to his colleagues rubbishing these jobs, calling them artificial and unsustainable. Frankly, I am not surprised that a Cabinet packed with millionaires who went to exclusive private schools and elitist universities cannot see the need for such a scheme and how valuable it is to have paid employment on the CVs of these young unemployed people. Will he press his colleagues to re-examine the decision to scrap the future jobs fund?

[David Mundell]

When I had the opportunity to visit the Clydebank jobcentre in the hon. Lady’s constituency, I found that the people there—who are on the front line in helping the unemployed into work—welcomed the Government’s measures to replace the myriad schemes introduced by the previous Government with a single Work programme.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

10. What recent discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the effect on households in Scotland of the proposed increase in the rate of value added tax.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)]

The VAT rise is part of a fair and progressive Budget. Difficult decisions are necessary to tackle the record deficit that this Government have inherited, but the richest will pay more than the poorest.

[Mrs McGuire]

Given that every independent analysis says that VAT rises are not progressive but regressive, did the Minister examine the impact of the rise on any aspect of Scottish industry and, in particular, the tourism industry in my constituency, which is a large employer and very relevant to household incomes? Did the Government look at the impact of the increase in VAT on anything?

[David Mundell]

The right hon. Lady makes a good point about the tourism industry and she will know that many jobs in that industry are low paid. The decision to raise the income tax personal allowance for under-65s by £1,000 in 2011-12 will benefit 2 million basic rate income tax payers in Scotland, including many working in the tourism industry.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

11. What recent discussions he has had with CBI Scotland on the state of the Scottish economy.

[The Secretary of State for Scotland (Michael Moore)]

I have had productive discussions with CBI Scotland and others on the Scottish economy, as has my right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, and I plan to meet them again in the near future.

[Fiona Bruce]

Bearing in mind that trade and industry is a reserved matter while economic development is devolved—and that both are vital in addressing the key challenge of economic growth—how will the Secretary of State use his role to work effectively to stimulate private enterprise and job creation in Scotland?

[Michael Moore]

Given the legacy that we were left by the Labour Government, it is essential that we tackle the deficit so that we can tackle interest rates and do not pay the cost in jobs. As far as the private sector is concerned, the measures introduced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor in the Budget, which we passed in the Third Reading of the Finance Bill last night, will see corporation tax lowered over the course of this Parliament, and include others to boost the private sector.

[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

Given the delicate state of the Scottish economy and the fears about the recovery, does the Secretary of State accept that the proposed massive cuts in public spending—including the huge job losses and the taking of so much money out of the economy—risk a double-dip recession?

[Michael Moore]

If we do not get rid of the historic deficit inherited by the Government—at £155 billion, the largest in peacetime history—we will pay the price in lost jobs for years and years to come. It is essential that we tackle that and take on board the other measures set out in the Budget to ensure we get a good private sector-led recovery, which will fund future public services.

[Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it was wrong of the Scottish Parliament to release al-Megrahi supposedly on compassionate grounds, and that this matter should be looked into given that he committed a horrendous crime?

[Michael Moore]

The decision to release al-Megrahi was a decision for the Scottish Government—it was entirely theirs, and they answer for that decision—but we, as a Government, have made plain what we felt about it. However, there have been inquiries in the House and the Scottish Parliament, and I do not believe that, at this stage, a public inquiry would be appropriate.

[Margaret Curran (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

Is the Secretary of State aware of research by Oxford Economics that states that 2.3 million jobs in the private sector will be lost because of the Government’s public sector cuts? Can he explain the devastation that that will cause in Glasgow, which it predicts will be the second-hardest hit city? What does he plan to do for jobs in Glasgow, not only in the public sector but in the private sector? Will the number of jobs go up or down in Glasgow because of his Government?

[Michael Moore]

Across the country we want rising levels of employment and to ensure that, through a private sector-led recovery, we will have a sustainable economy going forward. Were we just to keep going as the hon. Lady’s colleagues in the previous Labour Government did, we would be in very deep trouble indeed.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

12. What discussions he has had with ministerial colleagues and the Scottish Executive on upgrading the A1 in Scotland.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)]

The provision of road transport in Scotland is a devolved matter. Transport Scotland is responsible for the management and maintenance of the trunk road network in Scotland, including the A1.

[Guy Opperman]

For 13 years we have had an A1 that is largely single-laned, holding back economic development in south-east Scotland and Northumberland. Will its upgrade be considered in the comprehensive spending review?

[David Mundell]

I advise my hon. Friend that the Scottish Government have no proposals for any major schemes on the A1 trunk road in Scotland, but I will speak to colleagues in the Department for Transport about the need to liaise on cross-border routes. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There are far too many private conversations taking place in the Chamber, and the decibel level is far too high. I wish to hear the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty).

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

13. If he will take steps to ensure that account is taken in the strategic defence and security review of the implications for the Scottish economy of that review.

[The Secretary of State for Scotland (Michael Moore)]

Maintaining a strong Scottish economy is one of my top priorities, and I have, and will continue to have, regular conversations with my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Defence and the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the implications for Scotland of the strategic defence and security review.

[Thomas Docherty]

Thousands of highly prized, highly skilled and highly paid jobs in manufacturing and engineering are dependent on the aircraft carriers going ahead. Back in Fife, all political parties, including the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives, support the building of the second aircraft carrier. The Secretary of State’s former special adviser said that scrapping the second aircraft carrier would be crazy. Will the Secretary of State therefore come to Fife and meet the management and work force at Babcock during the summer recess, so that they can present their case—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We have got the essence of it, and we are grateful.

[Michael Moore]

I join the hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to the skills and expertise of the engineering sector, not just in defence but in so many other parts of the Scottish and UK economies. I fully understand the concerns that he is raising, and many of these issues are being considered as part of the strategic defence review. He might also be aware that I am planning to visit Babcock in the next few weeks.

[Mr Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Secretary of State want to go down in history as the man who presided over the closure of the Clyde shipyards, or will he defend the two aircraft carriers?

[Michael Moore]

The hon. Gentleman, particularly in his distinguished new role as Chair of the Scottish Affairs Committee, is a strong campaigner on these issues. As he knows, I intend to visit with him the shipyards and other defence installations in Glasgow in the near future.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

14. What recent devolution issues the Advocate-General has considered.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)]

Since 1 May, the Advocate-General and his predecessor have received 716 minutes notifying them of devolution issues. In the same period, the Advocate-General has continued monitoring 41 devolution cases, has been represented in court in three, and is currently involved as intervenor in two cases.

[Miss McIntosh]

Will the Minister share with the House whether or not the Advocate-General has given a view on the timing of a referendum on independence, as proposed by the Scottish Government?

[David Mundell]

As far as I am aware, the Scottish Government appear to have abandoned their proposal for a referendum on independence, especially after 80% of voters in Scotland at the recent general election voted for parties that support the Union.

The Prime Minister was asked—

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 21 July.

[The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)]

I have been asked to reply. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is visiting the United States for meetings with President Obama and briefings on Afghanistan.

I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in paying tribute to Marine Jonathan Crookes, from 40 Commando Royal Marines, and Senior Aircraftman Kinikki Griffiths, from the RAF Regiment, both of whom died on Friday; and to Sergeant David Monkhouse, from the Royal Dragoon Guards, and Staff Sergeant Brett Linley, from 11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Regiment, the Royal Logistic Corps, both of whom died on Saturday. They were, of course, men of great courage and selflessness who died in the service of our country, and their sacrifice will not be forgotten. I am sure that I speak on behalf of the whole House when I say that we also send our deepest condolences to their families and friends, whose own courage and dignity, like that of so many others who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan, are truly inspiring.

[Ian Mearns]

I am sure that the whole House will join me in sending our deepest sympathy and condolences to the families and friends of our brave service personnel who have died in the course of their duties while in action in Afghanistan.

It is now a fortnight since the people of Gateshead were told of the axing of the Building Schools for the Future programme, which affects five local schools in the borough of Gateshead. This deeply concerns both communities, which have lost much needed investment, and Liberal Democrat councillors in some of those areas, who now fear losing their seats. Will the Deputy Prime Minister agree to meet the borough’s MPs to discuss a way forward for those schools, which have had much needed investment wrenched from their grasp by this Government’s action?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Of course I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern about schooling in his constituency, but we should be under no illusions. The Building Schools for the Future programme would have had to be cut even if Labour were still in power. It was the Labour Government who cut capital investment by 50% but did not deign to tell people what that would mean. Building Schools for the Future was a programme that was not effectively run: it took three years after it had begun before the first brick was laid. Of course we will look at new ways of ensuring that capital investment continues to flow into existing schools and new schools—particularly primary schools, which were excluded from the Building Schools for the Future programme—and of course we will meet with him.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

May I express my gratitude for the Prime Minister raising the case of my constituent Gary McKinnon with the US President? Give the mutual commitment to find a way through and seek an appropriate solution, are there now real grounds for optimism that there is light at the end of a tortuous tunnel for Gary McKinnon?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I have long been associated with this case, and I would like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend for all the work that he has done on behalf of Gary McKinnon. No one doubts the gravity of the offences that Gary McKinnon is alleged to have committed. That is beyond question; the simple question is whether he should, in the circumstances, be tried here or extradited to the United States. The Prime Minister and the President of the United States indicated yesterday that they have had a discussion about Gary McKinnon and that, notwithstanding the gravity of the alleged crimes, they hope to find a way forward.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

I join the right hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to the British servicemen who have been killed in Afghanistan in recent days: Marine Jonathan Crookes, from 40 Commando Royal Marines, and Senior Aircraftman Kinikki Griffiths, from the RAF Regiment, who both died on Friday; and Sergeant David Monkhouse, from the Royal Dragoon Guards, and Staff Sergeant Brett Linley, from 11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Regiment, the Royal Logistic Corps, who both died on Saturday. These were very brave men who lost their lives in the service of their country—our country. We salute their courage, and we will always honour their memory and sacrifice, which they have made for us. I also join very much with the right hon. Gentleman in sending our deep condolences to the families, comrades and friends of these brave service personnel.

We welcome the Kabul conference, which the Foreign Secretary has attended, and hope that it does indeed lead to positive improvements in the lives of the people of Afghanistan. The Prime Minister has said that he wants to see United Kingdom combat troops withdrawn by 2014. Could I ask the Deputy Prime Minister whether that commitment is unconditional, or will it depend on the circumstances on the ground at the time?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

First, I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to the Dispatch Box. I look forward to answering his questions. This is the first time a Liberal leader has been in this position since the 1920s. Given the right hon. Gentleman’s great longevity in politics, that was probably around the time he first joined a Labour shadow Cabinet.

As to the right hon. Gentleman’s question about our engagement in Afghanistan, the Prime Minister has been clear, and we have been clear as a coalition Government, that we do not wish to see British troops in a combat role in Afghanistan by 2015—not 2014, as the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) suggested. That is consistent, of course, with the timetable for the Afghan forces assuming responsibility for security by 2014, as agreed in the Kabul conference yesterday. No timetable can be chiselled in stone, but we are absolutely determined, given how long we have been in Afghanistan and given that we are six months into an 18-month military strategy and embarking on a new political strategy, to be out of a combat role by 2015.

[Mr Straw]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his welcome of my appearance, probably my one and only appearance, here in this capacity—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] Well, there we are. I am also grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his answer, from which I take it that he was saying—in my view, wisely—that this commitment is indeed a conditional one.

The right hon. Gentleman told this House on 22 June that the Government had denied a loan to Sheffield Forgemasters because the owners

“did not want to dilute their own shareholding in the company.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 148.]

But we now know that, in private, the right hon. Gentleman admitted to the chief executive of the company:

“You… made clear to me your own willingness to dilute your equity share”.

Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the shadow Business Secretary asked you about this, Mr Speaker, and you ruled that

“if a Minister makes a factual error in a statement to the House, it is preferable… that he or she should correct that error in the House.”—[Official Report, 20 July 2010; Vol. 514, c. 186.]

Will the right hon. Gentleman now correct that error?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

First, lest there be any confusion on the vital issue of Afghanistan, which I hope will continue to enjoy cross-party support, let me be absolutely clear that we will see our troops withdrawn from a combat role in Afghanistan by 2015. We are determined to see that happen.

On Sheffield Forgemasters, the right hon. Gentleman knows that the problem was simply one of affordability. Lord Mandelson was writing out cheques to companies like Forgemasters, which he knew would bounce, all the while writing in his memoirs:

“We were deep in a pit of debt and still digging.”

That was what was wrong. It was wrong to pretend that there could be Government assistance for a great company like Sheffield Forgemasters when, as the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury said, there was “no money left”. [Interruption.]

[Mr Straw]

I find it surprising that the Deputy Prime Minister, who has preached the importance of open, transparent and honest politics, cannot bring himself to correct the record of something that was plainly wrong. The explanation that he is now offering is not the one that he offered previously. That explanation was about the dilution of the company’s shareholding—the same explanation that the Prime Minister offered the House. The Prime Minister told the House on 7 July:

“The question is whether it is an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money to give it to a business that could raise that money by diluting its shareholding.”—[Official Report, 7 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 369.]

Now that it is clear that the basis on which the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister made the decision to refuse the loan was simply wrong, will he reconsider that decision?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

That was not a question—it was a sort of dissertation. [Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman talks about openness and transparency. It would have been more transparent if Lord Mandelson and his Government had admitted that there was no money. [Interruption.] Hon. Members should not take it from me; the position was summed up rather well in Sheffield Forgemasters—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I must appeal for calm. I can see Members ranting at the tops of their voices at the Deputy Prime Minister. It is wrong, and it must stop. Whatever the feeling, it must stop. The public detest it and so do I.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

If the right hon. Gentleman thinks that is a lot of noise, he should try it from the Bench I formerly occupied—it is even worse.

Let me cite what a worker on the shop floor of Sheffield Forgemasters said in Sheffield’s The Star only last week. He said that on a visit by Lord Mandelson to Sheffield Forgemasters:

“I asked Lord Mandelson, if the country was near to bankruptcy, where would the money come from? He turned away to speak to my gaffer. I asked again and he said very”—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the Deputy Prime Minister, but that is very discursive and not relevant to the precise responsibility of a member of the Government. [Interruption.] Order. I do not require any guidance. We will leave it there.

[Mr Straw]

Let us consider affordability—not the reason that the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister gave originally, but affordability. The Deputy Prime Minister says that he is concerned about affordability, but we are talking about a loan, not a grant, to help Sheffield Forgemasters build Britain’s future in low-carbon manufacturing. He is not prepared to make that loan, but why is he prepared to acquiesce in spending £550 million a year on so-called tax breaks for marriage—a policy that he described as “patronising drivel”?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman is living in complete denial. When we came to government, we discovered that the structural deficit was £12 billion worse than he had led us to believe. His Government had announced £50 billion of cuts without having the decency to tell the British people what they would do about that. We now discover from Lord Mandelson’s infinitely helpful memoirs that the Chancellor had planned to increase VAT, lower tax for people on low pay and cut corporation tax. Does that sound familiar? Yes, it does. We had to do it; they did not have the courage to do it.

[Mr Straw]

I note that the right hon. Gentleman did not say a word about his acquiescence in spending half a billion pounds a year on marriage tax breaks, which he has criticised. No wonder that his noble and new-found Friend Lord Ashcroft says today—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I want to hear what the noble Lord has been saying. Let us hear it. There is far too much noise.

[Mr Straw]

Lord Ashcroft says today,

“even in the Liberal Democrat-held seats, less than a quarter of voters thought the Lib Dems were having a significant impact on the Government’s agenda.”

First, the Deputy Prime Minister blamed the cancellation of the loan on Sheffied Forgemasters’ unwillingness to dilute the shareholding, then he said that it was unaffordable. Last week he told the Yorkshire Post that the company did not need a loan after all. [Interruption.] I am not surprised that hon. Members are baying, because there has been one excuse after another. He said—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Members are beside themselves. I am quite worried about their health. They really do need to calm down. [Interruption.] Order. Let me simply say to the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) that I want some time to be left for Back Benchers.

[Mr Straw]

The Deputy Prime Minister said to the Yorkshire Post:

“Forgemasters can find the money for expansion elsewhere”.

Now that we know that it cannot find the money—as it said yesterday—has not the whole edifice of the Deputy Prime Minister’s argument been demolished? Why on earth will he not reconsider this ludicrous decision?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Thank heavens this is the last occasion on which the right hon. Gentleman will be at the Dispatch Box in this capacity. It seems to me that he needs to go away and practise a bit more.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about impact. Let me just ask him this. Why did his Government do nothing to sort out the banks which were not prepared to offer a decent loan to Forgemasters at reasonable rates? We imposed the levy; his Government did not. Why did pensioners have to wait until this coalition Government came to power for the restoration of the earnings link, which he failed to restore for 13 years? Why did his party scrap the 10p tax rate, whereas we have taken 800,000 people on low pay out of the tax system altogether? That is more progress in 10 weeks than he managed in 13 years.

[Mr Straw]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

I call Claire Perry. [Interruption.] Order. I want to hear Claire Perry.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

On the issue of progress, will the Deputy Prime Minister—

[Mr Straw]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I think that the right hon. Gentleman has had his allotted span. [Hon. Members: “No.”] I apologise. It felt like it. I call Jack Straw.

[Mr Straw]

With apologies to the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), Mr Speaker.

Just over a month before the election, the Deputy Prime Minister warned about the dangers of policies of the kind that he is now following. He said:

“just imagine the reaction of my constituents in South West Sheffield.”

People like that are going to ask, “Who are these people who are telling us that they are suddenly going to take our jobs away? Who are these people?” Well, now we know who these people are. Are they not the Liberal Democrats—the people who are giving power to the Conservatives without any influence over the policies that they used to oppose?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman may bellow as much as he likes. I am happy to account for everything that we are doing in this coalition Government—a coalition Government who have brought together two parties, working in the national interest, to sort out the mess that he left behind. We may have to wait for his memoirs, but perhaps one day he will account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all: the illegal invasion of Iraq.

[Claire Perry]

rose— [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The House really must start to behave itself. We have made slow progress—[Interruption.] Order. That progress must get faster from now on, with short questions and short answers. I call Claire Perry.

[Claire Perry]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Third time lucky.

Can the Deputy Prime Minister tell us what the coalition Government have done in 10 short weeks to preserve the civil liberties of the British people—liberties that have been so cruelly eroded by the Labour party over the past 13 years?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The authoritarian record of the Labour Government is one of the most dismal records in modern British history, featuring the illegal invasion of Iraq, the turning of our prisons into overcrowded colleges of crime, the decimation of our civil liberties, the invasion of our privacy, and the roll-out of a surveillance state without any checks or balances; and look at what we have managed—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I thought that the right hon. Gentleman was going to talk about what the present Government had done, not what the last Government had done; and he is now coming to an end, I am sure.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

This Government have scrapped ID cards, they will table a freedom Bill, and they have launched a counter-terrorism review to create the right balance between security and liberty.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

Q2. Does the Deputy Prime Minister recall the comments of the Prime Minister on the road to the election, when he stated openly and clearly that the north-east would be hit hard? Does that mean that the hard-working people in my constituency and others, the disabled people, the young and the old must suffer as a consequence of these Budget cuts, or should they just accept the fact that they will be part of this wonderful new big society?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is, of course, right that some regions and parts of the country are more vulnerable than others, and the north-east is an obvious example. It is a region where there has been a heavy dependence—arguably an over-reliance—on public sector jobs. One way or another, that was going to have to come to an end whoever was in government, because of the irresponsible overspending by the Labour Government. We are now putting measures in place, including the national insurance breaks for companies setting up in regions such as the north-east and the regional growth fund under which £1 billion is being precisely directed at helping those regions, to make sure that they are not disproportionately hit by the difficult fiscal contraction that we now have to introduce as a national duty because of the mess bequeathed to us by the Labour Government.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

Q3. More than 250,000 older people live in sheltered retirement accommodation. Like many, two constituents of mine purchased their leases on the promise of full-time, in-house warden support at no charge. In the case of my constituents, that service has been whittled down to an off-site, visiting-by-appointment, chargeable service. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is a shameful way to treat older people, and will he support my campaign to raise awareness of the legal redress that older people can have to secure their rights?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am grateful for that question from my hon. Friend. She is well known for her outstanding record as a champion for older people prior to coming to the House, and I am sure all Members on both sides of the House share her concern that all older people, regardless of whether they live in their own homes, sheltered accommodation or residential care homes, can live in those settings with real dignity. That is one reason why we have just announced that there will be an independent commission to consider how we can ensure affordable and sustainable funding for care and support for all adults in England, and I hope my hon. Friend will be able to make her views and expertise available to that commission.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

In his keynote Guardian interview on 10 July, the Deputy Prime Minister said:

“I am a revolutionary but”—

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

But he’s turned full circle.

[Mr Llwyd]

Indeed. The Deputy Prime Minister said:

“I am a revolutionary but I am also a pragmatist”.

When he suddenly agreed to raise VAT, was he being a revolutionary pragmatist or a pragmatic revolutionary?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

No one on the Government Benches took lightly the decision to raise VAT, but did we know before we went into government that the structural deficit was £12 billion higher? Did we know that the Labour Government had announced £50 billion of cuts but not told people what that actually meant in practice? Could anyone have predicted the economic firestorm in Europe? Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can tell me why the former Chancellor advocated an increase in VAT but was blocked by the then Prime Minister. The former Chancellor knew it was the right thing to do; the rest of his party stopped him.

[Dr Phillip Lee (Bracknell) (Con)]

Q4. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that in addition to dealing with the worst fiscal position in peacetime history, the new coalition Government should seek to arrest the decline in social mobility, and thereby reduce the gap between rich and poor?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right to say that as well as having to deal with a fiscal crisis—which has been handed over to us by the Labour party—we are faced also with a social crisis: social mobility has gone down; inequality has gone up; the gap between rich and poor has increased; and child poverty has increased by 100,000 since 2004 alone. That is why we have taken 800,000 people out of paying tax altogether. That is why we are going to deliver a pupil premium for children from poor backgrounds wherever they live in this country. That is why we have restored the triple guarantee to pensioners. That is why we have taken measures to make Britain fairer which were not taken by Opposition Members.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Q5. My constituent, Charlie Donegan, suffers from long-term mental health problems, septicaemia, pneumonia and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and is a wheelchair user as a result. He receives the mobility and care components of disability living allowance at the higher rate. Can the Deputy Prime Minister explain to my constituent and to thousands of other worried members of the public like him, who rely on DLA for some small improvement to the quality of their lives, why he is now to face a medical test for a benefit that is intended to meet his non-medical needs?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

This is not about taking away universal benefits; this is about making sure that those who receive DLA, such as the hon. Lady’s constituent, do so because of real need. That is why it has been proposed by Members from all parties for many, many years that one way to proceed is to have a simple medical test. I meet constituents; I meet people who say that rather than running the gamut of the vast bureaucracy that has now attached itself to DLA, they themselves would prefer a simple medical test to know whether they continue to be entitled to receive that benefit, yes or no.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

Q6. As part of the political and constitutional reform process, will the Deputy Prime Minister undertake to give due consideration to the loyal subjects of Her Majesty’s overseas territories and Crown dependencies, who currently have no representation and no voice in the constitution of this country?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

They are extremely well represented by my hon. Friend, who I know is a passionate advocate of our relationship with overseas territories and, of course, Crown dependencies. We will continue to work with him and others in this House to make sure that the citizens of the overseas territories are served by their own legislatures, with champions here in this House and in government, and of course we will work with the Governments of the Crown dependencies to help them develop their own wider ambitions. This applies to the Falklands or Gibraltar, although I have to confess that Gibraltar is a sensitive topic in the Clegg household.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

If the intercity express programme survives the comprehensive spending review, Hitachi will build the rolling stock in my constituency, at Newton Aycliffe, creating 800 direct jobs and thousands of jobs in the supply chain. This will be the biggest investment in the north-east of England since Nissan. Will the Deputy Prime Minister ask the Transport Minister to meet me and a delegation of north-eastern business leaders and trade unionists, so that we can explain how important this project is to the region?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Of course that will be considered, as with everything else, in the comprehensive spending round. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the previous Government cut capital investment by 50%. We are determined to maintain investment in our infrastructure—in our transport infrastructure and in our built infrastructure—is maintained, so that we do not repeat the recessions of the past and cut deep into infrastructure, which is so important to the long-term economic future of this country.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

Q7. May I first congratulate my right hon. Friend on being the first Liberal to answer questions to the Prime Minister since Lloyd George? In that too-long gap, many illiberal things have happened in this country, not least under the previous Government. One of the worst has been the detention of children for immigration purposes. There are words about that in the coalition agreement and there has been a review, but what concrete action will actually be taken to end this scandal?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend that it was simply a moral outrage that last year the Labour Government imprisoned, behind bars, 1,000 children who were innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever. This coalition Government, like so many other things, will once again restore a sense of decency and liberty to the way in which we conduct ourselves. That is why I can confirm that the Government will make an announcement shortly about how we will deliver on our pledge to end child detention and to close the Yarl’s Wood detention centre for good.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Q8. What recent discussions he has had with President Obama on coalition policy in Afghanistan.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is currently in the United States and will be discussing Afghanistan with President Obama during his visit. Yesterday, as the hon. Gentleman may have seen, they reaffirmed their joint commitment to the existing strategy, reflected on the bravery and shared sacrifice of United Kingdom and United States armed forces in Afghanistan, and agreed that the importance of progress on the political track to complement the military effort was essential.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Is it not time, after nearly 10 years of British deployment in Afghanistan, that the whole strategy should be reconsidered? Last year, 1,000 Afghan people died, and 300 and more British soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan, as have many from other coalition forces. Opinion polls in Afghanistan show declining support for western involvement there. If British troops are going to remain there for another five years, how many more are going to die, how much deeper is the civil war going to get and how much deeper are we going to be involved in conflicts in that region? Is it not time to say that this strategy has run its course and that it is time, now, to withdraw from Afghanistan?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will be giving a statement on Afghanistan imminently. I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman’s stance on Afghanistan, but I admire his consistency in arguing his case. It is right that the coalition Government have been crystal clear that we want our troops to come home as soon as possible. We do not want a single British serviceman or servicewoman to spend an extra day more than is necessary in Afghanistan. That is why we have been clear that we will not have soldiers in a combat role in Afghanistan in 2015. However, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that history teaches us that insurgencies cannot be defeated by military means alone. That is why we are pushing very hard for a new political strategy involving reconciliation and reintegration so that the political strategy and the military strategy are better aligned than has been the case in the past.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

Q9. My county of Herefordshire has below-average household income, but our schools are the third worst funded in the country. Does the Deputy Prime Minister share my view that it is time to rebalance public funding and give a fairer deal to our rural areas?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I certainly agree that just because poverty in rural areas is sometimes more invisible than more visible poverty in some of our inner-city areas, it does not mean that we should not make real efforts to address it. It is a matter of concern that under the previous Government a child from a poor family in an inner city area tended to get much more money allocated to their education than a child from a poor family in a rural area. That is why we are so determined to introduce a pupil premium that will provide extra resources to children from the most deprived backgrounds no matter where they live in our country.

[Mr Speaker]

Before I call the Foreign Secretary to give a statement, I appeal to hon. and right hon. Members whose lungs are probably exhausted now anyway to leave the Chamber quickly and quietly so that the House can hear the Foreign Secretary.

Kabul Conference

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

12:32

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

With permission, I will make a statement on the outcome of the Kabul conference and on progress in Afghanistan. Half an hour ago, my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister paid his respects to the four servicemen who have died in Afghanistan in the past week. They died in the service of this country, and the whole House has already joined in expressing its gratitude to them and to the British forces in Afghanistan.

The past month has indeed been a difficult one, but we should not lose sight of what has been achieved since the London conference on Afghanistan six months ago. I do not want to minimise in any way to the House the immense challenges that we and our allies continue to face in Afghanistan or the difficulties and dangers that we encounter on a daily basis. Bringing security and stability to Afghanistan remains an exceptionally demanding task for the men and women of our armed forces, our diplomatic service and those involved in development. Their work is rarely less than outstanding on a daily basis, but there will continue to be setbacks and discouragements even while progress is being made. We must therefore always guard against over-optimism, but we must equally guard against listening only to bad news or failing to notice the millions of Afghans who want us to succeed.

In the last six months our troops have consolidated their position in Helmand, taken the fight to the Taliban and trained hundreds of Afghan troops; our diplomats and aid workers have worked with Afghan colleagues to promote a more inclusive political process and intensify our work, including on education and governance; and the Government of Afghanistan have acted on their London commitments and drawn together for the first time a cross-Government strategy to deliver widespread reform. As the Prime Minister has said, our objective is a stable Afghanistan that is able to maintain its own security and prevent al-Qaeda from returning, so that within five years we can draw down British combat troops.

The NATO objective in Afghanistan is simple: to assist the Government of Afghanistan in exercising their authority and influence throughout the country, paving the way for reconstruction and effective governance. That requires the protection of the population, the provision of more effective governance at every level and the creation of an Afghan security force that is able to maintain security and, indeed, prevent the return of al-Qaeda. That is the strategy that UK forces are helping to implement through their training and partnering of Afghan troops, and through their efforts to create the opportunity for more effective local governance in central Helmand. General Petraeus, the newly appointed commander of the international security assistance force, has made it clear that that remains his approach.

Together with my right hon. Friend the International Development Secretary, I attended the Kabul conference yesterday, following the visits that I made to China, Japan and Oman. Some 40 Foreign Ministers and international organisations, including the United Nations, NATO, the European Union and the World Bank, attended what was an unprecedented event for Afghanistan. It was unprecedented also given the number of Muslim partners who were represented at such a conference. It showed the world that Afghanistan is increasingly able to run its own affairs, and it was a further step in the process of transition from direct international military and civil intervention to Afghan leadership.

The conference issued a communiqué that was agreed among all participants and builds on the progress that has been made in the last six months. It establishes the Afghan-led Kabul process, which aims to accelerate Afghanistan’s ability to govern itself with accountable government, to reduce dependence on the international community, to enhance Afghanistan’s security forces and to provide better protection for the rights of all its citizens. That is a single implementation plan for the coming years. International donors, including Britain, have committed themselves to realigning their funding behind the Kabul process, and that is a significant achievement for a country as beset by conflict and poverty as Afghanistan. The Kabul process holds out the prospect of a more secure future for Afghans.

The Afghan Government made yesterday a number of important commitments: to concentrate efforts on a limited number of national programmes and projects to transform the lives of people and reinforce the relationship between state and citizens; to have Afghan security forces take the lead on security throughout the country by 2014, and to set up an Afghan NATO board to analyse whether provinces are ready to begin the transition process; to create a lean, effective and appropriately paid public service, retiring those civil servants who are unable to perform or are not needed in a renewed and revitalised civil service; to ensure that the wealth generated from the mining sector is invested to benefit future generations; to require new national development programmes to be designed with international partners in order to ensure the highest standards of accountability and transparency; to amend the criminal law to increase penalties for the failure to disclose assets and to take to trial Ministers and other high-ranking officials who do not comply; to strengthen the High Office of Oversight for Government Accountability and the major crimes taskforce in order to tackle corruption; to establish a commission to find ways to bring together the public and private sectors in order to stimulate accelerated economic growth; to work with the Afghan Parliament to strengthen its constitutionally mandated role; and to improve financial management and agree a system with donors in order to allow more donor funds to be channelled through the Afghan budget.

That Afghan plan will be supported by the United Kingdom Government and by our international partners. On 10 June my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced an additional £200 million in funding to promote stability and development over the next four years. My right hon. Friend the International Development Secretary will set out further details of that in a written ministerial statement tomorrow. Britain will intensify and reinvigorate our development efforts, increasing the pace of work and the achievement of specific results in line with the Government of Afghanistan’s priorities. We will work closely with the Afghans, the United States and others to accelerate the stabilisation effort in central Helmand and the 81 key districts that have been targeted under the ISAF plan. We will work with others to ensure the successful implementation of the agreed peace and reintegration programme, help to support the forthcoming elections, and invest in improving the quality and effectiveness of the police. Our overall aim is to speed up the pace of transition to Afghan security leadership.

We will also support the Afghan economy and help with new jobs through investment in mining, roads, power and irrigation, and by bringing community-driven development to isolated areas of the country. We will help the Government of Afghanistan to deliver vital services and to tackle corruption, providing increased support to education, including technical and vocational training, and the administration of justice.

Our international partners have committed themselves to doing their part in supporting the Kabul process, as well. Afghanistan’s near neighbours will work to accelerate regional economic co-operation. An important milestone was reached in the days before the conference with the conclusion of the Afghanistan-Pakistan trade transit agreement. This much-desired economic measure has taken some 40 years to achieve.

The Kabul process is a major step forward for Afghanistan and an important staging post in Afghanistan’s development. There remains more to do, notably in the areas of governance. Measures to enforce transparency, anti-corruption and accountability have slipped and need to be brought back on track as soon as possible. We will pursue these and other issues as part of the follow-up to the conference. The Kabul process contains strengthened review mechanisms that include a more robust joint co-ordination monitoring board in Kabul and an overarching annual assessment which will report to an annual Kabul ministerial conference. My Department, the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development will be closely involved in that process.

The Kabul conference has established a road map for more professional functioning and mature institutions. There will be other important milestones this year, including parliamentary elections, the NATO Lisbon summit, and President Obama’s review. Her Majesty’s Government will build on these steps to help to put in place the conditions for a stable, secure and increasingly prosperous Afghanistan.

[David Miliband (South Shields) (Lab)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement and welcome him back to London. I thank him, too, for advance sight of his statement. We all join in his words of condolence and pride in the remarkable work of our armed forces. Their bravery, fortitude and intelligence are an example of the best of this country.

We welcome the Kabul conference as the chance for the Afghan Government to make their commitments to match those that the international community made in London in January. Thoughtful engagement with the profound and difficult issues for which the Foreign Secretary is now responsible requires us to ask probing questions in five key areas, and that is what I will do. First, there is the timetable for British withdrawal. Policy in this area is followed intensively by the forces and their families, by Afghans, and by other countries in the region. As Lord Guthrie said earlier this month, mixed messages are dangerous. Earlier today, the Deputy Prime Minister said that nothing is “chiselled in stone”, and then insisted, I think six times, that there would be no British combat operations from 2015.

Last November, the President of Afghanistan said in his inauguration speech that Afghans would lead the security effort across the country in five years. I would like to understand from the Foreign Secretary the British Government’s position. The Foreign Secretary has said that he would be very surprised if this process of security transition took longer than 2014. The Prime Minister then said that British troops would be out of combat by 2015. Last night in Washington, the Prime Minister said that British troops could begin pulling out next year. However, the Defence Secretary has said that he expects British troops to be the last to leave Afghanistan.

All of us want the troops home as soon as possible. Therefore, to resolve any confusion that may exist, could the Foreign Secretary tell us whether the Government stick by the position that the Prime Minister set out last year—that this

“should be based on success…you should do so once it’s safe…do it based on success, don’t keep talking about artificial timelines”?

Does that remain the position of the British Government?

Secondly, on a political settlement, the Foreign Secretary says that he agrees with me that there is no military solution in Afghanistan and that the only way to end a civil war is through a political settlement. The most important conclusion from the London conference in January was support for the Afghan Government’s national peace and reintegration programme, but the political settlement and the reintegration programme made up only a small part of the Foreign Secretary’s contribution at the conference yesterday. He did not set out the preconditions for a durable settlement—all the tribes in, al-Qaeda out, and Afghanistan’s regional neighbours on the side.

Will the Foreign Secretary tell us whether he met the leader of the opposition, Abdullah Abdullah, on this visit? If so, what did he say about how to overcome the ethnic divisions within Afghanistan and reach a political settlement? Will the Foreign Secretary also update us on whether General Petraeus plans to give the issue the priority attached to it by General McChrystal, what role NATO’s special representative, former British Ambassador Sedwill, will play in taking it forward, and what will be the next steps in the peace jirga that he applauded during the Queen’s Speech debate, given that the two Ministers responsible for the event have been forced to resign for its failings since then?

Thirdly, on our current work, we have noted the new announcements by the Secretary of State for International Development about increased aid. He will know that Helmand province is the most heavily aided province in the world, and the critical issue for the delivery of development aid there is, of course, security. We would be interested to know where in Helmand the Foreign Secretary thinks we will be able to add to the already extensive aid that is being delivered.

In respect of current operations, our immediate concern must be for our armed forces. Can the Foreign Secretary tell us the latest evidence on the Marjah operation, which General McChrystal described as a “bleeding ulcer”? We are told in the communiqué from the conference yesterday that reintegration shura, which are critical to bringing all the tribes inside the political system, are important in Helmand, and I agree, but my understanding is that in Marjah and the whole of Helmand province there has been only one public reintegration shura in recent months. Will the Foreign Secretary tell us whether he raised that matter with President Karzai?

Will the Foreign Secretary tell us also about planning for the Kandahar operation, which is obviously critical given the presence of our forces in Helmand? Where is the Afghan capacity for that operation, and what is being done to avoid a false choice in Kandahar between warlordism, some of which has important links inside major parts of the Afghan political system, on the one hand and Talibanisation on the other?

Fourthly, I turn to the Afghan forces. The number of soldiers in the Afghan national army, which the Foreign Secretary mentioned in his statement, is undoubtedly important, but quantity cannot override the importance of quality. The forces have to be representative of Afghanistan’s provinces and communities; otherwise they will find it difficult to move away from an image of being supplementary forces to foreign troops rather than the other way round. Will he tell us the number of south Pashtun Afghans who have been recruited into the Afghan national army? The figures of less than 5% that are around do no justice to the critical need for an army to have real legitimacy in the communities it serves.

Fifthly and finally, I turn to the regional dimension. The countries of the region, led by Pakistan, are key to a conclusion of the war, yet regional co-operation is, to put it mildly, anaemic. Can the Foreign Secretary update us on plans for a regional economic and security council, whether any meetings have been planned and what he will do to push that forward?

Some 318 British military personnel have died in Afghanistan. Every single death and injury weighs heavily on those of us who have had the privilege of meeting our armed forces and their families. We owe it to them to ensure that we have a clear vision of the endgame, that we are consistent in what we say and that we provide the leadership necessary to see this through. That is what we are committed to and what we look to see from the Foreign Secretary and the Government.

[Mr Hague]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his comments and questions, and I pay tribute to him for his work at the London conference, of which much of this work is a direct consequence. That conference set the stage for the Kabul conference, which has been a successful follow-up to what was agreed in London.

The right hon. Gentleman asked a wide range of questions. I shall respond to them perhaps in a roundabout order, but I shall try to cover them all. He asked about the work that we are doing in Helmand, including development work. Some of the money that the Department for International Development is providing, as my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister have announced, will go into Helmand, for instance to help build new police stations and patrol bases, giving 2,500 recently trained policemen and women the infrastructure to operate effectively. In Nad Ali, it will fund the building of two new schools to educate 1,900 children and the paving and repairing of roads to try to open up trade and commerce, which, as he knows, is fundamental to improving security and providing livelihoods for people in Helmand and throughout Afghanistan. The money and effort that DFID has announced is not purely dedicated to Helmand, but he can see from what I am saying that some of it will benefit people there.

The right hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the operations in Kandahar, which remain in progress. They are not traditional military operations—they are greatly concerned with the quality of governance and not just of holding territory in a military sense. The capacity exists to do that, and we underline constantly to our Afghan colleagues the need for clear Afghan leadership and support for the operations in Kandahar.

On the number of troops, it is true that the quantity is there. In fact, the quantity is ahead of schedule: the Afghan national army has already met its target of 134,000 strength, ahead of October. That is why I said in my statement that although there are often setbacks and discouragements, we should listen not just to the bad news. Sometimes, there is good news that we ought to comment on and recognise as part of the balance in presenting what is going on. Of course, quality is important too, and that shows the importance of the ongoing training and the embedded partnering that will be at the heart of our forces’ work over the coming months and, very likely, the coming years.

The right hon. Gentleman quite rightly pointed to the low level of recruitment to the Afghan national army among south Pashtun people. That is a long-running problem, as he knows, and it is not easily solved, except as part—one day—of a wider political settlement, involving support across Afghanistan for the basis of governance and authority. That cannot be solved overnight, but the build up of the ANA is so far one of the success stories taking place in Afghanistan.

We of course discussed regional co-operation at the conference and raised it with many other nations. In our time in office so far, the Government have concentrated on encouraging closer co-operation between Pakistan and Afghanistan, which is indeed taking place. It is also encouraging to see the strong support of India. More than $1 billion of support will come from India over the next few years for development in Afghanistan. Regional co-operation is improving, but it needs to improve further on the back of the Kabul conference. Other nations in the region were around the table in Kabul yesterday, including Uzbekistan and, indeed, Iran. As I said, the basis for regional co-operation is at least improving.

On the question of a political settlement, the Kabul conference is taking forward the commitments made at London. The Afghan President has now established the high peace council. He won support from the peace jirga at the beginning of last month for a process of reconciliation and reintegration, and the reintegration trust fund has now been established—again, that was one of the commitments made at the London conference. We stress, as the Deputy Prime Minister stressed at Prime Minister’s questions, that a political process remains fundamentally important. None of us thinks that there is a purely military solution to the problem, but the process of reconciliation must be Afghan led. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development and I stressed that in our meeting with President Karzai.

On timings, in the last 24 hours the Prime Minister again put things very clearly when he said:

“The faster we can transition districts and provinces to Afghan control, clearly the faster that some forces can be brought home…I don’t want to raise expectations about that because that transition should be based on how well the security situation is progressing.”

However, he also said:

“What I have said is”

that

“people in Britain should understand we’re not going to be there in five years’ time, in 2015, with combat troops or large numbers because I think it’s important to give people an end date by which we won’t be continuing in that way.”

That is the position of the Government, and it is consistent with the expectation of the entire international community at the conference yesterday that Afghan security forces will be able to be in the lead by 2014. That is the position of all Ministers in the coalition Government. I am not sure whether the Opposition support that commitment on 2015—they will need to reflect on whether they do so—but I am sure that it is the right position for this country.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Many right hon. and hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye. If I am to accommodate most or, better still, all of them, brevity in both questions and answers is required.

[Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

Why has it taken NATO nine years to acquaint itself with the facts of life in Afghanistan when it could have learned them by studying the communiqué issued from Kabul in 1842?

[Mr Hague]

As always, there is some force in my hon. Friend’s question and perspective—[Hon. Members: “He was there!”] I do not think he was there, but he always speaks with a good deal of wisdom and perspective on history. It is true that it took a long time for NATO to get its act together in Afghanistan. However, as he would have heard from what I described, it is now true that there is a clear military strategy, a very clear economic and development strategy, and the prospect of a political process, which as the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband) pointed out, requires further encouragement and work. Those three things have now come together. It has taken many years for that to happen, but we start from where we start, and we must make a success of them.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

While appreciation of the bravery of British soldiers and a total loathing of everything the Taliban stand for is felt throughout the country, does the Foreign Secretary recognise that public support is increasingly being lost simply because there is an understanding, which I share, that this is an unwinnable war? The hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) referred to 1842. Is it not the fact that virtually—or perhaps literally—every outside, foreign intervention in Afghanistan has always been unsuccessful?

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman must remember that we are in Afghanistan at the invitation of the Government of Afghanistan and under a United Nations mandate. We are not seeking to conquer Afghanistan, which is clearly impossible. One has only to fly over Afghanistan and look down at the deserts and mountain ranges to know in a moment that it is not possible to conquer Afghanistan, but it should be possible to provide the necessary support for a legitimate Government of Afghanistan to conduct their own security and provide for the future of their own people.

The hon. Gentleman is right that there is great public concern. As I said in my statement, I do not want to minimise the difficulties or imply that things are easier than they are, but I believe that if those three things—the military strategy, the economic strategy and a political process—are pursued successfully together it is possible not to have a purely military success, but to succeed in our objective of an Afghanistan that can look after its own security.

[Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)]

Does the Foreign Secretary accept that what the public will now regard as a timetable for the withdrawal of British troops will depend on better governance from the Karzai Administration, and a degree of professionalism from the Afghan police and army that we have not previously seen? What confidence can we have that those will be achieved in this instance? What is better about July 2010 than any occasion in the past when similar promises have been made and simply not honoured?

[Mr Hague]

I entirely understand my right hon. and learned Friend’s scepticism, because commitments have been made and not honoured in the past. I drew attention in my statement to the fact that not enough progress has been made in matters of governance and tackling corruption. Those are factors that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development and I stressed very strongly to President Karzai and Ministers in the Afghan Government.

It is fair to say that progress is being made. For instance, we discussed on Monday in Kabul with the Minister of Mines the forthcoming contracts for the development of Afghanistan’s incredibly rich natural resources. He is publishing the 108 contracts to develop those resources and their terms. As the House has discovered, transparency is the best antidote to suspicion or wrongdoing. That is also true in Afghanistan, with wrongdoing on a spectacularly greater scale.

Those lessons are being learned. For instance, rules that are to be introduced to forbid Afghan Ministers or Members of Parliament from having relatives involved in the country’s tax system are also important steps forward. I will argue not that we have solved the problem, but that what was committed to at Kabul is important progress.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Foreign Secretary referred to the aim of accelerating Afghanisation and its governance, including by enhancing security. Can he therefore explain why whereas the London communiqué refers to a number of provinces that will transition to an Afghan lead by late 2010 or early 2011, the Kabul communiqué simply states:

“The Government of Afghanistan and NATO/ISAF are to assess jointly the provinces with the aim of announcing by the end of 2010 that the process of transition is underway”?

Is that due to the influence of General Petraeus, or to the concerns that some NATO partners in those areas of Afghanistan might leave the coalition more quickly?

[Mr Hague]

No, it simply reflects the complexity of assessing when a province is ready for transition. I do not think that there is any contradiction between the London and Kabul communiqués. The Kabul conference backed the NATO-Afghan joint framework that has been agreed in recent days for assessing which provinces—and, if relevant, districts—are ready for transition from ISAF control to Afghan security control. That assessment will be based on a number of criteria, which will include governance and the rule of law. Predominantly, however, it will be a security-based assessment. As set out in the communiqué, NATO and the Afghan Government intend to announce that the transition process is under way by the end of the year. Further details will be set out at the NATO Lisbon summit. Between the summit and the spring of next year, we expect the first batch of provinces to have transitioned. So I think we are on track, but we are coming to a point at which we need to make the assessments, rather than setting out specific statistical targets.

[Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)]

I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement, and particularly his announcement that the Afghan Government will take the lead on security by 2014. Closely interwoven with that aspect is the Government of Pakistan. He has mentioned Pakistan in the context of trade, but to what extent will there be co-ordination and involvement with the Pakistan Government on security?

[Mr Hague]

That co-operation is also improving. My hon. Friend is quite right to say that this is an important matter, and it is one that I stressed on my visit to Pakistan a few weeks ago, as well as in Afghanistan just now. We must not understate the importance of the trade transit agreement. It will allow goods from Afghanistan to travel through Pakistan to markets in Pakistan or elsewhere much more easily. The security co-operation is also important, however, and it is fair to say that at all levels of government, including military levels, co-operation between the Governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan has improved in recent months. That is something that we will continue to encourage, because it is fundamental to success in the south of Afghanistan. We will continue to press that subject hard.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Does the Foreign Secretary agree that a sober, realistic assessment of the UK national interest in Afghanistan reveals the need for sufficient security and stability to prevent al-Qaeda from getting back in and establishing bases there, given that it has now been driven out successfully? Does he agree that we are more likely to achieve that stability and security if the arrangements were to encompass a political agreement—however unpalatable in some respects—with the Taliban, rather than trying to achieve an outright military defeat?

[Mr Hague]

I agree with much of the thrust of the hon. Gentleman’s question, but I am sure that he will agree that the military pressure on the Taliban—the work that our armed forces do in fighting the Taliban and making areas secure—is an important part of putting them under the necessary pressure so that they will want to enter into a political agreement. That is an indispensable part of looking for a political settlement in Afghanistan. I also differ from the hon. Gentleman when he says “however unpalatable”. Yes, we want a political settlement in Afghanistan, but we want one under which al-Qaeda cannot return, and under which a constitution is respected and a legitimate Government can be in office and take the necessary decisions. So I think it would be going too far to say that we want an agreement, however unpalatable it might be.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend, and indeed with the Deputy Prime Minister, that counter-insurgency campaigns always end in a political settlement. Will he accept, however, that those political settlements can vary from even-handed ones to ones that are little different from a negotiated surrender by one side? By setting a definite date for combat disengagement, he is helpfully putting pressure on the Afghan Government, but no pressure at all on the Taliban. For that reason, will he bear in mind an alternative—namely, the creation of a sovereign base bridgehead area, which would ensure that pressure could be put on both sides so that a compromise might actually be reached?

[Mr Hague]

I am not going to redefine our objectives. My hon. Friend will understand what the Prime Minister and I, and other Ministers, have said about 2015. Yes, it is true that our announcement puts pressure on the Government of Afghanistan to live up to the commitments that they have made, and it puts pressure on all those involved to ensure that the Afghan national security forces are expanded and trained according to the schedule that has been set out. It also recognises that, by then, we will have been in Helmand for nine years. It is important in any such operation that we achieve our objectives in that time scale. I understand the point that my hon. Friend is making, but I do not want to define our objectives for 2015 any more tightly.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

May I echo the earlier tributes that were paid to the bravery and courage of our servicemen and women in Afghanistan, and indeed to their families? It is vital that they should not have died or been maimed in vain. The Foreign Secretary will have detected a degree of concern about the ability of the Afghan Government and authorities to implement the necessary reforms and changes that will allow them to take the lead by 2014. Can he assure us that that is the priority, and that the Afghan security forces will be in a position to take the lead by 2014?

[Mr Hague]

As the right hon. Gentleman can gather, that is the intention of the Government of Afghanistan and of the members of the international community—nearly 80 nations were represented in Kabul yesterday—who are assisting in various ways with that progress. He has voiced a natural scepticism, but the encouraging thing is that that work is on track, and in some cases, ahead of track—certainly in the building up of the Afghan national army. The Government of Afghanistan will continue to work with the international community to increase the number of skilled and trained security forces personnel. That is clearly a very high priority. At the current rate of progress, the strength of the Afghan national army will reach 171,600 by October 2011, so we are beginning to look at a very large army, and the fact that it is an Afghan army is an important part of the solution.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Of course we do not want to conquer Afghanistan; nor do we want to scuttle out and leave chaos behind. But is there not, to coin a phrase, a middle way? No foreign combat army has ever held ground for any length of time in Afghanistan—it is like pushing water around in sand. Does my right hon. Friend therefore agree that we ought to place more reliance on Afghan forces, on our own special forces and even on buying or bribing Afghans—anything you like, rather than leaving combat forces on the ground as sitting targets?

[Mr Hague]

Much of what my hon. Friend suggests is now part and parcel of the strategy that we are pursuing. Almost all the work of our forces will in future be based on embedded partnering with the Afghan forces. We shall be working and fighting alongside the Afghan soldiers themselves. It is interesting to note that, when that happens, our own forces’ casualties are generally lower. That is an important part of our strategy, as is the reintegration of former Taliban fighters. The right hon. Member for South Shields noted that not enough of that had happened yet, and that is true, but it is beginning to happen in places such as Nad Ali, where 60 or 70 approaches have been made by people wanting to come back into the local community. So I must stress that this is not just a military effort.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

Regrettably, Afghanistan remains one of the most corrupt places on the globe. I accept what the Foreign Secretary said about making progress in that regard, but what progress has been made on law enforcement? Specifically, how many prison places are available in Afghanistan in which offenders might successfully be held?

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Lady draws our attention to another important issue. Some progress is being made. The expansion of the Afghan national police force is also taking place; there are now 105,000 police officers, against a target of 109,000 by October. They may well hit their target for the number of police by October, which is intended to increase to 134,000 by October of next year. In the case of the police force, quality is an even greater issue than it is with the army, as she knows. That is why a lot of the increased international assistance is going into training the police force, and some of the assistance that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development has announced is going in that direction. That work is therefore taking place and is among the most difficult work in Afghanistan, but it is a vital matter.

One area that was too weak in the Afghan Government’s preparation for the Kabul conference was the administration of justice. We stressed that at the Kabul conference, as did many other countries, and renewed work is being done in that regard. Only when people accept justice at the hands of the official authorities will the Taliban not hold sway in some parts of Afghanistan.

I do not have to hand an answer on the specific number of prison places, but I will write to the hon. Lady with the details.

[Mark Lancaster (Milton Keynes North) (Con)]

On governance, during my own time in Afghanistan it was clear that great progress was being made in building capacity in national Afghan Ministries, but very much the weak link was the lack of capacity in provincial government. Was that subject discussed during the conference, and how do we intend to address it?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, it was. My hon. Friend, with his experience in Afghanistan, draws attention to a very difficult area. There has been a great lack of capacity in government at all levels, which, in the opinion of the most capable Afghan Ministers—if I may describe them as that—is beginning to change with the arrival back in Afghanistan of students who have studied away from the country since 2001. There is now a flow of capable, professional, qualified young people back into Afghanistan, and that resource is increasingly helping the central Ministries. There is a Finance Ministry and a Ministry of Mines, which are so essential to the country’s economic survival. I do not think that that flow of skilled, qualified people is yet reaching the provincial level, but that is a necessary part of what must happen over the next few years.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Does the Foreign Secretary agree that this very welcome naming of an exit strategy will change the mindset and acquire its own accelerated momentum, whereby the public will say, “If 2014, why not 2011, like the Canadians?” NATO generals and politicians will increasingly ask themselves the John Kerry question: how can I ask a soldier to be the last one to die for a mistake?

[Mr Hague]

Of course people will question at all times what we are doing, and that should be expected because it is so difficult and costly. However, there is a straightforward answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question about the difference between 2014 and 2011. In 2011, the Afghan national security forces will not be remotely ready to lead their own operations throughout the whole of Afghanistan, whereas on current trends and performance, they will be able to in 2014.

There is another way of thinking about the hon. Gentleman’s question. If we were simply to abandon the current situation now and say, “We are not going to work with the Afghans to deliver a situation in which they can look after their own security,” what would we say to the families and friends of those people who have already died in this effort?

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

May I congratulate my right hon. Friend and the Prime Minister on beginning the process, which I hope they will accelerate, of disentangling our troops from a bloody and unnecessary commitment? I appreciate that my right hon. Friend has to continue to deploy the argument that the security of our streets requires the commitment of our troops to prevent the re-establishment of al-Qaeda. But can he, in the privacy of this Chamber, reassure me that he does not actually believe it, since logically it would require us to deploy troops in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and elsewhere where al-Qaeda already has a presence?

[Mr Hague]

My right hon. Friend understandably refers to the privacy of this Chamber, given that we have all said things in it that were widely unnoticed by the rest of the world, and which, when we said them in a television interview two weeks’ later, were news to the rest of the country. However, perhaps that is because not enough of our friends are upstairs regularly enough. However, I do not agree—[Interruption.] Well, I will not go any further down that road. I do not agree with the wider thrust of my right hon. Friend’s question. I would not want the House to think that we are now, as he put it, disentangling ourselves. As he can see, there is a huge British commitment to the international efforts in Afghanistan over the coming years. That is true in military terms and in development terms, so I would not at all put it in the way he has described.

If we failed in, or abandoned, Afghanistan, the opportunity would be there for terrorist bases to be established again in Afghanistan, and it would give great heart to terrorists based in other countries—whether Yemen or Somalia—and embolden them in their own campaigns.

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

Given that women have been particularly oppressed in Afghan society—even elected women MPs are still having difficulties working in that society—what assessment has the Foreign Secretary made of the security of women’s positions now, such as girls in schools and women in the professions? Does he share Hillary Clinton’s worry that talking to the Taliban might further undermine the position of women in Afghan society?

[Mr Hague]

The position of women in Afghan society is central to the development work that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development will be making a further statement about. Some 20% of participants in the recent peace jirga were women, which, we should note, is more than in some western Parliaments or local authorities. Simultaneously with the Kabul conference, the Afghan women’s movement held a conference at which all 34 provinces were represented. Part of the agreement at the conference was on a national programme for human rights and civic responsibilities that recognises the rights of women. So there is tremendous support for women’s rights in Afghanistan, and we must continue to be true to that in how we conduct ourselves, including in any political settlement.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

In a few weeks’ time, 16 Air Assault Brigade will be deployed once more to Helmand province, including some 3,000 soldiers from the Colchester garrison. I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s positive, upbeat statement and its reference to the three sides of the triangle—political, economic and military. However, in the summer of 2008 all four battalions of the Parachute Regiment—notably 2 Para and 3 Para, from the Colchester garrison—were engaged in a very dangerous mission to install transformers at the Kajaki dam. Two years later, that has not happened. So in order to act on the Foreign Secretary’s statement about supporting the Afghan economy and helping new jobs through investment, including in power generation, what positive action is going to be taken?

[Mr Hague]

I recognise that it is my hon. Friend’s constituents who will go out to Afghanistan, and that is often the case with me—Catterick garrison is in my constituency and many of the forces based there have been in Afghanistan in recent months. He is right to point out what has happened with the Kajaki dam, but it is also important to point out the improvements that are now taking place and will be taking place in Afghanistan under the commitments given at the Kabul conference. They include priority programmes on agriculture, on access to safe drinking water, on half a million more jobs in agriculture, and on training in technical skills in the next three years up to 300,000 people who have never attended school, so that we can see—as long as these plans are implemented—major improvements in the lives of the people of Afghanistan.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

There are some future risks in having an ever-stronger Afghan army if it is alongside a still systemically corrupt and weak Government. The Foreign Secretary referred in his statement to the Afghan Government’s drawing together for the first time across government a strategy to deliver widespread reform. However, toward the end of his statement he also acknowledged that measures to enforce transparency, anti-corruption and accountability have slipped. Can he therefore tell us how credible Karzai’s commitment is to a reform strategy, how robust the plans are, and how reliable the oversight and review mechanisms to which he referred will be? Will they ensure that the process of reintegration will not involve simply creating a new matrix of corruption?

[Mr Speaker]

That was four questions, but one answer will suffice.

[Mr Hague]

Yes, Mr Speaker. I realise that we must proceed with greater speed. I hope that I have given some answer to all four of those questions earlier in my responses. We are talking about an area where not enough has been achieved; we stressed that strongly at the conference. I mentioned earlier several of the specific mechanisms being introduced to tackle corruption. The hon. Gentleman is quite right that a large army, without a system of administration that is relatively free from corruption, would not be a safe thing to have. I hope that I answered some of his questions earlier.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Although I welcome my right hon. Friend’s comments on the growth of the Afghan national forces, and on local reconciliation, does he recognise that one of the keys to success, both in the campaign in Iraq and, in earlier eras, in campaigns in the region that we are discussing, has been buying off, and getting onside, local groups of armed men?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, it has. We should be careful about reading straight across from one conflict to another; the social and tribal composition of Afghanistan is different from that in Iraq. However, the reintegration programme, for which there is now a fund, is about people who have been fighting coming back into their community, and that community then being supported in a way that makes life better for it, and for those who were formerly fighting. That is one form of what my hon. Friend is talking about.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

There is now an Afghan army more than twice the size of the entire British armed forces, and we are apparently committed to being in Afghanistan for another five years. How much more is all this going to cost? Given that public support for the Afghan war is declining in Britain and Afghanistan, is it not better just to cut our losses and announce a much earlier date for withdrawal, rather than go through the torpor of another five years of increasing numbers of deaths among British soldiers and Afghan civilians, and an increasingly desperate civil war in that country, in which we will be forced to take sides?

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman has a completely different view on the subject, and that is understood and respected. He would not have got involved in Afghanistan in the first place—I realise that—and he has always called for an end to our involvement. I have a different view, and so, I think, do the majority of Members in the House, as well as the former Government and the coalition Government. We want to give the international strategy the necessary time and support to succeed. Yes, it is expensive; the cost runs to billions of pounds a year. More important than that, it is expensive in lives, as we know, but the alternative—failure in Afghanistan—would, we believe, be deeply damaging to the peace and security of the world. That is the choice that we have to make.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

Despite individuals’ opposition to our policy in Afghanistan, unity of purpose is important, going forward, if we are to achieve any sort of success in that country. Given the impression still being created by disparate voices in the coalition—including, most recently, by what President Karzai said on strategy—will the Foreign Secretary take the opportunity to confirm that what will ultimately decide the timetable for British withdrawal is the achievement of set objectives, not predetermined timelines? Otherwise, we are making things easier for the Taliban.

[Mr Hague]

I would not want my hon. Friend to be under the impression that the Prime Minister is not absolutely clear about what he and other Ministers have said about 2015—that we will not be there with combat troops, and will not be there in significant numbers, in five years’ time. I do not want to leave my hon. Friend with any impression that there is any doubt about that. However, that is on the basis of what has been said over the past year, and what we were all committed to at President Karzai’s inauguration, the London conference and the Kabul conference—the Afghan national security forces being able to lead their own operations by 2014. They are on track to do that. There is, of course, a little bit of leeway in what we have said, given that the target is for 2014, and we want to stick to that.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

Will the Foreign Secretary say what discussions he has had with Cabinet Ministers other than the International Development Secretary about offering expertise in kind to Afghanistan, such as police, court and prison support, and justice support generally? In passing, would he like to comment on what the Deputy Prime Minister said at Prime Minister’s questions about Iraq being an illegal war?

[Mr Hague]

The Deputy Prime Minister has a different history from mine on that subject; that is certainly true. It is, of course, for the Ministers who were in power at the time to account for their actions, but that, I know, Mr Speaker, is a separate subject from today’s. There is work on, and involvement in, the issue across Whitehall, as there was under the previous Government, with different agencies and Departments taking part—through provincial reconstruction teams, for instance—in the development of the capacity of the Afghan state. Of course we will continue that.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, contrary to some of the views that we have heard today, setting a target date for withdrawal does not necessarily lessen the chances of success? That is a lesson that we can learn from Iraq; in the Sunni triangle, when the Petraeus doctrine was given the resources to work, it worked, even though the American Administration set a target for withdrawal of their combat troops.

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point, and he can see that we, and nearly 80 international partners, are giving the strategy the necessary resources—and the necessary time—to succeed. We are also clear that we cannot be in Afghanistan for ever in a combat role.

[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

We welcome the speediest return of combat forces from Afghanistan, but the Foreign Secretary knows that UK units are, in the weeks and months ahead, being deployed to Afghanistan. Given the uproar during Iraq operations when announcements were made about the amalgamation and disbandment of units at the front, will he give a commitment that that will not happen in the case of Afghanistan as a consequence of the strategic defence and security review?

[Mr Hague]

I fully take the hon. Gentleman’s point, and I recall the controversy at the time, but as the strategic defence and security review is ongoing, I cannot give commitments about its outcome.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Could my right hon. Friend tell the House what remonstrations Her Majesty’s Government are making about the position of Muslim converts to Christianity in Afghanistan, many of whom have been arrested, and some of whom face execution?

[Mr Hague]

We have indeed made remonstrations on that subject, as did the previous Government, and I expect that we will do so again. My hon. Friend is quite right to feel strongly about the issue. It was not the subject of the conference yesterday, which, as he will gather, was about the economic development of Afghanistan, but we always stand ready to make such remonstrations, and I should be happy to discuss the subject with him.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

In the margins of the conference, did the Foreign Secretary have an opportunity to discuss, especially with the Americans, the situation in Yemen? As he knows, the London conference was about Afghanistan, but there was a conference about Yemen at the same time. We welcome the visit of the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), to Yemen, but will the Foreign Secretary please make sure that the Government’s focus remains on that country? Al-Qaeda is already there. If it is pushed out of Afghanistan, it will merely go to Yemen and strengthen its forces there.

[Mr Hague]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very powerful point, with which I agree strongly. I had many bilateral meetings with other Foreign Ministers during the Kabul conference, and that was a regular subject. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary and I have spent most of the morning with the Italian Foreign and Defence Ministers, and Yemen was high on our agenda, as was Somalia, on which the Italians have particular expertise. We will try to make sure over the coming months that we reinvigorate the Friends of Yemen process launched by the right hon. Member for South Shields, and I fully take the point made by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz).

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

May I commend the Foreign Secretary on the role that he played at the Kabul conference, and ask him what proportion of the Taliban are Afghan, and what proportion are from outside Afghanistan? That will be a relevant factor in a long-lasting political settlement.

[Mr Hague]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. He will understand that there are few precise statistics on the subject, but it is interesting to note that most of the Taliban who have been killed, so far as we can determine, were fighting within about 20 miles of their home. That is why we should attach importance to the reintegration process; they are certainly not all of an ideological disposition, and it is, of course, easier to come to a political settlement with those who are not.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

The Foreign Secretary referred in his statement to a number of things that will be done, and one of them was the development of mining. It is well known that Afghanistan has something in the region of $1 trillion-worth of precious materials, gas and oil. What steps will he take to ensure that the Afghani people benefit from the mining of their country?

[Mr Hague]

That is a very important point. On Monday I visited the Herat region in western Afghanistan, an area rich in mineral wealth. Not only is it very much part of the Kabul process to ensure that an estimated $11 billion can be added to Afghanistan’s GDP into the 2020s by the proper exploitation of its extractive industries, but, as the hon. Lady can tell from what I said earlier about the transparency of the publication of all the contracts now for the development of those industries, big steps are being made to ensure that the Afghan people benefit from them.

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that most front-line Taliban fighters hold no particular love for the Taliban but simply fight because they are paid to do so and have few other economic opportunities, and that economic development, agricultural reform and support for those who are willing to become ex-Taliban fighters must form an essential part of our strategy for withdrawal?

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is a vital part of what the reintegration programme is about, and that is why it is so important to provide economic opportunity for people, including in Helmand. As he can gather, that is an important part of our strategy.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The Irish Guards are redeploying again, so I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s comments in relation to the troops and the fact that they are an encouragement for them. In relation to winning the hearts and minds of those in Afghanistan, will he give us some more detail about the road structure? As I understand it, the road programme will not be one of the targets, and he made no mention today of the farmers and those involved in drugs, and the need to encourage them away from that. Will he comment on that?

[Mr Hague]

That is a lot more subjects than I can deal with at this stage of proceedings. I mentioned earlier that one of the objectives in the programmes adopted at the conference yesterday is to create 500,000 more jobs in agriculture. There are four priority programmes in agriculture and the provision of access to safe drinking water, so a tremendous amount of work is contained in this. If the hon. Gentleman studies the communiqué and the statement of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development about our development work, he will see that the issues that he raises are all being addressed.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

In the drive to tackle corruption in Afghanistan, will my right hon. Friend say a little more about what steps are being taken to disrupt the drugs industry, which does spread its tentacles very directly to our streets?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, the British Government continue to give a lot of resources to counter-narcotics work—£26 million in the current financial year. We support programmes for growing alternative crops in Afghanistan. I was interested to note in Herat on Monday that saffron is being grown on a wide scale and brings a much larger income to the farmer than the growing of opium poppies. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has reported a 22% fall in opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan in the last year.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I wish the Foreign Secretary well in the difficult task of bringing our troops home. What is the position of our partner nations with regard to the 2015 unconditional withdrawal date, of which the Prime Minister spoke?

[Mr Hague]

There is no difficulty on that among our partner nations. We have discussed it with the United States and with many other partners, and they are entirely comfortable with that position. In all the meetings that I held yesterday, I do not think that any of those whom I met raised any objection to it.

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will not be surprised to hear that many of my constituents are sceptical about our prospects of success in Afghanistan. He warned both against over-optimism and over-pessimism. I appreciate the complexity of the subject, but does he think that there is the potential to provide a few simple metrics by which hon. Members and the general public can measure success in implementing the plan during the next four years?

[Mr Hague]

In a way, yes. The Kabul process is a clear programme for the future in Afghanistan. I think that my hon. Friend and all of us in the House, and those of his constituents who take a close interest in these matters, will be able to see whether it is being implemented or not. Clearly there are statistical targets such as the size of the army and the police and the growth of the economy. Those things do exist, but, as he knows, it is the quality of them that matters as well as the timing of the quantity being achieved, so I am reluctant to say, “Here are four or five things by which we judge the entire situation.” But I think that we will be able to see whether this is working or not.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for the information that he has given us with regard to the progress made with recruitment to the Afghan army and police. He will know that a minority, but a substantial minority, of the personnel involved in those institutions are viewed by British forces as being unreliable. What assurances can he give us that the forces that we leave behind will be able to do the job and that this is not a tick-box exercise to reach a number that will not be able to provide for the security of Afghanistan and that will require us to go back in again at some point after 2015?

[Mr Hague]

It is for that reason that the focus on police training, which I mentioned earlier, and the role of our forces in being overwhelmingly devoted in the future to embedded partnering with Afghan soldiers are so important. The hon. Gentleman is right that not every experience of that is universally good, but, nevertheless, it is generally good, and that is important to stress. As the Afghan national army develops, our forces have a respect for what they are doing and they work well alongside them.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am grateful to colleagues, including the Foreign Secretary, for their co-operation.

Points of Order

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

13:36

[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Given the comments of the Prime Minister in Washington yesterday, are the Government seeking to make a statement in the House about their plans to release all documentation relating to the prisoner transfer agreement between the UK Government and Libya? Will UK Ministers and, now, shadow Ministers, come to the House to explain why they signed a PTA deal with Colonel Gaddafi at the same time as an economic agreement was being signed with BP?

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman is an experienced enough parliamentarian to know extremely well that that was not a point of order, but the views that he has expressed and the concern that he has articulated will have been heard. The short answer to his question is that I have had no indication from a Foreign Office Minister of any intention to make a statement on that matter. Whether Ministers will seek to do so in light of what the hon. Gentleman has said remains to be seen, and he will require his usual patience.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I understand fully that any expenses system, including one involving home accommodation, must retain records of hon. Members’ private home addresses, private telephone numbers and private bank details. But were you as disturbed as I was to read in The Times on 15 July that, owing to a glitch in the website, all such details became accessible to 1,300 hon. Members and their assistants, who are entitled to log on to their own part of the website? Such mistakes can always happen with online systems. Will you, Mr. Speaker, take up with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, and, if necessary with the Information Commissioner’s Office, the necessity to impress upon IPSA that such private details should not be held in any online system whatsoever, as there is absolutely no need for the information to be held in that vulnerable way?

[Mr Speaker]

I was as disturbed as the hon. Gentleman by this very unfortunate incident and breach of security. The Speaker’s Committee on IPSA is now the appropriate forum through which concerns about matters of operation or policy can be transmitted to IPSA. I have regular meetings with representatives of IPSA. It will not be my normal practice to talk in this House about the detail of those exchanges, but the hon. Gentleman has raised a very serious point, and I am aware of other Members who have expressed similar concerns. Those concerns will be transmitted, and I will be happy to play my proper role in helping to transmit them.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You have made it clear in the past that if a right hon. or hon. Member makes a statement in this House that is subsequently proved to be inaccurate, they should—at the earliest opportunity—make a correction to the House. On 22 June, we learned in Prime Minister’s questions that the Deputy Prime Minister had made a statement about the directors of Sheffield Forgemasters not being prepared to dilute their shareholding. Subsequently, he wrote to the chief executive saying that he recognised the inaccuracy of those comments, that he withdrew them and that he apologised. However, despite repeated opportunities at Prime Minister’s questions today—I listened as carefully as I could—the Deputy Prime Minister did not apologise, accept that he had been wrong or withdraw or correct his comments. Do you, or the House in general, have any powers to ensure that the record of the House can be corrected in this instance?

[Mr Speaker]

I have several points to make in response to that point of order. First, I ruled on the matter yesterday and it would be unwise to add to or pick at an earlier ruling about the appropriateness of correcting in the House factually incorrect statements made in the House. Secondly, I know that the hon. Gentleman will not take umbrage if I suggest that he is as persistent a woodpecker in the House as there is to be found. He has raised this matter before and he knows perfectly well that it was raised at some considerable length with the Deputy Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s questions. I have a slight anxiety that the hon. Gentleman is now seeking to continue the debate, and that would not be right. Thirdly, the hon. Gentleman need be patient for only a few hours because, unless I am mistaken, he has an Adjournment debate on the matter in which these and other points will probably be developed eloquently and at appropriate length.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Last night we had a debate on the UK Youth Parliament and one Member spoke for an hour and 17 minutes. Is it correct, proper and appropriate—and is it in order—that a Member should speak for that length of time so that others who wish to make a contribution are denied the opportunity?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that point of order and the answer to him is twofold. If something disorderly occurs, the Chair will ensure that it is stopped and that a Member does not continue in disorderly conduct. On the wider point about long speeches by some Members preventing others from contributing to a debate, it is true. However, it would be wrong for me to say to the hon. Gentleman, who is a new and committed Member, that a new precedent was somehow established last night. There have been occasions on which very long speeches by one Member have prevented other Members from contributing. It is a regrettable state of affairs and I know that the hon. Gentleman is often keen to catch the eye of the Chair. If he is persistent on other occasions, I am sure that he will get his fair share of opportunities. Account may also be taken by the Chair of occasions on which a Member has wished to speak and, because of long-windedness by someone else, has failed to do so.

Credit Regulation (Child Pornography)

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

Motion for leave to introduce a Bill (Standing Order No. 23)

13:43

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to impose penalties on credit and debit card providers for the facilitation of the downloading of child pornography from the internet; and for connected purposes.

My Bill would penalise credit card companies that enable the downloading of child pornography off the internet. The International Business Times says:

“Child pornography is one of the fastest growing businesses online”.

Let us not forget that behind every image is a child who has been abused, tragically immortalised on the web. Until 2002, users simply submitted their credit and debit card details online to download images of abuse from the web. These days the new route for users is to hide their identity by using pre-paid credit cards to download images. These pre-paid cards are available to adults and children for £100 a time at service stations and high street retailers without the need to provide proof of identity.

These Visa, Mastercard and other cards are then used to download images of child abuse by simply clicking on spam links to enter a growing number of sites. The user simply exchanges the credit card number and its value for a password to enable downloading. If more credit is needed, it is just a matter of buying more £100 cards to pay for more and more abuse. The same cards are used by children to buy knives, alcohol and other items online. All the buyer has to do is put his name and address down as, say, Donald Duck at Buckingham Palace, and away he goes.

The simple fact is that, under current legislation, no proof of identity is required for card values below £100 or €150. So the existing controls, which were designed to target money laundering via the now abolished Financial Services Authority, do not work to protect children or to stop the growth of online child pornography. That is why Parliament should back the provisions in my Bill to make credit and debit card companies liable for penalties when their cards are used to download images of abuse.

The provisions will work. International evidence shows that the authorities can target payment systems to change behaviour. For example, in the USA, credit card companies were banned from being used for internet gambling transactions and face fines if they allow such use. But in addition to fines, my Bill would require proof of identity and address such as passports, birth certificates or utility bills to buy pre-paid credit cards.

We cannot just rely—as some think we can—on the credit card industry policing itself. During Operation Ore, in 2002 the police carried out a mass raid on those using conventional credit cards to download child pornography, and that led to 1,750 convictions and 700 cautions. Since then, the credit card companies, including Visa and Mastercard, have invested heavily to stop the use of conventional cards, but that particular horse had, of course, already bolted. Few abusers would now risk their identities becoming known, so now they use pre-paid cards instead. Once more we find ourselves with growing credit card-driven child abuse on the web. The credit card companies are not taking pre-emptive action. There is lots of money involved and no appetite for voluntary industry action—[Interruption.] I thank hon. Members for their support for taking action rather than sitting back and letting the abuse go on. The more time that goes by, the more children are being abused. The more financial momentum these transactions cause, the more child abuse image users and addicts are created.

So Parliament must act and it is with no hesitation that I offer this Bill for the House to support. I am grateful for the blessing of hon. Members on both sides of the House and growing public interest—this is the BBC’s second most watched online story today and, I am reliably informed, is No. 2 on Teletext. I hope that the Government will listen and adopt the provisions into mainstream legislation. Today, let the House speak with one voice and send a clear message to those who would have our children abused and those who allow it to happen that we will not stand idly by. We will use the powers at our disposal and we will put the protection of children first.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Geraint Davies, Catherine McKinnell, Mr Edward Leigh, Jessica Morden, Greg Mulholland, Luciana Berger, Mr Peter Bone, Nia Griffith, Mr Ian Davidson, Rosie Cooper, Lindsay Roy and Mr Adam Holloway present the Bill.

Geraint Davies accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on 19 November 2010 and to be printed (Bill 61).

Business without Debate

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

Delegated Legislation

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Terms and Conditions of Employment

That the draft National Minimum Wage Regulations 1999 (Amendment) Regulations 2010, which were laid before this House on 21 June, be approved.—(James Duddridge.)

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Corporation Tax

That the draft Qualifying Oil Fields Order 2010, which was laid before this House on 23 June, be approved.—(James Duddridge.)

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Child Trust Funds

That the draft Child Trust Funds (Amendment No. 3) Regulations 2010, which were laid before this House on 29 June, be approved.—(James Duddridge.)

13:51

Division 36

Ayes: 315

---

Conservative: 271
Liberal Democrat: 43

Noes: 220

---

Labour: 202
Democratic Unionist Party: 7
Scottish National Party: 4
Plaid Cymru: 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 2
Independent: 1
Alliance: 1
Green Party: 1

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I should announce to the House that the vote in the deferred Division will now resume, and the Lobby will stay open until 2.15 pm. Those Members who have not voted in the deferred Division may do so until then.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[1st Allocated Day]

Considered in Committee

[Mr Lindsay Hoyle in the Chair]

Clause 1

Academy arrangements

14:04

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 28, page 1, line 18, leave out from ‘(6)’ to end of line 20.

Just so that I start off on the right foot, is it Mr Hoyle or Mr Deputy Speaker?

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Mr Hoyle.

[Vernon Coaker]

Right; I just thought that I would embarrass myself, rather than have everyone else embarrassing themselves by not knowing what to say.

It is a great pleasure to be going through the various provisions of the Bill. Let me also take this opportunity to welcome the Government Front-Bench team to their roles. This is their first opportunity to take a Bill through the Commons. Normally today’s proceedings would have happened upstairs but, without making a point, I can say that theirs is still a demanding role, but one that I know they will enjoy. It is also quite nice to be on this side of the Committee, from where I can ask the questions and not have to think what the answers are. Having said that, I would much rather be in power and have that responsibility.

With that welcome, let me say that the Bill and our discussions on it are extremely important, and while it is—

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Vernon Coaker]

I will in a moment. The hon. Gentleman should let me get started. If he gives me just two minutes, I will say something and then he might want to intervene—unless, of course, he wants to intervene to welcome my welcome.

It is good to be here to debate the issues, but let me say one thing. I know that there will be serious differences of opinion in this discussion, but I also know that we are all motivated by a desire to improve educational standards. There are real differences between us on how we achieve that and what the best way forward for our state school system is. However, I accept that we are all motivated by a desire to try to do the best for the young people of this country, and I know that that is true among all Members, right across the House.

[Mr Wilson]

rose—

[Vernon Coaker]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman now, because he looks as though he is about to burst if I do not.

[Mr Wilson]

At the start of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, he said that this was an important debate—and indeed it is—but is he embarrassed by the number of Labour Back Benchers who have come along to support him this afternoon?

[Vernon Coaker]

No, I am not embarrassed at all; I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman will have to put up with me for the time being.

This is an important debate, but it is also the quality of debate that is important. Over the next few days—today, tomorrow and Monday—the quality of the debate from across the Committee will lead to a Bill that we will oppose, but which, being a good Opposition, we will try to improve, notwithstanding the fact that we do not agree with it.

It is important to say at the beginning that, whether we are talking about the current amendment—amendment 28, which concerns special schools—or any other amendment, at the heart of this debate is the fact that we have a different view of academies and academy education from that which is presented in the Bill. This Bill inverts the way in which the previous Government pursued the academy programme. We established academies in areas of poor educational performance and areas of social disadvantage. The Bill turns that on its head, allowing outstanding schools to fast-track to academy status and allowing primary schools for the first time to become academies, a provision that is the subject of a subsequent amendment, and also allowing special schools to become academies—the subject of amendment 28. Those are all things that we think could damage the provision of education, particularly with respect to special education needs in an area.

[Mr Edward Timpson (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with the recommendation in the previous Parliament of the Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families, as it then was, that the freedoms available to academies under his Government should have been available to all schools? Does he have any objection to all schools having such freedoms?

[Vernon Coaker]

Of course we want freedoms extended to different schools where appropriate. However, if the hon. Gentleman reads the Children, Schools and Families Committee report, he will see that it talked about allowing the expansion of those freedoms within a managed context, not what is being proposed now, which is that these freedoms be extended to schools without any check on them or on how they use those freedoms. The proposals on the local authority role have caused huge disquiet across the country, and will have caused huge disquiet among the hon. Gentleman’s Conservative and Liberal colleagues. That is why I am pointing out the difference.

The Chair of the Select Committee is no longer in his place, but it would be interesting to know whether his Committee would have reached the same conclusion about the extension of freedoms to all schools if it had known that it would happen in a context in which the Secretary of State—either through a funding agreement or a direct grant—determined whether a school was operating effectively and conducting itself in an appropriate way. This applies to special schools, as provided for in the amendment, and to any other schools. I believe that the different context is crucial for understanding the conclusions that the Select Committee came to about how the academies programme was developing under the last Government in comparison with this Government’s programme. In the light of that difference, the Select Committee might well have reached different conclusions.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Why is it that extra freedom is good for a badly performing school, while a school that is performing well cannot be trusted with that extra freedom? That does not make any sense.

[Vernon Coaker]

Of course outstanding schools can be trusted, but such schools have demonstrated that they already have all the freedom they need to be outstanding. Schools in areas of social deprivation or those suffering from educational underperformance should be allowed to operate in a way that, we hope, will raise standards. Evidence on whether or not the hoped-for and expected higher standards have been achieved is not as clear cut as one would like to imagine. I shall come on to deal with impact assessments in more detail later, but for any type of school, the impact assessments are quite wary about the evidence is terms of how much progress has been made in academies. All I am saying to the right hon. Gentleman—to be fair, he operates by trying to make policy on the basis of evidence—is that the evidence is mixed, so to plunge headlong into a massive expansion of academy freedoms without due regard to the evidence is not the right course of action for special schools or others.

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Redwood]

rose—

[Vernon Coaker]

I give way to the right hon. Gentleman, who may want to come back to me on this point.

[Mr Redwood]

I am grateful. Is the hon. Gentleman now saying that Tony Blair’s experiment was wrong for schools in the poorly performing areas and that they should not have been made academies? Is that his position?

[Vernon Coaker]

No, that is a totally different scenario. I was not saying that at all. I was saying that to target academy freedoms in the first instance to schools in areas of educational underperformance and social disadvantage was exactly the right thing to do. My right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State agreed a large number of academies and it is clear that we would have gone on to establish more of them. What we are saying is that this model of academies is the right one. As for amendment 28—I want to stay in order, Mr Hoyle—extending the same model to special schools and primary schools without the evidence to back it up is a risk. A managed expansion would be fine, but this is a free-for-all. That is the difference. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman wants to improve educational achievement in an area, but our view is that this proposal creates an unnecessary risk. Allowing outstanding schools to expand through the academy system as the Bill sets out risks creating the two-tier education system that none of us wants.

[Gavin Barwell]

The hon. Gentleman talks about a massive expansion, but surely the key point about this legislation is that it is permissive. Special schools and primary schools will become academies only if those schools themselves judge that they want to be academies. Does he not trust the judgment of those schools, their head teachers and their governing bodies?

[Vernon Coaker]

It is simply not the case that the hon. Gentleman’s Front-Bench team wants this to be a gentle expansion and not a big bang. The Secretary of State sees this as a flagship Bill. The idea is to try as hard as possible—notwithstanding the impact assessments—to expand the number of academies as quickly as possible. If we had been successful in the election and were still in government, we would have expanded the number of academies. Indeed, I had signed up to a number of them coming forward in September—some in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency—and my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) would have expanded the academies programme, as I said.

The issue is the model for the expansion. That is the difference between us. We will argue our way all around the different clauses, but this goes to the very heart of the debate. Our view is that we should concentrate on schools in areas of social disadvantage and educational underperformance; this Government’s view is to allow outstanding schools to fast-track to academy status with all the risks that that brings.

14:15

[Gavin Barwell]

The hon. Gentleman will know that in London constituencies like mine, people in very disadvantaged circumstances often live right next door to fairly affluent areas. Why does he think that only poorly performing schools should try to improve? Why should satisfactory schools, good schools and outstanding schools not also try to raise their standards?

[Vernon Coaker]

That is a fair point. We want all schools to improve their standards. That is not my point. My point is that allowing only outstanding schools to let rip in this way is likely to cause problems. The hon. Gentleman needs to ask why the Bill does not specifically provide that outstanding schools should or must co-operate and reach an agreement with an underperforming school. As it stands, it is a permissive part of the Bill: it is a good thing to do; it would be nice if those outstanding schools did that. They should do so, but there is no “must” about it. I am not sure how this would work in respect of the programme motion, but the hon. Gentleman might like to consider tabling an amendment formally to require outstanding schools to partner other schools—special schools or whatever—that may be next door to them, but are not satisfactory and are not delivering the standard of education that they want. If he did that, I would look forward to considering whether we could support it.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

I am slightly concerned that words such as “freedom” are being used in this context. It is one of those concepts like “apple pie” and “mother’s milk”, which nobody can disagree with. Given that we have a personalised curriculum and given that much work has been done with head teachers to see what can be developed and offered at key stages 3 and 4, my concern is that we are effectively granting the freedom to disapply the curriculum from many vulnerable children and to restrict what is offered on the curricular diet to certain groups of children. I fear that head teachers will say, “There’s no point in that child learning French; he can barely speak English. Sorry.”

[Vernon Coaker]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. There is a clear tension. We need to ensure that, where appropriate, schools are given the freedom to innovate and to pursue the important objectives they want, but that we do so in a way that does not disadvantage some children.

As I was saying, this goes to heart of the Bill and explains why we tabled amendment 28 to take special schools out of the Bill so that they cannot become academies. If we give those special schools that freedom, there is a potential for it to impact adversely on the entitlements of other children in an area.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Vernon Coaker]

Let me finish the point, and then I will, of course. We are in Committee, so things are a bit calmer.

It is no good giving one person or school freedom without considering how it will impact on the freedom of others. I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) made that same point, particularly with respect to disadvantaged children, children with special needs and so forth. The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) tabled amendments with a similar point in mind for the Liberal Democrats, so these concerns are not restricted to Labour Members.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman remind the House who said:

“We need to make it easier for every school to acquire the drive and essential freedoms of Academies…We want every school to be able quickly and easily to become a self-governing independent state school…All schools will be able to have Academy-style freedoms”?

Was it not his former leader, one Anthony Blair? If the hon. Gentleman no longer agrees with those views, when did he depart from them?

[Vernon Coaker]

I have seen that briefing. I have explained how we have moved on from that point. We are now debating the particular model that the Government are introducing. The context in which those remarks were made was therefore totally different. We are considering how to move from where we are to where we want to be in giving schools more freedom. Our view is different from the hon. Gentleman’s and that of his Front Benchers. We believe that, if there is a free-for-all and the local authority’s role is taken away, the process is open to danger. That is the point of difference. The hon. Gentleman may think that it is better that whether a school becomes an academy is determined not by the local authority and local people but by the Secretary of State. That is nonsensical. However, he will doubtless defend that position.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

There has been pressure on special schools in particular. Under the previous Government, 186 special schools closed. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that some special schools may welcome the greater security that a bit more independence would give them if they were allowed to become academies?

[Vernon Coaker]

One of the points behind the hon. Gentleman’s question is to ensure that as many young people for whom it is appropriate are included in mainstream education. I would have thought that that was a point of agreement between us. Of course special schools need to be retained, and there is clearly a need for them to have high standards and deliver the quality of education that we all want for children with severe learning difficulties. I am not sure that their becoming academies in the way that the Bill envisages would make much difference. I pay tribute to special schools, which do a fantastic job.

[Damian Collins]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that, for parents, choice is at the heart of the matter when deciding whether a mainstream or a special school is most appropriate. Does he agree that such choice should be available to schools, so that a head teacher and a board of governors can decide whether academy status is best for them? They may decide one way or the other, but surely they should have the same choices and opportunities as other schools.

[Vernon Coaker]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to table an amendment to provide that schools choosing such a route must consult parents and the local community, and that any application for such status should depend on not only the head teacher and the governing body, but the broader community, particularly parents. I take his point that parents are always important in education, but that applies particularly to parents of pupils in special schools. They are especially dependent on not only the support that the schools give the young person, whom they have the responsibility of educating, but the emotional advice and support that they often give parents, sometimes in very difficult circumstances. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that that is important, why does not he amend the Bill to make it a requirement that schools taking the route that he suggests consult parents? It should not be a case of a whimsical, “It’s good practice if you do that, it’ll be in the funding agreement.” Let us have a bit of clarity about what is expected from such a radical reform.

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Vernon Coaker]

I will give way to a different part of the coalition.

[Dan Rogerson]

The hon. Gentleman is even-handed, for which I thank him. I direct him to clause 5, which deals with consultation on conversion. Subsection (1) states:

“Before a maintained school in England is converted into an Academy, the school’s governing body must consult”.

It includes the word “must”. Has he looked at the version of the Bill that came from the other place?

[Vernon Coaker]

I have, and the subsection goes on,

“must consult such persons as they think appropriate.”

Why does not it specify parents? It simply says, consult “as they think appropriate.” I have read the Bill and I can read the words “as they think appropriate.” Subsection (3) states:

“The consultation may take place before”—

which is fine—

“or after an Academy order”.

The hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) made a good point. If a school, particularly a special school, wants to follow the route that he proposed, one should not have a broad “consult people where appropriate” provision, but a list of people, including parents, who are exceptionally important, to consult. Why does subsection (3) say “before or after”? I am not a cynic, but the vast majority of our constituents will think that, if we provide for a school to consult after an academy order is made, such consultation is just a way of smoothing the process, rather than proper, legitimate consultation about whether it is the right thing to do. The constituents of the hon. Member for North Cornwall may be different from mine, but that is what my constituents would think.

[Mr Rob Wilson]

The hon. Gentleman has been generous in giving way. The Avenue school in Reading is an outstanding special school, led by a brilliant head teacher, Sue Bourne. Why do the Opposition want to take away the right to become an academy from her and her school, when that is clearly what they want to do?

[Vernon Coaker]

If it is an outstanding school, it has become one under the existing arrangements. We are worried that one school’s freedom could be detrimental to the wider school system. That goes to the heart of the matter. The hon. Gentleman disagrees, and it is a point of debate and discussion. He will have to argue with other special schools and other head teachers, whom I, and no doubt others, could cite, who greatly fear that fragmenting the system, with some schools following the academy route while others do not, means that the overall collective provision in an area for particularly vulnerable children is put at risk. That is even before we have reached the question, which the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb) will have to answer, about funding, admissions, the area that a school serves and its relationship with other schools. We are obliged to take all those matters on trust.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I was very interested to hear the hon. Gentleman’s concern about a lack of co-ordination for provision. Does he accept that some good work has been done in clause 2(6), which deals with low-incidence special educational needs? It provides for retaining the money for that provision under the control of the local education authority. The problem about which he is rightly worried will be largely avoided, and we can still have special resources and units for people with low-incidence special needs.

[Vernon Coaker]

The hon. Gentleman is right. That provision is the result of an amendment in the House of Lords, and it makes a significant improvement to the Bill. It would be stupid and churlish to deny that. The Government deserve credit for amending the measure and including that provision. They have made other amendments, which have improved the Bill. However, the hon. Gentleman, who knows a lot about special needs, knows that the provision deals with low-incidence special needs whereas the amendment deals with special schools. When people talk about special needs, low-incidence special needs are often neglected. Like other hon. Members, I know from professionals that they often feel that provision can be made for someone with serious learning difficulties. Some people, however, have an unrecognised or low-incidence special need, and the fact that that is covered in the Bill is a big step forward. Of course, the devil will be in the detail when it comes to how the funding will work, and how it will be judged whether a school is meeting the requirements of young people with low-incidence special needs.

Special schools are a different matter, as I have been trying to explain to various Members. They contain young people with particularly profound learning difficulties, rather than young people with low-incidence special needs. I think that rushing into allowing those schools to become academies puts at risk the cohesion, planning and co-ordination of provision for the young people involved.

14:30

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Vernon Coaker]

I will give way to the Minister first, and then to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner). May I make one point first, Mr Hoyle?

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

It’s your speech.

[Vernon Coaker]

It is my speech; I thank my hon. Friend—for he is my friend—the Minister of State. I will always give way to Members. However, I do not want to hear a point of order at 10 pm about how the Minister went on—[Interruption.] I mean the shadow Minister.

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to the shadow Minister for giving way. He was a very effective schools Minister, and, along with his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, he presided over 200 academies. Did he find that those 200 academies were not involved in their communities, and did not participate in local plans to raise standards across the board? Were they the islands unto themselves that he now claims the new academies will be?

[Vernon Coaker]

The point is that the whole of that system was based on local consensus. Local authorities and local communities were involved, and difficult and tough decisions were sometimes made in the face of significant opposition. The academies programme was developed on the basis of local agreement, which meant the local community telling schools that they must take part in all the partnerships.

Those were secondary schools, but, as the Minister knows, the amendment deals with the possible extension of academy status to special schools and primary schools, which would involve a massive expansion. A managed expansion is one thing, but, as both Ministers of State will probably point out, the Bill is permissive—permissive, that is, to the extent that it allows almost everything to be done by means of the funding agreement or the direct grant arrangements. Regardless of ideological differences, even Government Back Benchers draw attention to the lack of a statutory requirement for things to be done that people consider necessary, which I think is a serious weakness, particularly as a funding agreement, which is a contract, would ultimately have to be tested in the courts.

Let me say this to the Minister: in all honesty. I am not making a point about the Bill being rushed through; that was dealt with when we debated the programme motion. If I were in charge of the Bill, I would think that, notwithstanding some of the improvements made by the House of Lords—such as the provision for low-incidence special needs, which were mentioned by the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland), and the application to academies of section 4 of the Education Act 1996—when it comes to exclusions, admissions and, in particular, special schools, it is no use talking about things that people “should” do. It is no use saying, “These are important matters on which parents should be consulted. These people should be consulted, and those people should be consulted.” The Bill should lay down an absolute requirement, especially in relation to those with the most profound learning difficulties.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Schools in Brent are in a difficult position, given the proposal to redistribute special educational needs among schools. It is proposed that autism, learning difficulties and challenging behaviour be apportioned between Cardinal Hinsley high school, Queens Park community school, Alperton community school and Copland community school. All those schools have fallen victim to the Building Schools for the Future cuts, at the same time as the amalgamation of the two special schools, Hay Lane and Grove Park. In the circumstances, it would be incredible if an order were allowed for academy arrangements to be pursued with consultation taking place only afterwards. It would be absolutely preposterous.

[Vernon Coaker]

My hon. Friend underlines my point. I consider it ridiculous that the Bill allows consultation to take place after an order. There should be a requirement that, at the very least, it should take place beforehand, and those whom it is appropriate to consult should be listed. He is also right to draw attention to the problems caused by the Building Schools for the Future fiasco.

[Pat Glass]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the pattern of special educational needs in this country is changing fast, particularly at the more severe and complex end of the spectrum? The pattern of attendance at special schools is completely different from that of seven years ago. If we allow special schools to become academies and to remain almost the same for seven years, we shall risk creating a special school system that will be unable to cope with the changing pattern of need.

[Vernon Coaker]

I was going to make the same point, but it has been very well made by my hon. Friend, who brings her own expertise, knowledge and experience to the debate. Her valuable point is now on the record, and no doubt the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) will respond to it.

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to the shadow Minister for giving way again; he is being very generous. He mentioned the insertion in the House of Lords of part 4 of the 1996 Act, which requires an academy to accept a child with special educational needs. His party could have introduced that measure, but did not do so. It is this Bill that is making the change in the law relating to children with special needs.

[Vernon Coaker]

Changes in policy always improve as they go through Parliament, particularly when, as was the case in the House of Lords, amendment is possible. Now a hugely important Bill is being dealt with on the Floor of the House of Commons, but unless something remarkable happens, no amendments will be made. Members, not only Labour Members but Members on the Government Benches, may well propose equally important amendments to the Bill as it stands, but it will not be possible for them to be accepted.

We have our ideological differences and our views about what is right and what is wrong about the academies programme, but—I know I am repeating myself—although four or five important points have been made about academies and consultation, unless Members wish to make problems for themselves, it will not be possible for the Bill in its current form to be amended. The Minister mentioned one amendment that was made in the House of Lords, and other good amendments were made there but, notwithstanding what we may feel about special schools becoming academies, no amendments can be made in this place to improve the position.

The ability of special schools to become academies is not only highly problematic, but very dangerous to their status as a whole local authority resource. At present, local authority-maintained special schools play a critical role in the provision of support for pupils whose circumstances mean that attendance at a mainstream school is not appropriate. In that respect, special schools are a key feature of a genuinely inclusive education system that seeks to provide additional support on the basis of objective assessments of pupils’ needs, and of the settings in which those needs might best be met. We all accept that not all pupils can function effectively and access the most appropriate support in a mainstream setting. Maintained special schools are settings managed and administered directly by local authorities and they are in place for the benefit of all local pupils. In that respect, they demonstrate the value of a local authority-provided, commonly accessible educational resource upon which all settings can draw when necessary. The ability of local authorities to act in this way in respect of special schools means that additional support for pupils can be delivered on the basis of both a comprehensive and coherent assessment of local needs and best value for money. The Minister needs to address some of the concerns on this matter, and must explain to us how this coherence of provision will be maintained when special schools become academies.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

As a former director of a local authority research organisation before I was elected to my hon. Friend’s neighbouring constituency, I spent a lot of time looking at the Conservatives’ plans for localism and decentralisation to local government. Does he agree that it is slightly contradictory that on the one hand the Conservatives claim to believe in such devolution and yet, on the other, fail to grasp that at the strategic level for certain key issues a local authority is the best placed point at which to make these key decisions? Does he also agree that there is a lack of attention to the important role that local democratic authorities can play here?

[Vernon Coaker]

I agree absolutely, and that point goes to the heart of both this amendment and a number of further amendments to other clauses throughout the Bill. I cannot believe that a significant number of Members on the Government Benches are not having serious concerns expressed to them by their local authorities about decisions on school provision and places, particularly in respect of pupils with special educational needs, being taken out of their hands and being determined instead by the Secretary of State. That is a serious flaw in the Bill, and we will try to amend it.

Given the clear advantages of the current system of provision in respect of special schools, it is not possible to identify any benefits to pupils, teachers, head teachers or members of the wider school work force that would be generated by allowing special schools to acquire academy status. In addition to the issues associated with academy status for all schools, allowing special schools to operate beyond the control of local authorities would mean that the ability of local authorities to incorporate them into their wider strategies for SEN provision would be undermined. A special school with academy status would not be under an obligation to have regard to the wider strategy in terms of the nature and scope of its provision and would be able to act in ways inconsistent with the strategy’s key provisions. There are no provisions in the Bill that would prevent special schools from charging for placements at their school—I shall want to make a particular point about that with reference to a specific subsection. There is also no link with the other aspect of the coalition Government’s proposals: to take the assessment of special needs away from local authorities and give it to an independent body.

Some local authorities have a mixture of provision, in both special schools and mainstream schools with specialist units co-located in the school or on the school site. What are the Government saying would happen to them? How would that work? There is no information in the Bill about the right of a local authority to withdraw such provision from a school if it seeks to become an academy. If there is specialist provision for special needs within a mainstream school and that is onsite—it is co-located—what will happen? Will they be treated separately? If a school were to submit an application on its own, would that be taken as meaning that the onsite provision would also convert to academy status? What would happen if the pupils concerned were incorporated into, and were working in, mainstream classes? All these issues need to be addressed. I think all Members agree that our special schools do an incredibly important job in our society and make a huge contribution to education for parents and families in some of the most of difficult circumstances, but I also think that this move to allow special schools to take up academy status is part of a headlong rush.

14:45

I also ask the Minister: where is the evidence? As the explanatory notes to the Bill make clear, the benefits section of the impact assessment assumes that there will be 200 new academies each year but that they will all be secondaries. There is no evidence as to the potential impact on primary or special academies. We will come to primary academies when we deal with the next amendment, but how is it possible for Parliament to determine that allowing special schools to convert to academies is the right way forward when there is no evidence in the impact assessment? Even if it is flimsy evidence or evidence that we disagree with, would not the impact assessment usually address and deal with it? Why does the Government’s own impact assessment not address the issue of primaries or special schools, and why does the limited evidence in the Government’s own equalities impact assessment, which deals with SEN, state:

“It is not possible to say with certainty from table 6”—

I will not bore the Committee with table 6—

“which group of schools serve SEN pupils better because by definition we cannot know their individual circumstances and challenges. However, the outcomes for pupils with SEN are at least in line with what we might expect when compared to similar schools”?

It is hardly a ringing endorsement of the headlong rush to academy status for the assessment to say just

“at least in line with”,

rather than that academy status for pupils with SEN has resulted in a huge surge in attainment.

Why are we being asked to proceed in this manner? The Minister’s Government talk about evidence-based policy making; her Government say we are entering a new politics, which is about not ideologically driven policy making, but policy making that is based on evidence. Where is the evidence, apart from some head teachers of some special schools saying, for perfectly understandable and laudable reasons, that they think it would be better if they were special school academies? Where is the evidence that this is the right policy? Where can I and other hon. Members find that evidence?

Can the Minister also explain why pupil referral units—or short-stay schools as they are now called—are not included in the Bill? I suspect there must have been a debate about whether they should have been included; otherwise it would have been a mistake. From what I know about her ministerial colleague, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, it will not have been a mistake, so there has obviously been a debate about this. Why are not pupil referral units—or short-stay schools—included in the Bill? I guess that the reason is because there is so much potential for a disjointed system of provision that a little more work needs to be done. If so, why is that true for short-stay schools but not for special schools? What criteria have been used to determine that pupil referral units were inappropriate for inclusion in the Bill, but special schools should be included?

I have been speaking for a long time, but I took a lot of interventions. There are huge questions. How is the funding going to work? Where is the funding coming from for those schools? What will the impact on special schools be if two or three special schools in a local authority opt out? What will the implications be for a local authority’s special needs provision? What area will this cover? What will the requirements be in terms of schools liaising with other schools in the district? Will it be possible for parents in an area to set up a free school that is a special school academy? I do not know what the technical term for that might be; perhaps it would be called a special-school, free-school academy. Is that a possibility, or would different criteria be applied to that? What criteria would there be if parents in an area decided that they wished to set up a special school as an academy? How does that relate to the free school provisions in this Bill?

Lastly, will the Minister assure us on the arrangements for charging? She will know that clause 1(9) seeks to ensure that no charge is made by academies in respect of “admission” or “attendance”. However, clause 1(9)(b) says that this also applies

“(subject to any exceptions specified in the terms)”—

to—

“ education provided at the school.”

Can she reassure us about what will happen to the expertise, knowledge and information that many other schools access at the moment to support their own provision when a school becomes a special school academy? Will she categorically state that nothing in clause 1(9)(b) will allow a special school academy to start charging, in any sense, for any provision it makes for any other school within its area?

This is a hugely important point. To be fair, I do not think that the Minister would want to see such charging, but what will happen if a private company establishes a special school academy or if, two years down the road, a special school academy is providing teachers or support to a school? I am talking not about extras, but about what some special schools do. Their teachers go to work in other schools to help them, particularly in respect of some lower incidence special needs. These teachers use their expertise with children with profound difficulties to work with children with lower incidence special needs. Can she say whether it is absolutely the case that in no circumstances will any special school academy charge, in any way, for any service provided to another school that all of us would regard as mainstream provision?

I have begged the indulgence of the Committee because I have taken a lot of interventions. I hope that I have made it clear that I know that each and every one of us in this House supports special schools, and the fabulous work that teachers do in those schools and their fabulous co-operation and liaison with parents in those schools.

[Chris Skidmore]

rose—

[Vernon Coaker]

I was trying to finish, but I will give way.

[Chris Skidmore]

The hon. Gentleman has rightly praised the work of special schools. If he is such a fan of them, why did 9,000 special school places and 160 special schools close under the previous Government? He and I are not special school teachers. We are not experts in this field, but if we were, I would hope that the Government would give us the freedom to set up schools and teach in a way that we know we are able to teach as professionals. I hope that he agrees with that statement.

[Vernon Coaker]

If I were going to make a party political point, I would go away now to find out how many special schools closed under the previous Conservative Government. May I just say to the hon. Gentleman that the policy objective, which I thought had cross-party support, was to include as many young people as possible in mainstream education? If that is a policy objective, clearly some special schools will close and some special school places will not be available because we will have decided that we can provide perfectly properly for those young people in a mainstream setting. As one of his colleagues said, the clear point is that this has to be a matter on which parents choose. However, the hon. Gentleman did not say that, did he? His question should have been whether I am certain that every parent has had the free choice that they should have had. It should not have been the party political point that he tried to make about the number of special school places that went.

I say to the hon. Gentleman that every parent should have a proper choice about what provision is best for their child—be it a special school or a mainstream school. Alongside that, it is a laudable and absolutely correct policy objective to ensure that as far as possible—if this provision can be made for them—young people, whatever their difficulty, should be provided for and educated in a mainstream school. There are examples of brilliant education provision in mainstream education for young people with some of the most difficult learning problems. Unfortunately, for some that provision cannot be made and provision is instead made for them in special schools. He has doubtless seen in his constituency, as I have seen in mine, the brilliance of the provision that is then made for them. I say to him again that the question is about parental choice; it is not about trying to make a party political point about the number of places.

[Pat Glass]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we are dealing with one of the educational myths? Special schools may have closed under the previous Government, but in fact the number of special school places increased. Where special schools did close it was because they were simply not good enough, and they were replaced with excellent special schools or excellent provision in mainstream education.

[Vernon Coaker]

I totally agree with that.

This has been an excellent debate. May I finish by saying that I think all Members from across the House would agree that when we debate special education, not just special educational needs, and the issue of special schools, we do not pay sufficient tribute to the work of the teachers in special schools? That is the case notwithstanding our difference about whether special schools should become academies. We profoundly disagree with that approach, for some of the reasons that I have set out. It is a leap in the dark and we have no idea where it will end up. However, at least we have had the opportunity to praise special schools, to examine their work and to try to understand this issue. No doubt, the Minister will try, in her response, to allay the Committee’s fears a little more about what this will mean for special schools.

[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

Just to reinforce an earlier point, may I say that I closed 12 special schools as the relevant education portfolio holder and that many of those schools were an abomination? However, the process also included much more inclusion in mainstream schools and the creation of six brand-new schools, co-located, which was a great positive. That could not have been done without taking a strategic approach across the whole district and that would not have been possible if there had been independent schools within that sector.

[Vernon Coaker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point, which relates to the one that I have made. Where is the strategic direction coming from, given the bypassing of the local authority? He will know that the Liberal Democrats’ election manifesto showed that they understood very well that that was a real issue for them. That is why they tried to marry up the issue of the greater freedom for schools with ensuring that the strategic oversight of that was very much incorporated within the local authority framework and was not, in essence, delegated to the Secretary of State and centralised. That is a huge flaw in this model for academies.

[Mr Buckland]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), the shadow Minister, for saying some nice words about me, although I do not know whether I deserve them. I just happened to fall into this subject by being interested in it because of my family concern and, as a result of that interest, I perhaps have slightly more knowledge about it than most. However, I am not an expert; I am like any other parent who is interested in this subject and I am very passionate, as many parents become about the education of their children.

I must confess, however, to having been somewhat puzzled in the first instance, and then somewhat disappointed by this amendment. I had expected something more nuanced, given the debate that took place in the other place. I was crestfallen to see that the approach taken by Baroness Royall, which was that, in effect, special schools should be left out of the equation altogether, is being followed in this House. Some points have already been covered by my hon. Friends in interventions on the shadow Minister, so I shall not reiterate them in full. I simply ask: why exclude special schools from the opportunity that this Bill provides, given that other schools are to be given that choice? This is not mandatory—nobody is being forced to do anything; it is a matter for the individual school to choose.

15:00

Perhaps we should pause to remind ourselves of the process that families undergo when going through the statementing process and finding the right school for their child. We know a lot about that very important process, which is difficult for the parents, but which guarantees statutory protection for that child. There has been a lot of argument about how we assess a particular young person or child for the purposes of statementing, and there are many concerns about the obvious difficulty of the local education authority acting as both the assessor and funder of places. I have been very encouraged by my party’s policy of divorcing and dividing the assessment and provision processes. It is vital that we follow through on that to ensure that there is full confidence in the assessment system.

What will happen then? It is not always the case that a child with a full statement will go to a local special school. Very often, a child with acute needs will have to go to a school—often a privately funded school and perhaps in another part of the country—that has extremely specialised provision for children with acute needs. We can all think of examples of schools such as Prior’s Court, which is just off junction 13 of the M4. That private school was set up 10 years ago to deal with children with acute needs on the autism spectrum, including autism and Asperger’s syndrome. However, some of the children and young people who go there, including a constituent of mine, do so thanks to LEA funding.

Many results arise from local authority funding and it is not always the case that children end up in a local special school. The issue is far more nuanced than that. I know that the hon. Gentleman appreciates that, given his experience as the Schools Minister. He understands that the amendment ignores all the subtleties and individual cases that result in a plethora of provision across the country for children and young people with SEN.

Had the clause reached the House unamended—I remind the House that the unamended clause concerned merely the varying needs of children—I would be happy to support the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, but we have moved on considerably from that. The argument that was advanced in the other place by his colleague Baroness Royall was rightly rejected by that House, and a far more considered set of amendments were debated and either accepted by the Government or voted on by that House. I was delighted to see such amendments to clauses 6 to 9.

The funding issue that was properly raised by Members of the other place has been addressed and we now have the all-important guarantee—the incorporation of part IV of the Education Act 1996—that will put children with SEN on exactly the same footing whether they are in a maintained school or in an academy. That was an important concern for many people on both sides of the House and outside it, and it has been addressed, but we would lose that gain if the amendment were accepted; indeed, we would lose the whole shooting match.

The amendment not only ignores the nuances of the situation, but takes a blunderbuss approach. I appreciate that Labour opposes the Bill in principle and I understand why—the reasons have been well elucidated by the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues both on Second Reading and today. Putting that to one side, however, surely the function of tabling amendments is to try to make legislation better. I am afraid that the amendment fails that test spectacularly: its crude and generalist approach ignores all the points that I know the hon. Gentleman understands about the infinitesimal differences involved and the variety that exists in the provision of special education. It would exclude special schools from going down the academy route if they so wished.

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an extremely thoughtful contribution and I am certainly impressed by it, but it is unfair to suggest that the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) provided no argument for keeping special schools out of the equation. One such argument was that the elimination of special schools from the local authority network would have a more disruptive effect than the elimination of an ordinary primary or secondary school because special schools are well integrated into the overall local authority provision and mission regarding special education.

[Mr Buckland]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. We have dealt, in interventions, with low-incidence needs and I agree with the points that the hon. Gentleman made about that. The key point is about funding and we all felt that the Bill’s original draft did not deal with that properly, but it is now clearly set out.

A second concern of mine, which I expressed on Second Reading, is not so much about the process by which statements appear but about their enforcement. I made some observations in that debate about the need for more detail as to how that will be dealt with. How would a parent who was concerned that a statement was not being carried out or enforced by a school take their complaint further? I understand that complaints to the Secretary of State about the lack of enforcement of a statement in a special school will be dealt with by the Young People’s Learning Agency. I welcome that, but I would want to be satisfied that the YPLA personnel who dealt with those complaints would have adequate training to understand the sometimes labyrinthine process involved in enforcing SEN statements. I would also want the processes to be very clear and to be spelt out to the parents of children with SEN at the outset. I am not going to stray off the point, Mr Chope, but I want briefly to mention amendment 72, which was proposed by the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass)—

[The Temporary Chair (Christopher Chope)]

Order. It is not in order to refer to amendments that have not been selected. Will the hon. Gentleman confine his remarks to this amendment? The issue before us is whether special educational needs should be included within academies or not.

[Mr Buckland]

I am grateful for that guidance, but what I was seeking to explain is that there are some concerns about the process of enforcing SEN statements, which is relevant to the debate about linking special schools to the current network in terms of how academies will work. There are concerns about academies not being part of the LEA system and framework, but those matters could be dealt with by way of a clarification of those processes. I am sure that the Government are listening to what we are saying.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

rose—

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Buckland]

I shall give way to my hon. Friend.

[Mr Stuart]

My hon. Friend makes a good point regarding the structure of schools. There is a feeling that the most articulate or perhaps pushy parents are best able to get their child statemented in the first place and that they are also in the best position, if that statement is not properly enforced by the school, to put pressure on the school and the local authority. There is legitimate concern that the further away lies the authority that might be able to put pressure on the school, other than direct pressure from the parent, the more likely it is that that inequality will be exacerbated. It is important that Ministers should reassure us that we will have an effective and equitable system that will ensure that children are treated equally and that their statements will be honoured.

[Mr Buckland]

I am grateful for those comments. Now I shall give way to the hon. Lady.

[Glenda Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman talked about the local authority, but the special needs schools in my constituency have catchment areas for virtually the whole of London, so they are engaged with more than one local authority. We simply cannot discard the opinions of parents outside the local authority area in which the relevant special needs school is based.

Furthermore, the hon. Gentleman bases his argument on there being no change to special educational needs, but my fear is that if the Bill takes off, mainstream schools will be able simply to exclude special educational needs pupils, and there will be a knock-on effect for those special educational needs schools that prioritise those children.

[Mr Buckland]

The hon. Lady makes a number of interesting points. First, I agree about the wider community. Her well-made point about consultation reinforces my point about the complexity of provision, whereby a child in borough A will only be able to go to a school in borough B, which has the acute service—for want of a better phrase.

Secondly, the hon. Lady made a more general point about the accountability of the exclusions process, and I imagine that she would want the appeals process—

[The Temporary Chair]

Order. The accountability of the exclusions process does not relate to the amendment. The hon. Gentleman must get back to the content of the amendment.

[Mr Buckland]

I was only trying to address the hon. Lady’s intervention, which I had taken—

[The Temporary Chair]

Order. The hon. Gentleman should not be led astray by the hon. Lady. He should respond to the need to concentrate his remarks on the amendment, otherwise this debate will go on into the early hours of the morning.

[Mr Buckland]

Very well. I have been led astray by the hon. Lady’s film persona on many occasions, and in a very positive way, but I accept what you say, Mr Chope, and I shall return to the amendment.

I do not share the concern that, when it comes to children and young people in special education, the Bill will result in a “them and us” situation. In fact, to accept the amendment would be to create just such situation. If both Houses pass the Bill and we allow schools the opportunity to go down this exciting avenue, we must as a matter of principle allow all types of school to enjoy that potential opportunity, and it would be wholly wrong and discriminatory to exclude special schools from that process.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

For a number of years, I was the chair of the board of governors in a special school that dealt with the educational needs of children who were then classified as having moderate learning difficulties. The classifications were of the time. As the chair, I had to go through a process whereby the local authority decided that it would be more appropriate to close the school, because the range of provision for the children was inappropriate for the time in which we were living. If each special school in an area becomes an academy and independent of local authority concern, is there not a danger that special school arrangements and special educational arrangements will be maintained in aspic for ever?

[Mr Buckland]

That is unfair. I acknowledge and bow to the hon. Gentleman’s experience, but he underestimates where we are with special education. I am sure that he will agree that head teachers and staff in special schools always look at ways of improving their provision, and reinvent and adapt it to the new children who enter their schools year on year. I find special schools in the modern era very receptive to change. They want to understand and learn from their experiences, and they want to learn about new diagnoses, which is an area of constant change. In autism, for example, the huge increase in the number of diagnoses means that there is an increased demand for special education, so I do not share the hon. Gentleman’s pessimism or his vision of special schools wanting to remain in a golden age and refusing to move with the times.

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend makes a very compelling case for maintaining the option of academy status for special schools. Does he agree that one will struggle to find a school that is more engaged with the parents and community that it serves than a special school? Highview special school in my constituency is one such example, but those schools often feel under pressure because of the policies that previous Governments pursued. Such schools have to justify how they offer something that a mainstream school cannot, so they are very engaged with the community that they serve, and they would go down the academy route only if they honestly believed that it was best for their children.

15:15

[Mr Buckland]

My hon. Friend makes a proper point. In the borough of Swindon, which I partially represent, we are lucky to be served by a number of excellent special schools, such as the Chalet school, and Uplands school in Brimble Hill. I shall not give out the entire list, but the schools that I have not mentioned know that I am thinking of them as well. As their Member of Parliament, I would not presume to say to their head teachers and governors, “Look, you must go down this route offered by the Academies Act.” That would be utterly wrong and wholly out of kilter with the spirit of the legislation. It will be up to those schools, if they so choose, to take that route to academy status, and I make no apology for repeating the point that this legislation is all about giving schools that chance, rather than issuing some diktat from the centre, whereby schools have to follow a course, however unwillingly.

I am disappointed by the amendment, which I oppose. I do not mean this pejoratively against the hon. Member for Gedling, but it fails to respect the position of special schools, and it does not acknowledge their great potential or the great opportunities that the Bill presents to schools—in my constituency and, indeed, his—to flourish and thrive in the years ahead. I am sure that the Government will address the many concerns that Members from all parts of the House share about the rights of parents, and we will all continue to look very carefully at the detail on the rights of aggrieved parents.

[Vernon Coaker]

The hon. Gentleman says, “I am sure that the Government will address the concerns expressed in this Committee.” The Government should ensure that they address some concerns that are outlined in the Chamber, but does he not think that others are so fundamental that they need to be included in a Bill and given legislative force?

[Mr Buckland]

There is a fundamental point, and I shall not shy away from it. I would submit—sorry, the lawyer is coming out in me—that, when it comes to a timetable for the resolution of any disputes, the new model agreement on admissions should be clarified even further. I am sure that there is scope for looking at the detail, but it does not necessarily mean that such detail has to be in the Bill. If we are going to go down this road, let us ensure that the contract—the agreements—are as watertight, as accessible and as understandable as possible for parents. I have concerns that many Members share, but it does not mean that we need to include them in the Bill. In fact, to take the hon. Gentleman’s logic to its conclusion, I note that his amendment seeks to make the Bill even less prescriptive. He might think it an artificial point, but on his logic I am entitled to make it, because, by seeking to sweep away particular clauses that have been included as a result of much deliberation, he is in effect negating his own argument. With that, I draw my remarks to a close.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am pleased to follow the courteous exchange between the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) and my hon. Friend the shadow Minister.

I have a fundamental philosophical problem with the amendment. Earlier, when giving advice to Members, Mr Chope, you pointed out that the amendment was about whether special schools should be included in the academies programme. I oppose this reform because, unlike the previous system, which tried to address disadvantage and underperformance by taking money from outside the system and ensuring that it was targeted at underperforming schools and children who were not doing so well, and putting innovation into the system to see if that would make improvements, the Bill looks to take money from within the system, mainly from children who are disadvantaged, and give it to children who are, on the whole, better advantaged.

The amendment relates to special schools, which are specifically for children with greater disadvantage, so it goes against the thrust of why Labour Members oppose the Bill as a whole. I believe that there is tension among Labour Members that needs to be resolved. That can be done in the way that my hon. Friend the shadow Minister outlined in relation to the arrangements between special schools and local authorities. It goes to the heart of funding and co-ordination.

I outlined in an earlier intervention the very detailed and complex mesh of arrangements that have pertained in my borough between mainstream schools—not special schools—that were part of the Building Schools for the Future programme, that were seeking, as part of that programme, to divide up, in a co-ordinated way between themselves, the different elements of special educational needs that needed to be addressed: autism at one school, learning difficulties at another, challenging behaviour at another. At the core of that was the amalgamation of Hay Lane and Grove Park schools, which were for children who simply could not be accommodated within the mainstream.

That is an incredibly complex set of arrangements between a number of schools, some of which might, under the provisions of this Bill, choose to become academies, and some of which, under the same provisions, would not be able to become academies because they are not, at present, outstanding schools. The local authority will be unable to co-ordinate the system as a special school goes off and becomes an academy, and the funding that is drawn off by the academies will reduce the capacity of the centre. I am reminded of the W. B. Yeats poem about the widening gyre—the centre will not be able to hold. We will lose the ability of central provision through the local authority to co-ordinate the needs of all children with special needs—those who need to be in mainstream schools and those who need to be in special schools. That is the fundamental problem. However, we should not look at our opposition to this clause about special educational needs in the same light as our opposition to the Bill as a whole because there is a fundamental philosophical difference between them.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Sarah Teather)]

It is a great pleasure to be taking part in the debate on this Bill from the Front Bench. As the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) said, it is the first opportunity I have had to do so. I am grateful for his warm words at the outset. I recall the first Bill that I debated in opposition. I remember looking at the Minister struggling with her papers and thinking, my goodness, what an awful lot of things she needs to know. It does seem very different from this side of the Dispatch Box. The hon. Gentleman said that all parties in the House are united by a common desire to improve educational attainment. I welcome that. It is important to begin from that perspective and to recognise that our motives are common.

I listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said in his opening speech, which covered many different areas and was almost a re-run of some of the issues that were covered on Second Reading. My understanding of the nub of his argument is that his tabling of the amendment relates to his general objection to the Bill rather than a specific objection to special schools. However, I will try to deal with the points that he raised on special schools in a moment.

It is not clear to me why this policy is any different from that followed by the hon. Gentleman’s Government. If we believe it is a good thing to have freedom for schools, particularly for those that are struggling, it is not obvious to me why we would then deny those freedoms to other schools that are already doing well, particularly as the Secretary of State has made it clear that he expects outstanding schools that become academies to partner a weaker school and to share their expertise. That can offer an opportunity to provide the kind of partnership that I think the hon. Gentleman probably agrees with.

As the hon. Gentleman said, amendment 28 would prevent special schools from converting to academies. That was the previous Government’s policy. We think it right that special schools should have access to the same opportunities and freedoms that we are giving to mainstream schools. Indeed, many special schools want that freedom: more than 50 have registered an interest in becoming an academy. [Interruption.] The shadow Minister can find that detail on the Department’s website.

[Barry Gardiner]

Can the hon. Lady clarify that remark? She says that those schools have expressed an interest in becoming an academy. Is that strictly accurate, or have they rather expressed an interest in further information about the process of becoming an academy?

[Sarah Teather]

I think that is semantics.

[Barry Gardiner]

Absolutely not.

[Sarah Teather]

Okay, I agree—I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point. Indeed, they have expressed an interest in obtaining more information about becoming an academy.

[Vernon Coaker]

This is an extremely important point; my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) got in just before I could. The Government are talking about expressions of interest from people clicking a button to obtain information. Frankly, if I were head of a school, I would have clicked the button as well to have a look at what this really means and what the Government are really saying. The Government are using the fact that schools have done that—whether it be special schools, primary schools, outstanding schools or any other schools—and saying that clicking a button is almost the same as expressing an interest in becoming an academy. In fact, people are actually looking to obtain information. There is a real difference. I am glad—

[The Temporary Chair]

Order. Let me stop the hon. Gentleman there. He has the right to reply to the debate, and if we are to bring it to a reasonably early conclusion, it is important that interventions are kept brief.

[Sarah Teather]

These schools have expressed an interest in finding out more information. We have never said that they have applied to become academies. It is important to make that clear.

[Dan Rogerson]

I am struck by the fact that certain hon. Members, on Second Reading—I think we will hear this again during our deliberations in Committee—said that this is a fundamental and huge shift and that the Government are seeking to push all schools down a particular route. The Minister is now saying that perhaps many of them are not interested in this and just want to find out a bit more about it. Hon. Members cannot have it both ways—either it is a massive shift or it will be a case of a few schools exploring it at this point.

[Sarah Teather]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. A lot of straw men have been built up in order to knock them down.

If we think that it is a good thing for special schools to have access to freedoms to run their school in the way that is best for the children in their care, I cannot see why we would say that they should not do that. A prime example is that academies will have flexibility around the school day and how they organise the school calendar. I have found that many parents of disabled children and people who work with disabled children say that the most difficult period of the year is the long summer holiday. If we can provide special schools with flexibility, they may or may not choose to rearrange their calendar so that they break up the terms and holidays in a different way and run the school day differently to lessen the pressures on parents. That seems a sensible thing to do.

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Lady is making a good case, but I struggle to understand why schools should have to apply for those freedoms. Why cannot the Bill simply give them to all schools?

15:30

[Sarah Teather]

This is a permissive power and not all schools will choose that route. In response to the concerns of many of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues—I recognise that he was very much in favour of the academies programme when he was a Minister—I say that we are not forcing schools down that route.

[Stephen Twigg]

On a related point, I am unclear as to what the process will be for schools becoming academies under the new scheme. Say, for example, that 500 schools apply. The impact assessment seems to suggest that just 200 a year will be successful. On what basis will Ministers decide which schools become academies and which do not? Within that, will special schools have priority for the reasons that she has set out, or will they have a lower priority than secondary and primary schools?

[The Temporary Chair]

Order. May I point out that the Minister should not respond to that intervention, because it was totally of order?

[Sarah Teather]

I think one element of it was in order, and I shall respond to it because I am keen to respond as best I can despite this being my first Bill. The hon. Gentleman asked about the priority that will be given to special schools. I was about to say that we are treating special schools in a different way from others, which I hope will reassure some Members who have concerns. The process will be longer and slower, and we do not expect any special schools to convert to academies before 2011.

The hon. Member for Gedling asked a number of perfectly good questions, and I accept that more work needs to be done on the matter. That is precisely why the Secretary of State has set up an advisory group to work with head teachers from special schools and mainstream schools with special units, so that we can work through the details of the points that have been made.

The point about partnering is important. We would expect any school that gets academy status to partner with another school. That could provide an opportunity to spread knowledge, particularly on special education. There are already many good examples of special schools that are doing that, but it is not always happening. We will strongly encourage special schools to use the training that their staff have, which is often lacking in mainstream settings, to ensure that we drive up standards for children with special educational needs. We expect partnering to provide that opportunity.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The Minister talked about areas of detail that needed attention. One of the most critical of those to schools is, of course, the money involved. Can she give us any idea whether she expects special schools to see a bigger increase in their direct budget? Will local authorities spend a greater sum to support them than to support other schools? That takes us back to a point made by the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner)—if the money at the centre is to be denuded, we would rather the most needy got their share first and the strongest and the best be the ones who have to struggle with the least money, not the other way around.

[Sarah Teather]

The point made by my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Select Committee on Education, and by the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) is precisely why the advisory group has been set up. It will work through the details. That is why we do not expect any special school to convert into an academy until next year. I recognise that funding issues need to be considered, because we are talking about a place-based funding system, and that we need to work through the issue of how special schools interact with other schools. We want to work with those on the ground who have expertise but who want the programme to happen.

Whatever disagreements we have about the wording that has been used and whether special schools have just “expressed an interest” or really will become academies, we should recognise that there are special school head teachers who want their schools to become academies. They feel that that freedom will enable them to do some of the things that they have already been doing as outstanding schools, but also to work better with the community and have flexibility to change how their schools are run, so that they can better provide for children in their area.

[Glenda Jackson]

Will the specialised and more detailed approach to special schools be consulted upon on a much wider horizon than merely head teachers and teachers? I say “merely” not because I dismiss them—we all acknowledge their remarkable work—but the Minister must be aware that although many parents of pupils in special schools find changes in those schools easy to accommodate and understand, many do not for a variety of reasons. It would be quite wrong to make changes to special schools without ensuring that every parent had been properly consulted in the most detailed way on those changes, which may affect their children. She must know that for some parents, such changes are very hard to understand.

[Sarah Teather]

I keep being intervened on before I have completed my paragraph, but—

[Vernon Coaker]

It comes with the job.

[Sarah Teather]

It does. I should probably be a bit firmer about completing a paragraph before taking interventions. I was going to say that the working group will also include local authority representatives. I will get the detail of who is to be on it. There are also special educational consortiums representing the interests of parents whose children have special educational needs. The point that the hon. Lady made, however, was about the process of consultation on conversion. We will have a separate discussion on that under a different group of amendments, so I will not respond to that point because it would be out of order in this debate.

The hon. Member for Gedling spoke about charging. I think he would recognise that maintained schools can already charge for certain services in some circumstances, particularly for adult education after hours. However, clause 1(9) specifically prohibits charging for daytime educational services. Other details will remain exactly as they are now.

The Chair of the Education Committee asked about statementing provisions. The local authority will remain responsible for ensuring that the provision set out in a statement is delivered, whether a child attends a maintained school or an academy. We will revise our guide for parents on special educational needs to set out the complaint mechanisms clearly. I should add that the Bill was amended in the other place to ensure that if a statement names an academy, the child will need to be placed in that academy. That is an improvement on the existing system.

The hon. Member for Gedling and my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) asked about low-incidence special educational needs. Again, the Bill was amended during its progress through the other place. I want to put on the record that the Government are committed to ensuring that children with sensory impairments receive the services that they require in both maintained and academy schools. We will monitor the impact that changes in the number of academies will have and ensure that adjustments are made to the funding of academies to ensure that that provision is dealt with. The advisory group will take that up.

We were asked why short-stay schools are not included in the Bill. We are looking at the possibility of academies offering alternative provision equivalent to that provided by short-stay schools, but the current legislation gives local authorities statutory responsibility for those.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon asked wider questions on the statementing process. I remind him that we intend to introduce a Green Paper later in the year to deal with those, and I hope that he will be involved.

With those reassurances, I hope that the hon. Member for Gedling is willing to withdraw the amendment. We do not expect special schools to become academies on the same time frame as other schools, and there is a process to deal with the concerns that he rightly raises, and we will work through it. I hope that that gives him the reassurance he needs.

[Vernon Coaker]

I will be brief in responding to the Minister, who did not address one essential issue. Hon. Members will know the importance of the impact assessment and the equalities impact assessment, yet the Government have provided no evidence that special school academy status will make any difference. Essentially, therefore, we are being asked to take a leap in the dark.

The Minister then tried to reassure the Committee by saying, “You’re quite right that a lot of things are still to be worked out, there are some real problems, and the Government aren’t really sure how we do this. Don’t worry that we’re not sure; we’re going to set up an advisory committee, which will look at funding, admissions, co-ordination, working with other schools and so on. Don’t worry. It’s not a problem.”

[Sarah Teather]

The hon. Gentleman’s Government recognised that providing freedom to schools will drive up standards. If he still believes that, I cannot see why he is saying that that freedom should not be applied to special schools. Why would they be treated as totally different from any other school? I do not accept that premise.

[Vernon Coaker]

There are two things to say in response to that. First, the previous Government had a managed programme for allowing schools academy freedoms. Secondly, the difference between that and what the Government propose is that if they are not careful, there will be a free-for-all. Freedoms will be extended to schools when the Government have not worked out what that means in respect of co-ordination, funding and a whole range of things, as I said, yet we are supposed to say that that does not matter.

The Minister was kind enough to say that I asked perfectly reasonable questions, but we are now invited to pass legislation when she does not have an answer to them other than to say, “We have set up a body to look at how we answer those questions.” If she were in opposition, as she was until a few weeks ago, and if I had said what she just said, she would have reacted as I am reacting now. Frankly, she should be able to answer those questions.

The Chair of the Education Committee was right to ask what it means if special schools get academy freedoms, how much funding they will get and what the consequences are for the local authority and other schools in the area, but the Minister has no answer, because she does not know. If she knew she would provide an answer, but she does not know so she cannot. That is a very serious weakness.

On the 50 schools that registered an interest in academy status, the Minister said that the Government had never used the words “applied for academy status.” I shall look very carefully at what the Education Secretary said on that and at how expressions of interest relate to applications. The Government are in a bit of a mess on that and on what they are using that to justify their measures.

[Barry Gardiner]

Does my hon. Friend agree that many schools will ask for further information because they feel that they have an obligation to present their boards of governors with the fullest information possible before taking a decision? It would be an abrogation of that duty were a head teacher not to push that button.

[Vernon Coaker]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The other weakness in the Minister’s response is that it is very unclear what role, if any, the local authority will have in all this, and what the consequences will be for the overall co-ordination in an area. With respect to the Minister and to the Committee, I should like to test the opinion of the Committee on this amendment. I shall therefore not withdraw amendment 28.

15:45

Division 37

Ayes: 226

---

Labour: 222
Liberal Democrat: 1
Independent: 1
Alliance: 1
Green Party: 1
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 1

Noes: 319

---

Conservative: 272
Liberal Democrat: 41
Democratic Unionist Party: 5

[The Temporary Chair (Mr Christopher Chope)]

Before we move to the next group of amendments, I must announce the result of the Division deferred from a previous day on the question relating to Use of the Chamber (United Kingdom Youth Parliament). The Ayes were 499, and the Noes were 21, so the Ayes have it.

[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]

[Vernon Coaker]

I beg to move amendment 32, page 1, line 21, at end insert—

‘(5A) No Academy arrangement may be made under this section with a school that is exclusively a nursery or primary school, or both.’.

[The Temporary Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 48, in clause 3, page 3, line 15, at end insert—

‘(3A) The governing body of a primary school is not eligible to apply under subsection (1).

(3B) Two years after Royal Assent, the following is substituted for subsection (3A)—

“( ) The governing body of a primary school which has fewer than five hundred registered pupils is not eligible to apply under subsection (1).

( ) The Secretary of State may by order amend this section to allow the governing body of a federation to apply, or the governing bodies of a number of schools to apply jointly, for an Academy order provided the total of primary-aged registered pupils in the federation, or group of schools, is five hundred or more.”.’.

[Vernon Coaker]

It is good to come to the second group of amendments. May I formally welcome the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), to his post, as I welcomed his fellow Minister, the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather)? This is the first Bill that he is taking through the House as Minister with responsibility for schools, a post that I held. He and I have held each other’s posts. In all seriousness and sincerity, I wish him well in his role. I think he has found in the past 24 hours, and will continue to find out in the next 24 hours, as his fellow Minister has done, that tabling amendments is one thing, but having all the answers is quite another. It is good to welcome others too.

We had a good and interesting debate on special schools and we come now to primary schools. I want to start by making a few general points and then move on to some specifics, which is the reverse of my approach in the previous debate. The amendment seeks to raise some of the key concerns felt by many, not just Opposition Members—I note amendment 48 in the name of the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson)—about the rapid and precipitate conversion of hundreds of primary schools to academy status.

16:00

Will the Minister tell us, as the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Brent Central, did with regard to special schools, the up-to-date number of primary schools that have expressed an interest in academy status and how many they expect to apply? Special schools are expected to convert to academy status by September 2011, and perhaps the Minister will say how many primary schools are expected to convert. It is not clear from the impact assessment exactly what that figure is. There is a figure of 200, but it is not clear how that breaks down into secondary schools and primary schools, or indeed others, with respect to 2010.

I will try to demonstrate that people’s concerns are born, as we have already discussed, not necessarily out of any ideological objection to granting primary schools the kinds of freedoms that existing academies have, but out of practical consideration for the implications of academy status. Some of those concerns are present when considering all-through academies, but not usually present when considering those cases. As the Minister will know, because I signed off with the Secretary of State a number of all-through academies, the model of primary schools linking with secondary schools to form all-through academies was an innovative way forward. But all-through academies are a different case from stand-alone primary schools, or indeed even stand-alone infant and nursery schools. That is because many of the concerns stem from the relative size and community location of primary schools. It is for that reason that the amendment seeks to prevent primary schools from becoming academies.

Primary schools, by and large, serve their immediate local community. If a local school becomes an academy, parents could risk finding that there is a shift in its admissions policy or in the way in which it serves the local community. The primary school is much more of a local school than many secondary schools can claim to be, because they are, typically, the only school in a small rural village or in a particular area. They are much more of a neighbourhood school, however much secondary schools aim to be that.

In the previous debate, we expressed concern about the role that local authorities will not have under the Bill. Most local authorities will say that the schools most dependent on their advice and support are primary schools. The vast majority of primary schools are community schools, and they have not even had the experience that foundation schools will have had in managing the enormous range of responsibilities that come with academy status. How much will that cost? Where will that expertise come from? How will primary schools deal with that? How will a small primary school, with perhaps only a few pupils, be able to cope with some of the demands being made on them? Capacity is a very real issue. Most secondary schools already employ a range of staff who will be able to deal with the increased administrative requirements, but many primary schools have only a school secretary, who will doubtless be expected to deal with many of the issues and problems that come with academy status.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

These are exactly the same arguments that were advanced by Labour during the discussion of grant-maintained schools, which were often supported by the local community and perfectly able to exercise the powers and responsibilities involved. Indeed, many of them did so very successfully. Unfortunately, Labour is still in an ideological time warp and hostile to the idea that parents, governors and other professionals can have effective local control over their own schools.

[Vernon Coaker]

Who will have local control over whether a primary school in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency becomes an academy? It will be the head teacher and the governing body, and it will then go to the Secretary of State for approval. There is nothing in the Bill to say that parents, the community, local people or even the local authority must be consulted. If the hon. Gentleman’s point is that before a school changes its status or applies to become an academy it should have the support of all those people, I would agree with him in many respects. Certainly the academy model that we pursued—although it obviously related to secondary schools rather than to primary schools—was about trying to ensure that there was proper local support for the conversion.

One of the problems with the Bill is that it does not require the support of everyone in the local community for a school to convert to academy status. Indeed, an amendment tabled by one of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues tries to address that problem. When we talked about special schools, some hon. Members mentioned the need to ensure, and demonstrate, that local parents, the local authority and local people supported them, but that is not what the Bill would do.

I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman. I am not ideologically opposed to academies—I approved a significant number of them, including all-through academies. In the last debate, we talked about the difference between the academy model presented in the Bill and the academy model that the previous Government pursued. As I said, I do not believe that people are motivated by anything other than a genuine desire to improve educational standards for children, but there is a difference of view about how to achieve that.

The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point, but how can local support be proved when all the Bill requires is the support of the head teacher and governing body, and others as appropriate?

[Mr Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, but it would be perverse for any head teacher with the support of the governing body not to take into account the settled view of the local community, whether that was as a result of consultation directly with the governing body or others, or of the local authority, local charities or others. The idea that this is some kind of top-down approach to be forced on schools is untrue.

[Vernon Coaker]

In the spirit in which debate has been conducted in Committee today, I thank the hon. Gentleman for recognising that I was trying to be constructive in my response. He will have read the Bill and he will know that clause 5(1) does not specify who should be consulted by a school wishing to convert. It just says that it

“must consult such persons as they think appropriate.”

Similarly, clause 5(3) states:

“The consultation may take place before or after an Academy order, or an application for an Academy order”.

If the hon. Gentleman follows his point through to a logical conclusion, one might expect the Bill to list the parents, the local community and so on as parties which should be consulted and shown to be supportive of the academy bid, because that would strengthen the application and increase its potential for success. Similarly, one would have thought the Bill would require consultation to take place before the academy order was applied for. I agree that such consultation is necessary, and the hon. Gentleman’s point was not unimportant, but the Bill does not do what he would wish it to do.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that, first, the Bill requires that there must be consultation and, secondly, that that consultation must be with “appropriate” people, so it is inconceivable that some of the stakeholders he mentioned—local people and parents and the local community—would not be deemed to be appropriate? Indeed, “appropriate” people, which is a general term, might be a far better description than a specific one which might not cover one particular group.

[Vernon Coaker]

Unusually, I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman, because a much tighter form of words in the Bill would ensure that we deliver exactly what he proposes. I believe that the Bill is so drafted because the Government think that the opposition from local authorities and local groups that always emerges to school reorganisation could hold up the progress of the Bill and the attempt to fast-track some schools to academy status. The lawyers will have said, “Put in ‘they think appropriate’, because if you start listing people and groups such as parents and community organisations, you will open yourself up, when trying to convert, to the possibility of legal challenges from parents and organisations saying they were not consulted when they should have been.” To fast-track academies is a policy objective, and I think that Ministers, their officials and their lawyers will have said, “For goodness’ sake, don’t make a list, because it will be a hostage to fortune.” Furthermore, I cannot understand why clause 5(3) includes the phrase

“or after an Academy order”.

[Mr Ward]

The way around that would have been to specify certain obvious consultees and then to add the words “plus others deemed appropriate”.

[Vernon Coaker]

I have tabled an amendment to that effect, as the hon. Gentleman will no doubt have noticed. Other than parents, local authorities are the key group that should be defined, but of course they have been missed out as well.

[Mr Rob Wilson]

The hon. Gentleman is making a strong case, but I would like him to clarify something. In the debate on the previous amendment, he said he did not want special educational needs schools included, and now he is saying he does not want primary schools included. In government, he wanted to limit the number of secondary schools that could become academies. It seems that he actually wants an old-style command-and-control system in schooling, rather than to allow local communities and parents to decide what they want. Can he clarify that for me?

[Vernon Coaker]

As I said at the beginning of the debate on the previous amendment, for which the hon. Gentleman was present, I want to see more academies. I have not said that there should not be any more academies. Indeed, many of the academies that will open in September—[Interruption.] A Tory Member is nodding because there is one in his constituency. Many of those that will open in September will be ones that I agreed with the previous Secretary of State. Sometimes, they were agreed in the face of quite difficult local circumstances. I do not have a problem with the expansion of academies; what I am saying—this is the thrust of the debate—is that the academy model in the Bill is completely different from the one pursued by the last Government. That is the choice that people have made: the Government are in power and they have come forward with what they believe is an appropriate model, which is to allow outstanding schools to fast-track to academy status, as well as including special schools and primary schools. What I am saying is that that means rushing headlong into something for which, as I will mention again in a minute, the Government have presented no evidence and which, in a way, will potentially mean riding roughshod over the wishes of local people and local authorities, when they should be playing a significant role in the organisation and provision of schooling in an area.

16:15

[Glenda Jackson]

I rise in the light of the remarks made by the hon. Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) and for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), both of whom were proselytising on the basis that it would be unthinkable for anybody engaged with a primary school not to consult automatically, at least with the parents. I realise that this is merely anecdotal, but there is a situation in my constituency where the board of governors of a grant-maintained school—or, the aspect of the school which is grant-maintained—wishes to pull the school down and build a brand-new one. No one has consulted the parents, who certainly do not want that to happen. I acknowledge that that example is merely anecdotal, but it underlines my underlying fear about the Bill: that if it does not say that parents must be consulted on such issues, we are essentially going to destroy state education.

[Vernon Coaker]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s point about the need for parents to be consulted, which relates to what the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) said about the phrase

“persons as they think appropriate”

not being sufficient. Instead, the Bill should list groups such as parents and the local authority. If the Government had done that, it would have strengthened the Bill and meant that many of the difficulties that some of us have with it would have been to some extent ameliorated.

[Sammy Wilson]

I have listened to the hon. Gentleman’s explanation of why he objects to the catch-all phrase “appropriate persons”, but is he really suggesting that if a school moved towards academy status, yet parents or another group of significant stakeholders had not been included in the consultation, which must take place according to the Bill, and people wished to challenge that decision in court, the court would say that the letter of the law had been applied, even though that group had been excluded from the consultation?

[Vernon Coaker]

I am not a lawyer, but one of the phrases that people often use is “for the avoidance of doubt”. Given the magnitude of the decisions that could be entered into, I would have thought that, for the avoidance of doubt, it should not be beyond the wit of us all to list some of the groups that we think it should be essential to consult—local authorities, parents and so on—and then to have a phrase at the end such as “and others as the school governing body thinks appropriate”.

[Glenda Jackson]

Briefly, it is hardly going to advance educational standards if a proposed academy cannot get up and educate because both the school and the Government are engaged in a judicial review, quite apart from the expense that such a review would create.

[Vernon Coaker]

I agree.

We have serious doubts about the capacity of primary schools, and about what the costs will be, who will be leading the process, how it will be managed and so on. There are also financial implications. I have been told of a primary school in the west midlands—I think that it was mentioned in the other place—that recently developed serious structural faults. The local authority found the money to put the problem right, with a final cost of around £1 million.

Another example of where the local authority often steps in is on the matter of fires on school premises. How would that work under academy status? The Department for Education advice states that it would expect schools that had become academies facing such problems to take out loans. How could a small school possibly afford to do that? What does the Minister imagine would happen in those circumstances? How would the repayments be made? Who would get the loan in the first place? How would that operate? Most primary schools rely on the local authority to pick up the costs of redundancies and employment tribunals, as well as the legal costs associated with challenges on accidents. The school would not necessarily be able to find the cost of the insurance to cover those things.

Again, the Department for Education’s own website states that, for most schools, the cost of insurance will be between £60,000 and £100,000. The cost of purchasing legal and personal advice commercially needs to be taken into account. How would that work? What will happen with all that? Are we going to have another advisory committee to look at all those details, as we did with special schools, before we get a proper answer? The problem for primary schools is that all these are unanswered questions. Many primary schools are on holiday now, yet some of them are supposed to be opening in September as academies. How is that going to happen? What is going on?

A great deal of work has been done over the past few years, by others as well as the Government, on managing the process of transition from an early years setting into the first year of primary school. The review of the early years foundation stage announced by the Government over the last week or two will not, I trust, represent the reversal of much of that good work. The reality is that there are overlapping responsibilities between early years settings, the children’s trusts—the abolition of which would cause great concern for Labour Members, but I know that Ministers are either considering or proceeding with it—and a number of child care and early years settings sited with primary schools. How is that supposed to work? What happens with all of that—child care, nursery provision, early years provisions—in relation to primary schools? Will there be separate applications to convert separately? Do they stand alone? Will it work differently for a primary school, a nursery and an infant school? Again, I have seen no explanation of that. In many ways, I am concerned not so much about the ideology as the practicality. In the rush to get the Bill through, many practical issues have not been thought through and, frankly, Ministers do not have the answer to them.

Thousands of primary schools—some small, some big, some in rural areas—are involved, but where is the evidence for this change coming from? As I stressed in the debate on the last group of amendments, the crucial evidence that Governments often publish on their Bills is the equality impact assessments and the impact assessments. All members of this Committee will have seen and read those assessments, but there is not a word about primary schools in them—not a word. How, then, are we supposed to judge? This is supposed to be the evidence base for the Bill. Where is the evidence base for this Academies Bill, when there is nothing in it about primary schools? How can any hon. Member look at the evidence base and decide whether the Government’s proposals are acceptable?

Conservative Members seem to think that the idea of primary schools becoming academies is great, but their new Government effectively said, “We do not believe that policy should be made without evidence,” so where is the evidence?

[Gavin Barwell]

rose—

[Vernon Coaker]

Let me finish the point, and then I will, of course, give way.

It is the same with the equality impact assessments. They relate to existing academies, which are all secondary schools, so there is nothing in them about primary schools. Yet this is supposed to be the evidence base for the Bill. Frankly—although I am going to say this gently to the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, as we get along—this is not good enough. For all of us to look at the evidence for or against this Bill and to analyse, discuss, debate or disagree with it, and to say what has been missed out of it or what should have been included in it, we require an evidence base—but there is no evidence in it. We are told that if conversion to academies goes ahead, the GCSE results will be 1.5% what might have been expected if the schools had not converted. What on earth has that got to do with primary schools? This is a very serious point and at some stage the Minister will have to answer it.

[Mr Gibb]

rose—

[Gavin Barwell]

rose—

[Vernon Coaker]

I will give way to the Minister in a moment, but to his hon. Friend first.

[Gavin Barwell]

The hon. Gentleman said that he had approved an all-through school in my constituency. Where was the evidence base for the primary section in that application?

[Vernon Coaker]

The evidence came from the local people, the local authority and local schools discussing with each other the best way forward for educational provision in their area. That was our academy model, not the model that the hon. Gentleman supports, whereby local authorities are completely missed out of the equation, and there is not even a statutory right to ensure that parents are consulted. It was sometimes difficult, but we ensured that local people and local authorities were involved in those decisions.

[Mr Gibb]

That is an opinion, not evidence. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about opinion, but the evidence is clearly set out in the impact assessment, headed “evidence base”. It describes the huge success of the city technology colleges and their increasingly good academic results over the years since they were established. Cannot the shadow Minister extrapolate evidence from that to special schools and primary schools? That is what policy making is all about—taking the existing evidence and applying it to other forms of schooling.

[Vernon Coaker]

It is not for me to extrapolate, but for the Government to demonstrate through evidence. I am no longer in government: the Minister is. He, in his new role, should present the evidence. The Secretary of State signed off the impact assessment. If he wanted to do what the Minister claims, why did he not amend it? I am sure that he read it carefully, word for word. Why did he not notice that primary schools were not mentioned, go back to his officials and say, “We haven’t mentioned primary schools in this. Do you know what? The shadow Minister will get up and say that, because it’s in the Library notes—the House of Commons Library has noticed, too.” I repeat that it is not for me to extrapolate.

[Mr Gibb]

The evidence base is the same one that the shadow Minister used when, as my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) said, he signed off all-through academies. Consulting local opinion is not evidence for the early years sections of all-through academies. The evidence that the hon. Gentleman looked at will have been the success of the academies movement as a whole. We have based our policy on that.

[Vernon Coaker]

The Minister has not set the evidence out. The impact assessments mention CTCs, but not primary schools. The Minister makes a good debating point when he says that CTCs have primary sections, and they are therefore covered. I think that if the Government could rewind the clock three, four or five weeks—whenever the assessments were prepared—the Minister would ensure that primary schools and special schools were included, particularly in the equality impact assessment.

[Chris Skidmore]

The hon. Gentleman talks about evidence, and we have that of GCSE performance. I am sure that he welcomes the performance of secondary schools that have become academies. For example, when Mossbourne academy was Hackney Downs school, 10% of pupils got five good GCSEs, but now more than 80% get five good GCSEs as a result of the school gaining academy freedoms. Primary schools have not yet had the opportunity to enjoy those freedoms, but we know that 40% of primary school pupils currently do not get the three R’s at level 4, key stage 2 and that fewer than 50% of pupils in around 500 primary schools achieve the required standard in English and maths. Does the hon. Gentleman think that that is acceptable, or that those schools should have the same chance as Mossbourne to change?

[Vernon Coaker]

The dramatic rise in standards—the improvements in reading, writing and maths—in primary schools is significant. The hon. Gentleman asks whether we want higher standards and even faster progress. Of course we all do. However, the Government want to achieve that by allowing outstanding primary schools initially—we will find out how many shortly—to fast-track to academy status in September. If that is the Government’s policy direction, where is the evidence to demonstrate that the results will be as he predicts? The whole point of a Bill’s impact assessment, as the Chair of the Select Committee knows from his days as a member of that Committee, is to present evidence.

[Chris Skidmore]

rose—

[Vernon Coaker]

I will give way again, but I want to make progress, otherwise, at 10 o’clock, everyone will say, “We’ve only done two sets amendments.”

[Chris Skidmore]

The fact that nearly 300,000 pupils are not achieving level 4 in the three R’s at key stage 2 is clearly not acceptable. Yes, we admit that standards have risen since 1997, but at level 4 they have stalled and begun to go backwards. Will the hon. Gentleman not admit that? During the next stage of the march, we need to think about freedoms. We need to think about giving teachers freedom to seek academy status if they wish, so that they can push forward as secondary school teachers have at Mossbourne school.

16:30

[Vernon Coaker]

This is a Committee stage, but the hon. Gentleman has retreated into a Second Reading political statement. I was asking what evidence the Government had presented to Parliament—[Interruption.] It is not for me to present evidence. I am not the Government. I am asking the hon. Gentleman what evidence the Government have presented to persuade Parliament to accept the Bill. How have they demonstrated that primary academies would deliver what he wants? That is the issue. I do not agree with the proposal, so it is not for me to say what evidence there is in favour of it. The hon. Gentleman is a Back-Bench Member of the Government. He may progress further—I do not know—but his responsibility now is to defend the Government and to explain how Government policy will improve standards.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The Minister makes a reasonable point about the quality of the evidence that the Govt should provide when presenting proposals, but I am struck by the way in which the Opposition have retreated. They are no longer telling the truth about the fact that, in 2005, the then Prime Minister said that all schools wanted these freedoms. The Government proposed a managed move, but the aim was to provide these freedoms everywhere.

It is as if the whole new Labour era is ending. The thaw is over, and we feel the cold ice of a monolithic centralised state system forming over us once more. Is that really the vision seen by the shadow Minister, of whom I have always had a high opinion? Is he really reverting to his Socialist Educational Association roots?

[Vernon Coaker]

Oh dear. Well, I mean, you know—

[Mr Stuart]

Yes, is the answer.

[Vernon Coaker]

It is never as simple as yes or no.

The hon. Gentleman and I have worked together a great deal over the last few years, and no doubt we will work together more over the next two or three years, or however many there may be. As I have made clear on a number of occasions, I have not said that I am opposed to academies. That would be hypocrisy of the highest order, given that I agreed to the establishment of a number of academies, and given that many of the academies that will open in September are academies to whose establishment I agreed.

I think it right to seek to increase the number of academies when that is appropriate, whether they are primary or secondary schools, although I prefer all-through academies. However, I do not think it right to fast-track outstanding schools to academy status, and to allow academy status to primary and special schools when there is no real evidence in favour of such action.

It is not a case of retreating in the direction of the Socialist Educational Association, many of whose members would oppose any academy. I do not oppose every or any academy. What I propose is a third way, which has been proposed by neither the Government nor the Socialist Educational Association but which, according to some famous politician, makes it possible to find a balance between two alternatives in order to move forward.

I want to ask the Minister a few more questions. What arrangements will there be for primary schools that are members of federations to apply for academy status, and what are the implications for each school? Can schools apply as a group, or must they apply individually? As I said, there are important questions to be asked about how academy status will work for nurseries, and about the arrangements for collaboration and funding. How will things be arranged between a local authority and a primary school if the authority has given large amounts of money to the school? How does the Minister expect small rural schools to become primary academies? What criteria will apply to them, as opposed to primary schools in the middle of cities?

Those are serious questions, and I know that the Minister will reflect on them seriously. However, as in the case of special schools, I find it slightly regrettable that we do not already know many of the answers. As I have said, the evidence base is fairly poor, given the magnitude of the decisions that we must make.

[Dan Rogerson]

May I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Evans, at this stage in the proceedings? Earlier, Mr Chope reminded us that it is out of order to refer to the decision about which amendments have been selected and which have not, so I will not reflect further on that and thereby risk being called out of order, except merely to say that I am delighted that amendment 48 in my name was selected.

The hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) has set out the dangers he foresees in primary schools being allowed to follow the academy route, but he adds that he is none the less an advocate of the academy system and that he thinks it is a success. I come at this from a different angle: I think the jury is still out because the evidence is balanced as to whether the academy structure has made a substantial difference to results. We Liberal Democrats have not been entirely convinced, although some party members have advocated academies throughout the process. Other arguments can be put as to why schools that have been established as academies have been successful and we talked about some of them on Second Reading, so I will not rehearse them at length. If I were to do so, I am sure you would rule me out of order, Mr Evans, but there are arguments to do with leadership and the resources put into academies, for instance.

This is a permissive Bill. We will either allow schools to examine, and consider following, this route or we will not. From visiting schools in my constituency, it seems fairly clear that not many of them are interested in doing so. They do not see it as right for them. They are largely happy with their relationship with Cornwall council, their local authority. I welcome that, and I am sure it is also the case in many other parts of the country. I believe that local authorities have a role to play and they have often played a good role in the past. However, that has not always been the case, because there are undoubtedly places where the relationship has broken down and there have been failings. The fact that not many schools in my area wish to follow the academy route does not, however, strike me as necessarily an argument for saying that it should not be open to them.

I tabled amendment 48 in order to have a debate about primary schools. I am therefore pleased that we are having that debate, and I would like to add a number of questions to those already asked by the hon. Gentleman. He raised the important issue of federation. It is being explored in many rural areas—and, I imagine, increasingly in urban areas too. Federation is often controversial because people sometimes feel they are giving up some measure of control over their local school, but my experience of those federations that have been formed—there are three or four in my part of the world now—is that the governing bodies and communities can come together. They still have their own school in their community and it performs a vital function not only in terms of education but in many other ways as well, especially for rural village communities. Therefore, if these schools become part of something a bit bigger, it means they are able to support a full-time head—and to recruit one as well, which is increasingly an issue. Federation can be a crucial step, therefore.

There are questions, however, about what approach the Government should take to applications for federation and how they would be explored. There are also, perhaps, issues to do with capacity. I hope, therefore, that no primary school approaches this option lightly. If they are considering it, they should reflect on their own situation and what resources they will have to take advantage of any freedoms that arise. That is an important consideration.

There are questions to do with the monitoring of schools as well. I have discussed that briefly with the Minister outside the Chamber. There is a role for the Young People’s Learning Agency in monitoring academies to ensure that they meet the criteria set out in the Bill. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that if primary schools, in particular, are going to go down the academy route, they will have the capacity to be able to do that and to manage a relationship with a much larger number of schools. If primary schools are to take up that option, the number of schools involved will be much greater than has been the case up to now.

The idea of all-though schools, to which the hon. Member for Gedling referred, presents an exciting opportunity. One of these schools is coming to my constituency and, again, the trust and confidence of the local people has to be won; they have to feel that the change will protect what they may see as younger, vulnerable pupils in that bigger set-up. That argument has been won in one community and this may be a route that some take towards academy status.

As I said at the beginning of my remarks on the clause, I am not convinced that this is necessarily the best route for everybody. My hon. Friends, some of whom spoke on Second Reading, have made it clear that they have concerns about the model too.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman will doubtless concede that this is permissive legislation and, therefore, schools will not be the subject of draconian diktat. He will also know that the experience of grant-maintained schools was that the legislation allowed them to work closely with their local education authority on things such as procurement and purchasing, and that consortiums were often very successful in that respect. This Bill specifically does not preclude the involvement on a practical, day-to-day basis of the local education authority. In that respect, I am sure that he will be reassured.

[Dan Rogerson]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. We have served together on a number of Public Bill Committees, not always agreeing when we have debated issues. However, we can perhaps agree that the permissive nature of this Bill allows both of us to explore what is available to schools and communities in our constituencies. As I say, I remain to be convinced that this is necessarily the best route and that it offers as many benefits as some hon. Members, including him, are convinced it does. However, I believe that if the route is to be available to some schools in particular circumstances, we ought to explore the option, as this Bill does, of making it available to others. So I accept his point about this being a permissive Bill.

The hon. Gentleman also makes the point about schools continuing to work with the local authority. The Minister may wish to talk about the fact that schools that take up the option that the Bill extends to them could continue to explore buying back some services from the local authority, even though they may well have not wanted to have such a rigid relationship with it. Clearly, they could still have an engagement with it and may indeed wish to buy back some services from it. This debate has begun and we may be at risk of going back over issues that we covered when discussing the previous group.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to the sceptical wing of the coalition and respect his position. Yesterday morning, at Ealing hospital, I welcomed my newest constituent, Noah White, weighing 6 lb 9 oz, to the constituency. When that child is ready to go to primary school, there will be no primary school place for him in the London borough of Ealing, given the present capacity. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should be looking to expand the educational estate, rather than overloading head teachers and governors with yet more crushing work and just changing the signs outside the schools?

[Dan Rogerson]

I am delighted to hear that the hon. Gentleman is such an assiduous constituency MP that he is there to greet every new arrival to it. It is a wonder that we have the benefit of his company in this place as often as we do, given that he is so hard-working and pays such attention to detail. However, it is slightly problematic for a Labour Member to talk about the overburdening of head teachers. I have spent time talking to them about the reams of paper that were generated and imposed upon them by this Department—under its various names—under the previous Government, so I can say that he is on fairly sticky ground. However, he is absolutely right to raise the point about providing places, and we need the flexibility to do that.

I shall draw my remarks to a close. Clearly, I have been addressing my remarks to the lead amendment, but I tabled the second amendment with the purpose of discussing the particular circumstances that pertain to primary schools. I hope that the Minister will respond both to the issues that I and the hon. Member for Gedling have raised.

16:45

[Gavin Barwell]

First, I thank the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) for being so generous in his speeches on this amendment and the previous amendment in allowing people to intervene and ask him questions. I appreciate that.

The amendment is further evidence of the dichotomy of the Labour party’s approach to education policy for primary and secondary schools. With capital, as has been discussed, the previous Government’s Building Schools for the Future programme was concentrated purely on the secondary sector, whereas their policy on academies was to have them in deprived areas at secondary level but not at primary level, even though many issues of educational under-attainment stem from performance at primary level. The list on the Department for Education website of schools in my constituency that have expressed an interest in the academy process includes Wolsey infant school in New Addington, which is an outstanding school, and St Mary’s junior school, which is not. Both of them serve highly deprived parts of my constituency. If Labour Members have the passion that they say they have about driving up educational standards in deprived areas, that ought to apply equally at primary and secondary level.

I do not wish to detain hon. Members for long, but I want to address the four main objections that have been raised regarding primary schools. The first objection was about size and whether primary schools would be able to cope with the responsibilities that come with academy status. Having looked at the schools in my constituency that have expressed an interest, I would expect a far lower proportion of primary schools than secondary schools to be interested in going down this route because of their size. However, there are large discrepancies regarding primary schools. In my local authority area there are a number of single-form entry schools, some two-form entry schools and a significant number of three-form entry schools. The picture is very different for a three-form entry school, such as the state school that my children go to, than for a single-form entry school.

It would be helpful if the Minister clarified the position on federations. The Secretary of State’s response to the shadow Secretary of State on Second Reading implied that applications from federations would be accepted. Clearly, that would be one way of addressing issues of size and scope. One concern that the Labour party has raised about academies is the fear that schools will stop working together, so it seems particularly perverse for the amendment to rule out the prospect of federations of schools applying for academy status and preserving those relationships that Members on both sides want to persist.

My main point about the issue of school size is that the legislation is, as several hon. Members have pointed out, permissive. Surely, we should trust head teachers, leadership teams and governors to judge whether their schools have the capacity to cope with academy status.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. It is better to have looser language in the Bill because, as the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) knows, any issues of consultation in relation to the schools that seek to proceed along this path will be the subject of regulation and secondary legislation. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is better to have looser language in the Bill than to be too prescriptive, because that might, as the shadow Minister has said, lay individual schools, local education authorities and other bodies open to legal action further down the line?

[Gavin Barwell]

My hon. Friend makes the point far more eloquently than I can. At some point in the future, the shadow Education Minister might have the honour of being the Minister again, or even the Secretary of State, who will sign off the applications for academy status. However, the amendment would tell primary schools or federations of primary schools that they were not even allowed to make the case for academy status, and that is completely the wrong approach.

[Ian Mearns]

The hon. Gentleman refers to schools working in partnership on school improvement programmes, and clause 15 refers to city technology colleges becoming part of the family of academies that the legislation will look after, but I am afraid that the city technology college in my constituency has always been fiercely independent and has never wanted to work in partnership with any other school or with the local education authority. I do not see how the circle will be squared, because that is the evidence from our experience.

[Gavin Barwell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but my experience in my part of the world is very different. In Croydon we had one of the original city technology colleges, which has converted to an academy, as most CTCs have, and the academy partners have continued to work closely with the local authority and community.

My next point is about the evidence base. In an intervention on the hon. Member for Gedling, I referred to the evidence in relation to the Oasis Academy Shirley Park, an all-through academy that he and the former Secretary of State approved in my constituency. The evidence from the first year is that at primary and secondary levels the academy has made a profound difference not just to pupil attainment, parental satisfaction and the local community’s confidence in the school, but most importantly to the pupils’ perception of the school that they attend, which surely ought to be the key judge of any school.

The Opposition also argued that the policy is a leap in the dark, and that, whereas the previous policy was managed and a number of schools became academies each year, we are opening the floodgates and do not know how many schools might become such institutions. Having listened to the debate, however, it is clear that the Secretary of State will retain control of approving academy applications, and the explanatory notes to the Bill give a rough forecast of the numbers that we might expect.

My final point is about the admissions policy. The hon. Gentleman suggested that, given how primary schools are rooted in their community and some secondary schools are not, there was a danger that the admissions criteria might change and the local link could break down. As I understand the arrangements, however, such schools will continue to be covered by the admissions code. Indeed, in my area we have written into academy funding agreements the importance of a clear local link in relation to selection. In all parts of the country, we want good schools serving their local communities so that local parents have what they want, which in my experience is a good local school.

None of the concerns about size, evidence base, opening the floodgates or admissions bears any scrutiny, and there is a very important point of principle. Primary schools or federations of primary schools should have the chance to make to the Secretary of State the case for being given academy status, so that we see at primary level the same improvement, particularly in deprived parts of the country, of which there are a number in my constituency, that we have seen at secondary level.

[Glenda Jackson]

The Government argue that the Bill is permissive, but my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) has made it abundantly clear that there is no evidence why primary schools should apply for academy status, so I am intrigued about the permission that the Government believe primary schools are denied and, therefore, want to grant them.

Government Members have also argued that the Bill is born of a desire to raise standards, but the issue with primary schools in my constituency, all of which are over-subscribed, have very high educational standards and provide a much more rounded education to the children who attend them, is that there will be a serious shortfall in places. Before the general election we were informed that a new primary school would be built in my constituency, and I shall not go into the debacle of Building Schools for the Future, but it has a knock-on effect on the provision of school places—certainly in an inner-London borough such as mine. That proposal now seems either to have disappeared or to have been thrown into the deep freeze.

The overriding issue that parents raise with me as regards primary schools is that they cannot get their child into their first-choice primary school, which almost invariably is that within walking distance of where their child lives. They want that not only because their child is already part of the community where they then make friends who live in the same area but because, as we are increasingly aware, many parents have to juggle not only work but a variety of school ages among their children. Only the other day, I had a constituency case involving a mother whose third child is about to start primary school. She has to transport the other two children to different parts of the borough, and it is clearly out of the question for her to be asked to take a place in another primary school that is even further away.

I am somewhat bemused as to why the Government think that their approach of academising all our schools will tackle the real issues that are facing my constituents and their children in relation to the provision of school places. There is another, more nuanced issue in my constituency. Many of the primary schools are faith-based, and there is constant conflict between parents who want their children to go to a faith-based school and parents who do not want their children to go to such a school.

That brings me back to my central point about academising all our schools—the Government’s continuing total exclusion of the opinions of parents. If it were stated in the Bill that parents have to be consulted, I could begin to understand this. I would not understand it completely, but I could see that it might offer the means genuinely to examine the issues that face many of my constituents as regards primary schools. My hon. Friend mentioned another concern to do with nursery places linked to a primary school, but he did not touch on after-school clubs, which are also linked to primary schools, certainly in my constituency. There has also been a move towards primary schools acting as feeders for secondary schools, as well as community linkage across my entire constituency, which encompasses two London boroughs.

As I say, I am bemused by the idea of academising our educational system, but the central and essential issue for me is the Government’s total failure to acknowledge the importance of consulting parents on these issues. I see that the Chair of the Education Committee has returned to his place. In an earlier intervention, he castigated my hon. Friend for his criticism of the Bill and said that Labour was reverting to some deep-frozen I do not know what—he said something about the waters closing over new Labour. I found that somewhat surprising, because before the election he was, almost individually, the creator of the all-party group on home education. If I remember rightly, the central and essential argument that he consistently proselytised, and I agreed with him, was that the Government of the day—my Government—had markedly failed to consult parents. That was the basis of his argument, and I am somewhat shocked that it seems to have disappeared from his mind.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I think that it was rather more to do with the fact that the Government of the day wanted to monitor, regulate, intervene, instruct, license and control parents than with the fact that they were not listening to them. The main aim was to ensure that the state did not trample all over their freedom, and that is an essential safety valve that home education gives to a system that too often fails parents and children—the most vulnerable children the most often.

[Glenda Jackson]

I have not been quite so hyperbolic in my choice of verbs as the hon. Gentleman, but it seems to me that in this Bill his Government are attempting to replicate precisely what he is accusing my Government of attempting to do with regard to home-educated children.

Put in the simplest terms, the Government are ignoring parents’ opinions. That is why the arguments that they have advanced on primary schools, and will advance with regard to secondary schools, should be fiercely opposed, and I am delighted to see that Labour Members are continuing to do that.

[Mr Gibb]

May I add my welcome to the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) to the Opposition Front-Bench role? In some ways, it is as tough as being a Minister. He has no support and has to draft all the amendments himself, so I am sympathetic to his position. I am grateful to him for the kind words that he passed on at the beginning of the debate.

17:00

The amendments focus on nursery and primary schools. Amendment 32 would prevent stand-alone nurseries or primary schools, or joint primary and nursery schools, from becoming academies. Amendment 48 would prevent any primary school from applying for an academy order within the first two years of the Bill receiving Royal Assent, after which only primary schools or federations of primary schools with more than 500 pupils would be able to apply.

First, I reassure hon. Members that no stand-alone nursery is permitted to become an academy. Academies are schools, as defined in section 463 of the Education Act 1996, which provides that any independent school must provide full-time education for five or more pupils of compulsory school age. Hence, stand-alone nursery schools will not be able to apply for academy status.

Primary schools will be free to choose whether academy status is the right option for them. There will be no requirement for them to convert into academies. I appreciate that many small primary schools may depend on the local authority more than other schools, which is why the Bill is permissive rather than prescriptive, as my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) so ably pointed out. It is about trusting professionals. We want schools to determine whether academy status is right for them, and we understand that it may not be right for some very small primaries. That should not mean that primary schools that want to become academies and believe that it is a viable option for them should be prevented from doing so.

In another place, Lord Knight—a wonderfully mediaeval title for a former Education Minister—did not appear to be against primary schools becoming academies in principle. He said:

“I am not completely against the notion that there might be circumstances where groups of primaries could become academies”.

His concern seemed to be one of practicalities. As my noble Friend Baroness Perry pointed out,

“many of these primary schools, particularly in rural communities, are at the heart of the community and can attract very senior and experienced businesspeople and professionals from the community to their governing bodies and the chairmanship of those bodies. Therefore, they do not lack that kind of hard-edged business experience in running their affairs.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 July 2010; Vol. 720, c. 122, 120.]

The fact that they are at the heart of their communities is their strength, not their weakness.

[Mr Ward]

On the Minister’s defence of the Bill as being of a permissive nature, does he believe we should also have permissive legislation without a full impact assessment to allow everybody to walk around naked, on the basis that they would not have to do it if they did not want to?

[Mr Gibb]

That is an argument taken ad absurdum, and I do not think it is very effective.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) made an important point about the need to ensure that communities, parents and schools feel that they are in control and making decisions, which is why the power is properly permissive.

What consideration did the Minister give to whether a school that becomes an academy could reverse that process? I bring that up, I hope in order, because smaller primary schools might find that the academy freedoms do not work for them. It is important that the system makes communities and schools feel in control, not forced down a particular channel. We will get much further with the policy if people feel that way.

[Mr Gibb]

No primary school is being forced down any channel, that is the whole essence of the proposals. We will not let academies fail, and if they are struggling intervention measures and monitoring will take place to ensure that different sponsors can take them over.

We want all schools that want academy status to be able to apply for it, and we do not intend to deny certain schools that option. Nor do we believe that a delay of two years before primary schools can apply to convert is necessary or appropriate. However, we will see whether any lessons can be learned from the primaries that convert this September. Furthermore, we encourage federations or partnership arrangements that wish to convert, as well as proposals for all-through academies.

I should also point out that when there are challenges with primaries—for example, with shared or co-located services such as children’s centres—we intend to work through them with all the relevant partners to ensure that services are maintained without interruption. That may mean that the process of conversion takes a little longer, but it is important to do things correctly.

The hon. Member for Gedling seemed to express no principle objection. He cited all-through academies, but said that things were different for stand-alone primaries owing to their size and the fact that their location communities could be at risk, but why? In another place, the Under-Secretary of State, Lord Hill of Oareford, said:

“The local primary school is very much part of the village where I live and I know that that is true throughout the country…If an outstanding local primary were to become an academy, it is not clear why it should automatically become less of a part of the local community, village or town life. It will have the same head, staff, parents and children with some additional freedoms. I am not clear why the change of status should suddenly make those people in their villages, towns and communities suddenly start to behave differently.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 July 2010; Vol. 720, c. 125.]

That is a very well expressed answer to the questions asked throughout the debate on the Bill on whether academies will continue to be part of the community. Of course they will. There is no evidence from the 203 academies, other than the one cited by the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), that they are any more or less involved in their communities than maintained schools. I am sure that the hon. Member for Gedling did not preside over the 203 academies with a view to them being islands unto themselves and isolated from the community.

[Vernon Coaker]

Of the 203 schools to which the Minister refers, how many are primary schools?

[Mr Gibb]

They were not permitted to become academies under the hon. Gentleman’s tutelage and stewardship. The Bill is permissive legislation to allow more schools to acquire the academy status that he extolled as a Minister.

[Stephen Pound]

I am not entirely opposed to academies—we have an extremely good one in Ealing North—but there is a problem with governance and involvement with local communities. When an academy sets up, it does not need local education governors or even parent governors—it can select governors. The link with the community is crucial, so what would the Minister say to those who remain to be convinced when it comes to the establishment of an academy within their local community but who would also like that governance link?

[Mr Gibb]

An academy can, of course, have the local authority represented on its governing body, but it is up to the academy trust to decide its structure. The hon. Gentleman praised his local academy in Ealing, but there are different models for schools. The academy model gives schools more independence from the local authority and indeed from the Government, and it has worked in his constituency and up and down the country. There is ample evidence in the impact assessment that the model is very effective here and in other countries. We need not have a one-size-fits-all approach to the governance of schools. The community school is one model, and the academy is another. We believe that the latter needs to be boosted and given a chance to extend into other forms of school.

[Stephen Pound]

I do not want to trespass on the Minister’s good nature or generosity. I quite rightly praised West London academy because it maintains the link with the local community. What is his personal preference? Is it for a school governing body to be drawn from the local community or for it to be completely separate?

[Mr Gibb]

I do not think that it matters. What matters is that the academy is engaged with the local community. Any academy that wants to attract parents and pupils will engage with the local community. That is my preference.

[Glenda Jackson]

The Minister rightly says that he does not believe that there will be a one-size-fits-all approach. However, he said earlier that no academy would be allowed to fail. How can he guarantee that? Will there be a wide range of failure prevention measures?

[Mr Gibb]

Any Government face such challenges, but the Government whom the hon. Lady supported for 13 years were not that effective in dealing with them. Under the previous Government, a considerable number of schools were in special measures for a long period, and the results in some schools were very poor. This is going to be a challenge for this Government, as it was for the previous Government. It will also be a challenge for the organisation that monitors the quangos—the Young People’s Learning Agency.

[Ian Mearns]

The way in which the legislation has been framed seems to have built in a mechanism under which that scrutiny will not need to be carried out in the first instance, because only outstanding schools will be allowed to go forward. The whole point of the previous Government’s academies programme was to lift standards in schools that were performing below the level that we all want for our children. This Government’s programme is for outstanding schools only—[Hon. Members: “No, it’s not.”] Well, that is certainly the way the legislation seems to be framed.

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friends have just made the point from a sedentary position that that is not the case. It is not only outstanding schools that are being invited to acquire academy status; it is all schools. We are also continuing to address the problems at the other end of the scale, to ensure that schools that are in special measures and that are struggling can acquire academy status and have a sponsor that can raise standards in those schools. Those projects, and that approach to policy, will continue.

I am surprised at the opposition to these proposals, given that they build on the legislation of the previous Government. They do not represent a major departure from the previous approach. The Bill has only 20 clauses, and the reason for that is that it builds on the legislation introduced by the previous Government.

[Dr Pugh]

I want to test my understanding of what the Minister is saying. In response to the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), he said that he would be perfectly happy for a governing body to spend a fair amount of money on behalf of local children, even though there might not be anyone on that governing body who had any connection to local children. Surely there is an issue of accountability there—

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. This is not a wide-ranging debate on academies in general. We are debating the amendment, so perhaps the Minister could now direct his comments to that.

[Mr Gibb]

Thank you very much, Mr Evans. I will seek to do so.

There will be parent governors on the governing bodies of the schools, so they will not be divorced from them. We are trying to be permissive and to allow academies to draw up their own arrangements, and to select their own directors for the academy trusts and governors for the school. That is the approach that we want to take; we do not want to take a top-down approach to the governance of schools.

The hon. Member for Gedling mentioned the figure of 200 in the impact assessment. That is an illustrative figure to show the costs and the benefits that would arise if that number of schools were to convert annually. Given that this is permissive legislation, we cannot say that we will require x number of schools to convert annually and that the cost will therefore be y. He also asked for the number of primary schools that had expressed an interest. I can give him a figure, but with all the caveats that my fellow Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) expressed earlier. Of the 1,900 expressions of interest, 862 have been from primary schools, and 529 of the 862 have been judged by Ofsted to be outstanding.

[Vernon Coaker]

I thank the Minister for that information. How many primary schools does he expect to become academies in September? He has talked about expressions of interest, but how many does he expect actually to convert?

[Mr Gibb]

It is very hard to say at the moment. I cannot anticipate what the number will be. For every application that has been submitted, there is a named official working with the school. That process is happening right now, and I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman will have to wait until we are able to announce the figure. I think that he will be very pleased with the figure.

[Vernon Coaker]

But what will happen in counties such as Leicestershire, where the schools are now on holiday? How will the negotiations carry on there?

[Mr Gibb]

The discussions will carry on through August; not everyone is rushing away. Those schools that are determined to open as academies in September will be working throughout August to achieve that.

The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of the costs of insurance and VAT. Those will be covered by the general annual grant paid to academies. He asked about federations, a question also raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson).

17:15

[Vernon Coaker]

I appreciate that the Minister may not know the answer to this, but what is his estimate of the VAT cost? Is it an additional cost, as I think it might be, for the academies? Is it factored in at 17.5%, and is the increase to 20% in January taken into account?

[Mr Gibb]

I will happily respond to the hon. Gentleman’s questions. As he knows, having been a Minister, there is a VAT cost because academies, as independent schools, cannot reclaim it, whereas when they were maintained schools the local authority had a reclaim procedure that enabled them to reclaim it. The VAT that academies cannot reclaim at the moment will form part of their funding and does not present a cost to Government; it is simply an internal accounting issue.

There are hard federations and soft federations. A hard federation has one governing body that is shared by the number of schools within it; that governing body can of course apply to become an academy. Soft federations, which have a number of governing bodies, can also apply, regardless of whether one or two of the schools are outstanding. If there are no outstanding schools in the federation, things will take a little longer than if there were.

Primaries with a nursery school will be able to convert to an academy, notwithstanding the fact that the nursery school is within the school. In those circumstances, therefore, the nursery school will become an academy.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the early years foundation stage, which does of course apply to independent schools. Academies are independent schools and the early years foundation stage is statutory, so it will also apply to academies.

The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) talked about her constituents being unable to get their children into their first choice of primary school. This is absolutely the issue we are debating. We want to raise standards across all schools and to invite new providers into the system, particularly in areas such as those she described, in which there is parental dissatisfaction with existing provision. That is where the focus of our efforts will be.

[Glenda Jackson]

The issue is not standards but capacity. There are insufficient places, and for the majority of primary schools in my constituency there is no possibility of extending their existing sites. As I said before the general election, we were promised a new primary school. Where has that gone? Why are the hon. Gentleman’s Government not meeting that promise?

[Mr Gibb]

That is a different issue, and capital will be available to deal with the increasing population of young children. The birth rate is increasing, which means that new capacity will be required in some areas, and those capital costs will be met. I thought that the hon. Lady was making a slightly different point—that some very popular schools are over-subscribed because parents from a wider area try to get their children in, crowding out local children in some circumstances. We want to ensure that parents are happy with the quality, as well as the quantity, of provision.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

The Minister will be aware that there are specific issues in inner London, particularly given the massive increase in population mobility and local authorities’ policy of encouraging families in. There are therefore some issues specific to central London that the Minister needs to be aware of as he puts this policy in place.

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that important issue on behalf of his constituents, which he has raised before in Westminster Hall debates. I am aware of it, we are concerned about it and I can assure him it will be dealt with.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall raised a number of issues. In particular, he talked about monitoring schools and asked about the Young People’s Learning Agency. I reassure him that it will have the capacity to monitor academies’ performance as the number of academies increases over the years. He also asked about buying back services from local authorities. That is very much part of the model. Just because a school opts to become an academy, it does not mean that it will sever its links with the local authority, or will not continue to use local authority services. Local authorities that provide high-quality services are more likely to be able to sell them to academies.

I listened carefully to my hon. Friend’s comments, and will continue to reflect on his arguments, but I make three points, which are best summed up by the Minister in the other place, my noble Friend Lord Hill:

“First…we believe that the number of primaries that will convert in the very first wave is likely to be very modest. Secondly, the Secretary of State has made it clear that he will keep the situation under review and learn any lessons from the first primary converters.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 July 2010; Vol. 720, c. 127.]

His third point was that there will be an annual report to Parliament on the progress of academies policy. Noble Lords from my hon. Friend’s party managed to persuade the Minister in the other place to put that requirement on the statute book. That report is precisely the vehicle through which to consider the impact of academies policy on primary schools.

Having made those few remarks, I very much hope that I have persuaded the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend not to press their amendments.

[Vernon Coaker]

I thank the Minister for his response and the information that he gave us in answer to some of our questions. The issue of VAT is interesting; I am not quite sure of the mechanism involved, but if the Department for Education reimburses schools, hopefully the Treasury will reimburse the Department. I am not quite sure which way round that goes, but I leave the issue with the Minister and will see whether he is more successful with that argument about money than the Department was in its argument about Building Schools for the Future money.

Some of the answers to questions posed by Members from across the Chamber demonstrate that the Bill has been rushed, and demonstrate problems with what the policy will mean in practice. It is interesting that in many respects—this is not so much the case for primaries as for special schools—the Minister is saying, “Trust us. This is permissive legislation; we will sort out some of the detail after we’ve legislated, hopefully in the next education and schools Bill, in the autumn.” That is not particularly appropriate. I understand why the Government want to rush through this legislation—they see it as flagship—but the Minister himself said, in answer to various questions, that issues are being worked on.

Let me give the Minister one example. If I were trying to be nasty to him, I would ask him to explain to the Committee how the ready reckoner on the DFE website works. I am sure that he understands, but nobody else knows how it works. The point is not whether he understands it, but whether anybody out there does. It is telling that large numbers of primary—and, indeed, secondary—schools trying to work out what becoming an academy would mean for them find it difficult to make the ready reckoner work. Some local authorities have been astonished to find that when they put their figures in, it seems that they would pay out more money than they receive. There is some work to be done on that, and no doubt that issue is one that will be looked at when the detail is sorted.

[Dan Rogerson]

The ready reckoner was the subject of debate in the other place, and I have had sight of a letter to my noble Friend Baroness Walmsley from Lord Hill, the Under-Secretary, on that issue. I understand that he has placed copies of that letter in the Library for hon. Members to look at. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has had the opportunity to see it.

[Vernon Coaker]

I was not aware of that letter. It would have been even more helpful if the hon. Gentleman had told us what it said, but I will have a look at it. Certainly, the ready reckoner and the whole question of funding for primary schools is still an issue.

I take the point about primary schools being an important part of the community, whether they are small, rural or urban. The more important point that many hon. Members made concerned the capacity of those schools operating on their own to deal with academy status, particularly in regard to some of the support that they receive from local authorities on insurance, legal costs and sometimes when emergencies occur. If we are not careful, the Government will undermine the local authority’s capacity to deal with such matters, while not giving individual primary schools, even if they become academies, the capacity to deal with them either. That is a real issue for us all.

To be fair, the Minister tried to address most of the points made, except that relating to the inadequacy of the equalities impact assessment and the impact assessment on the Bill, which makes no reference to any evidence for what the Government are doing. My hon. Friends and I have raised serious concerns about the rush to academy status for primary schools, but in the interests of dealing with some of the important issues that remain to be debated in the limited time available, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Ian Mearns]

I beg to move amendment 19, page 1, line 22, at end insert—

(za) the school has regard to the regulations relating to schools admissions made under section 84 of the Schools Standards and Framework Act 1998;

(zb) the school has regard to the regulations relating to the exclusion of pupils made under section 52 of the Education Act 2002;’.

[The First Deputy Chairman]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 23, page 2, line 8, at end insert—

(e) the school must comply with the provisions of the Code for School Admissions issued from time to time by the Secretary of State.’.

Amendment 24, page 2, line 8, at end insert—

(e) the school must comply with fair access protocols issued from time to time by the Secretary of State.’.

Amendment 27, page 2, line 8, at end insert—

(e) the school complies with provisions on pupil exclusions and behaviour partnerships as set out in EA 2002, EIA 2006 and ASCLA 2009.’.

Amendment 42, page 2, line 8, at end insert—

(e) the admissions arrangements of the school make no provision for selection on the basis of religion or belief.’.

Amendment 11, page 2, line 21, at end insert—

‘(9A) Academy arrangements must also include terms imposed for the purpose of securing that the school complies with any code for school admissions issued under section 84 of SSFA.’.

Amendment 43, page 2, line 23, at end insert—

‘(11) Subsection (12) applies if the school is a voluntary controlled school which is designated by order under section 69(3) of SSFA 1998 as a school having a particular religious character.

(12) The Academy agreement must include terms imposed for the purpose of securing that no greater percentage of pupils are selected on the basis of religion or belief after, as compared with before, the conversion date.’.

Amendment 14, in clause 6, page 4, line 21, leave out subsections (3) and (4).

Amendment 49, in clause 6, page 4, line 24, at end insert—

‘(3A) If the school is a selective school, sections 105 to 109 of SSFA 1998 shall continue to apply in respect of the retention of selective admission arrangements at the school.’.

Amendment 44, in clause 6, page 4, line 37, at end insert—

‘( ) Subsections (7) and (8) apply only if the governing body has made a request to maintain such religious character.

( ) Subsections (7) and (8) do not apply if the school is not designated by order under section 69(3) of SSFA 1998 as a school having a particular religious character and, on conversion to an Academy, such a school may not then be designated or treated as designated by order under section 69(3) of SSFA 1998 as a school having a particular religious character.’.

Amendment 12, in clause 6, page 5, line 4, at end add—

‘(10) After the conversion date the school must comply with any code for school admissions issued under section 84 of SSFA which applied to the school on the conversion date.’.

Amendment 13, in schedule 2, page 18, line 26, at end insert—

‘9A In section 84(1) of SSFA (code for school admissions) after paragraph (b) insert—

“(bza) Academies,”.’.

[Ian Mearns]

I do not intend to detain the Committee for long as we are only three amendments into a 30-odd amendment marathon.

I am not a fan of the legislation as it takes a set of proposals that were meant for one set of schools and transfers those, lock, stock and barrel, to schools in a wholly different category. It takes resources that were meant to improve the educational outcome for children in schools that are underperforming and transfers them in a targeted way to schools that are, in the first instance, already regarded as outstanding. It will also take resources that the local authority currently receives to be targeted at school improvement and gives those resources to schools that are already outstanding, in a “devil take the hindmost” fashion.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful case were it not for the fact that the Government have made it clear that they want all schools to have the opportunity to become academies and have that freedom. Also, the pupil premium, which is an important part of the policy platform, will ensure that the poorest in our society have an extra resource, which, for the first time, will follow them, rather than some political fix. Surely he should recognise that in his remarks.

[Ian Mearns]

I thank the Select Committee Chair for his comments, but I did emphasise the words “in the first instance” with regard to the outstanding schools in these proposals. The pupil premium will be part of legislation in the autumn, and it remains to be seen how those proposals will pan out.

[Glenda Jackson]

I tabled questions asking which children in my constituency would benefit from the pupil premium and which would not, and the Department did not know.

[Ian Mearns]

I thank my hon. Friend for that information. It helps us to pad out the argument about how we feel about the Bill.

Government Members have regularly alluded to and broadly welcomed what they see as a return to grant-maintained schools by another name, now known as son of grant-maintained schools or academies. If the policy were to go down that road, its fairness, equity and accountability would have to be severely questioned. Unlike local authorities, the governing body of an academy will not undergo the rigours of the local democratic system. That is, it will not have to stand for election and stand or fall on its record and/or its programme.

17:30

I know that the Secretary of State has been keen to placate local government representatives on these issues. Indeed, in a speech at the Local Government Association annual conference in Bournemouth, he confirmed that he sees councils continuing to play a strong, strategic role in the school system. However, local government is very disappointed that there has been no opportunity for formal consultation on these proposals, which has left little chance to discuss in detail some of the potential issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) referred to the ready reckoner implications earlier. In my local authority, some of the ready reckoner calculations done by finance officers have resulted in horrendous—

[Mr Gibb]

The ready reckoner is used to give an indication to prospective academies of what their funding might be. It is not to be used by local authorities to calculate the claw-back, because they are different figures. Academies are funded through two different routes, so the figures would not match.

[Ian Mearns]

Nevertheless, local authorities are uncertain about the financial implications and their capacity to improve schools in the future. Indeed, education cannot be delivered in isolation from the wider range of local public services used by children and young people—or by the local community. Within education, if the role of local authorities as commissioners was recognised and strengthened, the children’s services budget could be more efficiently used by delivering a wider range of services through schools.

It is important to ensure that all children have fair access to a place in a local school, and that academies operate a fair admissions procedure. Similarly, it is imperative that all schools operate a fair exclusions policy. I was pleased that the Secretary of State gave a reassurance on Second Reading when he said that academies

“have to abide by the admissions code and subscribe to fair access protocols, so that those hard-to-place children are placed appropriately.”—[Official Report, 19 July 2010; Vol. 514, c. 31.]

However, I would like to see an inclusion in the Bill that all academies must comply with admissions law and codes and fair access protocols, as well as regulations relating to pupil exclusions. That would ensure that they were on the same footing as other schools, requiring a change to primary legislation to amend and making them truly equal partners. I therefore ask the Committee to accept amendment No. 19 in my name because it would achieve exactly that.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I tabled amendments 42, 43 and 44, which deal with one aspect of admissions to academies of a religious nature. I understand the benefits that can flow from such schools. Indeed, I used to be a governor of a Church of England school in the ward I represented and it was a very interesting experience. However, I am concerned that the Bill may inadvertently lead to an increase in the proportion of religious places. It risks permanently entrenching religious segregation in our education system through irreversible changes that could permit wide discrimination in admissions and employment.

By “freeing” religious academies from the national curriculum without sufficient safeguards, the Bill also risks exposing children to extreme religious views, including creationism. Members will know that I have spent some time arguing for the scientific line on such issues. My concern is widely shared. A new ICM poll commissioned by the British Humanist Association found that 72% of the public are concerned that the Academies Bill could lead to taxpayers’ money being used to promote religion. A third of the public said that they were “very concerned” about that. The poll also found that two thirds of people think that religious academies should be required to teach pupils about other beliefs, including non-religious ones.

I seek assurances from the Minister on these issues and I have tabled three amendments to flush out their thinking in this area. Amendment 42 would prevent any form of religious discrimination in admissions policies. Many state-funded “faith schools” use privileges to have highly selective admissions criteria, giving preference to the children of parents with particular beliefs. The Government have so far made it clear that they intend to allow these schools to retain their admissions policies, and I have great concerns in that area. It can cause segregation along religious and socio-economic lines. Professor Ted Cantle, author of a report into community cohesion in Blackburn, describes religious schools as

“automatically a source of division”

in the town, which is not something we would wish to see. In other areas, faith schools, which are their own admissions authorities—as these academies will be—are 10 times more likely to be highly unrepresentative of their surrounding area than faith schools where the local authority is the admission authority. Separating children by religion, class and ethnicity is totally antithetical to the aims of social cohesion, and amendment 42 would ensure that no academy pupil is discriminated against on religious grounds.

That is an ideal to which I hope we all aspire. However, if amendment 42 cannot be accepted by the Government, I hope that amendment 43 can at least provide greater assurance. It would ensure that, at the very least, existing faith schools cannot discriminate more when they achieve academy status. During discussions in the other place, the Government confirmed that maintained faith schools will be able to discriminate in admissions. I hope they will change their mind on that. They said that a 50% quota would be imposed to ensure that 50% of admissions would not be religiously selective, and that was repeated on Second Reading. However, that provision is not in the Bill, the model funding agreement or any other official guidance or information. We need to know what would happen there. If amendment 42 cannot be accepted, I hope that amendment 43 will be, to ensure that things can get no worse than they currently are.

Finally, I turn to amendment 44, which deals with two issues, one of which I take to be a drafting error on which I seek reassurance, and the other is the desire to provide choice for current religious schools. I shall take the second part of the amendment first. The amendment would ensure symmetry. Currently a state-funded religious school becomes a religious academy, but there is nothing to confirm that a non-faith school becomes a non-faith academy. I therefore seek the guarantee, which I think the Secretary of State intended, that that is what would happen—that their nature simply would not change.

The first part of the amendment deals with schools that are religious schools now. Currently, a state-maintained school with a religious character is forced to become an academy with that religious character, but surely religious schools should at least have the option not to do that if they do not wish to. That would be popular with the local community: a recent poll found that 64% of people agreed that the Government should not be funding faith schools of any kind—but that is a debate for another time. However, some faith schools are only nominally of a religious character—that character being a residue of former connections. When taking on academy status with the possibility of growth, these schools may wish to free themselves of the restrictive status of being of a religious character which has ceased to be relevant to them. The amendment would allow them the choice, rather than compel them.

I hope my amendments will be considered carefully by the Government, and I hope that Ministers will comment on them. I intend them as probing amendments and will not press them to a vote, but I hope that the Government will take them seriously and accept a number of them.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I am the author of four amendments in this group, and their purpose is to try to make it mandatory for the new academies to comply with the schools admission code. Concerns have been expressed in this debate that increasing the number of academies will have major implications for admissions planning, and, as I said, the amendments seek to ensure that there is co-ordination and that it is mandatory for academies to comply with the code.

If the Government are serious that the proposals will not open up the back door to selection, as many of us fear—that promise was made in the other place—why not state very clearly in the Bill that academies should comply with the schools admission code, instead of only stating that academies will have to comply with the codes under their funding arrangements? Although required under those arrangements to meet the code, the levers to ensure that that happens still rest entirely with the Secretary of State. So all concerns about fairness keep being met with the reassurance that it is in the funding agreement, but that is not good enough. Parents must know, through a proper consultation process prior to the setting up of an academy, what the admissions arrangements for the school will be and how their chances of getting into the local schools will be affected. Furthermore, there must be mechanisms to ensure that funding agreements can be changed to ensure that academies follow any changes required in any future code on admissions.

Essentially, voluntary-aided schools, foundation schools, trust schools and academies all operate as admission authorities, able to set their own admission criteria. Research over a number of years has shown that where schools set their own criteria, there is more social segregation. In particular, the fact that grammar schools will be allowed to become academies is a serious concern. Selective academies will be able to expand in a way that grammar schools currently are not allowed to. That expansion will also take place after limited consultation with the local community. I would therefore like the Minister to reassure the Committee that all new academies, including former grammar schools, will be required to participate in local admissions co-ordination schemes.

Under the 2009 code, the schools adjudicators, as the independent enforcers of fair access to schools, also have a wider remit to consider any admissions arrangements that come to their attention, in addition to any complaints received through an objection. Can the Minister tell the Committee whether the schools adjudicators will be reporting annually to the Secretary of State on the admissions of academies as well? We could debate at length the ability of an admission forum to ensure fairness, but will the Minister assure the Committee that academies will be represented on admissions forums? Currently, regulations allow for the administration of all admissions—in other words, dealing with the key administrative decisions on whether an applicant meets the admissions criteria, even if they are set by the school—to be carried out by the local authority. Is the option to allow the local authority to administer admissions still open to all schools, including academies? Finally, will the Government encourage a role for local authorities in administering admissions in that way?

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

I hope that the Committee will excuse me if I intervene briefly in my capacity as Second Church Estates Commissioner to deal with the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). What he was talking about was something of a straw man. There is nothing in the Bill that changes the existing relationship between the state and faith groups, although it is important to remind the Committee of a couple of things.

First, the reason why there are so many faith schools among primary and secondary schools in England and Wales is that, as part of the Education Act 1944, the then Government persuaded the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church to place at the disposal of the state all the Church schools that they had previously run. The then Government simply could not have delivered universal state education through the 1944 Act if the Churches had not brought all their schools into the state system.

Secondly, one fundamental principle of the 1944 Act was that, so far as possible, children should be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents. No one is obliged to send their child to a faith school; they do so because they wish to. I suspect that it is the experience of us all in the House that faith schools in our constituencies are consistently and substantially over-subscribed. I have one faith school in my constituency—Blessed George Napier school, a Roman Catholic comprehensive secondary school in the diocese of Birmingham—that is consistently over-subscribed, because parents wish to send their children there.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Could the hon. Gentleman help me to understand why, across the piece and on average, faith schools have an intake that is substantially less deprived than maintained schools?

[Tony Baldry]

I do not accept that as a principle or an assertion, although I would be happy to meet the hon. Lady to talk about it, because the Church takes considerable pride in the fact that it admits into its schools a wide range of pupils, from all backgrounds, all faiths and all cultures, particularly in London. The Church of England sees that as an important part of its outreach and its commitment to the community and society as a whole.

[Dr Huppert]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tony Baldry]

I will, but let me finish my point.

17:45

It is of fundamental importance that parents can educate their children as they wish. My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge is clearly opposed to any faith schools at all. That may well be a debate for another occasion, but it is not a debate under this Bill. This Bill does nothing to alter the existing covenant and arrangements between Church and faith groups in respect of faith schools. I suspect that I am not the only Member to have received all sorts of e-mails suggesting otherwise. They are wrong: this Bill does nothing to upset or alter the covenant between Church and state that has existed since 1944.

[Dr Huppert]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. First, he says that parents have a choice, but does he accept that that simply does not apply in many rural areas where there is no reasonable choice because there is a shortage of schools nearby? Furthermore, he says that there is no change, so may I take it that he will support the second part of my amendment 44, which stipulates that there should be no change in either direction—into or out of faith schools?

[Tony Baldry]

For the more than 27 years I have represented my constituency, I have never yet received a complaint from a parent about being obliged to send a child to a rural church school. It is usually the other way round, with parents expressing the concern that they cannot get their children into the local church school if there is only one school available. I hope that Government Members would accept it as a fundamental principle that, so far as possible, children should be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents.

On my hon. Friend’s second point, with all due respect I think his amendments are seeking to create some straw men that simply do not exist in this Bill. It is a distraction. There may be another time for such a debate and I am sure that I and other colleagues would gladly engage with him because many in the House believe that faith schools make a very substantial contribution to our national life, provide diversity in education and contribute to the richness of educational experience in this country. As I say, I believe that seeking to introduce these amendments is a distraction, and I hope that the House will oppose them.

[Glenda Jackson]

Following on from the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), let me say that it is more than anecdotal—and certain in my constituency—that all schools, primary or secondary, are over-subscribed. As the hon. Gentleman said, parents should be allowed to educate their children as they wish, but parents who want to educate their child in a faith school—Church of England, Roman Catholic or Muslim—may find that there are no places because they have been superseded not only by people who have suddenly discovered their faith but by those who have had the money to buy their way into a catchment area. Yes, we would all like parents to see their children educated as they wish, whether it be in a faith school or a non-faith school, but what my constituents overwhelmingly want is to see their children educated in a local school, so they do not have to travel vast distances and so that relationships can be created with in a local area.

In my opinion, this group of amendments brings us to the central part of the Bill, which is all to do with admissions. I have already touched lightly on the difficulties experienced in my constituency. As I said on Second Reading, if the Bill goes through without further amendment, we will return the country to the bad old days of the 11-plus. Many Members on the opposite Benches would love the restoration of the 11-plus and are desperate to return to grammar schools and the old-fashioned secondary modern schools. Under the Bill, they would not even be bog-standard comprehensives, and I can remember what the old secondary schools were like.

It is intrinsically wrong to approach education in a way that so totally excludes parents’ input. It is astounding that hon. Members, who, like me, must come across such issues in their constituency surgeries, cannot foresee a position in which, should the Bill go through and the academisation of our schools go on, there would be a determined move on the part of some parents to exclude, first, children with special educational needs; secondly, children who could claim free school meals; and, thirdly, children with English as a second language.

[Chris Skidmore]

I simply do not understand the hon. Lady’s assertion that academies will penalise those with special educational needs or those who can claim free school meals. All the available evidence shows that academies take more pupils who can claim free school meals and more pupils with special educational needs. Her comments therefore make no sense.

[Glenda Jackson]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman simply does not know or whether he is deliberately blurring the issue, but existing academies were established by my Government in areas of grievous deprivation in an attempt to raise the educational standards of children who not only lived in deprived areas, but whose whole lives constituted deprivation. That was the central and essential motive of my Government. The hon. Gentleman’s Government propose that every secondary school in the country can suddenly become an academy. I reiterate what I have had occasion to say before: human nature does not change. To go back to the point that the hon. Member for Banbury made—that every parent has the right to educate their child as they wish—there will always be parents who want their children to be in a particular situation, which is not inclusive, but deliberately exclusive. They would wish to exclude children whom they feel, for a variety of reasons—I have given only three—should not share a school with their children.

[Chris Skidmore]

Many hon. Members simply do not understand the politics of class warfare that the hon. Lady describes. Where is the available evidence for what she outlines? It does not matter if the parents are rich or poor or what their background is, they want to do the best for their children, and that should happen. I am sure she will welcome the Government’s attempt to ensure that the most deprived pupils have a better start in school through the pupil premium. I look forward to her supporting that.

[Glenda Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman will be very disappointed. It is not a matter of class warfare, as he describes it. We all understand parents’ vulnerability when they are presented with sending their child to a school, and the agonies that they go through—initially, when they first let the child go out of the front door without their being there all the time. We all understand the anxieties that parents experience if they think that the school is not up to the standard that they desire for their children. However, we must not delude ourselves. Some parents are perfectly prepared to sacrifice the education of other parents’ children if they think they can gain a greater advantage for their own. Academies open the door to that. That is why, apart from the academic downturn to which the Bill will lead, the potential for social division is horrendous.

An inner-London constituency such as mine is multiracial, multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-you-name-it-we’ve-got-it—and it works. People communicate and get on, and there is an exchange of culture, tradition and identity and a sense of community, which is shared by all. It is inherent in the Bill, however, that it will begin to chip away at that and destroy it. That is inevitable. I remember the terrible rows that took place, the terrible ongoing arguments, when it was first proposed that we should get rid of grammar schools. That situation could be replicated.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

I think that my hon. Friend is describing the difference between an admissions policy, which can be manipulated, and a secondary school catchment area. The catchment area will give an impression of the community that contains the school, whereas an admissions policy that is not nailed down or defined in any great detail will not necessarily give such an impression.

[Glenda Jackson]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend has made the point much more succinctly than I could have done. That is the bedrock of my argument: there must be an admissions policy that affects all schools and cannot be left exclusively to the governors of a school.

[Chris Skidmore]

The hon. Lady says that the schools system in her constituency “absolutely works”. Last year, 48.4% of pupils in the constituency achieved five good GCSEs including English and maths. That means that more than half the pupils in her constituency are not achieving the basics at GCSE. Does the system really “absolutely work”?

[Glenda Jackson]

I do not wish to be rude, but the hon. Gentleman is not a testament to his own education. He does not listen to what I say. The point that I was making about a community was not about education, but about the way in which communities work together over a wide spectrum of experience, ethnicity and age. I consider that the Bill has enormous potential to create a serious breakdown in social cohesion—

[Ms Buck]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Glenda Jackson]

May I just finish the sentence? Then I shall be delighted to allow my hon. Friend to intervene.

It seems to me that the strongest bulwark against that serious breakdown is to ensure that we have an admissions policy that is fair in the broadest sense, as suggested by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas).

[Ms Buck]

Is not my hon. Friend’s point reinforced, and that made by the hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) undermined, by the extraordinary variation in the intake of precisely the pupils whom my hon. Friend has described—pupils who are on School Action Plus, pupils with special educational needs and pupils who are entitled to free school dinners? Schools with a significantly larger proportion of pupils in those categories almost invariably struggle to achieve the educational standards achieved by schools that choose to take fewer such pupils. Will not allowing more schools to choose less deprived pupils increase that variation between higher and lower-performing schools?

[Glenda Jackson]

I entirely agree, and we must take that seriously.

We have come so far in so many ways in this country. I know that the hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) disagrees with me, but over the past 13 years I have seen a transformation of the schools in my constituency and a transformation of the educational levels of pupils in my constituency, and that seems to be increasing. There are invariably benefits in such circumstances, because of the wide variety of people whom our children meet. The variations in culture, language and tradition feed into schools in a way that has an intrinsically positive effect not only on the children’s education, but on the quality and stability of life in this country.

I am a product of the 11-plus, and I remember distinctly what happened at the time. I lived in a very small town. I was probably related to two thirds of the people there, and everyone knew me and my entire family. The results of the 11-plus came in. As I walked to school people asked me, “Have you passed?” and I said, “I don’t know.” “Oh,” they said, “You’ve failed.” I went home for lunch. The brown envelope had arrived; I had passed. I went back. In the intervening time, my mother had run around and told everyone that I had passed.

What is most shocking to me, however—I did not realise it at the time, but I realise it now—was the attitude of adults whom I had known all my life. I must say in fairness to them that they had always looked out for me and mine and ours, because at that time there was a community culture of looking out for our children. They had changed in a second their view of what I was capable of and of what I was as a human being. If Government Members really wish to return that burden to the shoulders of 11-year-old children, I throw up my hands in despair because I do not know what they want from education or what they expect of our children.

18:00

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady not accept that this Bill does not include the capacity to expand selection? It is clear that that is not in the Bill; indeed, that is very clearly stated in the Bill. Would the hon. Lady not accept that?

[Glenda Jackson]

No, I would not accept that, because the Bill is allowing a minute number of people who are engaged in delivering publicly funded education to our children over a period of time to decide on their admissions policies. They can decide on everything. It seems that they have no need to consult anyone, and if they make a decision and there is a little trouble locally, they then go to the Secretary of State.

Many of us can remember that under a previous Conservative Government there were great difficulties with planning proposals. Planning was always a terrible problem, and the Government of the day simply rubber-stamped the proposals they wished to proceed.

[Julian Smith]

Is the hon. Lady telling the public that this Bill will expand selection? If she is, I believe that is a deceit.

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. The hon. Member should know that he cannot accuse another hon. Member of deceit. Perhaps he would like to rephrase his comments, and withdraw the word “deceit”.

[Julian Smith]

Of course I will. I think it is important—

[The First Deputy Chairman]

Do you withdraw that word?

[Julian Smith]

I withdraw that word, but I think it is important that we do not represent the Bill inaccurately. This Bill does not propose any expansion to selection in this country, beyond the terms embedded in existing legislation.

[Glenda Jackson]

How many Bills have been enacted in this place, the unconsidered consequences of which have created the necessity for this House to come back again and either write a new Bill or add an amendment to the existing legislation? To reassure the hon. Gentleman, I have been extremely public about what I regard as the intrinsic potential for huge damage in this Bill.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that in rushing the Bill through with such haste precisely the danger she mentions arises because we are not scrutinising its measures properly and so we may end up with an Act that needs to be changed?

[Glenda Jackson]

That is an extremely salient point, and one is left wondering why the Bill has to be rushed through in such a short space of time. I personally have received no comfort from the Minister when it has been pointed out during this afternoon’s debate that we are running into the long summer holidays and he has replied, “Well, work is going on and schools will open in September.” We do not know which schools they are. I am secretly hoping that the Minister will, with the best will in the world and not because of his own individual failure, be proved wrong on this matter, as his Secretary of State was when he made his five varying announcements on which schools would or would not be in the Building Schools for the Future programme.

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

May I ask the hon. Lady to clarify something? Did she pass the 11-plus?

[Glenda Jackson]

Somebody else who does not listen—you are not the listening party, are you?

The Bill’s measures would take us back to a position to which we really should not want to return. As we all know, we are living in an ever more competitive world, and the greatest national resource we have is our people—their talent, their energy, their ability, their creativity. The future of this country is dependent upon our young people, and on our being able to deliver to them the best possible education, but it must be the best possible education we can deliver to all our children and young people, not just a selected, or selective, few. So I sincerely hope that the amendments that have already been presented will be accepted by the Committee, because this is the heart of the Bill and the Committee should reject the Bill as it stands.

[Mr Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale West) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) for giving me my cue, once again. She finished her remarks by saying that what is important is that we have the best possible education for all our children, and that is precisely why I have always been an advocate of academic selection. May I say to her—I hope that she will take this in the spirit in which it is intended—that there is always a danger in these debates of reverting to historical anecdotes about our own experiences? All too often, people look at debates about academic selection through a prism that is not the experience of people today in areas such as mine, which still have selective schools. The borough of Trafford has a model of diverse education, where the grammar schools are excellent and so are the high schools, a very large number of which are specialist schools that excel in particular areas.

We have moved a tremendous distance from the kind of world that the hon. Lady described, which was one of pass or fail. We have moved to a world where many people will choose to go to a high school because of its specialism and its very high academic attainment. My area achieves better results than leafier Cheshire does over the border. In fact, it achieves better results than any other part of the country apart from Northern Ireland, which also has a wholly selective system. As is well known, I am an advocate of that system.

[Glenda Jackson]

Surely the hon. Gentleman would also acknowledge that there has been an explosion across the whole country of parents buying additional educational facilities for their children at the point when they have to sit a selective examination, and not always in a secondary or a grammar school. That kind of pressure, which is being exerted on our children, is a pressure too far. We hear about that in respect of standard assessment tests. Why do we not hear about it in terms of the pressure on children whose choice of school must be via selection?

[Mr Brady]

As the hon. Lady well knows, there has also been an explosion in the practice of parents paying over the odds for houses in the catchment area of the better comprehensive schools, in her constituency and elsewhere. That is why the Sutton Trust found earlier this year that the better comprehensive schools are the most socially selective, not the grammar schools.

It is time that we had a more rational and open-minded debate. Hon. Members will have heard the exchanges that took place a few moments ago on the Bill’s content and whether it would allow an expansion of selection. As I said in response to the hon. Lady’s intervention on Second Reading, I only wish that it would. At the moment, although the Conservative Front-Bench team takes the view that parents should have more choice on the kind of schools that are available and that schools should have more freedom, it sadly still does not quite have the courage of its convictions to allow the choice to include academic selection where parents want it. I would like to see that additional choice allowed.

I oppose amendment 14, which is an attack on the remaining grammar schools, many of which, including those in my constituency, wish to become academies because they believe that they can benefit from the additional freedom that that will give them to flourish and excel. Of course, I wish to support amendment 43, which stands in my name and the names of some of my hon. Friends and at least one Labour Member. In speaking in support of amendment 43, I suppose I should start with a rare admission—

[Mr Mark Field]

Amendment 49.

[Mr Brady]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because I suspect that amendment 43 might have led me into all sorts of difficulties.

[Mr Field]

You might have been excommunicated for a start.

[Mr Brady]

My moral safety is now assured.

I expect broad support from hon. Members on both sides of the Houses on amendment 49, and I shall start my comments on that amendment with the unusual admission that I was once wrong in an education debate in the House. I am going all the way back to the Committee stage of the Bill that became the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, in which I opposed introducing ballot arrangements to continue grammar schools because I made the mistake of imagining that they were intended to be a route to abolishing grammar schools. It has become apparent, with experience and practice over the years, that those arrangements have been the greatest safeguard introduced by the Labour Government because there has been only one instance in which parents achieved the requisite threshold to trigger a ballot through a petition, and the proposal was then thrown out by an overwhelming majority precisely because grammar schools are immensely popular with parents. I was therefore mistaken in my earlier view.

The introduction of the ballot arrangements in 1998 was a great tribute to the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, the former right hon. Member for Sedgefield. Many of us came to understand, much to our regret, that he had an unrivalled feel for the views and instincts of middle Britain. In that instance, he had correctly identified the affection and support that so many people have for grammar schools and he had identified the perfect mechanism for protecting both them and the then Labour Government from the opprobrium that would have resulted had any of them closed during the years of Labour government.

[Mr Field]

I suspect that, given his record in so many areas, the then Prime Minister was more guilty of cock-up than conspiracy.

[Mr Brady]

My hon. Friend is being uncharacteristically ungenerous; Mr Blair needs all the support that he can get right now given that some of his friends are not helping him much.

As the ballot arrangements were introduced by a Labour Government and have been nurtured and kept in place by Education Ministers throughout the period of Labour government, I am sure that the shadow Minister will support my amendment. I am also sure, given the very strong support that the Minister of State, Department for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), has given to the continuation of grammar schools—he has also visited some of the excellent schools in my constituency—that the Government will want to reassure us that grammar schools are entirely safe under the Bill, and I look forward to hearing that reassurance.

During the general election, all four candidates in my constituency, which I think probably has the best state schools in the country, were to a greater or lesser extent supportive of the selective system. Even the Labour candidate was reasonably warm about grammar schools because he, like me, is an old boy of Altrincham grammar school for boys; perhaps that helped to condition his views on the subject. The Liberal Democrat candidate was strongly in support, and I hope that our coalition partners will follow suit and strongly support the grammar schools in the two Divisions on them this evening. The other candidate from the United Kingdom Independence party was also very supportive.

[Ms Buck]

Can the hon. Gentleman help me with one point? If grammar schools are, as he and other proponents of them claim, a route for high-achieving children from more deprived backgrounds, why do they have fewer children who are entitled to free school meals than other schools?

18:14

[Mr Brady]

There are a number of reasons, but the principal one is that most inner-city grammar schools were sadly destroyed by misguided policy, so there are fewer grammar schools in the most deprived areas and they tend to survive—[Interruption.] No, I am responding to the hon. Lady’s point. They tend to survive in the outer-urban and more rural areas. The reduction in grammar schools, particularly in London, where there are so few, has had another effect: they have become more selective over time. In my borough of Trafford, we select about 35% of that cohort to go to grammar school, but selection can amount to as little as 1% or 2% of the ability range at some London grammar schools.

[Ms Buck]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point about the national statistics, but is he saying that, in Trafford, grammar schools have the same proportion of children on free school dinners as non-grammar schools?

[Mr Brady]

That would depend on the part of Trafford that one was in, and the figure would largely relate to the school’s catchment area, but overall grammar schools have become more selective than they should have had to become.

I do not want to detain the Committee for long. The crucial point about amendment 49 is that it would protect the status quo not just of the excellent schools that are thriving and popular in their communities, but of their protection in current education legislation. If the amendment is accepted and those schools become academies, they will have the protection of a parental ballot, which will transfer with them and prevent any change in their status without reference to the parents. I hope that the amendment is uncontentious, and I very much hope that my Front Benchers warmly welcome it.

[Vernon Coaker]

Mr Evans, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to some really important amendments that clearly arouse feelings among Members on both sides of the Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) has left the Chamber, but in a very good speech she again outlined some of the differences between hon. Members on how to achieve the educational objectives that we all want.

[Mr Mark Field]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

He’s only just started.

[Mr Field]

Well, my point is actually rather important, because many of us fundamentally differ in our objectives for the education system and in our feelings about what it is there to achieve. The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) made a very impassioned speech, but we should not be fooled, because some of us have very different objectives. Some of us do not feel that an egalitarian and equal education for every single child is necessarily the right way forward. Some Government Members feel very strongly that, given the global world in which we will compete in the decades ahead, we should look at an elitist education in order to ensure that our brightest and best have the very best opportunities without having to rely upon the wealth of their parents.

[Vernon Coaker]

The hon. Gentleman and I have spoken on several occasions and exchanged pleasantries at debates not just in the Chamber, but outside, and I do not think that, when he reflects on what he has said, he will agree with himself—if I might be so bold. In my opening remarks I was essentially trying to say that everybody wants the best for the children of this country. We want them to achieve the very best that they can. Opposition Members believe in comprehensive education, and we believe that grammar schools are divisive. It is a caricature of our position to say that, therefore, we do not want young people to excel at something; that is not the case.

The issue is about trying different ways from those of the hon. Gentleman to ensure that every child has the same chance of achieving their educational objectives. The difference between us is that he sees the route to excellence, and an opportunity to be created, in a system that allows for grammar schools, and we do not see it that way at all. I would be surprised if his Front Benchers, who are also exercised about this issue, voted for amendment 49 along with the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady).

In the continuing debate about grammar schools, we are debating a few schools rather than how we raise the standard and quality of education right across the system. I do not decry the desire of the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) to ensure that all children achieve the very best that they can, and I hope that he would not decry me, or any of my hon. Friends, in terms of wanting that either. It is a difference of philosophy and view about how one achieves that. [Interruption.] With respect to the hon. Gentleman, if he reads what he said, I think he will find that that was not quite the point that he was making. If I am wrong, I apologise.

The amendments tabled in my name deal with exclusions and admissions. I should say at the outset, for the avoidance of doubt, that I wish to press amendments 23, 27 and 14 to a vote to test the opinion of the Committee. The amendments would ensure that independence for academies does not mean an ability to select covertly and to exclude more easily. That is particularly relevant now that we have this changed academy model. As hon. Members who have sat through a few hours of this debate will know, that is one of the principal points of difference. We are not opposing academies per se, but we see this particular model of academy as different. Hundreds of outstanding schools are now eligible for academy status.

One of the interesting points, which changes the whole dynamic of the debate, is that when we look at schools that are applying to become academies as opposed to those that are already academies under the existing model, we see a completely different version of the academy profile. According to a study published this month by the Centre for Economic Performance, schools that have expressed an interest are, unlike the current academies, characterised by having a more advantaged pupil population, lower proportions of free school meals, lower numbers of pupils with special educational needs, lower numbers of pupils with ethnic minority status, and superior levels of GCSE attainment. That is an important difference to reflect on when we consider the Bill in this context. We believe it is necessary to consider how we change some of the provisions in the Bill to deal with that changed situation.

[Mr Gibb]

Is it not an indictment of 13 years of Labour Government that outstanding schools are disproportionately in areas of affluence? That is the best example of that Government’s track record that could be revealed, and the hon. Gentleman has revealed it to the Committee.

[Vernon Coaker]

That could be a debate that the hon. Gentleman will want to have another time. The context for this debate, though, is to consider the changed profile of schools that wish to become academies as opposed to the profile of schools that are already academies. We are debating a different situation in which those academies, through a funding agreement rather than through statutory legislation, now have to abide by various things such as admissions codes, exclusions and so on. That is the point that we are making about the genuine difference between these two sets of the schools and the need for some of the amendments that we have before us.

[Ms Buck]

Is the Minister not wrong? There are actually cases in which two schools serve the same neighbourhood and one has a dramatically lower number of children on free school dinners, on School Action Plus or with special educational needs than the other, which is only a few hundred yards away. Neither school is situated in a more affluent area; they simply have different intakes. That shows that something else is going on in their admissions policies.

[Vernon Coaker]

Such a difference in intake is certainly true in many cases. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn pointed out, it is also crucial for us to understand the difference between the profile of pupils at the new academies that the Government intend to set free and give all sorts of freedoms to, and those at the existing academies. The study by the Centre for Economic Performance is extremely important in that respect.

[Robert Flello]

Does my hon. Friend understand my concern that at the moment, not just in Stoke-on-Trent but more widely, there are young people in the education system, such as those on the autism spectrum, who have undiagnosed conditions and who have problems in school? Under the Government’s proposals, they will be much more readily kicked out of their schools, whereas they should be getting more support and help in them.

[Vernon Coaker]

That is absolutely the case, and people are concerned that schools that are already fairly exclusive in many respects may not wish to admit pupils of that type.

I shall give an example of how difficult the matter is, and I hope that the Minister will comment specifically on it. The Government’s view is that none of our suggestions needs to be on the face of the Bill. We fundamentally disagree, hence the amendments that we have tabled. We do not believe it is enough for the admissions provisions to be set out simply in the funding agreements. One of the most fundamental changes that I can find in annexe A of the draft funding agreement, on admissions—I am sure there are many others—relates to the annual procedures for determining admissions arrangements. In the current model agreement, the relevant annexe contains detailed provisions with which an academy has to comply in order to remain within the terms of the funding agreement. The proposed draft completely removes those provisions.

Somebody cynical would ask why, when the Government are seeking to reassure Members throughout the House who want a fair admissions process, the Minister or the Department has signed off a model funding agreement that removes some of the detailed provisions on admissions.

[Mr Gibb]

What we are trying to do across government at the moment is reduce the bureaucratic burdens faced by the public services. However, the model funding agreement still applies the law on admissions, as well as the admissions code and admissions appeal code, to all converting academies. It achieves exactly the same effect as before, and academies will be on exactly the same basis as maintained schools when it comes to admissions. We can achieve that with fewer words.

[Vernon Coaker]

The question to the Minister is therefore why he does not put that in the Bill.

[Mr Gibb]

For the same reason the hon. Gentleman did not put such measures in legislation for the 200 academies over which he presided—it is not the model that we are working to.

[Vernon Coaker]

The model that the Minister is working to is one that will lead to a massive expansion in academies right across the country, not just 200 at secondary schools in areas of social disadvantage and educational underperformance. The new academies will be outstanding schools that are already doing well and are socially advantaged, and that have a totally different profile from existing academies. At the same time as Members throughout the Committee are raising concerns about what the impact of that will be on admissions to the new academies, the Minister weakens the model funding agreement. Those things are tucked away—they are not deliberately hidden—in model funding agreements. We need to compare funding agreements, as I will with respect to exclusions, but significant changes in provisions are included in them.

18:30

The Minister has tried to offer a justification, but will he say what other differences there are in the model funding agreements on admissions between what existed and what happens now? Why have those changes been made, and why should we be reassured simply by his words on changing the model funding agreement, which is the legally binding contract between the Secretary of State and the school that becomes an academy? Even if the Opposition agreed with the Minister’s policy, which we do not, would it not have been better to have reassured people by ensuring that the various things that have been taken out of the model funding agreement were kept in?

[Graham Evans]

Much of the debate has been on schools in areas of social deprivation and selective schools, but what about the middle ground, such as schools in my constituency? Mid-Cheshire towns have areas of deep social deprivation—not quite the same as in cities—but also prosperous families. When they are brought together, we end up with good rather than outstanding schools. Does the hon. Gentleman not see that the Bill will help good schools that are under-achieving? Under the Bill, all sections of those communities could come together to achieve the outstanding excellence that we all want.

[Vernon Coaker]

In fairness, the hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point on the need to concentrate not only on outstanding and failing schools. He is right to point that out. It would have been perfectly possible to develop Labour’s academies model to deal with schools in the middle—I will not call them coasting schools. Similarly, that is why our model contained provisions for all-through academies. It was sometimes a matter not of the secondary school alone, but of linking the primary and secondary schools. That is important.

The reason why the Opposition are opposed to the way in which the Bill is constructed is that it does not consider the need for academies or where they can bring added value to schools in an area, but says that they are the only solution. National challenge trusts, a change of head teacher or the injection of new staff to a school could make the difference rather than structural change, as I have seen in different parts of the country. One flaw at the heart of the Bill, to which we will doubtless return when the Government introduce their Bill in the autumn, is that they have made the mistake that people always make of believing that structural change brings improved performance in schools. Sometimes such change creates the opportunity for change to take place, but essentially, what ultimately makes the difference, whether in a local authority school, a national challenge trust or an academy, is the quality of leadership and teaching in the school, not structural change.

Good schools deserve help and support, and the hon. Gentleman was right to point out that we need better to understand how we get that injection of pace and inspiration into them. I do not think that that is necessarily brought about by structural change, particularly the structural change enabled by the Bill, which does not include a requirement on outstanding schools to link to or partner other schools. That is an aspiration and a desire—

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. We are straying somewhat from the amendments we are discussing on admissions and exclusions. There is a lot to be debated this evening in a short space of time, so could the shadow Minister please restrict himself to the amendments?

[Vernon Coaker]

I apologise to you, Mr Evans and to the Committee. I was trying to answer the hon. Gentleman fully, but perhaps my reply was too full.

The Local Government Association, along with many charities, says that a provision that academies must comply with the admissions code should be in the Bill, hence proposed amendment 23.

Amendment 14 would effectively prevent grammar schools from becoming academies. We are worried that grammar schools becoming academies will lead to an increase in selection in the academies arena. Will the Minister explain whether it would be possible for a grammar school with 1,000 places that had become an academy to expand to 1,500 or 2,000 places? Will he also explain what, if any, influence in terms of selection a grammar school that had become an academy would have if it were to link up with a weaker school? What effect would its selection policy have on that other school?

Will the Minister also explain what Lord Hill meant when he wrote that the Government intended to allow selective academies to expand where there was a strong case for doing so and where there had been local consultation? It is important that we understand what he meant by that.

On exclusions, amendment 27 seeks to ensure that the current legal framework would apply to the new academies, to the extent that they would have to conform to the existing codes that schools have to conform to at the moment. One piece of evidence from the equalities impact assessment shows that the overall rate of exclusions is higher in academies than in local authority-maintained secondary schools. How does the Minister expect to keep track of that and understand how it is all working? How can we ensure that pupils with special educational needs, and pupils who are less academic or who are difficult, are not excluded from a school simply to preserve the school’s examination standing?

In annex D, we can see that changes have been made to the model funding agreement. Paragraph 3 used to state:

“Subject to the exceptions in paragraph 4, the Academy Trust shall ensure that in carrying out their functions the Principal, the Governing Body and the Independent Appeal Panel (established in accordance with paragraph 5) have regard to the Secretary of State’s guidance on exclusions, as if the Academy were a maintained school.”

That has been changed to:

“Subject to the exceptions in paragraph 4, the Academy Trust shall ensure that in carrying out their functions the Principal and the Governing Body have regard to the Secretary of State’s guidance on exclusions including in relation to any appeals process as if the Academy were a maintained school.”

Can the Minister explain why the independent appeal panel has been removed from the model funding agreement? Or is that of no consequence?

[Mr Mike Hancock (Portsmouth South) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is quoting the statistics of the exclusion rates in the 200-odd academies set up under Labour. What was his plan to bring those academies back into line? Why were they excluding so many pupils, and what action was his Department planning to take?

[Vernon Coaker]

The Department was planning to have discussions with all those academies, and with their sponsors, to try to understand why those exclusions figures were as they were, to see what we could do to reduce the numbers, and to accept it as a difficulty. The Bill proposes a massive expansion of academies to include outstanding schools, and they will only be asked—not required—to partner schools that are in difficulty. Given that the Government refuse to put these issues on the face of the Bill, one can only wonder what this will mean for exclusions and admissions. If the hon. Gentleman does not believe that they should be included in the Bill, how does he expect them to be monitored and academies to be held to account?

[Mr Hancock]

I do not have a problem with what is in the Bill because I will be voting against it anyway. However, given all that the hon. Gentleman said the previous Government were doing to encourage schools to be more understanding about exclusions, why did the number of exclusions continue to rise?

[Vernon Coaker]

As I said, what happens is that a problem is identified and an attempt is made to deal with it. It became apparent that there were a number of exclusions, and I could have stood here and not drawn attention to that, opening myself up to exactly the point that the hon. Gentleman has, correctly, made. The rate of exclusions in academies was too high, and we wanted to do something about it.

It is clear that one way to deal with that issue is to include in the Bill a requirement to conform to measures such as admissions codes and the legal frameworks laid out on exclusions. In doing so, we would give much more legislative clout to achieving the things we want to achieve. I have given examples—the changes to the model funding agreements on admissions and on exclusions—that demonstrate that the Government are saying, “Trust us, we will do all this through the model funding agreement.” Through these amendments, I and my party are saying that we do not believe that that is sufficient and that such a provision needs to be included in the Bill, which is why we tabled these amendments.

[Gavin Barwell]

The hon. Gentleman is trying to make the case that the exclusion rates are higher in academies, and is comparing them with the whole of the maintained sector. Is it not true that research published by his Department when he was a Minister showed that exclusion rates in academies are no higher than the average rates for their local authority areas?

[Vernon Coaker]

I was quoting earlier from point 20 in the equalities impact assessment.

Let me try to make some progress. This set of amendments is extremely important. Allowing outstanding schools to fast-track to becoming academies raises all sorts of questions and concerns right across the Committee. What will it mean for admissions? We are told, “Trust the funding agreement.” What will it mean for exclusions? We are told, “Trust the funding agreement.” Grammar schools are to become part of the academy world. We are told, “Don’t worry, it won’t mean more selection. Don’t worry, it won’t mean more selective places.”

It is clear from the answers we have been given and the evidence before us that grammar schools becoming academies will lead to more selection. It is clear that, without its being made explicit in the Bill that there is a requirement to abide by the various codes and the legal framework in respect of exclusions and admissions, over the next few years we will see an expansion of selection and of exclusions from the intakes into certain schools—or, more likely, non-admittance—and a more socially exclusive education system. We all want increased attainment and our young people to achieve the very best they can, but we cannot do that by creating what this Bill in effect creates at its heart: a two-tier education system.

[Mr Mark Field]

I will not detain the Committee for long as I know we have a lot more business to get on with. I want to speak to amendment 49, which is in my name and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) and for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing). My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West went into the amendment in great detail, and I agree with every word that he had to say.

In many ways, ultimately this is a philosophical debate that fires up many of us. We have all had our own experiences, and I was sorry to learn from the contribution of the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) that she has only negative thoughts about her admission to a grammar school. I am the product of the grammar school system, although I must confess that I cannot even remember the day I got in. However, I do remember various episodes while I was there that allowed me to aspire to the university place that my parents could never aspire to, and to aspire to running my own business, becoming professionally qualified and eventually becoming a Member of this House.

That was an opportunity for me, because my parents could not have afforded to send me to one of a range of independent schools within a few miles of us. I do not suggest for one minute that my experience was of an entirely open school, but there were people attending the school who lived in social housing. An element of selection is a healthy aspect of the choice that should be available to all parents, and to children of all abilities, in our society.

18:45

It is perhaps slightly paradoxical that in this set of amendments, we are dealing with both admissions and exclusions. My biggest criticism of the Bill is that the one real freedom that would have given diversity of provision has been expressly forbidden. Under the Bill, schools cannot determine their admissions procedure, beyond the relatively limited allowances that are made for academies. I would like there to be much more freedom to ensure a genuine sense of accountability. My party leader has said many a time that he wants to give people more responsibility, and that if one trusts people, they tend to do the right thing. When it comes to the education of children, we should look to trust parents to make rather better decisions than the state might necessarily make on their behalf.

I hope that the Government will give serious consideration to what we propose. Amendment 49 is a minor amendment that simply retains for grammar schools the safeguard of balloting parents if a school is to make the change from grammar school to academy. I hope that we will robustly oppose amendment 14, as it represents a retrograde step.

[Dr Pugh]

Speaking for the non-secular wing of the Liberal Democrats, I should like to say a few words about amendment 42. It appears to narrow the range of schools that can become academies. I think that the Roman Catholic Church has cautioned governors against the Bill, which would have a big impact in areas in Merseyside and Lancashire such as the one that I represent. I tire of hearing people in this place make generalisations about faith schools that are based purely on the north London experience. A person does not need to struggle to get into a faith school round where I live.

People may recognise that I have a somewhat diminished enthusiasm for this legislation. The academy project, whether in its Labour or coalition form, does not fill me with any great glee. I regard it as something of a sideshow, as an extravagance—possibly expensive—and as a distraction from improving standards across the board.

It is interesting to note that in his amendment, my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) wants to put into law what the archdiocese commands; I do not know whether that will please him, but that is, in effect, what he is doing. Looking at that amendment, a priori, there is no good argument for not having a faith academy that would not equally apply to not having a faith school. It would therefore seem rather mean to discriminate against faith schools at this time, albeit that I regard it as a boon to faith schools not to be academies.

The real argument against faith schools becoming academies seems to me to be as follows. Contrary to what people say, faith schools are often deeply rooted in their communities, and they should not disregard the disruptive effects on wider local authority provision. They should be mindful always of the community effect. That being said, if a religious community both educated and enhanced specifically religious objectives, it is right, as under the Butler Act, that that should be reflected in some way in the funding agreement. It is not obvious that that is done in the Bill, or that the Blair academy project did that. Equally, having settled for academy status and funding, it would be wrong for a school to adopt faith school status retrospectively; I think that we can agree on that. That, I think, is what amendments 43 and 44 seek to prevent, so compared with amendment 42, they are relatively innocuous.

Another consideration that swings me against amendment 42 is my own experience. Eleven of the best years of my life were spent teaching in a faith comprehensive school in Bootle, in an extraordinarily challenging environment. It was a school with a Salesian foundation, run by the Salesian order. The headmaster was a priest, the ethos was fantastic, the dedication considerable, in a very, very difficult environment. Staff never stinted on their time and the head timetabled himself to teach remedial maths to the fifth year and the upper school. When he stepped down as head, before he finished his career—this was a man who was a very distinguished scientist and writer—he continued to teach remedial maths to children whom many teachers would not give much time to in the first place. I have never seen the like, but it ought not to surprise one when one recognises that that order was founded by someone called St John Bosco, who started his schools in industrial Milan, with the vocation of schooling the deprived and transforming their lives.

I could almost be reconciled—the Minister might be delighted to hear—to the anarchy of free schools if I thought that a lot of St John Boscos and Salesians were ready in the wings, waiting to deal with children in environments where people had given up or were terminally demoralised. Sadly, my overall view is that that is not the case. But the free school project would be almost bearable if there were such people and what they were doing could be aligned with the overall social good of the community, if education could be provided that was not just a cloak for indoctrination and if there was a capacity to manage the full curriculum. Then the free school project would have a really noble basis in reality. Sadly, the people queuing up to start free schools are not in that category and do not, in many cases, turn out to be saints.

[Mr Ward]

We are all fashioned on the anvil of experience, and I bring to this debate my own experience. On Second Reading I mentioned the crucial situation of schools being judged or assessed on their attainment, which is then reflected in league tables. A little earlier the Minister attacked the former Labour Government’s record, saying what a shame it was that all the successful schools were in affluent areas, and was not that an indictment? Of course they are mainly in affluent areas because of the crucial importance of intake and the link, to which I have drawn attention in other speeches elsewhere, between attainment and levels of deprivation. The issue of admissions is at the heart of the Bill for me, more than anything else. Freedoms of the curriculum, freedoms in staffing and control of staffing budgets, I am okay with. I opposed the academies of Labour, and I oppose these academies for the same reasons. There are other ways of bringing about improvements in schools.

What concerns me is my experience over nearly 30 years of what schools actually do. Amendments have been tabled saying that schools must comply with the provisions of the schools admissions code. I know what schools that are already subject to that code do now, and we can understand why. I have mentioned the league tables. Schools want to succeed and to be seen to succeed, and parents want the very best for their children, so wherever possible they go to whatever lengths are needed, legally—moving home—or in some cases, illegally, to get their children into the schools that are doing well in the league tables.

I have often heard of the importance and ethos of faith schools. Frankly, to hear people talk about the special ethos of faith schools makes me quite angry, because it is a slap in the face for all those other non-faith schools that have a fabulous ethos, are loving and caring, and provide a good education for children. It is an indication of the importance of league tables, even to faith schools, that although a faith school might say that it will totally disregard school league tables, that it does not care if it is bottom of the league, that it will open its doors to absolutely everyone and take the children that other schools do not want, it does not do that, because it knows that at the end of the day it will be assessed upon the performance of the school in the league tables, and that is so heavily dependent upon the intake. I have chaired admissions forums. It is very difficult when the area includes faith schools, foundation schools, city technology colleges and so on. In effect, there were six different admission authorities, all appearing at the admissions forum, and it was very difficult to achieve co-ordination on admissions with those schools.

The pressure on schools means that good people do bad things—it is only human nature—and I have countless examples of that. When I chaired the admissions forum, a foundation school applied to change its admissions criteria—we could not stop it doing so—to use stanines and banding. I respected the head teacher, but we argued about it. I was the only one to vote against the change and, as it transpired, we could not really have done anything to stop it. I understand why the head teacher was seeking to overcome the problem of having a catchment area of only 10 or so streets. The Minister talked about successful schools, but this school was in the top 20 for its contextual value-added score of 1,040. That was a remarkable result, but the school was also in the national challenge. That head teacher knew that whatever the school did in raising achievement, it would still have a stubbornly resistant attainment record until it changed its intake, and it therefore went ahead and did so.

I am desperately seeking not just assurances, but guarantees of the fairness of the admissions of these new schools. I am very concerned that the Bill describes the characteristics of schools that may become academies as providing

“education for pupils who are wholly or mainly drawn from the area in which the school is situated.”

My understanding of “wholly or mainly” is that it means more than 50%, so 49% could come from outside the area. Another characteristic is that

“the school provides education for pupils of different abilities”.

That may have been changed, but I thought that we were talking about all abilities.

There are some good aspects of academies, but if they are so good and important why do we not make the freedoms they will have available to all schools? I seek guarantees of fair and open admissions policies and an undertaking that this Bill does not represent the opening of the door to more selection.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. It may be helpful to remind the Committee that the Chair is not obliged to call Members who have not been in their place for the majority of the debate.

[Mr Mike Hancock]

I apologise for not being here for the whole debate, but I was at a Defence Committee meeting for most of it. I apologise to the Minister and the Opposition spokesman.

I am concerned by this Bill. I am disappointed that Labour has not thrown its weight behind the coalition’s proposals for academy schools, because that would have been a more honest approach, given that the Labour Government started this. I am still opposed to the proposals: I opposed Labour’s proposals and I oppose these ones.

I declare an interest in that I am still a member of Portsmouth city council and I have been a member of the LEA in one way or another for the past 40 years. I never personally felt that there was too much wrong with the LEA having responsibility for schools. In my experience, in the old county borough before the 1974 reorganisation, Portsmouth did a good job. Hampshire county council, of which I was the leader, also did a very good job for education, and now that the city council has the responsibility again it is doing its best.

18:59

There is a chartered academy faith school in the city of Portsmouth. It was not something that I favoured but, despite the fact that I am against academies, I have to be honest and say that there has been an amazing transformation. In a very short period, a really committed head teacher and staff have been able to start turning around what could only be described as an appalling, failing school. With great regret, it could not get itself out of the mess it was in, and perhaps—just perhaps—its emergence as an academy was the one thing that prevented it from being closed once and for all. I wish the school all the very best.

My problem is that I know from the LEA what admissions policies are like. The popular schools are forever competing. We all have stories about how people will manifest themselves in different addresses simply to get their child into a school. The success, or otherwise, of an academy will become a magnet. I have no way of knowing, because the terminology in the Bill is so vague—it refers to pupils who are “mainly” from the area closest from the school—whether, if the 51% quota is met, other pupils from other areas could fill any surplus places to the detriment of children who might still be living in the catchment area but do not have the academic record that the school wants.

I would be pleased, therefore, if somebody could explain the procedure to me. Who takes up the challenge on behalf of the children excluded from an academy—the ones who never got a place in the first place—despite living close to the school? The big problem that we faced time and again, in a restricted geographical area with a large population, was with people trying to select schools in and around Portsmouth. I do not envisage that being easily dealt with by the Bill. I want every child to be given every opportunity to achieve their full potential. We all want that. It is not a unique stance; it is a common stance for anyone who cares about the future of our country and of our children.

I have yet to be convinced that academies offer fair and equal opportunities to children; and I have yet to be convinced that taking education away from locally elected people, through the LEA, is the best option for the overall governance of education policy. No one, including during the past 13 years under Labour, has yet put forward a convincing argument for that. The only two occasions when Mr Blair got close to hysterical about anything were the Iraq war and academies. Nobody could have been pushier than he was. I do not know who finally trod on his foot and said, “Slow down!”, but to have achieved 200 academy schools will have been a great disappointment to him, because he would have liked a lot more.

What damage has been done to the other schools in the area? Has any real analysis ever been done of the effects on other schools in areas where a successful academy has emerged over the past five years?

[Damian Collins]

In Folkestone in my constituency, since the launch of the Folkestone academy, results have improved not only at that school but in all the others at secondary level in the town. The improvement at that school has certainly not been to the detriment of others in the same catchment area.

[The Second Deputy Chairman]

Order. We are not having a Second Reading or general debate on academies; we are debating amendments on admissions and exclusions, so I would be grateful if Members could stick to those points.

[Mr Hancock]

The point I was trying to make was about the unfairness of a policy that is so loosely written and can so easily be misinterpreted to the detriment of children who will be refused places in academies, particularly the successful ones. I am concerned about, and frustrated by, the idea that people can vote for this legislation believing that it will provide equal opportunities for all children to go to the academy of their choice. It manifestly will not do that, and there is nothing to safeguard their interests if they fail to get a place. That is the real concern and why I cannot find it in my make-up to support the Bill. I will be supporting the amendments, because they go some way to improving what I consider to be a bad Bill. Otherwise, I would simply ignore the amendments, and vote against them and the Bill. However, if the Bill is going to be carried, I would like it carried with at least some amendments that actually improve it.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

. Having listened to the whole debate, I wanted to make just one or two comments on the issue of selection. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock) for the consistency that he has shown, and to the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) and other Conservative Members who were at least clear in saying that they believe in selection. The attitude that I find most difficult to deal with is that of Opposition Members, whether Liberal Democrat or Conservative, who are pretending that the Bill does not aim to produce exactly the kind of division and increase in selection and exclusivity that my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) so eloquently described.

Indeed, what my hon. Friend described is already happening. For example, this morning I met the head teacher of a new academy that is being built in my constituency. I have always had an ambivalent attitude to academies, in the sense that I do not have an ideological opposition to them—hon. Members might be surprised to hear that—if they work. The project of producing schools in deprived areas to increase the level of attainment in those areas is one that I have supported, and I do not really care whether they are called academies or not. However, I can say one thing. The two academies in my constituency, which are Hammersmith academy in Shepherds Bush, which is under construction—at a cost of £30 million—and Burlington Danes academy, which was praised by the Secretary of State earlier this week, at least have the benefit of £50 million of capital investment, which is something that none of the other schools in my constituency will have.

However, even with just those academies, which were built under the previous regime, the aim of my Conservative local authority is already to increase selection and exclusivity. The question put to the head teacher this morning by a group of Muslim community leaders with whom I met him was why, when the boundaries of the admissions area for the new academy were drawn, the line stopped only a few yards north of the academy, excluding the most deprived parts of my constituency and most of the black and minority ethnic population, but extended a couple of miles south, to include the most prosperous and least ethnically diverse parts of my constituency.

If that is the type of manipulation that is already happening under the current system, when we have that extra ability to affect intake, in the many ways that it can be affected, whether through existing selective schools or not—and we will have that ability, if the Bill is passed with the haste in which we are taking it—we will have a recipe for divisiveness, particularly in areas of inner London such as the one that I represent.

[Mr Mike Hancock]

The hon. Gentleman says that he has two academies in his area—one already there, and one under construction—but I would be grateful if he could tell us what the admission policies of the existing schools in his area are. Are those schools full to the gunwales? Do they have a problem now? What does he estimate the situation will be in a year or so, when the second academy comes on stream? What will that do for the other schools and their problems of attracting pupils?

[Mr Slaughter]

The hon. Gentleman anticipates the point that I was just about to make. The new academy is not opening until next September, but one of the things that the prospective head told me this morning was that there will be a special form. In addition to selecting priority places, which will be limited for that school—and that school only—to a primary admissions area, there will be an additional form to fill in, because the anticipated demand will be so great.

I should say that most schools are now over-subscribed. There is a shortage of schools, although two other factors bear down on the increasing stratification—if not selection—of schools in areas of inner London. One is the profusion of voluntary-aided schools. In response to a point made earlier, let me say that three of the voluntary-aided schools in the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham have intakes eligible for free school meals of 2%, 2% and 6% respectively, whereas the figures for the community schools are 30%, 40% and 50%. That degree of division has now become institutionalised.

The other factor relates to the choices that schools make. The point was wrongly made—by the Government Front-Bench team, I believe—that there are too many outstanding schools in affluent areas. Well, the two community secondary schools in my constituency—the Phoenix high school, which has one of the most deprived intakes of any school in the country; and the William Morris academy, a sixth-form college of which I am a founder and governor—both have a hugely deprived intake. Both those schools are outstanding—and there are many more such outstanding schools with deprived intakes—and they have chosen not to go down the academy path. Other than one primary school, no school in my constituency has chosen that path. The reason why the heads, the governors and the teachers of those schools have made that decision is that they wish to maintain their open outlook and their inclusivity. They do not wish to be browbeaten or driven into becoming this new type of academy.

Whether it be through choice, types of selection, religion, geography or the ease or difficulty of application, inner London already has many problems achieving what other hon. Members have identified as a wonderful balance, control and integration of diverse communities. The proposals in a Bill such as this will have only one effect: they will create social divisions, class divisions and racial divisions within communities. I believe that in putting this Bill forward, the Liberal Democrats—with some exceptions—and the Conservatives well know that they will achieve exactly that.

[Mr Gibb]

This has been a wide-ranging debate, touching on the education shibboleths in all political parties. The amendments cover issues relating to admissions, selection, faith and exclusions. The majority of these amendments would place in the Bill requirements that have been regulated by funding agreements since the inception of the academies programme—in other words, they would increase regulation for academies.

It was the position of the previous Government that academies should not be regulated directly by legislation, but through their funding agreements. We agree. The whole focus of the Bill is to allow more schools to take on academy freedoms and we simply do not agree that it is appropriate to undermine that intention by incorporating into the legislation a host of additional requirements to which academies have not previously been subject.

Amendments 11, 12, 13, 19 and 23 would build into the Bill a duty for academies to comply with the school admissions code. Amendments 19 and 27 would place on the face of the Bill requirements in relation to exclusions and behaviour, including participation in behaviour partnerships. The previous Labour Administration did not deem that necessary for the 203 academies they opened. Why should we do so in expanding the programme?

Academies must already comply with admissions law and the codes through their funding agreements. Their funding agreements also require them to act in accordance with the law on exclusions as if the academy were a maintained school, and to have regard to the Secretary of State’s guidance on exclusions. This is the same wording that applies to all maintained schools. The new model funding agreement is in the House Library and it is clear from it that academies are required to adopt admissions policies and arrangements that will be

“in accordance with admissions law and the DfE Codes of Practice as they apply to maintained schools.”

The exclusions annexe to the funding agreement also requires academies to

“act in accordance with the law on exclusions as if the Academy were a maintained school”

and to

“have regard to the Secretary of State’s guidance on exclusions”.

Amendment 24 has a similar intention in that it seeks to make it a statutory duty for academies to take part in their local in-year fair access protocol. Fair access protocols are established by the local authority and the requirement to take part in them is set out in the school admissions code. Since participation is a requirement of the code, it is applied to academies in the same way as other aspects of the admissions code, through the funding agreement. This means that academies, along with all maintained schools in a local area, will take their fair share of hard-to-place pupils, including those previously excluded from other schools. The funding agreement is crystal clear about the compliance requirements. The amendments are, therefore, unnecessary.

19:15

Hon. Members have also tabled amendments to probe our intentions on academic selection. Amendment 14 would require any existing maintained grammar school or partially selective school to remove its selective arrangements on conversion to academy status. The Bill is not about increasing or removing selection. We believe that the freedoms that academy status brings will not only benefit struggling schools but enable outstanding and other schools to improve standards for their pupils.

[Mr Mike Hancock]

Will the Minister explain the position on excluded children? He has intimated that academies will be expected to take a quota of excluded children. Does that mean excluded or difficult-to-place children in the school’s normal catchment area, or a general quota of children who are difficult to place in the local education authority area?

[Mr Gibb]

They will be subject to the same fair access protocols that have been agreed by other schools in the area. The position will be no different from the one that existed before the school became an academy.

It seems unreasonable to deny existing selective schools freedoms, or to require them to change their nature fundamentally before being granted those freedoms. For clarification, we are not allowing non-selective schools to begin selecting by ability; we are merely facilitating a change in status for existing maintained schools, including those with academic selection.

[Vernon Coaker]

Will the Minister comment on Lord Hill’s letter, in which he says that grammar schools will have the ability to extend selection?

[Mr Gibb]

I will deal with that, but I want to respond to all the points in order.

My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) tabled amendment 49. I pay tribute to him, not just because he is chairman of the 1922 committee, and therefore chief of the men in suits, but because of his highly principled support for grammar schools in his constituency and elsewhere in the country. I was hugely impressed by the quality of education in Trafford. I visited Wellington high school, which has GCSE results that many comprehensive schools throughout the country would envy. From memory—I visited the school a few years ago—67% of pupils gained five or more GCSEs including English and maths, and that school had experienced 40% of the most able children going elsewhere. I also visited Ashton on Mersey school, which is exemplary, as well as Trafford grammar school for girls, which impressed me.

Amendment 49 would directly apply sections 105 to 109 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 to wholly selective academies. That legislation governs the mechanisms for removing selection from maintained grammar schools either through parental ballot or by the governing body introducing proposals to remove selection. Neither the grammar school ballots legislation nor current provisions that allow governing bodies of grammar schools to introduce proposals to remove selection apply to academies. We do not believe that that means that academies have fewer protections than maintained schools when removing selection is an issue. Indeed, one could argue that the ballot mechanism gives parents a route to removing selection in maintained selective schools. I listened to my hon. Friend carefully, and although the amendment might protect selection when that is the wish of parents, we do not believe that it could necessarily frustrate statutory proposals to remove selection that the governing body of a maintained selective school made. He knows that the ballot process has a high trigger threshold, requiring a petition from at least 20% of the eligible electorate.

The Government’s arrangements for academies are a more significant protection of the ethos of any school, including selective schools. I want to go into some detail about that because it is important. Outstanding schools that convert will essentially be self-sponsoring. That means that existing governors will become the new academy trust. In the case of a foundation school with a foundation—a grammar school with an ancient foundation—that converts to academy status, the foundation will be responsible for appointing the majority of governors on the governing body of an academy, a greater proportion than currently exists in a maintained school. That will make it possible for the foundation to maintain the academy’s ethos, including its selective ethos, over an extended period.

[Mr Mike Hancock]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Gibb]

I will in a moment. This section of my speech is fairly technical, and I want to finish it before I give way again.

A similar arrangement would apply in the case of a foundation school without a foundation—in other words, a grammar school that is essentially a community school. The current governors would decide on the members of the academy trust. The members would be responsible for appointing a majority of the governors to the governing body by electing members who are committed to a selective ethos. That ethos would be maintained over time, because—in theory and, I suspect, in practice—they would appoint a majority of governors who were similarly committed. We are nevertheless committed to ensuring that the same rights are afforded to parents, and the same rights and protections are afforded to grammar schools on conversion, as were enjoyed while the school was a maintained school.

I hope that that reassures my hon. Friend to some extent. No doubt he will intervene, either now or later, if he needs further reassurance.

[Mr Brady]

I am greatly reassured by the tone of what my hon. Friend has said, but it is not entirely clear whether he is giving me an assurance that the ballot arrangements will be introduced at a later date, or whether he is suggesting that other protections might be introduced.

[Mr Gibb]

What I am suggesting now—it is as far as I can go at this stage—is that we will include the provisions in the funding agreements of academies. That will provide strong protection—as strong, in effect, as it would be if the measures were on the statute book.

[Mr Brady]

Is my hon. Friend saying that if a grammar school transferred to academy status, it would not be able to vary its selective admissions under the terms of the funding agreement without the support of a parental ballot?

[Mr Gibb]

According to my understanding, that is correct. All the protections that currently apply under the ballot procedure would still apply. If for some reason the governing body of a selective academy sought to change its status as a selective school, the funding agreement would require a ballot of parents to be held before that provision took effect.

[Mr Brady]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way a third time. He has been immensely helpful, and I think that that final reassurance will be of great help to the many excellent grammar schools—including many in the borough of Trafford—that are keen to proceed with seeking academy status. It is certainly sufficient to persuade me not to press amendment 49 to a vote.

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I hope that I can be equally successful with other hon. Members.

Amendment 24 has a similar intention, in that it seeks to make it a statutory duty for academies to take part in their local in-year fair access protocol. Fair access protocols are established by the local authority, and the requirement to take part in them is set out in the school admissions code. Since participation is a requirement of the admissions code, it is applied to academies in the same way as other aspects of the code, through the funding agreement. That means that academies, along with all maintained schools in a local area, will take their fair share of hard-to-place pupils, including those who have previously been excluded from other schools. The funding agreement is crystal clear about the compliance requirements, and the amendments are therefore unnecessary.

[Mr Mike Hancock]

I am fascinated by the concept that certain processes will enable a grammar school that becomes an academy to manoeuvre around the selection rules. According to the Bill, the majority of pupils will come

“wholly or mainly… from the area in which the school is situated.”

That could be a very successful grammar school currently drawing its pupils from a wide area. Would the criteria be the same for an existing grammar school that becomes an academy, or would there be a specific designation? Would they be treated the same as any other school, consequently losing quite a number of pupils because it will undoubtedly be the case that when a grammar school becomes an academy without the prerequisite of being able to select under this system, it will be inundated with pupils and a lot of existing pupils will probably be forced to leave the school? I therefore ask the Minister to explain how this will work.

[Mr Gibb]

There is no change from the current situation. The catchment area of a grammar school after conversion to an academy will be the same as it was before. [Interruption.] Yes, this Bill does not seek to change any of the admissions arrangements or admissions appeal arrangements for schools, including selective schools. All it is allowing is successful schools—or, indeed, any school—to convert to academy status. We have been very clear about, and very conscious of, wanting to apply all the admissions arrangements. Therefore the code, the fair access protocols and the co-ordinated admissions systems will all still apply in the same way as when the school was a maintained school.

The final amendments in this group relate to faith admissions and faith designation. The Bill seeks to maintain the status quo on faith schools. There is nothing in this Bill that will make it easier for there to be an increase in the number of faith schools, or that seeks to change their character, but we do believe that faith schools should have the same chance to become an academy as any other maintained school.

Amendment 42 would require that no academy could select pupils on the basis of their faith, and it would effectively bar academy status for faith schools. As many Members on both sides of the House are aware, faith schools play an important role in this country’s education system, often providing high-quality education for their children, as my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) explained so well. Parents value the role that faith schools play and many parents actively seek out a place at such a school so they can obtain an education for their children in accordance with their religious beliefs, which is one of the principal tenets of the Education Act 1944, as my hon. Friend also pointed out. Although many schools maintain a faith ethos without giving priority for admission based on a child’s faith, others maintain their strong religious ethos by ensuring that a significant proportion of their children are faith adherents. While we wish to ensure that new faith academies serve their broader communities, forcing existing schools to change admissions arrangements that may have been operating successfully for a number of years just because a school converts to become an academy would be unfair to those parents who chose the school on the basis of its religious character and ethos.

Amendment 43 also seeks to cap faith admissions by limiting the proportion of faith admissions in an academy that was previously a voluntary controlled school to the level prior to conversion. Voluntary controlled schools generally have a religious character. That means that although many do not prioritise children based on their faith, they are permitted to have faith-based over-subscription criteria. As maintained schools, they can increase the proportion of faith places through a local process of consultation and determination of admission arrangements. We wish to maintain the status quo in this respect, rather than be more restrictive. Therefore, academies that were previously maintained faith schools, including voluntary controlled schools, will be able to consult local people on changing their admission arrangements. Consultees will, however, retain their current rights of objection if they disagree with those changes.

Finally, we do not believe that amendment 44 is necessary or appropriate. We do not agree with its proposal that faith schools seeking to convert should have to go through an additional application simply to stay as they are, nor do we agree with its proposal that any non-faith maintained school should be barred from obtaining a faith designation as an academy. Any academy can currently apply to the Secretary of State for a faith designation provided that the relevant tests set out in existing legislation are met. Again, we want to retain the current provisions. I can, however, give the assurance that entirely new faith academies—by that I mean those that do not have a predecessor maintained school with a religious character—will be required to offer 50% of places to pupils from the community with no test of faith. I hope that provides some reassurance. I believe that the existing procedures for designating faith schools and the role of the funding agreement in regulating academies should provide sufficient safeguards for parents.

19:30

I wish to deal with some of the points raised by the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker). He asked about the profile of the schools that are applying for academy status compared with the existing cohort of academies. Of course, they will differ, because the earlier academies were all located in very challenging areas and we are now inviting all schools throughout the country to apply. Indeed, expressions of interest have been received from schools in 95% of local authority areas around the country.

The hon. Gentleman cited the funding agreement and the issue of the admissions code. Annexe B to the model funding agreement makes things clear, stating:

“The Academy Trust will act in accordance with, and will ensure that an Independent Appeal Panel is trained to act in accordance with, all relevant provisions of the School Admissions Code and the School Admission Appeals Code published by the Department for Education…as they apply at any given time to maintained schools and with equalities law and the law on admissions as they apply to maintained schools.”

The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of the differences between the old and the new model funding agreements. The procedures for changing admissions arrangements are covered in the schools admissions code, with the exception that the Secretary of State will now police the changes for academies. The old funding agreements simply repeated these requirements and therefore were not necessary. We are trying to remove from Government documents unnecessary replication of issues that are dealt with elsewhere.

The hon. Gentleman said that the exclusion independent appeal panel had been removed from the funding agreement, but it has not; this has been redrafted to apply the arrangements that apply to maintained schools. It should be clear that the position for all state-funded schools is therefore the same. He asked about the influence of selection on partner schools. Any partner of a grammar school could not select by academic ability unless it already had selective admission arrangements.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the rules relating to the expansion of grammar schools and requested that I quote from Lord Hill’s letter. I am happy to do so, because this will interest all Members of the Committee. One of its end paragraphs states:

“For the sake of completeness, just as the previous Government allowed selective maintained schools to expand by up to 25% without publishing statutory proposals (and by more if they were to publish proposals under sections 18 and 19 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006), we will allow selective Academies to expand where a strong business case has been made and where there has been local consultation. We will not, however, agree to the percentage of selective places increasing within partially selective schools.”

[Vernon Coaker]

May I just clarify how that relates to paragraph 1.22 on page 15 of the admissions code? That states:

“Local authorities and the Schools Adjudicator, when making decisions over setting an admission number or admitting above them, should have regard to the presumption that proposals to expand successful and popular schools, except grammar schools, should be approved.”

It clearly states “except grammar schools” so how does that relate to what the hon. Gentleman has just said?

[Mr Gibb]

Well, it can do, because even under the previous Government, when the hon. Gentleman presided over this, it was the case that grammar schools could expand by up to 25% without publishing statutory proposals. Under that code, and under his Administration, grammar schools were permitted to expand by up to 25%, so we are not changing the fundamentals behind the expansion of grammar schools. They still have to demonstrate that there is a fundamental need and that consultation has taken place.

[Vernon Coaker]

What I was asking, even if we were wrong, is how what he has just said squares with the exclusion of grammar schools in paragraph 1.22 of the admissions code.

[Mr Gibb]

The provision is consistent in the same way that it was consistent with the arrangement under the hon. Gentleman’s Administration, and under current law on maintained grammar schools—[Interruption.] Well, the hon. Gentleman was the Minister who presided over the introduction of these regulations, so he should know why these schools are currently allowed to expand by 25% and that that provision is still consistent with the admissions code.

[Vernon Coaker]

I do not have a problem with these things; if I was wrong, I was wrong. The hon. Gentleman is the Minister now. It is no good blaming me; he has responsibility for it now. All I am asking is how what he has just said corresponds to that aspect of the school admissions code.

[Mr Gibb]

By the same mechanism that currently allows maintained grammar schools to expand by 25%. If the hon. Gentleman is not satisfied with that response, I am happy to respond to any parliamentary question that he tables.

[Vernon Coaker]

He could write to me.

[Mr Gibb]

I am very happy to write to the hon. Gentleman if he would prefer that.

The hon. Gentleman also asked about the exclusion of children with special educational needs. As he will know, the current 203 academies have a higher proportion of children with SEN and they exclude such children disproportionately less than maintained schools.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) raised the concern that freeing faith schools from the national curriculum would create a risk of their teaching creationism, but there is no risk of that because they will still be required to teach a broad and balanced curriculum. The funding agreement will continue to require academies to teach religious education. For non-faith delegated academies, that means teaching the locally agreed syllabus; for faith schools it means teaching a curriculum in accordance with the tenets of the relevant faith. That is the same requirement as applies to voluntary-aided schools.

My hon. Friend also raised the issue of schools converting to academy status. As I have just said, the same rules apply as for maintained schools that want to convert to faith schools: they have to go through the whole process of re-designation, which requires the permission of the Secretary of State.

My hon. Friend asked where provision on the 50% rule is. It is not in the funding agreement, but we would not enter into a funding agreement that included admissions arrangements that allowed faith selection of more than 50%. That is a policy position, but it has been confirmed in both Houses and I confirm again that we will not sign funding agreements with new faith schools that intend to select more than half their intake on the basis of faith.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) asked about co-ordinated admissions arrangements. I am happy to assure her that they will apply. She also asked about levers for enforcing the admissions code. The Young People’s Learning Agency will ensure compliance with funding agreements on behalf of the Secretary of State. If an academy breached an obligation in its funding agreement, the YPLA would seek to enforce the obligation and the Secretary of State could ultimately do so through the courts. The Secretary of State has a specific power within the funding agreement to direct the admission of an individual pupil or to direct the amendment of an academy’s admissions arrangements if they do not comply with the code.

The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson), who is not in her place, asserted that the new academies will increase social division, but they will not. The Bill states at clause 1(6)(c) that academies must provide

“education for pupils of different abilities”,

and at clause 1(6)(d) that they must provide

“education for pupils who are wholly or mainly drawn from the area in which the school is situated.”

In response to the queries of my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock), the admissions code requires fair and inclusive admission arrangements and outlaws any notion of cherry-picking. Of course, the academies will be bound by the code. Academies must be part of local fair access protocols, which require them to admit their fair share of challenging pupils, some of whom are likely to have been permanently excluded from other schools.

This has been an interesting and wide-ranging debate. I have spoken for long enough and I hope that I have managed to reassure my hon. Friends in both parts of the coalition and Opposition Members. I hope that on the basis of the assurances I have given, hon. Members will feel able to withdraw their amendments.

[Ian Mearns]

With your leave, Ms Primarolo, I am happy to withdraw the amendment and to defer to the amendments that are put at the appropriate time later. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Mr Iain Wright]

I beg to move amendment 20, page 1, line 22, at end insert—

(za) if the school is an additional school, the school meets a proven need for additional capacity in the area in which the school is situated;’.

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 50, in clause 9, page 7, line 4, at end insert—

‘(2A) For the purposes of subsection (2) “impact” refers to—

(a) the impact on funding for the other maintained schools, Academies and institutions within the further education sector situated in the area in which the additional school is (or is proposed to be) situated;

(b) the effect on social cohesion in the area in which the additional school is (or is proposed to be) situated;

(c) the impact on the balance of intake for the other maintained schools, Academies and institutions within the further education sector situated in the area in which the additional school is (or is proposed to be) situated; and

(d) other appropriate considerations.’.

New clause 3—Local policies in relation to additional schools—

(1) A local authority must at the annual general meeting of that authority publish a “Statement of current and future need” in relation to school places in that local authority area.

(2) This statement—

(a) may consider the need for further diversity of provision in a given area;

(b) may consider the satisfaction of local parents with existing schools;

(c) must have regard to social cohesion; and

(d) must have regard to population and the current and future demand for total school places.

(3) The Secretary of State must—

(a) satisfy himself that the additional school meets substantive needs as set out in the statement under subsection (1);

(b) where the additional school does not meet substantive needs set out in the statement under subsection (1) the Secretary of State must arrange for any substantive identified needs to be met; or

(c) must not enter into Academy arrangements for the additional school under consideration.’.

New clause 5—Inducements to pupils, parents or guardians—

‘No person or organisation may offer inducements to pupils, parents or guardians for the purposes of encouraging—

(a) attendance at a school;

(b) expressions of demand for the establishment of an additional school;

(c) recommending attendance at a school;

(d) participation in any consultation on the establishment of an additional school; or

(e) any public statement.’.

Amendment 29, in clause 9, page 7, line 9, leave out subsection (4).

Amendment 33, in clause 10, page 7, line 13, leave out subsection (1) and insert—

‘(1) Before entering into Academy arrangements with the Secretary of State in relation to an additional school, a person must consult—

(a) local parents and children,

(b) local schools,

(c) the relevant local authority,

(d) all school staff and their representatives, and

(e) any other persons deemed appropriate.’.

Amendment 5, page 7, line 14, leave out ‘such’ and insert—

(a) the local education authority for the area in which the additional school is (or is proposed to be) situated,

(b) the teachers at maintained schools, Academies and institutions within the further education sector in that area,

(c) the pupils at any establishment falling within paragraph (b),

(d) the parents of those pupils,

(e) such persons as, in the opinion of the person undertaking the consultation, represent the wider community, and

(f) such other’.

[Mr Wright]

This group of amendments seeks to address two fundamental weaknesses in the Bill, namely a chronic lack of consultation with relevant stakeholders and a failure to consider the capacity of the wider education system in an area where free-market schools may be established.

There is a shocking lack of consultation in the Bill, but the Schools Minister and his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State are conviction politicians and men of strength and leadership, so they have nothing to be frightened of. In the short time that the Secretary of State has been in office, however, he has demonstrated an unwillingness or an inability to consult on anything, whether it has been the Building Schools for the Future cuts or the indecent haste with which the House has had to scrutinise the Bill.

Let me illustrate that point with regard to the amendments. The National Governors Association, in its guidance to members about the legislation, stated:

“The Bill as it is currently drafted does not require you to consult anyone.”

A governing body can apply to become an academy without consulting teachers, parents, children, the wider community, trade unions or local authority, and there is no obligation to consult parents or the wider community in order to explain the vision or the academy’s functions. On Report in another place, the Government introduced an amendment that allows new academies to

“consult such persons as they think appropriate”,

but that concession was vaguely drafted and the Bill needs to go further.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), who is no longer in his place, said earlier today that a good school is not an island, and I absolutely agree. A good school is an institution that has a positive partnership with neighbouring schools and a constructive relationship with the community in which it operates. But the Bill does not take that into account. Instead, it ensures that the most important relationship is between the school and the Secretary of State, rather than between the school and its economic and social environment.

I am also unclear about how staff will be consulted under the Bill, and I hope that in responding the Minister will specifically answer that point. As far as I understand it, there is no obligation to consult staff about changes to the school model, but there will be huge ramifications in terms of the legal challenges to that, especially if TUPE arrangements need to be properly considered.

I have already mentioned the indecent haste of the Bill’s passage through Parliament. If some institutions are to be set up as academies or free schools as early as six weeks from now, in September, and if many schools have either finished, or might finish in the next couple of days, for the summer, is there any time logistically to consult staff and unions properly on the ramifications for staffing contracts? Article 12 of the UN convention on the rights of the child gives children the right to express views on matters affecting them, a point that was made in Committee in another place, but nothing in the Bill allows children’s views to be heard on a future that affects them.

Another fundamental question is, what impact will a new school have? Where does the Bill allow for the need to assess and challenge a new school, or for people who want to introduce one to demonstrate where it will improve education not just for its own intake, but for the surrounding area and students of adjacent schools? If an area takes on additional free schools, academies or both without appropriate consultation or consideration, we must accept that there is a strong risk of existing maintained schools becoming unviable. That arrangement will inevitably lead to an unfair, two-tier system of schooling, and this country’s education system will fragment, with all the negative social consequences that that produces.

Without my amendments and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends, the Bill will ensure that funding flows towards new, free-market schools without any assessment of capacity or need. In Committee in the other place, it was confirmed that local authorities and other stakeholders were essentially being booted out of the way to enable additional school places to be created in a completely ad hoc, free-market way. The only check on this is the Secretary of State, rather than local people with a passion for their area and schools and knowledge of local circumstances. The creation of those additional places will be funded at the expense of existing school budgets and the loss of school buildings. It will also lead to a fragmentation of education, as I have said. It will leave some pupils behind, and it does not raise standards in schools at all. I ask the Minister to respond to those concerns and to think again.

As my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State said on Second Reading, which seems only a matter of hours ago—in fact, given the haste of this Bill’s passage, it was only a few hours ago—having examined the case for a new parent-promoted school in Kirklees, Professor David Woods said that it would

“have a negative impact on other schools in the area in the form of surplus places and an adverse effect on revenue and capital budgets.”

19:45

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

Is it not the case, though, that if we do not sometimes have excess places, we deny parents the choice that in turn drives the improvement in standards within schools, and end up in the situation that we are in at the moment whereby we are going down the league tables in mathematics and literacy, and of the 80,000 pupils who have free school meals, only 45 are getting into Oxford and Cambridge and our better universities?

[Mr Wright]

I would be happy to allow the hon. Gentleman to intervene on me again if he could provide a direct correlation between surplus capacity, which is what he is suggesting, and rising standards and quality in schools. I do not see a close correlation between capacity and quality, but if he would like to enlighten me on that, I am more than happy for him to intervene.

[Mel Stride]

Does not the hon. Gentleman accept that there is a correlation between increased parental choice—after all, it is parents who know what is best for their children and can spot a good school as opposed to a bad one—and an improvement in standards?

[Mr Wright]

I certainly agree with choice in the education system, but it would be choice for a very narrow stratum of society—predominantly middle class, media-articulate, affluent parents at the expense of disadvantaged communities. That is wrong: we need to raise standards completely across the board.

In the Bill as it stands, there is nothing to stop a load of private sector chancers, keen on making a quick profit, from contacting local parents in an area and suggesting that perhaps a new school could be beneficial, without any appropriate checks and balances on the impact that such free-market profiteers would have on educational quality, provision and capacity. Those free-market chancers could incentivise the local community with perhaps with a free laptop or the opportunity to enter a competition to win something if they expressed an interest in providing a new free school. New clause 5 would allow that to be stopped. It would ensure that there were effective checks and balances so that no person or organisation could offer inducements to pupils, parents or guardians for the purpose of new school places.

This afternoon, we had an extremely heated and interesting debate in Westminster Hall about Building Schools for the Future. Following what the Secretary of State said in his statement, 735 schools will no longer be refurbished or rebuilt. A review of the school capital programme is to be carried out by Sebastian James. Let me quote from the terms of the review:

“The overall aim of the review is to ensure that future capital investment represents good value for money and strongly supports the Government’s ambitions to reduce the deficit, raise standards and tackle disadvantage.”

Okay, that is the narrative that the Secretary of State has been producing—I understand that. However, the terms of the review also state that it is intended to do the following:

“To consider how to generate sufficient places to allow new providers to enter the state school system in response to parental demand…To increase choice locally determined by parental demand”,

and, crucially,

“To enable the establishment of new schools.”

Will the Minister discount the scenario whereby in a community where parents are disappointed that schools will not be rebuilt or refurbished under BSF, the Secretary of State could say, “But if you set up a new free school you can unilaterally decide to have a school capital building programme, and what is more, we will provide the school capital to allow you to do that, regardless of the impact that it will have on the wider educational provision in your local area. If you and a few other parents decide to do that, we will drop you a load of money to make sure you can have a rebuilt school.” Will the Minister confirm that that will not happen?

If a new school is to be established, surely it is courteous, and just common sense, to establish what people in the local area think of the proposal. Surely it is important to scrutinise the impact and effect that it will have on existing schools. The amendments therefore highlight the need to ensure that local people are satisfied that there is a clear and rational case for additional capacity in education provision, that the proposal has been subject to local consultation, scrutiny and challenge, and that additional provision could best be served through the establishment of a new school.

Amendment 33 addresses the risks that I have outlined to the Committee and is therefore very important. Before arrangements for setting up a new free-market school are entered into, there should be consultation with local parents and children, schools, the local authority, school staff and unions and any other persons deemed appropriate. We believe that the amendment would involve relevant and important stakeholders in a fundamental decision about changes to education in a particular area.

Amendment 50 follows on from that point and addresses the risk of fragmentation in the education system as a result of setting up a free school. To avoid a two-tier system and funding being automatically diverted to new free schools without any consideration of the impact on existing schools’ finances or the number of students in the wider local education authority, the amendment would insert into the Bill a requirement to consider various factors. Those are

“the impact on funding for the other maintained schools…the effect on social cohesion in the area in which the additional school is (or is proposed to be) situated”

and

“the impact on the balance of intake”

for other schools in the area and the further education sector. That last point is important, and I am pleased to see the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), who is responsible for further education, on the Treasury Bench. I shall return to that matter later in my remarks.

Amendment 20 is an attempt to rein in free-market abandon and address the point that I have already made about capacity. It would add to the characteristics in clause 1(6) that must be demonstrated by a potential additional school if one is to be established. That subsection is currently broad to the point of being vague and, I would argue, meaningless. The amendment states that if there is to be an additional school in an area, it must be demonstrated as part of the selection process that it

“meets a proven need for additional capacity in the area in which the school is situated.”

As the Bill is currently drafted, when an academy order has been made, the converting school or relevant local authority will not have to follow the school closure procedures set out in section 30 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 or sections 15 to 17 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006. The relevant provisions in the 1998 Act are designed specifically to ensure that reflection is made on the consequences of a closure. Those provisions are that the governing body should give at least two years’ notice to the Secretary of State, and that if closure would affect the facilities for full-time education for post-16-year-olds, the relevant further education funding council should be consulted. I believe that in the current regime that would be the Young People’s Learning Agency, but it would be useful if the Minister confirmed that. Those provisions allow the decision on closing a school to be considered in a proper manner.

Removing the provisions of sections 15 to 17 of the 2006 Act is particularly risky. Those sections essentially ensure that when a school maintained by a local authority is to be discontinued, the authority must publish its proposals. Prior to that, the relevant body must consult the registered parents of pupils at the affected school as well as the local education authority. That just seems like good common sense. When there are proposals to discontinue a school, there should be the widest possible consultation, challenge and scrutiny. I ask the Minister to tell us specifically why it was felt necessary to remove those requirements, which seem like good, plain common sense.

Clause 9(4) states that an additional school is not to be considered a maintained school

“if it provides education for pupils of a wider range of ages than the maintained school.”

That is a significant part of the Bill, and at the risk of being too melodramatic, I believe it could prove the death knell for our current further education sector. I shall expand that argument with reference to my constituency. For a relatively small town, Hartlepool has a diverse offer of 16-to-19 provision. It has a college of further education, a sixth-form college, a specialist art and design college and a Catholic school sixth-form college. The choice on offer for students in Hartlepool is really quite rich, and it works incredibly well, but under clause 10(4), a school in Hartlepool or anywhere else that currently offers 11-to-16 provision could apply to become an 11-to-18 free school or academy without consideration for the wider area, without consultation regarding current post-16 provision, and without any assessment of whether the new arrangements are feasible, viable or desirable. That cannot be right or sensible. I would be grateful if the Minister could, before his winding-up speech, have a word with the Business, Innovation and Skills Minister, to determine the rationale behind that measure, because it puts at risk the advances that have been made in the FE sector since incorporation in 1992-93.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I may be reading clause 10 incorrectly, but it seems to me to have precisely the opposite meaning to the one the hon. Gentleman suggests. It states that

“a school does not replace a maintained school if it provides education for pupils of a wider range of ages”,

which means that it would be viewed as an additional school, and therefore that it comes under clause 10(2), which states:

“The Secretary of State must take into account what the impact of establishing the additional school would be likely to be on maintained schools, Academies and institutions…in the area”.

As I said, the measure therefore appears to have the opposite effect to the one the hon. Gentleman suggests.

[Mr Wright]

That is certainly not how I interpret the Bill. Amendment 50 is a probing amendment, because given the advances in FE provision and the huge choice in my constituency, I would hate anything that meant that an 11-to-16 school could disrupt post-16 provision.

The amendment would ensure that institutions within the FE sector, as well as the local education authority, pupils and parents are consulted. It is also important that that wider family—I hate that phrase—of education providers is consulted, but that will have a direct impact on post-16 provision.

The Opposition have faith in parents, pupils, teachers, councils and the wider community, and we think that their views should be taken into account when setting up academies, and that no new free-market schools that fragment the current system should be set up. That could lead to a two-tier system and compromise the viability of current schools and colleges.

[Chris Skidmore]

The hon. Gentleman has a near-obsession with free-market schools, but nowhere in the Bill do I see them mentioned. However, clause 12, “Charitable status of Academy proprietors etc”, suggests that no such free market is created by the Bill. Rather, it suggests that the money is charitable money, and that it will remain within the state sector.

[Mr Wright]

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. In all their rhetoric on free-market schools, the Education Secretary and his ministerial team want to encourage parents to set up free schools that are beyond the scope and authorisation of the local education authority. The Opposition believe that we ought to think of education in an area holistically, and ask what impact unilaterally setting up a new school will have on existing maintained schools and wider education providers, such as FE colleges. That is important.

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

I understand the Opposition’s concern, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that the private school sector benefits most when parents and others who have an appetite to set up a school in an area are not allowed to do so, because those parents, as a last resort, will send their children to private schools? If any lobby group is most against the plans in the Bill, it is that of private and smaller private schools, which believe that their income will suffer if parents can send their children to nearby small schools. Does he recognise that the effect of liberating a market or creating a so-called free market might be to alleviate the great divide that currently exists between private and state education?

[Mr Wright]

I have no problem whatever with anything the hon. Lady says. If parents decide, for whatever reason, that a new state-funded school is necessary, they should be given help and support for it. If birth rates are rising, or if people think that there is not enough capacity in the education system, it is perfectly reasonable to do that.

20:00

I have a problem with the fact that these proposals will not be subject to rigorous challenge, scrutiny and consultation. That is all I am asking for, but the Bill does not provide for it. It does not allow for dialogue with local stakeholders, parents from the affected schools, pupils, local education authorities or further education colleges in the area. Given the courage of the convictions of the Secretary of State and the Minister, why will they not accept that challenge and address the point about additional capacity in an area? That is all I am asking, and the hon. Lady has made a good point. Change should be subject to consultation, challenge and scrutiny, but the Government seem to fear that their dogma and ideology would not stand up to such a challenge. We believe that local people should be making local decisions, and that we should not be concentrating all the power in the Secretary of State.

Finally, given that this is a Bill about children and about raising standards, I should just like to wish my little girl, Hattie, a happy eighth birthday today. In doing so, I commend the amendment to the House.

[Caroline Lucas]

I want to speak to amendment 5, and to reinforce some of the points that have already been made about the importance of making real consultation mandatory. The Government are selling these proposals on the basis that they are about empowering communities, but they are specifically refusing to allow proper consultation with our communities. This is not about empowerment; it is about centralisation.

The Department for Education website gives four handy steps towards conversion. First, the head teacher decides that he or she wants to opt out. Then the governors meet and pass a resolution. The Secretary of State then approves the proposal and the funding agreement. Finally, the Government order the local authority to cease maintaining the school. Then, as if by magic, the school is suddenly free. I am sure that most parents would find that rather alarming, and that they would want to have a direct say in the removal of their right to democratic influence through the severing of that link to the local authority.

Proper consultation would enable reflection on accountability and governance, and on whether the freedoms that academy status brings would be used without disadvantage to other parts of the community. Despite all the nice rhetoric about the schools being free schools set up by those parents who want them, there is a real risk that they will drain resources away from other schools in the region. We need the kind of consultation that the amendment proposes if we are to ensure that that does not happen.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that this lack of consultation with communities and local authorities runs contrary to what others in the new coalition Government are proposing in their localist agenda? They talk about giving more power to communities and local authorities, but the proposals in the Bill seem entirely inconsistent with that agenda.

[Caroline Lucas]

I completely agree with the hon. Lady. In spite of all their rhetoric about the big society, when the Government are put to the test and asked to demonstrate their commitment to the idea, they do not seem to trust our communities enough to consult them.

The ramifications of so many schools becoming independent are enormous, and children, parents, teachers, trade unions and members of the wider community are surely entitled to have their voices heard. Under the Government’s proposals, thousands more schools could become their own admissions authorities, and parents will want to know who will ensure that a school’s admissions policy is being observed. They will also want to know that the education of vulnerable children and children with special needs will be fairly managed and properly resourced. Consultation is the key to giving them that kind of guarantee. Surely local authorities are entitled to debate proposals that will result in local authority boundaries ceasing to have meaning in some cases. Surely they also need to have some kind of input into an admissions process that could lead to chaos for the rest of the region.

Consultation should be absolutely central to the Bill, and it is still not clear to me, despite what the Secretary of State has said, why he and other Ministers are in such a rush. Perhaps we must conclude that they are anxious that students, parents or staff might rise up and object to this attempt to take power away from local communities. Perhaps that is why the Secretary of State does not want to consult on these proposals.

[Dan Rogerson]

I have some issues with the whole concept and experience of free schools, having spoken to colleagues, hon. Members and others who have seen them in operation in other countries. I have always struggled to understand how the concept might be relevant across the United Kingdom. However, recently I have been considering the situation in a rural area such as my own, in which the village schools do not become part of a federation and the local authority or the diocese—if it is involved—decides to close a small village school. In such a situation, I can foresee that a community might come together and want to provide some form of school.

This presents me with another problem: should there be a facility to enable that to happen? What safeguards will be in place to ensure that the facilities are of a required standard? Will all the protections be in place, the suitability of which a local authority would otherwise have input into, to ensure that not just the bare minimum is provided?

As I struggle to reconcile my initial dislike of the concept of free schools with the circumstance in a rural area such as my own that I have outlined, I ask what safeguards will be in place to ensure that, particularly in the early days of such a provision, all the standards that we would expect within the existing sector will be safeguarded, and that there will be equal protection.

[Mr Slaughter]

The Opposition amendments, which I support, are based on genuine fears about what may occur through a local market in education if this Bill becomes law. I mentioned on Second Reading a flyer that is circulating in a part of my constituency that is already testing the market to see whether an appetite exists for the opening of new schools in the area. I thought that this was already common practice, but The Times Educational Supplement telephoned me yesterday to say that it is the first such example it had heard of. However, I am sure it will not be the last if this Bill is passed, when it will become common practice.

Let me give a foretaste of what is to come by indicating what is proposed in Shepherd’s Bush. The flyer, which is being circulated widely, says:

“A New Primary School For Your Child. We are opening a new primary school in your area soon and we are enrolling now!”

It comes from an organisation called ABC Academies, although I believe that that name is not patented and may change. It continues:

“Close to your home, we will provide education for children from five years old. Life skills. reading and writing. mathematics. science. physical education and fun!...Contact us to find out more!”

There were three open days, the last of which, in fact, ended about eight minutes ago in a part of the Shepherd’s Bush road. Parents are being invited to come along and I presume that, if enough turn up, an estate agent will be asked to look for suitable premises in the area. It is not that easy to find somewhere with sufficient play space and equipment in the middle of inner London, but it is a task that we know Toby Young and others have set themselves in that part of the world. At some point, an application will be made to the Secretary of State for some of the £210 million of Building Schools for the Future funding that the schools in my constituency have been deprived of.

Although I agree with the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), it may surprise him to hear that I disagree with his pillorying the people who are putting forward this proposal. I do not particularly pillory them—in fact, I know the people who are doing this in my area. They are local entrepreneurs who run a perfectly respectable, good business that says to schools, “We will use your schools for you. We will market them when they are available—classrooms and halls at evenings and weekends, for example—and we have a number of successful supplementary schools in the area.” I see nothing wrong with that. The firms make a profit, and that benefits the school, the people who use it, and the company. However, as a result of the coalition Government’s proposals, the companies now see that exactly the same principles should apply to the provision of state education in the area. Who can criticise them for that, when that is exactly what is being proposed?

I asked the assistant director of education whether he knew about the practice. He is responsible for all school building programmes and the provision of school buildings; he had never heard of it. I spoke to some of the primary heads in the area; they had never heard of it, and did not know about it, although when I told them about it, they thought that they might pop along to an open day and see what was happening.

There is over-subscription of primary schools in the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, although curiously the local authority was closing primary schools until last year so that it could free up the sites and sell them on to private schools. There may be demand for a primary school in certain parts of the borough, but I ask the Government whether that is the right way to go about things.

For example, one primary school is next to a place where one of the open days is held. It is a popular, successful school, but it is not full in all years because the turnover—the mobility—of population in inner London is such that 25% of the children in a class can leave that class in the course of a school year. That is very difficult. Some 65% of children in that school have English as a second language, and 40% are Muslim. We are talking about one of the most varied, diverse and mobile communities in the country. Planning school provision and school places is incredibly difficult on both a financial and educational level.

What will happen if we throw into the mix the ability, simply on the basis of a business idea, to set up a new school where one feels that one can? A company might attract parents who like the idea, and who are most able, willing, articulate, and responsive to that type of marketing, set up a school, and drain other schools of their pupils and finances, including the capital funding that has already been stopped for existing schools. That is a recipe for utter chaos in the education system. It is gold-rush tactics applied to the education system.

There are groups of parents doing the same as the companies. They have their eye on particular buildings, and say to the local authority, “Could we have that building? Never mind who is in there at the moment. Could you get them out? We’d like the building for our own use.” I am certainly not criticising the parents; they want to do the best for their children. I do not even criticise the organisations concerned. They may be very sound entrepreneurial organisations. I blame the politicians, who, both at local and national level, appear to be abdicating completely all responsibility for the planning of education, and in particular the planning of sustainable, sensible and integrated education.

The education system, particularly in areas such as inner London, is finely balanced. It works. It is highly resourced, thanks to the last Labour Government. It has an incredible number of committed people in it—parents, teachers, children and, indeed, some local politicians. It works very well, particularly at primary level, but often against the odds and against great challenges. This legislation does nothing to assist. All that it does is put a spoke in the wheel, and barriers in the way of continuing that success. Education—particularly primary education—in inner London is not broke. This noxious and pernicious Bill aims to destroy what we have built up over many years, and I urge all Members of the Committee to support the amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I am really depressed by what is happening, particularly in relation to consultation. For years and years, quite rightly, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives attacked the previous Government for not having full consultation with people when measures such as this were going through. But to have a consultation process, or not to have a consultation process, when the people who run our schools—the teachers, the support staff, the people who do school meals and the people who clean the schools—are not even at work but are on holiday, if they can afford to take one, and to say that the head will decide and that when they come back in December they will be told what will happen to them, is clearly out of order. It is almost certainly not legal and I am convinced that there will be challenges.

20:15

Let us just think about some of the things that could happen during the summer. People who may finish work this week and return in the first week in September may not have these questions answered. Will I, or will I not, still be entitled to the sickness agreements that I have had for years in my previous employment? Will I still be entitled to the same rights of annual leave? Will my salary be the same? Will my pension be the same? Will my redundancy rights be the same? Will my access to training be the same? Will my redeployment rights be the same? Will my career development still be the same? Will any rights that I have accrued in possibly decades of service for the people of my community be the same?

In any normal consultation process—I have had long experience in six to 10 years of working for a local authority—under both the last Labour Government and the previous Conservative Government, even at the hardest of times, when there were real issues and really dogma-driven changes, people were still allowed the right to consult and to have their questions answered. There is no way, in six weeks, even if the staff were still at work, that these questions could be answered, and to say that this is the right way forward and to pretend that somehow it fits into the concept of the big society is clearly and utterly wrong. Staff will be going back to work in six weeks’ time and they will be told by the head, by the board of governors, “You either take it or leave it.” That has to be wrong.

[Mr Gibb]

I start by wishing Hattie a very happy eighth birthday on behalf of all Government Members. Happy birthday, Hattie.

Amendment 20 would require any proposal for an additional school or a free school to demonstrate a need for additional capacity within the local area. We have made it clear that we want to improve choice in education. A free school proposal will be required to demonstrate parental demand and support. Where there is such demand, we will not turn down the proposal simply to protect other local schools. As my noble Friend Lady Perry said in the other place:

“Why can we not trust the people who run our schools and education services to behave in a sensible and honourable way? That is how they have always behaved…To be prescriptive, to write down as a rule that we are consulting only because it is the law, would be alien to the way in which good schools operate—and only good schools will come this way.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 13 July 2010; Vol. 720, c. 623.]

All schools will need to drive up standards to retain their pupils and remain viable. Any proposer of an academy that does not replace a maintained school, including a free school, must consult such people as they think appropriate before entering into funding arrangements with the Secretary of State on the principle of whether to enter into such arrangements. That will allow for representations to be made regarding any concerns that appropriate people may have over such proposals.

[Charlotte Leslie]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be utter lunacy and madness for either an additional school or a school seeking to apply for academy status not to meet the needs of the local community around it, because then it would not succeed as a school? It would be part of the process of its change that it would seek to meet the needs of the entire community around it.

[Mr Gibb]

Absolutely. That is the whole point. It is in the Bill. Any school that sought to establish itself without talking to and consulting local people would not fare well in trying to attract pupils.

Furthermore, clause 9 requires the Secretary of State, when deciding whether to enter into academy arrangements with an additional school, an entirely new or free school, to take into account the impact of such a school on the existing schools and colleges in the area. That will ensure that in making decisions on any free school proposal due consideration will always be given to its wider implications. Clause 9 is included in the Bill following helpful debates in the other place where noble Lords expressed concerns over the impact that any brand new academies—free schools—would have on other schools and colleges in the area. We agreed that in making decisions on any free school proposal, due consideration should always be given to its wider implications. That was our intention even before we tabled that amendment in the other place. We were happy to place that duty in the Bill.

Amendment No. 50 seeks to define “impact”, which the Secretary of State would be required to take account of when considering entering into arrangements for an additional free school. I fully understand hon. Members’ concerns, but we do not wish to prescribe the matters to be considered in each case. Every school is different and its case should be considered on its merits. The problem with a list is that people tend to focus on what is not on it, and that risks other considerations that are not included being considered irrelevant and unimportant. In fact, they could well be quite important.

Lord Adonis said:

“The idea that parents should not be able to access new or additional school places in areas where the schools are not providing good quality places simply because the provision of those places will cause detriment to other schools fundamentally ignores the interests of parents and their right to have a decent quality school to send their children to. If there is not such a decent quality school and someone is prepared to do something substantive about it, they should be applauded”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 June 2010; Vol. 719, c. 1264.]

We agree with Lord Adonis’s sentiments.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Although I agree with my hon. Friend that the amendment should be rejected, may we expect the Secretary of State to come forward with an explanation of the approach that he will take to the assessment of this impact? Otherwise it could appear that the Secretary of State was making such decisions without a framework that the public in a local area could expect to understand.

[Mr Gibb]

We need to try to get away from reams of guidance and secondary legislation. The wording of clause 9 is clear. It states:

“The Secretary of State must take into account what the impact of establishing the additional school would be likely to be on maintained schools, Academies and institutions within the further education sector in the area in which the additional school is (or is proposed to be) situated.”

It is clear what is intended, and what has always been intended by the Secretary of State because he is under a duty to act reasonably. The clause just reinforces the duty that already exists.

[Mr Stuart]

If the Secretary of State will not produce a framework to show how he will approach such cases, will he publish the assessment that he makes in order to come to a conclusion? People deserve to be able to understand the logic behind a decision, even if it is just precedent and looking at different schools in different places at different times. That might also help people who want to come forward with proposals. If they do not understand the Secretary of State’s thinking, they will not know whether or not to make a proposal.

[Mr Gibb]

I will ponder my hon. Friend’s point. I personally think that it is clear what sort of issues the Secretary of State will take into account when deciding whether to accept a proposal for an additional school in an area. To be too specific in setting out guidance would be a mistake, because it could end up luring future providers into not considering issues that they should take into account when assessing the impact that their proposal would have on the local area. As I say, I will ponder my hon. Friend’s points and perhaps write to him on this issue.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Surely it is a matter for both natural justice and judicial review? I am sure that the Minister has taken very good advice, but if he does not open the process up and give people the opportunity to make representations on it, he will lay himself open to many more problems in the future.

[Mr Gibb]

I will ponder the points that both my hon. Friends have made and I will write to them shortly to set out our position with greater clarity.

In the letter to lead Members sent on 26 May, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made it clear that the Government see strong local authorities as central to our plans to improve education. We want to see a smooth transition to the new school system and want a genuine dialogue with local government—and other partners—to that end. There are important questions about the role of local authorities in school improvement, how to ensure that local provision meets the needs of all children in an area, including the most vulnerable, and how we help schools to understand the opportunities, freedoms and responsibilities of the new system.

Over the next weeks and months, we want a further dialogue with local government on those and related matters, and we do not think it would be right to pre-empt those discussions by accepting the amendment, which would clearly place a bureaucratic burden on local authorities ahead of a wider discussion about their continuing role. As I have already explained, additional schools are required to consult locally on their proposals, and the Secretary of State has a duty to consider the wider impact of any school on its local area, so a requirement for him to take account of an annual report provided by the local authority would, in our view, be unnecessary.

On new clause 5, we share the commitment of the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) to promoting fair and proper processes when establishing all new schools, including free schools, which is why we have put in place a rigorous approval process and are requiring that groups comply with every aspect of it before being allowed to open a new school. As part of the process to establish a free school, groups will have to demonstrate that there is genuine, robust demand for places at the school they are proposing, both at the proposal stage and in completing their business case and plan. To meet this requirement, we expect groups to provide evidence of this demand, perhaps through a petition or a declaration from interested parties, but in every case demonstrating clear evidence of unmet local need, not just expressions of support.

The new clause would prevent organisations or groups from offering financial inducements to parents and pupils to encourage them to attend or support new free schools. It is, of course, right that we would not wish to see any organisation trying to manipulate public opinion or to give financial incentives to any person to obtain their support. However, it shows a marked lack of trust in parents, if I may say so to the hon. Gentleman, to suggest that they would send their child to any school on the back of a financial incentive. They will obviously want to send their child to the best school possible.

[Mr Iain Wright]

Will the Minister address the point I made on this subject? Parents might quite rightly be disappointed about Building Schools for the Future capital being scrapped, but are the Secretary of State or the Minister saying, “We’re trying to look for additional school capital programmes, and if you set up a new school, you’ll be first in line, regardless of what the wider community requires”? Can he say that that will definitely not be the case?

[Mr Gibb]

We have allocated £50 million of funding from the harnessing technology fund to restart the standards and diversity fund, which was established in 2008 by the hon. Gentleman’s Government to promote new schools. That is the fund that will provide capital for free schools until 31 March 2011. It is quite clear that it does not come from the Building Schools for the Future fund.

New clause 5 would have an unintended consequence as a result of its wide scope. For example, it would prevent a school from being able to offer subsidies for the provision of school uniforms to pupils from low-income families, which I am sure is not something that Labour Members would want.

[Chris Skidmore]

New clause 5 mentions inducements to pupils, as my hon. Friend mentioned. The hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) also made a point on this subject. However, would the new clause not also affect the education maintenance allowance, which was a financial inducement introduced by the previous Government? I am sure he does not oppose that.

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend makes his point in his own way, and I am sure that the hon. Member for Hartlepool will respond to it when he decides whether to press his amendment to a vote.

I want to clarify one point about the approval of new schools. A very strong evidential basis must be demonstrated, not one based on offering rewards. In order to ensure that places are of sufficient long-term quality and sustainability, not all applicants to this process will be successful. However, it is right that, where cases are properly made, we strongly support communities that want to establish new schools in order to improve choice for their own and other young people in their areas and to drive up standards across them.

Amendment 29 would amend the definition of what amounts to an additional school and the circumstances in which the Secretary of State would be required to take account of the impact of an additional school. Noble Lords in the other place raised concerns about circumstances in which a free school was partially new, but partially replacing an existing school—for example, where a school had a broader age range than the school that it had replaced. I can confirm that it is our policy to expect convertors to convert “as is”. Therefore, any school wishing to change its age range would need to follow either the relevant statutory procedures for prescribed alterations before conversion or the relevant administrative processes after conversion, rather than as part of the conversion process.

20:30

We are also committed to assessing the impact of any free school proposals on a local area. However, we also wanted to meet the concerns of noble Friends in the other place, so we have amended the Bill accordingly. In most cases, the school will have the same head, staff, parents and children, but will also have additional freedoms to innovate and raise standards. Furthermore, the requirement for converting schools to consult means that those other schools in the area may have the chance to make representations on the proposed conversion. However, schools may still become academies via the Education and Inspections Act 2006, under which the predecessor school is closed and replaced by an academy, as opposed to undergoing a conversion to academy status, which is what the Bill will allow. In those cases, under clause 9(4), the Secretary of State will be required to assess the impact of any change in the age range.

Amendments 33 and 5 both seek to specify in the legislation who the promoter of an additional school must consult before entering into academy arrangements with the Secretary of State. Any free school proposal, which will need to demonstrate parental demand and support, will by definition require consultation. However, following concerns raised in the other place, we felt it necessary to set out in the Bill our expectation for such consultation. However, we do not intend to prescribe how that consultation should be conducted. A key principle of this Government is to trust professionals to do their jobs without the unnecessary interference of central Government. We trust professionals to determine how to consult, and we do not think it right to provide an inflexible checklist, which would not, in itself, ensure that consultation was any more meaningful.

[Mr Anderson]

Does the Minister also think it correct that the professionals who deliver the education of our children have the right to be consulted and that that should be set out in the Bill?

[Mr Gibb]

I do not think that it needs to be set out in the Bill, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: of course staff should be consulted, and they would be. TUPE––the transfer of undertakings (protection of employment) regulations—will govern the contracts of all the employees of the school and the transfer of employment on the same terms. He should feel assured that the necessary statutory consultation, by the employer and with the employee, will take place as part of the process.

[Caroline Lucas]

Why do we just have to take the hon. Gentleman’s word for it? No disrespect, but if it is so self-evidently clear that the consultation will take place with all the relevant parties, why could that not be set down in the Bill? For a lot of us, that would be a way of putting our minds at rest.

[Mr Gibb]

Well, no disrespect right back at you. The point is that the TUPE regulations are already in statute and they have to be followed. Whenever there is a transfer of undertakings, those procedures are followed, and there is no need to set that out in the Bill. However, we are simply adopting the same approach that the previous Government took to academies, which is that we regulate through the funding agreement. The hon. Lady can also be assured that the things said in this House are on the record for her to hold us to account against, so the more she can get me to say now, the more reassured she can be.

This Government’s approach is to let the people who have the experience and knowledge in their areas of work make the decisions that will affect them. The promoter of a free school will know who the interested parties are in their local area. Any proposal for a free school must be able to demonstrate genuine, robust demand for places at the proposed school—for example, through a petition or a declaration from interested parties. As I said, clause 9 requires the Secretary of State, when deciding whether to enter into academy arrangements with a free school, to take into account the impact of such a school on existing schools and colleges in the area. That will ensure that when decisions on any free school proposal are made, due consideration will always be given to its wider implications.

I want to run through some of the other points that the hon. Member for Hartlepool made. I made the point about consultation, but he also talked about academies being disconnected from their surrounding areas. However, the model funding agreement for academies, which hon. Members will have seen, explicitly says that

“the school will be at the heart of its community, sharing facilities with other schools and the wider community”.

That is a key provision of the model funding agreement.

The hon. Gentleman also talked about TUPE. Consultation can take place after the academy order has been made. The key issue for staff transferring—he also mentioned the discussions taking place in August—is the signing of the funding agreement. These consultations can take place well into September and October before the funding agreement is signed.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the disapplication of sections 15 and 17 of the Education Inspections Act 2006 for schools converting under clause 4. This is relevant because under those arrangements the school is not closing, but converting, so there is no need for provisions to govern all the steps that have to be gone through when a school is closed. Consultations are provided for, as I said, under clause 5. He also asked about the impact on the further education sector. Clause 9(2) requires the Secretary of State to take into account the impact on colleges as well as on other schools.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) asked about the facilities at free schools. Health and safety law will, of course, apply. Ofsted will continue to inspect, and there are detailed provisions about fire, safety, security and structure, food hygiene and so forth in the Education (Independent School Standards) (England) Regulations 2003, which will now apply to academies. Those regulations are very detailed; if they were not detailed, many independent schools around the country would have the same worries as my hon. Friend.

With those few remarks, I hope that I have assured hon. Members on both sides of the Committee, and I urge them not to press their amendments.

[Mr Iain Wright]

I begin by thanking the Minister for his usual courtesy and kindness in wishing my daughter Hattie a very happy birthday. The whole Committee is welcome to join us for “Toy Story 3” on Sunday, if it so wishes.

The Minister has reassured me to some extent on clauses 9 and 10 and on the model funding agreement. That goes some way to addressing my concerns and I also thank him for clarifying some points about the FE sector. However, he has not gone far enough. As I said, there are fundamental weaknesses at the heart of the Bill, as seen in this group of amendments. Those weaknesses are on capacity and on consultation. With great respect to the Minister, he has not reassured me on those matters.

More to the point, some comments by the hon. Members for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) and for Hexham (Guy Opperman), and the excellent comments by the Chair of the Select Committee, showed that there is concern about the gap in the appropriate level of consultation. I understand that the Minister hopes to ponder on that issue, but I would suggest that he table a Government amendment on Report, which we could consider. I would be more than happy to discuss any such amendment with him. I suspect, however, that he will not do that.

I repeat that there are fundamental weaknesses on capacity, which amendment 20 would address, and on consultation, which amendment 33 would address. I would therefore like to test the opinion of the Committee on those amendments.

[The Temporary Chairman (Martin Caton)]

Only amendment 20 can be pressed at this time.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

20:38

Division 38

Ayes: 202

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Labour: 199
Liberal Democrat: 1
Green Party: 1

Noes: 312

---

Conservative: 269
Liberal Democrat: 39
Democratic Unionist Party: 3

[Caroline Lucas]

I beg to move amendment 1, page 2, line 1, leave out paragraph (a) and insert—

(a) the school follows the National Curriculum;’.

[The Temporary Chair (Martin Caton)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 25, page 2, line 2, at end insert

‘and follows the National Curriculum in science, mathematics, information technology and English;’.

Amendment 30, page 2, line 2, at end insert

‘and where appropriate section 40 of the Childcare Act 2006’.

Amendment 26, page 2, line 2, at end insert—

‘(0) the school has a curriculum which includes personal, social and health education as a statutory entitlement for all pupils;’.

[Caroline Lucas]

As Members will know, the amendment proposes that academies should follow the national curriculum. Under the Government’s proposals, once a state-maintained school becomes an academy, it is no longer required to follow the national curriculum. [Interruption.]

[The Temporary Chair]

Order. There is an awful lot of background noise in the Chamber at present. I cannot hear the speaker, and I am sure many others cannot either.

[Caroline Lucas]

As I was saying, under the Government’s proposals once a state-maintained school becomes an academy, it is no longer required to follow the national curriculum and that is of particular concern in respect of state-maintained faith schools that convert to become faith academies. Interestingly, a recent poll found that 75% of people agree or strongly agree that all state-funded schools should teach an objective and balanced syllabus for education about a wide range of religious and non-religious beliefs.

The Government appear to be unconcerned about the public’s view on that as they allow a significant risk that some religious authorities will use this new freedom under the Bill to pursue restrictive teaching in line with their religion. There are no specific protections in the Bill to ensure that the duty to offer this so-called balanced and broadly based curriculum cannot be neglected or evaded. That is a cause for great concern.

The previous Government introduced a change so that academies had to follow the national curriculum in English, maths and science, and the teaching of evolution was, of course, covered in that. I have tabled my amendment because the coalition Government propose that academies should be entirely free from the national curriculum. If the Bill is not amended, there will be no requirement on academies to teach evolution, and the Government do not even appear to have plans to prevent the teaching of creationism in academies.

We know that some academy sponsors want creationism to be taught. Emmanuel college in Gateshead, backed by the philanthropist Sir Peter Vardy, attracted controversy by teaching pupils about creationism, and pupils at the school reported that creationism was taught alongside evolutionary theory as being an equally valid belief. How will Ministers ensure that pupils at religious academies receive objective and evidence-based teaching and that creationism is not taught in science lessons or as fact?

[Stephen Pound]

I share the hon. Lady’s concerns and I raised this very point with the Secretary of State when he was on the Front Bench earlier this week. He replied that at Emmanuel college there was no teaching of creationism. I am a reasonable human being and I am inclined to believe the Secretary of State. However, does the hon. Lady have any evidence that this teaching is continuing, because if that is the case, the whole House will be very worried?

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. My notes tell me that this information came from a National Union of Teachers briefing. I imagine that the NUT is up to date with what is being taught in schools, but I am happy to check that and come back. This teaching has been going on, as it does in other countries where academies are fully fledged, such as the United States. So it certainly is not outside the realms of possibility that not only is it continuing in that particular academy, but that it is happening in a widespread fashion in a number of academies. The point is that there is nothing in the Bill to stop this happening. Even if it has stopped over the past few weeks or months at one particular academy, there is nothing to prevent it from happening again. That is the real concern.

It beggars belief that the Minister in the other place said that although he shared the concerns raised about creationism,

“one of the core aims of the policy is precisely that the Secretary of State should not dictate to academies what they should teach…I fully accept that if you trust people things do go wrong, but that is the direction that we want to try to go in.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 July 2007; Vol. 720, c. 299.]

I commend him on his honesty at least, but the substance of what he said is very worrying.

Although, at the moment, the national curriculum does not include statutory sex and relationships education, it does ensure that maintained faith schools teach sexual reproduction as part of the science syllabus. Nothing in the new, deregulated system proposed by this Bill would oblige religious academies to do the same. Personal, social and health education—PSHE—was debated at length in the other place, yet we see no Government move on it as yet. Instead, the Government argued that making PSHE a curriculum requirement under the Bill was not the right way to go, as the best place to consider this was in the forthcoming national curriculum review. Yet, of course, the Government want academies to be free of the national curriculum.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

A recent television report said that there are six times as many teenage pregnancies in Britain than in Holland, yet Holland’s schools have much more rigorous education on sexual and reproduction matters. Is that not of fundamental importance?

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, because it absolutely proves the case that education is a key way of ensuring that we do not have a huge number of unwanted teenage pregnancies. Education does not lead young people suddenly to think of doing things that they might not have thought of doing were they not to have had that education. On the contrary, education is one of the best forms of contraception.

The British Humanist Association has asked, legitimately, whether a new, state-funded, Catholic academy would be allowed not to teach sexual reproduction in biology lessons, let alone wider and more objective sex and relationships education. Again, as far as we can see, nothing in the new, deregulated system proposed by the Bill would seem to prohibit that from happening.

These are not the only concerns, because despite this being paid for by the taxpayer, sponsors of academies have enormous powers to dictate how and what pupils learn more generally. I read today with horror that one academy is apparently installing a “call centre” so that pupils’ “aspirations” can be raised by training for this type of work. In Manchester and Birmingham, for example, a range of academies are being planned, each specialising in preparing pupils for employment in specific industries or commercial activities. I read that Manchester airport, which is one such prospective sponsor, has overtly stated that the principal purpose of its academy will be to provide employees for the airport. That is a pretty reductionist interpretation of the purpose of education. That is why we must ensure that academies do follow the national curriculum, which is what my amendment seeks to do.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

As the hon. Lady mentions the subject, may I say that that does seem an absurdly reductionist approach to academies? Could she explain what she believes the purpose of education is?

[Caroline Lucas]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to expand more widely on this point. I believe that the purpose of education is to enable the potential of every human being to be properly fulfilled, whatever that might be in—it might be in a very academic, artistic or practical way. What education is not about is giving very narrow training for a specific job that has somehow been set up already by the time a child goes into an academy at a young age. We risk dumbing down in a worrying way for the pupils who come through our schools if that is what we think education is about. Education should be for life. It is about fulfilling people’s potential and is not about becoming a narrow cog in a wheel.

21:00

[Dan Rogerson]

The hon. Lady is speaking in very inspirational terms about education and I happen to agree with her on this point. However, I do not recognise in the national curriculum, in all its glory, that has been forced on teachers in all schools, the freedom to teach in that inspirational way. I recognise her concerns about the possible dangers and I hope that the Minister will reply to them, but, by tying schools to the national curriculum, the hon. Lady’s amendment would do a disservice to young people, who might want the sort of education that she is describing.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I do not think that the national curriculum is the best possible curriculum we could have but it is a bulwark and a protection against the kind of laissez-faire approach that will be unleashed by the Bill if we do not have some protections. I assure the hon. Gentleman that if we had more time and if I had more of my colleagues on these Benches, I would love to put forward a Green party policy on the kind of inspirational education that I would love to see. That is in our manifesto. Right now, though, we are looking at damage limitation and that is what my amendment is about. I want to make sure that we do not have sponsors imposing on wide numbers of pupils their personal views about what education should be about. That is why my amendment is important.

[Chris Skidmore]

Does the hon. Lady agree that having freedom from national curriculum restrictions was extremely valuable for the academies that the previous Government set up in deprived communities? Those academies were able to filter down subjects and to teach maths and English in ways that the national curriculum would have prevented. I know that she is talking off her brief and I have enjoyed listening to the National Union of Teachers’ briefing that she has produced today, but she might like to know, given her praise of the Netherlands’ system, that the Netherlands does not have a national curriculum.

[Caroline Lucas]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that the only part of my notes that is from the briefing from the NUT, much as I respect it, is the reference to the particular school I mentioned. I have made it very clear that even if that practice is not carrying on at that school, the wider point remains that it could carry on in any academy at any time because there is absolutely no protection in the Bill to prevent sponsors from imposing on schools any particular educational direction that they choose. That is deeply worrying and that is why there is, for the moment, a need for the national curriculum as a protection against that kind of utter and complete deregulation.

In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question about whether the freeing of academies from the national curriculum has been a positive thing, there is no overall evidence that academies perform better than other schools. Where academies have done better, it is often because they have managed to exclude more children and to use a different kind of curriculum by choosing from within the curriculum the subjects to pursue—possibly less rigorous ones academically. There is no educational argument in favour of academies—even those under the previous Government’s proposals. The Green party and I were not in favour of academies under the previous Government and we are even less in favour of them under this Government, because it is quite clear that they are going in the wrong direction.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I am sorry that I missed part of the hon. Lady’s speech. Will she confirm that removing academies from the ambit of the national curriculum, as the Bill suggests, will restrict the career and life choices of those students who might leave those schools under-educated and not having been exposed at all to certain subjects?

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his wise observation. He is exactly right. If children are put into particular training perspectives very early on, the wider set of possibilities and potential that could have been available to them will no longer exist if they have only the particularly narrow kind of education that the sponsors of academies often seem to pursue. I thank all hon. Members who have intervened and I stand by my amendment.

[Diana R. Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I wish to speak to amendments 25, 30 and 26 in my name and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends, but first I turn to amendment 1, the lead amendment, in the name of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who has just passionately explained why she put it forward.

The Opposition do not support amendment 1, which is designed to make academies adopt the whole national curriculum. The previous Labour Government’s view was clear on the curriculum that an academy should follow. We said that the core national curriculum subjects of science, mathematics, information technology and English should be taught in academies, but that left room for flexibility so that academies could design their own, local curriculum to meet the needs of their local population.

The Opposition still take the view that that is the most appropriate approach to the curriculum in academies, in marked contrast to clause 1(6)(a), which refers only to the requirement for a broad and balanced curriculum. Amendment 25, which sets out the core subjects that all pupils should be required to study, would provide the best approach to ensuring that those important subjects were taught in academy schools, while retaining some flexibility for academies. I hope that the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson), who spoke from the Liberal Democrat Benches, feels able to support that approach.

Amendment 30 sets out the Opposition’s view that section 40 of the Childcare Act 2006 should apply to academies.

[Stephen Pound]

Before my hon. Friend moves on from amendment 1, I note that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) mentioned the temptation for some academies to structure that local element, to which my hon. Friend referred, towards local employment possibilities. The pedagogic tradition of Mr Gradgrind and Dr Dryasdust concerned the hon. Lady during the early part of her speech, but the latter point concerns me. In the Opposition’s amendments is there anything to prevent the situation to which the hon. Lady referred, in which an academy is in effect the employment feeder for a local company, from occurring?

[Diana R. Johnson]

The Opposition want every pupil in an academy and any school to reach their full potential, and closing off options early on to pupils is not the appropriate approach.

Amendment 30 sets out the Opposition’s view that section 40 of the Childcare Act 2006 should apply to academies. Now that academy status will be open to primary schools, I am concerned that the Bill is ambiguous about the care and education of young children, and that section 40 of the 2006 Act does not refer to academies. That is understandable, because at the time only secondary schools could become academies, but a few all-through academies have now been developed.

Amendment 30 would introduce a clear duty to implement the early years foundation stage in academies with a nursery, ensuring that early years education in academies met the learning and developmental requirements of young children and complied with welfare requirements, too. That in turn would guarantee all young children in academies the same balanced, age-appropriate and play-based standard of care and education as children in maintained and independent schools. The Opposition believe that that is a sensible way to ensure that the excellent and well regarded early years curriculum is applied in academies. I am concerned that the Bill is silent on that subject, so it would be helpful to have a commitment to the early years foundation stage in the Bill. I listened very carefully to the Minister’s earlier remarks, but it would be better if the measure were clearly signposted in the Bill.

Amendment 26 would require academies to include personal, social, health and economic education on their curriculum and to make PSHE mandatory.

[Chris Skidmore]

I do not see economic education mentioned in the amendment—am I misreading it?

[Diana R. Johnson]

When this matter was before the House in the last Parliament, economic education was part of PSHE, but I may be mistaken in still calling it that. The original name was personal and social health and education. I think that the previous Government tried to insert “economic” to make it clear that economic education was very important to young people to give them information about bank accounts and how to budget accordingly.

[Chris Skidmore]

If the hon. Lady is not quite certain herself about what the amendment should mean or what the definition is, surely she should withdraw it and bring it back at a later stage.

[Diana R. Johnson]

With the greatest respect to the hon. Gentleman, who is a very new Member of this House, it is clear, having checked the amendment, that I have made a mistake, as I said. I tried to explain why the previous Government wanted to include economic education in PSHE. We want to make PSHE mandatory in academies, and I am keen to set out why the Government have got this completely wrong.

Pupils are pupils whether they attend an academy or any other type of school, and they all need to develop the life skills to make choices on subjects such as nutrition, sex and relationship education, and personal finance. In many constituencies across the land, we are very concerned about levels of teenage pregnancy. A few moments ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) spoke about teenage pregnancy rates in European countries where there is comprehensive sex and relationship education. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion also touched on that subject. We believe that making PSHE mandatory in academies and, indeed, in all schools is the way forward to ensure that young people have the information they need to make sensible and good life choices.

[Dan Rogerson]

I understand the point that the hon. Lady is making. I agree that it is important that all schools should have this subject as part of the curriculum; I have believed that for a long time. I understand that when there was a debate on this in the other place, a similar amendment was tabled by her noble Friends. However, given that the amendment has to work within the confines of this Bill and is therefore restricted to the new academies that it covers, it would not achieve the aims that she is talking about. Does she concede that this might not be the time and place to do this, and that we need to revisit the issue across the piece?

[Diana R. Johnson]

This Bill is about academies, and we have made it clear in the amendment that we want to make PSHE mandatory in academies. The position taken by my party is that we believe that PSHE should be mandatory in all schools—academies and non-academies.

We want to put PSHE on a formal footing to send out a clear message in academies about how important the subject is and how important it is to develop it as a professional subject and to train more teachers in it. Many schools already provide very good PSHE, including some academies, but more can still be done to improve its teaching. Hon. Members will know that in the previous Parliament the Labour Government attempted to legislate in the Children, Schools and Families Bill to make PSHE compulsory for all pupils in all schools, including, importantly in this case, academies. The key principles that we set out in that Bill were to make the teaching of PSHE promote equality, encourage the acceptance of diversity, and emphasise rights and responsibilities and the need to reflect on contrasting attitudes within society—in other words, to give children and young people the opportunity truly to develop their life skills. At that stage, the Liberal Democrat coalition partners fully supported the Labour Government’s policy of making PSHE compulsory for all pupils, including those in academies. It will be interesting to see tonight whether the Liberal Democrats now differ in their position.

Young people and parents both tell us that they want PSHE taught in schools. A National Children’s Bureau report showed that children wanted to be able to talk about issues important in their lives, such as emotions, relationships, mental health, sexual health and so on. In a popular survey, 81% of parents agreed that every child should have sex and relationship education as part of the curriculum, and in a survey by Parentline Plus, 97% of parents said that they wanted drug and alcohol education to be delivered in schools. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence recently recommended that all primary schools should teach PSHE.

21:15

Parents say that they do not always have the knowledge, skills or confidence to engage their youngsters in discussion on the sensitive matters of sex and relationships and drugs. Of course, the Liberal Democrats may wish to reflect on the fact that people can often get themselves into undesirable relationships if they have not had the opportunity to really think things through and consider all their options.

We know that PSHE fosters self-esteem and builds confidence, which we always want to encourage in our young people. In 2009, Sir Alasdair Macdonald held a review of the then Labour Government’s proposals to make PSHE a statutory foundation subject. He made it clear that PSHE was important because of the

“unique body of knowledge, understanding and skills”

that it brings our young people.

Our amendment 26 would make the provision of PSHE mandatory in academies, but we still also take the view that we want academies to have good, open communication with parents on the issue of PSHE, and that each individual school and academy should develop sex and relationships policies.

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

From reading the amendment, I am slightly confused. Perhaps the hon. Lady is about to develop this point, but what is the difference between compulsion and PSHE being mandatory, which is not mentioned in the amendment, and a “statutory entitlement”, which is?

[Diana R. Johnson]

We believe that all academies—we are dealing only with academies this evening—should have the subject of PSHE on the curriculum within the school day. That is what the amendment is intended to achieve. At the moment, as I understand it, and the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, it will be down to academies to decide for themselves how, whether and in what format they wish to deliver PSHE. That is my understanding of the Government’s position.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Is my hon. Friend aware of any pressures being placed on the Government by those who have ambitions to run academies to ensure that they are free from what they would see as the constraint of having to have PSHE in their curriculum? It seems to me that there are some forces out there that are not particularly benign towards a society in which young people grow up recognising the need to understand relationships and to be equipped with the appropriate life skills at the end of their compulsory school years.

[Diana R. Johnson]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. We will have to see who comes forward to sponsor academies. I have not been given any information about any particular sponsor who might take that view, but we need to wait and see.

As the hon. Member for North Cornwall said, the same amendment was debated in the other place. It was clear there that the Government accepted that there was broad agreement on the importance of PSHE but argued that there were differences of opinion on the way forward. We have been debating and discussing PSHE for far too long, and we need to get on and do something about it now. The Secretary of State for Education has said several times in the House recently that he is in a hurry in his zest to reform education, as can be seen in the speed at which the Bill is going through Parliament. I say to the Government, please let us be in a hurry on PSHE. Let us get on with it and do what we all agree should happen, to prepare our young people with the life skills that they need.

[George Hollingbery]

May I pursue my point a little further? I am a new Member, so forgive me if I am incorrect. Amendment 26 would require

“a statutory entitlement for all pupils”

to PSHE, but it does not mention compulsion or say that PSHE should be mandatory. Could pupils who wish to opt out of PSHE do so? The word used in the amendment is “entitlement,” not “compulsion.”

[Diana R. Johnson]

The proposal is as it is. In the previous Parliament, there was a long debate on opting out of PSHE, especially regarding sex and relationship education. The proposed amendment does not address that matter, but if the Government were minded to accept it, they may have to consider it further. The proposal is for

“a statutory entitlement for all pupils”

in academies.

There was huge disappointment among parliamentarians and many other organisations at the failure of the previous Parliament to legislate on PSHE owing to the fact that the Conservative party would not accept the PSHE clauses in the Children, Schools and Families Act 2010 during the wash-up period. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats now have an opportunity for an early win on PSHE for our young people who will be educated in academies.

[Dan Rogerson]

The hon. Lady’s telling of events of the closing days of the previous Parliament is interesting, but obviously, the wash-up process is somewhat arcane for those of us who were not party to the negotiations. Could the previous Government have dug their heels in and pushed for those PSHE clauses with other interested parties?

[Diana R. Johnson]

I, too, was not party to those negotiations, but I understand that that was not possible.

I intend to press amendment 26 to a Division to test the opinion of the Committee on that very important proposal.

[Mr Gibb]

Amendment 1 would require all academies established in future to follow the national curriculum rather than one that satisfied

“the requirements of section 78 of the EA 2002”,

which is that academies must provide a

“balanced and broadly based curriculum”.

Amendment 25 would mean that new academies would be required to teach the national curriculum in

“science, mathematics, information technology and English”.

Academies have been regulated since their inception by funding agreements. The previous Government took the stance—for many years—that that was the appropriate mechanism, and we agree with them. We intend to retain the funding agreement as the principle regulatory mechanism for academies. Via the new model funding agreement, academies will be required to teach English, maths and science as part of a broad and balanced curriculum. Beyond that, they can choose a curriculum that both engages and meets the needs of their pupils.

The freedoms in the academy system allow school leaders and teachers to be innovative in their approaches to raising standards and improving pupil engagement by tailoring the curriculum to the needs of their students in response to the type and quality of education demanded by parents. We trust teachers to use their professional judgment. They are the people who are best-placed to make such decisions. We want more freedom and flexibility for schools, not less.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am listening to the Minister with interest, but I am somewhat astonished. I remember him when he was in opposition speaking strongly in favour of using synthetic phonics in teaching, with which I entirely agree, and advocating imposing requirements on teachers as to how they teach. However, now he is taking a Maoist approach—let a thousand flowers bloom—and giving teachers the freedom to do what they like. That is something of a contradiction.

[Mr Gibb]

The Conservatives have never said, either in opposition or in government, that we will pass a law requiring teachers to teach in that way, although it is the law—as introduced by the previous Government—that phonics should be the method used to teach children to read. I believe, as does the hon. Gentleman, that that method raises standards. We believe that schools should use best practice and we will not countenance schools that use methods that do not result in young people being able to read early in their school careers, which is why we are introducing a test of children’s reading skills for six-year-olds. We will say more about that in the weeks and months ahead.

The hon. Gentleman will also wish to know that we are planning a review of the national curriculum that will inform our proposals for a set of core knowledge. We expect that each academy will want to incorporate that into its curriculum and that there will be parental pressure for them to do so. However, that will be an expectation, not a requirement. We believe that the freedom to be imaginative with curriculum design within a broad and balanced context is a core freedom at the heart of the academies programme that will underpin the improvement in standards that we all want for our schools.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Again, I am listening with interest to what the Minister is saying, but he will know, as I do, that there is a wide range of teaching philosophies among teachers, some of which are successful and some of which are not. We have suffered from this for the past couple of generations. There are apparently 1 million people in London who cannot read because of mistaken teaching techniques. Is it not time that we started to require successful teaching methods to be adopted in all our schools?

[Mr Gibb]

I would hate to be on the opposite side of this argument with the hon. Gentleman. He will have to wait until we make our announcements on this, but there are going to be reforms to initial teacher training, to the tests at age six, and to the training of teachers through continued professional development to ensure that they all use best practice in teaching children to read.

Evidence from the National Reading Panel in the United States and elsewhere overwhelmingly suggests that using early systematic synthetic phonics in the teaching of reading is the most effective way of teaching young children to read. That is my personal view, too. In particular, it closes the gap between boys and girls and between children from poorer backgrounds and others. I have to say, however, that there might well be other methods that the hon. Gentleman and I have not come across that could be even more effective than systematic synthetic phonics. I would like to see what they are, but we cannot rule out teachers being innovative and using such methods, if that results in children learning to read sooner and more effectively.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

May I take the Minister back to the subject of PSHE teaching? If an academy does not include it in its curriculum because the governors do not believe it to be appropriate, but groups of parents want it to be taught in the school, who will decide whether the parents’ wishes should be granted? Might they be prevented from allowing their children to receive PSHE education?

[Mr Gibb]

That is the position in every school at the moment. PSHE is not a statutory requirement in any maintained school or academy. The essence of our reforms is to give parents greater choice—a genuine choice, not the faux choice that parents in many areas now face when they have been denied their first choice of school. The thrust of the Bill, and of the Government’s education policy more generally, is to give parents more choice by providing a diverse range of schools to which they can send their children. They will then be able to find a school with the education orthodoxy and philosophy that they agree with, and that could also involve subjects such as PSHE.

Amendment 30 seeks clarity about the arrangements for the very youngest in our schools. I hope that I can reassure hon. Members that the amendment is not needed, because the requirements it seeks are already in place. It seeks to ensure that the provisions in the Childcare Act 2006 relating to learning and development, welfare and assessment will apply to every academy that provides for the very youngest children. However, the Act already provides for that. Section 40 requires all schools to deliver the early years foundation stage if they provide for pupils aged three to the end of the academic year in which they turn five. That includes independent schools. The Act does not use the word “academy”, but academies are legally categorised as independent schools, and all schools providing for the under-threes—academies, independent and maintained schools—are required to register with Ofsted and to deliver the early years foundation stage. There is a limited number of exemptions from that requirement, such as when the provision is for a very short amount of time per day, but the requirement applies to all providers, and there is no difference for academies.

I should also point out that the Minister of State, Department for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) announced on 6 July an independent review of the early years foundation stage, which will report in the spring of 2011. It will look at precisely the areas that hon. Members—the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana R. Johnson) in particular—wish to deal with in the amendment. I hope that that provides further reassurance.

21:30

Amendment 26 would require all new academies to teach PSHE—I will give the hon. Lady that—as a statutory subject. This issue was debated at length in Committee and on Report in the other place, and no one doubts the importance of children learning these essential skills for life. However, we know that many academies are teaching PSHE right now and teaching it very well. There is no reason to believe that academies teach PSHE any less well than maintained schools, or that a maintained school that becomes an academy will suddenly teach it less well. The key point is that if we make PSHE a statutory part of the curriculum in academies, it will mean imposing greater requirements on academies in this respect than on maintained schools, where PSHE is not a statutory subject. We are not in the business of reducing freedoms for academies; that is not the direction we want the academies programme to be travelling in. In addition, it does not make sense to single out PSHE and place it on a statutory footing, while not doing so for other subjects. That does not seem the right thing to do in this circumstance.

[Diana R. Johnson]

Is it now the coalition Government’s position that they are not going to proceed with making PSHE statutory in maintained schools or academies?

[Mr Gibb]

The coalition’s position is that we are having a curriculum review and all these issues will be addressed in it.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

I commend the position that my hon. Friend is taking on amendment 26. Does that amendment not highlight the seeming lack of respect for the fact that governors, in conjunction with parents and teachers, take PSHE seriously, are concerned about its quality and want it to be properly taught with proper values-based teaching underlying it?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is the sort of issue we will look at when the review takes place. The curriculum review that is taking place later this year must be the right place to look at PSHE, to ensure that this important subject is debated properly. Members will have every opportunity to contribute to that debate, but at this point it makes sense to ensure that academies’ policy on PSHE does not go further than PSHE policy in maintained schools.

Clause 28 of the model funding agreement already states:

“The Academy Trust shall have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State on sex and relationship education to ensure that children at the Academy are protected from inappropriate teaching materials and they learn the nature of marriage and its importance for family life and for bringing up children.”

I hope that that provision reassures my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who raised the question of why the national curriculum is not on the statute book for academies. As I mentioned before, there is statutory provision in section 78 of the Education Act 2002 for a broad and balanced curriculum. Creationism cannot be taught as fact in academies or in maintained schools, and it cannot be taught as part of science lessons. The hon. Lady’s notion of the purpose of education—enabling the potential of any individual to be fulfilled, whether that is academic or vocational—I agree with 100%. She is absolutely right: fulfilling the potential of every child to the best of their ability, in whatever field that is, is the purpose of education.

The hon. Lady referred to the Manchester academies, which are jointly sponsored by the local authorities and by business. Their ethos is built around this partnership and is not solely related to the skills needs of those businesses. As I said before, the Bill requires academies to have a broad and balanced curriculum, so she can be reassured that the things she described as happening at those academies are not happening.

[Dan Rogerson]

Earlier, I talked about monitoring the meeting of the criteria. On ensuring that academies deliver a broad-based curriculum, would there be a number of triggers—things that would concern Ofsted and encourage it to take an interest in an academy, if reports of them reached it?

[Mr Gibb]

Ofsted will, of course, continue to inspect academies. It will conduct those inspections against the independent school standards, which are rigorous, and against section 78 of the 2002 Act. If it discovers that a school is not teaching a broadly balanced curriculum, the school will be put into special measures, so I think that my hon. Friend can be reassured. The reports will, of course, be monitored on behalf of the Secretary of State by the Young People’s Learning Agency. I hope that with those few remarks I have reassured all hon. Members on both sides of the House—

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Not me.

[Mr Gibb]

Apart from the hon. Gentleman, who is rarely reassured by any Front Bencher on either side of the House. On the basis of my remarks, I urge hon. Members not to press their amendments.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the Minister for his reply, but he will not be surprised to hear me say that I do not think that he goes far enough. Nothing in what he said reassures me that academies will teach a genuinely objective and balanced curriculum. Perhaps part of the problem is in the language, because what might feel objective and balanced to one person is patently not to another. There are not sufficient safeguards in the Bill to prevent the real risks that other hon. Members and I discussed; they are just not there. However, reluctantly, I have decided not to push the amendment to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment, but I hope very much that this debate means that the Government will give more thought to those particular concerns.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment proposed: 26, in clause 1, page 2, line 2, at end insert—

( ) the school has a curriculum which includes personal, social and health education as a statutory entitlement for all pupils;’.—(Diana R. Johnson.)

Question put, That the amendment be made.

21:37

Division 39

Ayes: 200

---

Labour: 197
Liberal Democrat: 1
Green Party: 1

Noes: 314

---

Conservative: 266
Liberal Democrat: 43
Democratic Unionist Party: 3
Labour: 1

Amendment proposed: 23, page 2, line 8, at end insert—

(e) the school must comply with the provisions of the Code for School Admissions issued from time to time by the Secretary of State.’.—(Diana R. Johnson.)

Question put, That the amendment be made.

21:50

Division 40

Ayes: 118

---

Labour: 205
Liberal Democrat: 1
Green Party: 1

Noes: 321

---

Conservative: 274
Liberal Democrat: 43
Democratic Unionist Party: 3

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Evans. Rather a lot of Members who voted in the Aye Lobby seem to have slipped away. Will you please check that the count has been reported accurately?

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Will the Tellers please come to the Table so that the numbers can be clarified? There now appears to have been a recount. The Ayes were 218, and the Noes were 321. The Noes still have it.

22:05

Proceedings interrupted (Programme Order, 19 July).

The Chair put forthwith the Questions necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded at that time (Standing Order No. 83D).

Amendment proposed: 27, page 2, line 8, at end insert—

(e) the school complies with provisions on pupil exclusions and behaviour partnerships as set out in EA 2002, EIA 2006 and ASCLA 2009.’.—(Vernon Coaker.)

Question put, That the amendment be made.

22:05

Division 41

Ayes: 213

---

Labour: 210
Liberal Democrat: 1
Green Party: 1

Noes: 327

---

Conservative: 279
Liberal Democrat: 44
Democratic Unionist Party: 3

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 6

Effect of Academy order

Amendment proposed: 14, page 4, line 21, leave out subsections (3) and (4).—(Vernon Coaker.)

Question put, That the amendment be made.

22:19

Division 42

Ayes: 213

---

Labour: 210
Liberal Democrat: 1
Green Party: 1

Noes: 322

---

Conservative: 277
Liberal Democrat: 42
Democratic Unionist Party: 2

Clauses 6 and 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 10

Consultation: additional schools

Amendment proposed: 33, page 7, line 13, leave out subsection (1) and insert—

‘(1) Before entering into Academy arrangements with the Secretary of State in relation to an additional school, a person must consult—

(a) local parents and children,

(b) local schools,

(c) the relevant local authority,

(d) all school staff and their representatives, and

(e) any other persons deemed appropriate.’.—(Vernon Coaker.)

Question put, That the amendment be made.

22:33

Division 43

Ayes: 213

---

Labour: 211
Green Party: 1

Noes: 317

---

Conservative: 275
Liberal Democrat: 39
Democratic Unionist Party: 2

Clause 10 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

The occupant of the Chair left the Chair to report progress and ask leave to sit again (Programme Order, 19 July).

The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again tomorrow.

Business without Debate

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

Sittings of the House (27 July)

Ordered,

That, on Tuesday 27 July, the House shall meet at 11.30 am and references to specific times in the Standing Orders of this House shall apply as if that day were a Wednesday.—(Sir George Young.)

Adjournment of the House (27 July)

Motion made,

That, on Tuesday 27 July, the Speaker shall not adjourn the House until any message from the Lords has been received, any Committee to draw up Reasons which has been appointed at that sitting has reported, and he has notified the Royal Assent to Acts agreed upon by both Houses.—(Sir George Young.)

[Hon. Members]

Object.

Sheffield Forgemasters

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Stephen Crabb.)

22:45

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Would Members who are leaving the Chamber do so quietly?

[Mr Betts]

Normally when a Member speaks in an Adjournment debate at this time of night, they stand in the Chamber in splendid isolation. It is obviously pleasing to see so many right hon. and hon. Friends here tonight, particularly four other Sheffield MPs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), and my hon. Friends the Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) and for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield). It is also pleasing to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) and many other colleagues.

This issue affects not merely Sheffield—it has touched a nerve across the nation—but forging and forgemasters are very important in the history of Sheffield. As a child growing up in the city, the pounding of the drop forges down in the Don valley, which is now part of my constituency, was like the very heart of the city beating.

However, this debate is not only about the history of industry in Sheffield, but about its future. In 2005, when the company was part of the Aitchison group, there were major financial difficulties. Eventually, the company was saved by a management buy-out led by chief executive Graham Honeyman, who by putting his own money in saved the firm, its workers’ jobs, debts to suppliers and, with the help of the pension protection fund, the workers’ pensions. Despite initial problems with cash flow and rising energy prices, the company became profitable and increased in size to 700 employees, taking on 70 new apprentices. The company has full order books and 80% of its work is for export, and it has a turnover of £100 million. All the company’s profits to date have been reinvested.

Two or three years ago, the company saw a major opportunity in the nuclear industry. With £150 million of investment, it could buy a 15,000 tonne forging press. However, as that was larger than the company’s total annual turnover, it needed additional help. It went to my friend, the previous Member for Sheffield Central, Richard Caborn, who deserves a great deal of credit for the help he gave at that time.

That package would have created 400 jobs. The Government were approached and over a two-year period, very detailed negotiations were held. Eventually, an £80 million loan was agreed as part of a package involving private investment, including support from Westinghouse, loans and equity release. There was a full appraisal by Department for Business, Innovation and Skills officials and Treasury officials. It was confirmed in parliamentary answers that the independent Industrial Advisory Board gave its assessment, and that Deloitte and Allen & Overy looked at market opportunities and additionality, and at cost-benefit and commercial considerations. After all that, it was concluded that a loan of £80 million was the right way to go as part of an overall package. The loan was also part of an industrial strategy with a nuclear research centre and the Advanced Manufacturing Park. I do not think that France and Germany would have such a dilemma about what to do about investing in such a company.

After the election, we were told that there would be a review. Funnily enough, most of the reviews that took place actually approved schemes that were in train, so let us examine what the review of the Forgemasters loan amounted to. There was no new cost-benefit analysis and no new external advice was sought. Indeed, the Government did not get back to the original advisers. There was no contact with Forgemasters. The first time the company learned anything of the review was when the chief executive got a phone call from a Minister, who said, “Your loan has been withdrawn.” That is no way to carry out a review. The kindest thing I can say is that it was a virtual review; the worst thing I could say is that it was an absolute sham.

Since then, various reasons have been given for the refusal of the loan, including that the directors would not dilute shares. The Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister said that, but the former has had to write to the chief executive to apologise for making inaccurate statements, although he did not apologise today in the House.

Private funding was involved via an element of equity release, but the company would not continue with extra equity release to the point at which control passed back to an absentee owner—the very sort of owner that nearly bankrupted the company in 2005 when the workers and management had to save it.

It was said that commercial options were available. Indeed, the Lib Dem leader of Sheffield city council, Councillor Paul Scriven, said that the commercial markets would provide the money. Will the Minister confirm that at a meeting with Forgemasters and his officials the other day, it was agreed that there were no straightforward commercial options without the loan?

We have been told that there is no money, and that this is unaffordable, but we are talking about an £80 million loan, not a grant. It would have been repaid with interest, making a repayment of £110 million, plus additional money from equity warrants if the investment had been successful, plus the tax revenue from those employed by Sheffield Forgemasters and by companies in the supply chain such as Davie Malcolm, Siemens and Rolls-Royce. This loan would actually have made a profit for the Treasury. The Business Secretary almost admitted as much to the Select Committee the other day.

We were also told that the loan had been a pre-election bribe to buy up a few votes at the general election, but the negotiations had been going on for between 18 and 24 months before the election. So what was the real reason for this decision?

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

I have here correspondence released following a freedom of information request. It indicates that Andrew Cook, of William Cook Holdings, wrote to the Government to urge the cancellation of the loan. Does my hon. Friend agree that this approach from a major donor to the Tory party seems to provide the only basis for the Government’s decision to cancel the loan?

[Mr Betts]

I have not heard any other reason. I have read out four reasons, all of which have been proved to be inaccurate and untrue. I shall read out some of the letter that Andrew Cook sent. There were lots of letters sent in during the review, but I think the Minister will be able to confirm that this was the only one that objected to the loan and said that it should not be granted. It is dated 25 May, and it begins:

“Dear Mark,

I am the largest donor to the Conservative Party in Yorkshire and have been since David Cameron was elected leader. I am delighted you are at last back in power, albeit in coalition.”

The letter goes on:

“I have specialist knowledge of the situation which I would like to share with you confidentially. The loan is probably unnecessary and possibly illegal under EU rules. I believe the private sector could provide the required finance without the taxpayer shelling out…It is a typical labour ‘sacred cow’. I believe you may be the best person to consider this matter as Vince Cable may find it a difficult nettle to grasp, being as Nick Clegg is a Sheffield MP.”

Well, he needn’t have worried about that, need he? A second letter from Andrew Cook, dated 9 June, states:

“For the record, I am convinced from my own industrial experience that the necessary finance could be raised from the private sector.”

He goes on to cite

“the reluctance of local management to accept outside equity investment.”

Where have we heard those comments repeated subsequently?

Did the Minister, or any other Minister or civil servant, reply to this letter? Who knew about the letter? Did the Deputy Prime Minister or the Business Secretary know about it? Did the Chief Secretary to the Treasury know about it? Tonight, Downing street has issued a statement saying, “Not us, guv. It was all down to the Liberal Democrats. It was down to the Business Secretary and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. They made the decision.” It will be interesting to hear people’s response in Sheffield to how the Lib Dems have treated them in this regard. When did Ministers know about this letter? Was it taken into account in reaching the decision? It is difficult to believe that it was not, because there was not one other shred of evidence thrown at the review that could have led the Government to change the decision that had been taken previously.

In the end, Sheffield Forgemasters will continue to be a successful company without this loan. Without it, however, the losers will be UK workers, UK industry and the UK economy. In the light of the cloud that these letters have now cast on the real reason for the withdrawal of the loan, and in the absence of any other real reasons being provided, will the Minister now accept that the case for a proper independent review into this whole matter is unanswerable?

22:54

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Mark Prisk)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) on securing this debate. I suspect that he was hoping that it might take place a bit earlier this evening, but it is nevertheless an important debate. It is good to see Members from all parties here, although I suspect that some might not be here entirely in the sole interest of the company.

I should like to set out the current position. Then I will address the individual questions that the hon. Gentleman has quite rightly raised. Sheffield Forgemasters is a good example of a successful British manufacturing company. The Government whole-heartedly support what the company does, and I would like to place on record our recognition of its excellent work.

I am well aware that since 2005, the chief executive, Dr Graham Honeyman, and the current management have, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, grown the business and made sure that it has developed into a highly skilled manufacturing firm. Remarkably, this was achieved during a recession that has been very difficult for manufacturing, but it has got through that without making any staff redundant. That is a testament to the commitment and dedication of Dr Honeyman and of everyone who works in that business.

So let there be no doubt about this Government’s admiration for Forgemasters, and nor should there be any doubt about our broader commitment to British manufacturing. It is precisely because of our desire to see a thriving UK economy and a vibrant manufacturing sector that, yes, we have had to take a number of difficult decisions in recent weeks. The decision not to proceed with the conditional offer of an £80 million loan to Sheffield Forgemasters was not taken lightly, but ultimately, we came to the reluctant decision that the loan was simply unaffordable at this point.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

What comment would the hon. Gentleman make on the allegations by the Deputy Prime Minister that Dr Honeyman was actually involved in looking after his shares, rather than seeking a loan in the private market? He has had to repudiate that in the Yorkshire Post, and it has caused enormous distress in Yorkshire that the Deputy Prime Minister of our country can make such outrageous allegations about a decent chief executive.

[Mr Prisk]

This decision has got nothing to do with dilution of equity, which I shall come to in a moment in detail, if I may. The point we are trying to establish is that there is no question of dilution. The issue for us has always been commercial affordability.

Some people have said that the decision is somehow a reflection on the company, the project, its management or staff; in fact, quite the opposite is true. We fully recognise that the project is commercially worth while, but the key point here is that this Government are serious about addressing the deficit and rebalancing the UK economy so that it can recover and grow once more. We are absolutely determined to ensure that all companies, including manufacturers, can operate in the right long-term business environment, so they can thrive and grow.

As a result, the first priority for this incoming coalition Government has to be to restore confidence in the UK’s finances, because confidence is the bedrock of our future economic growth. That means that we have to get to grips with the record budget deficit that we inherited, in order to ensure that this country is once again a good place in which to do business.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

But if the reasoning is not the letter from Andrew Cook or some other spurious reason that has already been knocked down by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), and it rests solely on the budget deficit, why was Forgemasters one of only two projects reviewed that were refused by the Government, and 12 projects were not?

[Mr Prisk]

I am just about to come to that. I believe that the critical issue here is affordability. We have had to deal with very difficult circumstances, not least the fact that on taking office, it became clear that the structural deficit is £12 billion more than we were led to believe by former Labour Ministers. If apologies are due, in my personal opinion they should come from the former Labour Ministers who were in this Chamber and failed to be straight with the British people about the size of the deficit. That is the critical issue.

Of course, the ideal outcome would be for the project to proceed with private sector finance, and I very much hope that in the longer term, that will still happen. However, I must make it clear that, given the scale of the budget deficit that the country faces, we considered the issue from the point of view of unaffordability.

[Angela Smith]

I respect the way in which the Minister is trying to respond to the debate tonight, but is not the £500,000 that Mr Cook donated to the Conservative party, along with the £54,000-worth of plane flights for the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), the real reason for the cancellation?

[Mr Prisk]

No. Let me make this very clear: in the letter that Mr Cook wrote, he mentioned a number of things. I have the letter with me. [Interruption.] I will answer the question fully. As the hon. Member for Sheffield South East correctly says, Mr Cook states, right at the top of the letter, that he is a donor to the Conservative party. He goes on to say that he is a senior industrialist in Sheffield with two casting plants in that city. [Hon. Members: “Oh!”] If the Labour party will listen for a moment, the point about that is that it tells me that we are talking about somebody who has some interest in and knowledge of the industry. He goes on to say that he may consider whether or not there is an issue of legality.

When I receive something of that nature, as a Minister, I do not give a monkey’s whether the person is a donor to the Conservative party, the Labour party, or any other party. What I am primarily concerned with is making sure that the matter is dealt with equally. With all representations—whether a person donates to the Labour party through the trade union movement, to the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats or any other party—my view is that they should go to the officials; they must decide on the issue of legality.

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Prisk]

Just one moment, because I think that the letter to which we are referring is not something that all Members have seen. As the hon. Members for Sheffield South East, and for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), know perfectly well, I made sure that the letter was made available—they nod in assent—so that we could look at it in the debate. If I had something to hide, I would not have done that, and hon. Members have noticed that.

I also say to Opposition Members that it is peculiar logic to suggest that a Conservative party donor is the reason why a Liberal Democrat Cabinet member in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and a Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary, should support the proposal. If the Labour party’s argument is that somehow, a Conservative party donor is managing to twist events in the interests of that party, it has made a mistake, and that is the problem.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Does the Minister therefore concur with the statement from Downing street that the decision was solely the responsibility of Liberal Democrat Ministers?

[Mr Prisk]

That is not actually what the statement says. The decision was taken by the Government as a whole, and rightly so, but nevertheless, it is one on which the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury obviously had the lead. As I made perfectly clear, the argument that somehow a Conservative party donor is twisting the arm of the Liberal Democrats does not make any logical sense.

[Caroline Flint]

We have already heard that Andrew Cook, a Tory donor, has approached and lobbied the Government on the issue. I just wonder to what extent his sister, Angela Knight, a former Tory MP and head of the British Bankers Association, is also part of a cabal that is influencing yes-or-no decisions on major projects that bring jobs to our country.

[Mr Prisk]

That is complete nonsense from the right hon. Lady. The sad part about this is that while I totally respect the interests of the local Members of Parliament here, who want to see a decision taken, the national Labour party Front Benchers are using the issue as a method of trying to unsettle the coalition Government.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Prisk]

I will move on, because the hon. Member for Sheffield South East, the constituency Member of Parliament, has asked a series of questions, and I want to try to answer them. I appreciate that Members from Wales and elsewhere may wish to intervene, but the matter relates to Sheffield, and I am going to try to deal with it. Let me move on, if I can.

I said that a private sector outcome was an important possibility. Hon. Members alluded to the fact that the company has set out its views in just the past 48 hours. It might help the House if we listened to those views. Dr Honeyman has said, in the past 24 hours:

“We are still keen to undertake the 15,000 tonne press development but feel that the company’s best interests will be served by suspending work on the project for the time being.”

[Interruption.] One moment, and I will give the answer that the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) seeks. The statement continues:

“The opportunities in global nuclear will continue to grow.

This pause will give the company, which has invested more than two years and significant funds to this project, time to resume a greater focus on growing our business into civil nuclear and other sectors.”

Dr Honeyman concludes—this is very relevant to the issue that Members are concerned about:

“As our thinking develops we will of course take up the Government’s offer of further discussions. The company recognises the difficult financial position faced by the country and accepts the loan offer will not be reinstated.”

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am listening to the Minister very carefully and he is making a great deal of the issue of unaffordability, but the Government have continued with projects in relation to Nissan and other industrial projects. Why Sheffield Forgemasters, when clearly the Government are saying to us that they appreciate just what a great company it is?

[Mr Prisk]

There are difficult decisions in this issue, and we have taken the view that the project is unaffordable. That is the challenge that we have had to deal with.

[Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Prisk]

No, I will not give way. The right hon. Gentleman can shout and scream all he wants. I will try to answer the constituency Member’s questions.

Having quoted the company chairman, I want to point out the position from the Government’s point of view. Yesterday, the Secretary of State, on receiving a note from the company, said:

“I will keep the situation under review and reconvene the meeting of experts with the Sheffield Forgemasters Board when they are ready, to review the investment potential with the company.”

On that basis—

[Mr Byrne]

I appreciate the argument that the Minister is rehearsing this evening. As the Chief Secretary to the Treasury at the time, I was involved in negotiations about this loan. I insisted on certain conditions and certain restructuring, including the issue of equity warrants. Is he aware of advice to me from Her Majesty’s Treasury officials that recommended acceptance of the loan on the grounds that it was indeed value for money?

[Mr Prisk]

When it was the right hon. Gentleman who told us in a letter that there was no money left, it is a little rich to be lectured by him on financial prudence. I am more concerned with making sure that we move on so that this company can do its job and stop the Labour party from playing party politics. It is bad for local jobs and it is bad for the company.

[Mr Byrne]

I appreciate the partisan point that the Minister is trying to rehearse. My question was much simpler. Was he aware of Her Majesty’s Treasury officials’ advice to me that this loan should have been accepted and was, in their judgment, value for money? Yes or no?

[Mr Prisk]

The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that Ministers receive a wide range of different advice. He knows that perfectly well. The issue, as I have said time and time again, is affordability. That is what I am dealing with.

Let me move on from the machinations of the Labour party and deal with the economic issues, which I think are the crucial ones. There has been some good news for Sheffield Forgemasters in the last few days. It has recently signed a £30 million trade agreement to oversee the development of power generation forgings with the Indian state-run power equipment maker, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. It is important here to bear in mind—I know that the local Members will be concerned about this—that the venture will be operated as a technology transfer agreement, and it will see BHEL buy both the technology rights and share Sheffield Forgemasters’ specialist engineering knowledge. That is an important issue. It is a 10-year agreement and it will help to strengthen and protect future markets for Sheffield Forgemasters in the Indian subcontinent. Also important is that the agreement will mainly serve India’s rapidly growing domestic market for turbine and power generation products, including the nuclear power plants.

Forgemasters specialist forging skills are in demand in markets around the world, and that will continue to be so. It will continue to play a part in the emerging UK nuclear supply chain, not least through the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, which the Government continue to support.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Minister alleged earlier that there were all sorts of people here who were not from Yorkshire. There are many Yorkshire Members of Parliament, and one on the Government Benches has just been wheedled into the Chamber.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

The Minister is responsible for his own speech. A number of questions have been asked, which the Minister has a right to respond to. If the House could be quieter, I would appreciate that.

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Minister said that people from Wales and other parts of the United Kingdom have no interest in this. That simply is not the case. There is a national interest here. Investment from Sheffield Forgemasters will impact on hundreds of millions of pounds of investment in my constituency. This is not just a local issue; this is a national issue, and the Minister should acknowledge that.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

That is not a point of order for the Chair, and the Minister is responsible for the interventions that he takes. As I said, a number of questions have been asked by the constituency Member who has called the debate, and he deserves to have his answers.

[Mr Prisk]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I entirely agree with that.

I turn now to some of the other questions that were raised by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East in his opening remarks. First, he questioned the issue of affordability, and other Members have also raised that. One of the key points to bear in mind is that, in the light of the huge deficit that we inherited, this Government had to take the decision on the grounds that this project was not affordable. One of the key changes is that the structural deficit emerged after the election as being £12 billion worse than Ministers announced.

[Paul Blomfield]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Prisk]

No, because it is important that I try to answer some of the other questions that were raised and I have only five minutes left. The hon. Gentleman asked some eminently sensible questions and I want to try to give him the answers.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

What about the letter?

[Mr Prisk]

I will come to the letter in a moment.

The hon. Member for Sheffield South East asked me what affordability actually means. There seems to be some confusion about this on the part of Labour Members. Financing a loan of this nature needed £80 million more debt to be issued. That would have meant £80 million more debt on the Government’s books this year. So to claim that somehow this loan would not be as challenging as all that or would not really represent debt on the books of the Government is not correct. The reality is that by taking on that commitment we would have been adding to the enormous debt, regardless of the nature of the assets it financed.

I turn now to the question of the letter and the background to it, which Labour Members appear to be more interested in than the question of the company—[Interruption.] I exclude the local Sheffield Members, but their colleagues appear to be more concerned about the party politics. Local Members have made representation to the Department by means of a freedom of information inquiry. They put their letters forward. On seeing those I ensured that their requests were answered, so that they received all the information this evening for this debate. That is an important point, because one of the accusations against us is that somehow we are not being transparent. In making sure that those hon. Members who tabled freedom of information requests received the information for this debate, we are being—let me be crystal clear on this point—absolutely transparent on this matter.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Prisk]

No, because the hon. Member for Sheffield South East has asked questions that need to be answered—[Interruption.] When the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) calms down, I will reply.

The Department received an email from Mr Cook’s company. While it was noted, as every representation is noted, it had no bearing on the decision-making process. That is an important point.

[Ms Rosie Winterton (Doncaster Central) (Lab)]

Did you see the letter?

[Mr Prisk]

Of course I saw the letter, because it was emailed to me. As I have made clear, it was apparent from the letter that this was a business man who had knowledge of Sheffield and the industry and was making various representations. My view was that that should go to the officials. It went to the officials and the answer that came back was “We have noted your letter, Mr Cook.” That was it. There has been no further—[Interruption.] The reply is included in the replies that I have given to the local Members. It is clear—[Interruption.] No, I am sorry, but that is wrong.

The other question that has been raised by several hon. Members is the issue of the dilution of equity. I set out the situation clearly in my remarks earlier. The Government’s decision had nothing to do with the shareholder structure. In my view, Dr Honeyman and his team deserve credit for putting this together—

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

If the Minister says tonight that this decision had nothing to do with the directors’ shareholdings, why did the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister allege that that was the case as justification for this decision?

[Mr Prisk]

The right hon. Gentleman usually makes intelligent contributions, but that was just part of the knockabout nonsense—[Interruption.] This has always been, as my colleagues and I have made clear, an issue of affordability. That is the crucial point in this debate.

[Mr Betts]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Prisk]

No. I have 60 seconds left and I want to ensure that I draw my thoughts to a conclusion.

Business in this country cannot prosper while we have a record budget deficit hanging over us. That is the simple fact, but it is one that—sadly—the Front-Bench Members of the Labour party seem unable to grasp. A clear plan to eliminate the structural deficit by the end of this Parliament can leave the markets in no doubt that the Government will live within their means. That is why we have placed fiscal discipline at the top of our programme for governance. Our job in government is to create a stable, long-term framework so that all companies—

23:15

House adjourned without Question put (Standing Order No. 9(7)).

Deferred Divisions

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

Division 35

Ayes: 499

---

Conservative: 242
Labour: 195
Liberal Democrat: 44
Democratic Unionist Party: 5
Scottish National Party: 5
Plaid Cymru: 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 2
Independent: 1
Alliance: 1
Green Party: 1

Noes: 21

---

Conservative: 16
Labour: 4
Democratic Unionist Party: 1

Petitions

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Petitions

Wednesday 21 July 2010

Housing (Croydon)

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Petitions

The Petition of New Addington residents,

Declares that much needed family homes are being shoe-horned into unsuitable former garage sites that compromise the visual amenity and environment of old and new residents alike, and that the local Council thus pays disrespect to New Addington.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to investigate whether value for money is being achieved from the housing grant paid to Croydon Council and to place improved conditions on quality of design and setting for new Council housing in the London Borough of Croydon.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.—[Presented by Mr Andrew Pelling, Official Report, 30 March 2010; Vol. 508, c. 790 .]

[P000814]

Observations from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government:

The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government understands that the London Borough of Croydon has granted planning permission for a housing scheme on a former garage site in New Addington and that the Registered Social Landlord is preparing to go on site. The Secretary of State also notes that although the garages were a source of anti-social behaviour, there are objections to the housing scheme.

The Government’s policy is not to interfere with the day-to-day planning control functions of a local planning authority unless it is absolutely necessary to do so. This is because local authority councillors are elected to represent the views of local people and, in the main, it is these councillors who are in the best position to decide whether a development should go ahead or not.

As part of their proposals for Building the Big Society, the Government intend to give communities more powers. In relation to the planning system they propose to give neighbourhoods far more ability to determine the shape of the places in which their inhabitants live.

The Government recently revised Planning Policy Guidance 3: Housing, putting power back in the hands of local authorities and communities to take the decisions that are best for them, and decide for themselves the best locations and types of development in their areas. This gives Local Authorities the freedom to prevent overdevelopment of their areas.

The majority of grant funding for house building is not paid to Councils, but direct to Registered Social Landlords. The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) works closely with Local Authorities to agree strategy and investment based on locally determined priorities. The HCA is working in this way with the London Borough of Croydon to provide housing which meets local needs and contributes to the creation of high quality places. Key funding provided directly to Croydon Council is for the Local Authority New Build (LANB) programme. The HCA assesses all bids made by Local Authorities for LANB funding against four areas of criteria—value for money, deliverability, strategic fit and design and quality. The Secretary of State has no reason to believe that value for money is not being achieved and does not propose to investigate at this stage, but he understands that the HCA will raise the concerns lodged in the petition from New Addington residents with the London Borough of Croydon to ensure that the housing which is provided within New Addington provides the best solution possible for residents.

Pear Tree Farm (Croydon)

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Petitions

The Petition of the people of Addington and Forestdale,

Declares that the residents are concerned that there should be a regularisation of the planning arrangements for Pear Tree Farm, a waste transfer station nestled in the Green Belt on the borders of the London Borough of Croydon and Tandridge District Council.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to take steps to see Croydon and Tandridge Councils regularise the planning arrangements at the site and to see the Environment Agency review the Waste Transfer Licence for Pear Tree Farm.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.—[Presented by Mr Andrew Pelling, Official Report, 29 March 2010; Vol. 508, c. 605 .]

[P000795]

Observations from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government:

Planning arrangements

The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is aware of the concerns of local residents about the activities on the Pear Tree Farm site.

The Secretary of State understands that lawful planning use of the land in question was determined in 1981 when an established use certificate was granted for use of part of the site for

“the dumping and transfer of waste building materials, top soil and manure and for the parking of farm and other commercial vehicles”.

The Secretary of State is informed that following increases in the activity on the site and local complaints, Croydon Council undertook a series of enforcement investigations, subsequent to which—across a number of years—a series of planning applications and applications for Lawful Development Certificate have been made and refused, and that there are four enforcement notices requiring remedial action by September 2008 which remain extant. He understands that Croydon Council is continuing to collect evidence to establish the degree of planning control breaches further to the extant enforcement notices in relation to the possibility of further action.

The Government’s policy is not to interfere with the day to day planning control functions of a local planning authority unless it is absolutely necessary to do so. This is because local authority Councillors are elected to represent the views of local people and, in the main, it is these Councillors who are in the best position to decide whether a development should go ahead or be refused, or whether enforcement action should be taken. In determining any planning application the local planning authority are required to have regard to all material considerations, including the development plan, national policies and views expressed by third parties. It is, of course, for local planning authorities to provide whatever justification it may be appropriate to give for their decisions and procedures. The Secretary of State’s potential formal decision-making role in relation to any planning application or appeal (against refusal of permission or in relation to enforcement) also means it would be inappropriate for him to seek to influence the decisions of the local planning authorities in relation to the site in question.

Environment Agency regulation

The Secretary of State is informed that the London Waste Regulation Authority (predecessor of the Environment Agency) issued a waste management licence (permit) to Samuel Smith to receive and handle certain low risk types of waste on the site in 1982 and again in 1986. He is also informed that the Environment Agency regularly inspects the permitted area of the site against the licence conditions. Although there have been minor permit breaches, no legal action has been taken against the operators. It is understood that the Environment Agency has some operational concerns with the site, and has begun a permit review to address these. The reason for any such review is to update an old permit and to provide the appropriate level of regulatory control to this site relevant to current activities.

Planning (Chester)

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Petitions

The Humble Petition of the people of Chester in the County of Cheshire being electors of the Local Authority of Cheshire West and Chester,

Sheweth, that in the process of our new Local Authority of Cheshire West and Chester planning the disposal of its Chester County Hall in a restricted preferential sale to Chester University, and of making a costly move of its Chester headquarters, on a leasehold agreement, to the new so called ‘HQ Building’ beside Chester racecourse, the local community has found itself excluded throughout from any meaningful consultation over the plan with Council; and has additionally been denied essential information prior to the completion of the scheme, and subsequent to it, that we are certain we should have been entitled to know.

Sheweth, that this failure by our local authority to consult with its people over this planning matter is in conflict with the legislative requirements and advisory guidance issued by Parliament in the form of, for example, the publication ‘Communities in Control-real people, real power’, and the ‘Action for Empowerment’ and ‘Duty to Involve’ white papers stating a statutory duty for all councils to engage fully and from an early stage with the public over such matters; and that this behaviour towards its public by Cheshire West and Chester Council is, in addition, in conflict with its own published ‘Statement of Community Involvement’ and the operative interim and draft forms of its ‘Sustainable Community Strategy’.

Sheweth in addition the validity of this most respectful submission by dutifully reminding this House of the relevance of and of the UK’s commitment as a full signatory to the ‘European Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision Making, and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters’; this generally being known as ‘The Arhus Agreement’.

Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House refer our petition to the relevant Select Committee for Communities and Local Government or other body as you deem appropriate requesting that the body review the effectiveness of the said legislation and guidance concerned with the duty to involve provided by this House with reference to the way local authorities are interpreting and operating that legislation and guidance in the public interest and with regard to our legislated rights.

And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c.—[Presented by Christine Russell, Official Report, 23 March 2010; Vol. 508, c. 216 .]

[P000766]

Observations from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government:

The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is aware that a planning application was submitted to Cheshire West and Chester Council in respect of County Hall. He is advised that the application was submitted on 15 September 2009.

Cheshire West and Chester Borough Council are responsible for the day to day planning control in their area, and the Secretary of State cannot comment on the merits or otherwise of any application. The Government’s policy is not to interfere with the jurisdiction of a local planning authority unless it is necessary to do so. This is because local authority Councillors are elected to represent the views of local people and, in the main, it is these Councillors who are in the best position to decide whether a development should go ahead. It is, of course, for local planning authorities to provide whatever justification it may be appropriate to give for their decisions and procedures.

In determining a planning application the local planning authority who have full knowledge of the local circumstances are required to have regard to all material considerations including the development plan, national policies and views expressed by third parties.

The Secretary of State can decide to call-in an application for his own determination if he considers that it raises matters of more than local importance, but his policy is to be very selective about this.

Following the application to the Council, representations were received requesting the Secretary of State to call-in the application but it was considered that the matter did not raise issues of more than local significance and so the matter was left to the Council to determine.

Planning and Development (Benfleet, Essex)

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Petitions

The Petition of Brian Keeler, the residents of Castle Point and others,

Declares that they object to the proposed development of the area between Nos. 18 to 32 High Road, Benfleet to construct a building providing 5 Retail Units at Ground Level, 22 Parking Spaces, 2 Offices, plus 12 x 2 bed flats and 2 x 1 bed flats at 1st and 2nd floor levels; that this development should be rejected because the proposed, much larger building would dominate and overlook existing properties, bring unacceptable problems including inadequate parking, fails to show where access to and from the site parking area, bearing in mind an existing public parking area in Adelaide Gardens, vague refuse storage area, restricted sight lines for emerging traffic from St Mary’s Drive, reduction of the pavement, loss of light entering adjoining buildings and relocation of the heritage telephone kiosk and post box; further declares that this development would further spoil the Conservation Area and create unacceptable stress on the existing infrastructure, including roads, schools, rail, doctors, dentists, etc.; that for these and many other valid planning reasons this application be rejected by the local Councillors, elected to represent their constituents, and that given the importance to the wider community of protecting this unique Conservation Area, unelected and unaccountable officers must properly and widely consult the public before permitting such developments.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to press Castle Point Borough Council, and all Councillors, to reject this planning application and to substantially protect the unique St Mary’s Conservation area.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.—[Presented by Bob Spink, Official Report, Tuesday 30 March 2010; Vol. 508, c. 784 .]

[P000799]

Observations from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government:

The Secretary of State is aware that a planning application had been submitted to Castle Point Borough Council in respect of the above development. He is advised that the application was rejected by the Borough Council on 26 May 2020.

Planning and Development (Hadleigh, Essex)

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Petitions

The Petition of local residents and others objecting to the back garden development of eight flats in two blocks at 21 Lynton Road Hadleigh,

Declares that the proposed development is out of character with the area, has insufficient parking and garden amenity space, would make an unacceptable imposition on the street scene, is by its bulk and design over obtrusive, would make unacceptable impositions on local road congestion, and on fresh water demand and sewage and surface water disposal, would make local road junctions serving the streets more dangerous, does not provide suitable access to the site from the road and would create disturbance, noise and other problems for local residents; further notes that there is sufficient previously developed land to provide all the housing needs for this region without such intensive building in the green belt or back gardens and that the council is under no obligation or pressure from the Government to vote for this application if it chooses not to.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to press Castle Point Borough Council, and the Conservative Council Group, to ensure this application is decided by councillors who can be held to account, rather than officers, and that it is rejected.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.—[Presented by Bob Spink, Official Report, 30 March 2010; Vol. 508, c. 784.]

[P000798]

Observations from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government:

The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is aware that a planning application had been submitted to Castle Point Borough Council in respect of the above development. He is advised that the application was rejected by the Borough Council on 8th April 2010.

Dunstable Northern Bypass

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Petitions

The Petition of Dunstable Town Council in the constituency of South West Bedfordshire,

Declares that the town of Dunstable suffers serious traffic congestion; further declares that a link road between the A5 and M1 would relieve this congestion; and notes that HM Treasury approved this link on 9 December 2009.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to commence without delay the A5-M1 link as approved by HM Treasury on 9 December 2009.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.—[Presented by Andrew Selous, Official Report, 30 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 967 .]

[P000840]

Observations from the Secretary of State for Transport:

Draft Orders for the A5-M1 link were published on 9 December 2009, but HM Treasury has never given funding approval for this scheme. On 11 December 2009 HM Treasury approved funding for the construction of M1 Junctions 10-13 Hard Shoulder Running scheme that is now on site. This scheme is separate from the A5-M1 link.

The A5-M1 Link scheme is being prepared. However, the Public Inquiry due to be held in July this year has been postponed, in common with other Highway Agency schemes at the same stage, because it is important to ensure that there is clarity during the statutory process on the availability of funding for this scheme. Unfortunately, clarity on the availability of funding will not be available until after the Spending Review. If the scheme is prioritised in the Spending Review it would need to successfully complete the statutory process and receive final approval of the construction budget before it can proceed to site.

The Public Inquiry process could be started quickly once the outcome of the Spending Review is known in the autumn.

Westminster Hall

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Westminster Hall

Wednesday 21 July 2010

[Martin Caton in the Chair]

National Apprenticeship Scheme

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Westminster Hall

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—(James Duddridge.)

09:30

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I am grateful to Mr Speaker for enabling me to re-secure this debate. I am also grateful to him and many others for their kind reminders about its starting time, which, together with the help of three alarm clocks and several telephone calls from my wife in Gloucester, have ensured that this parliamentary apprentice has already rehearsed his speech in this Chamber this morning. I am sorry that the shadow Minister for apprenticeships, the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), is unable to be with us, but if he has any difficulties with a faulty printer, I am available to offer assistance.

It is important to hold this debate on apprenticeships, and I am grateful that the Minister, who knows the subject so well, is here to respond. It is telling that the majority of Members here are Conservatives. One irony of the past 13 years is that the previous Government could have done so much more to promote the importance and perception of apprenticeships. I have not found a single secondary school in my constituency that has made presentations on apprenticeships to its pupils, but they all worked assiduously on the previous Government’s drive to get 50% of students into university—a target that was never achieved and which has thankfully now been dropped. That took place when the previous Government allowed manufacturing to decline at its fastest pace ever and youth unemployment to grow to its highest ever. Those sad facts are not unrelated.

Let us be clear about what is at stake. Without apprentices, our national and local capability to do and make things, and our ability to stem the decline in manufacturing and retain, if not improve, our status as the world’s sixth greatest manufacturer will simply not produce results. Only 10 years ago, Gloucestershire manufactured 24% of its GDP; today, the figure is 16%. That is not because our service sectors have grown, but because manufacturing has shrunk faster than anything else. That is not acceptable. The situation must be turned around, and apprentices are the key, just as they are to reducing the 18%—almost one in five—of our 16 to 24-year-olds who are neither learning nor earning. If ever there was a time to support apprenticeships, not only in the manufacturing and construction sectors, it is now.

It is true that the previous Government did some rebranding and restructuring work on apprenticeships, and put some taxpayers’ money behind that.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman makes some interesting points about the previous Government’s work, but is he aware that in the borough of Wirral between 1997 and 2008, the number of apprenticeships rose from 90 to 2,000? His characterisation of the past decade as one of no growth is, certainly in my area, a mischaracterisation.

[Richard Graham]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I recognise what she says. If she waits a second, I will cover that specific point.

The previous Government put some taxpayers’ money behind their restructuring and promised to create 500,000 apprenticeships. I appreciate that, but it is also true that they missed that target, like so many others, by a very wide margin—about 50%. The restructuring broadly fitted the epitaph for his party given by the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), who said that a day without a new initiative was a day wasted for new Labour. The idea of the restructuring was more important than the outcome. I will touch on that later.

I have a suspicion that the shadow Minister here today, the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), might try to distract us by referring to the decision by the Department for Work and Pensions not to extend the future jobs fund and to redeploy the cash as part of the Work programme. However, we are not talking about future jobs; in Gloucester, we are talking about placements in the public sector or quangos, which have kept people out of the unemployment statistics for six months and provided some useful skills, but which have not led to job offers. That is different from an employment contract for a serious three-year apprenticeship, which is what business wants.

It therefore falls to the coalition Government to recognise and restore the vital role of apprenticeships for future business growth in many sectors, increase the number of apprenticeships so that our record youth unemployment can be reduced and implement an expanded Government programme of apprenticeships in a much leaner, more flexible and user-friendly way.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this interesting debate. The new coalition has announced 50,000 new apprenticeships over a number of years. Does he agree that those apprenticeships need to be relevant to today’s needs and future needs, and that there need to be linkages with industry so that we can find out exactly what those needs are? The courses offered by universities and further education colleges also need to be relevant.

Furthermore, young people need easy access to apprenticeships. In Northern Ireland, they must be sponsored by industry—whether the building industry or whatever—to go into apprenticeships, but that is difficult today, and the financial reward is not what it should be. I trust that the new coalition will consider those points, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree with me on them.

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Gentleman makes a number of good points, some of which I am coming to. He is absolutely right that training providers need to tailor their courses to be most relevant to business needs.

That leads conveniently to my next point. The approach that the coalition Government should take is about not simply good management practice, but a political philosophy. I agree with the former Labour Minister, Lord Myners, who told the other House that his colleagues never understood the fact that the Government do not create jobs, but set, or fail to set, the framework in which businesses create jobs. I also agree with Oona King, who recently regretted that new Labour’s belief in social justice counted for nothing if it forgot successful economic stewardship. Our mission is therefore to spread apprenticeships, which are critical to restoring the economy, and to boost social justice. There is no justice in increasing the number of those dependent on handouts. My city of Gloucester is a proud working city, not a centre of benefits, and apprenticeships are a major gateway to work and a better life.

[Esther McVey (Wirral West) (Con)]

I want to pick up on the point about the Wirral apprenticeships raised by the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern). Although we are doing well in Wirral, we are seriously over-subscribed. Last year, more than 1,000 young people submitted 3,117 applications to the fewer than 150 businesses involved. To move forward, we are looking to build on something that has done so well.

Do colleagues agree that although we are talking about apprenticeships, there is something that each and every one of us in the room could do? It is good to talk about these things, but we in Wirral West are about to embark on taking on political apprentices, and I know that other colleagues are doing the same. Former apprentices include Sir Alex Ferguson, Alan Titchmarsh, Henry Ford, Vincent van Gogh, Isambard Kingdom Brunel—

[Martin Caton (in the Chair)]

Order. I am being indulgent with a new Member, but interventions should be brief. If the hon. Lady wants to make a speech, she should try to catch my eye.

[Esther McVey]

Thank you, Mr Caton. I was responding to what had been said.

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend makes a number of good points and anticipates brilliantly what was going to be my punchline.

[Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend say a word about the problem of girls? Two per cent. of apprenticeships go to girls and something needs to be done about it. Does he have any ideas on how to encourage girls to go into engineering, science, technology or mathematics?

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend began by asking whether I could do something about the problem of girls; on the whole, I would encourage them. He makes a valid point, as always, and I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) for pointing out the need for more apprenticeships in her constituency. I hope that many will benefit from the expansion of apprenticeships that the Minister has announced, which I shall encourage him to continue with in due course.

If Alan Sugar did much to bring the word “apprentice” to our TV screens, ours must be the Government who bring apprentices into many more large, medium and even small companies. There are different programmes of help for the young, emerging from three different Departments under the coalition Government: the Work programme from the Department for Work and Pensions, the national citizen scheme from the Cabinet Office, and apprenticeships through the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Those will require some cross-departmental co-ordination, perhaps through the new Cabinet Committee on social justice. The Minister may want to offer his thoughts on that co-ordination later, but today I shall focus on apprenticeships.

[Alison McGovern]

Business confidence is crucial for expanding apprenticeships and we are in a difficult and uncertain time, especially given the alterations to business support through the regional development agencies. What would the hon. Gentleman suggest to the Government to keep business confidence high in a period of uncertainty, and how could the Government fill the gap in work on skills at a regional level, as we move—perhaps—towards local economic partnerships, maybe in two years’ time?

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Lady asks what I would do to boost business confidence. My feeling, as a former businessman, is that business confidence depends above all on a stable macro-economic situation. That is precisely what the coalition Government are pledged to restore, and I believe that they made significant steps forward with that in the emergency Budget a few weeks ago. Business confidence depends on that, and I believe that it is growing. That is reflected in several indicators, not least falling unemployment, at the moment.

[Mr Heald]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend is aware that Essex county council recently sponsored, I think, 140 apprenticeships to ensure that the engineering base will be maintained in the county, which is of course run by a Conservative authority. Is that perhaps an example to follow?

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend makes a good point and gives a striking example. My congratulations go to Essex county council.

Today’s debate could have centred on the situation in my own city and the county of Gloucestershire, but I decided to widen it into a national debate, because the issues are mostly generic. Our experience in Gloucester can help to bring alive the national picture, and other hon. Members will supplement that with their remarks. I want to begin by discussing the value of apprenticeships, and I shall make suggestions about their status, the role of schools, the structure and measurement of administrative organisations, and the current types of apprenticeship, including matters of price and flexibility. I am grateful to the many organisations and individuals who have given me their time and thoughts.

When I was a boy, one of my favourite stories was that of the 12th century meeting, before their armies, of the giant Richard the Lionheart and the more slender Saladin. Richard showed his great strength by bringing down his enormously heavy double-handed sword to break in half a steel anvil. Saladin then tossed a silk scarf into the air and slashed it in two with his curved scimitar, with great strength of wrist. The important thing was that neither could have done what the other did. Both were remarkable. So it is with degrees and apprenticeships. I am quite incapable of fixing many things—including faulty printers, but also things under the bonnet of my car—and some of my friends who are engineering geniuses might struggle with essays and speeches. We need both skills, but it is absurd to rate the degree more highly than the apprenticeship, and the marketplace will often reward the practical skill more highly.

My key message to students, parents and schools in my constituency and more widely is that an apprenticeship, especially a higher apprenticeship, is every bit as much of an achievement as a good degree from a good university. I urge the Minister to direct the Department for Education to encourage all secondary schools to provide their students with presentations on apprenticeships from training providers, employers and apprentices themselves. Those presentations could start by making the important distinction that from day one apprentices earn to learn, rather than building up debt. They could spell out the differences between the second, third and fourth, or higher, levels of apprenticeship, which many people are unaware of.

I hope that the Minister will confirm that under this Government more status and recognition will be given to apprentices. I propose that we should create a national apprenticeship day to celebrate what apprentices have achieved and what they contribute throughout the country. A special stamp issue, for example, could commemorate some of the world’s most famous apprentices, some of whom my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West alluded to, such as Vincent van Gogh, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Alexander McQueen.

As to the structure of Government bodies involved with apprenticeships, I am not absolutely sure that the previous Government’s disbanding of one quango, the Learning and Skills Council, to create three, led by the Skills Funding Agency, just as the budget deficit began to reach record proportions, was the right move. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on that. I believe that employers and training providers broadly welcome the National Apprenticeship Service, but I am sure that the administrative cost associated with the programme could be reduced. Perhaps he will say something about that too.

The structure is also very top-down. There is a quota system, parcelled out to regional offices of the NAS and from there to the shires—rather like the unloved regional spatial strategies in the planning sector—and constructed on the basis of historical demand, which is a bit like looking out of the rear window while driving. The system—in Gloucestershire, anyway—is inflexible. If training providers find that demand for one sector or age group has increased, and demand for another has diminished, they cannot swap or trade quotas. In an era when businesses can trade carbon emissions, it surely should be possible to trade apprenticeships, or to do away with the regional approach and give my county and others a sum of money for apprenticeships. The local economic organisation, which in our case is Gloucestershire First, and the NAS could decide how to manage it.

That leads me to the question of marketing, which in Gloucestershire is done by one employee of the NAS. That is ambitious and she depends on distributors, whose co-operation will vary without any direct, commission-style incentive. I sense that the quality of the NAS database and access to employers varies, and I believe that the service should work more closely with the local economic organisation to target and penetrate leading employers. That would be easier if the funds were controlled locally.

A related matter is penetration of the small and medium-sized enterprise market. The Department has figures that show that the majority of employers with apprenticeships are SMEs, but I believe that those figures are distorted by, for example, the number of hairdressers, and that take-up by members of the Federation of Small Businesses—5,000 of them in Gloucestershire—remains very small.

Many small firms, such as IT consultants, public relations companies or recruitment firms, could benefit from taking on apprentices as their order books expand again, but they are reluctant to get involved, for fear of bringing excessive paperwork into the office. The NAS should focus on the FSB and SME market, using examples of clients who have found that the business of taking on apprentices is not nearly as cumbersome as it might at first appear.

Will the Minister also consider breaking training provider courses into bite-sized chunks or units? That would be popular, especially with SMEs, which do not always need a complete training course alongside work-based learning. There is, effectively, a market for an apprenticeship-lite. My final suggestion on this theme would be for the NAS to consider the provision of courses in Gloucester relative to actual or likely high-growth sectors, as one or two hon. Members have mentioned. Examples might be green energy and even more conventional sectors such as real estate agency, which are not covered at the moment.

The NAS needs to talk to some of our newest and most entrepreneurial companies, such as Gloucester’s Book Depository, which yesterday was awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise as the UK’s third-fastest-growing company. There is plenty more marketing to be done, and Gloucestershire First and similar agencies in other counties can and should help the NAS to gain access to it.

On pricing, the package of Government support is worth about three times as much for 16 to 18-year-olds as it is for those aged 19 to 24. What is the formula for arriving at that ratio? Does the Minister believe that it is right? Several employers have told me that they would like a level playing field for the various age groups. In some cases, as with the electrical engineering training specialist Clarkson Evans, it appears that health and safety requirements disadvantage employers who cannot take 16 to 18-year-olds. Under a flexible scheme, they could swap x 16 to 18-year-old places for y 19 to 24-year-olds. However, as I pointed out earlier, that cannot easily be done.

Although the cash value of Government support for apprenticeships is fixed, the price from the training provider and the salary from the employer vary considerably. That can be seen either as choice and market freedom, with the price being weighed against the service quality of the training, or as a distortion of the market that encourages market consolidation and might drive out niche private sector providers. My instinct is that we have a bit of both, which may not necessarily help the smaller players. One way around that would be to provide employers with more advice on apprenticeship quality.

Quality of delivery is hard to analyse. The NAS can offer some pointers, but it cannot offer much qualitative judgment; after all, the trainers are their customers. I would love to see a simplified Ofsted-like report on each training provider’s apprenticeship training schemes, and their good and not so good points, just as I hope that the Gloucester-based Quality Assurance Agency will one day do something similar for universities. Parents could then see immediately on websites what was best and worst about universities and apprenticeship schemes. Choice is good, but informed choice on universities and apprenticeships would be even better.

Equally important is the way different bodies are measured. The NAS is proud of the fact that, at 79%, its success rate in Gloucester—I would put inverted commas around that term—is high for the south-west, and that the south-west has the highest in the country, up significantly from a few years ago. I consider such success rate measures misleading. First, this measures only how many of those who started apprenticeships actually finished them. The NAS has no involvement with the individual apprentice. Should a judgment be made on that measure—in reality, it is customer service—or would a better benchmark be success in persuading a higher percentage of employers to take on apprentices, and in cross-selling new apprenticeships in different sectors to existing clients?

We need effective sales benchmarks for the marketing arm, not customer experience ones, which are more relevant to the training provider. My recommendation is that the Government should reconsider the measurement of various organisations. If the Minister was looking for a third way, he could measure success on both sales and customer service criteria. The important thing, however, is that the current success criteria do not prove success. That, I am sorry to say, is very new Labour; it is like the future jobs fund, which should have been called the “keep me off the unemployment stats” fund.

I draw the attention of the House to one innovative way in which Gloucestershire has succeeded in stimulating employer demand for apprenticeships. Our newspaper, The Citizen, together with Gloucestershire college and other colleges, challenged businesses to create 100 new apprentices in 100 days. They succeeded, and will shortly launch the next “100 in 100” challenge. That marketing initiative has been copied in the south-west by related Associated Newspapers titles, and it could resonate elsewhere.

I invite the Minister to join the launch of the next “100 in 100” challenge to see the wide range of companies, from many sectors, that are interested in apprenticeships—they range from hairdressing to engineering—and which are encouraged by our local newspaper and our leading further education college. The launch will also give him the chance to show that the coalition Government are doing more with less. Last year, the Minister with responsibility for apprenticeships and the Minister for the South-West were both present, but the coalition Government have dispensed with regional Ministers—something, I believe, that not even the shadow apprenticeships Minister would greatly mourn.

I realise that other Members wish to speak, so I shall summarise the main points of my argument. I hope that I have made clear our need for apprenticeships and my enormous support for them—and as many of them as possible. I would be delighted if the Minister said when we are to have the additional 50,000 apprenticeships that I and many others here today have welcomed. Does he agree that doubling our already strong commitment to 100,000 new apprenticeships—a figure that we had in mind during the election campaign, before the full truth of the previous Government’s accounts was exposed—is a desirable goal, and might achieving it be possible over the next year or so?

I have raised questions about the number of quangos involved, who gets what budgeting quota, and how that is measured and against what targets. I hope that the Minister agrees that it is time to scrap the regional approach, and that we should devolve responsibility as soon as possible, giving training providers more flexibility and making apprenticeships more responsive to the marketplace and business demands. I hope that he agrees also that the NAS and local economic entities should work together, and that the NAS and the FSB should engage to ensure more apprenticeships in the SME market.

I hope that the Minister and everyone here today agrees that the impact of apprenticeships on youth unemployment can and should be striking. Gloucestershire took up 4,500 apprenticeships in 2009, of which the city of Gloucester had 1,200—almost the same number as the current record number of young unemployed. Doubling the number of apprenticeships would have a significant impact on those young people not earning or learning, with knock-on benefits for their families and communities, and probably a good effect on antisocial behaviour and the cost of policing and probation work. It would also contribute to growing business and tax revenues.

Lastly, does the Minister agree that apprenticeships are a genuine example of investment by Government and employers that can have a positive impact on the community in several ways? I believe that the combination of more opportunities provided by the Government and better co-operation from schools, with more courses and more flexibility, the transferability of unused quotas and a national apprenticeship day, would increase employer interest and make the future for our youngsters much brighter.

Reviving apprenticeships was a Labour idea, but it is for the coalition Government to sort it out, take it forward and make it work effectively, and to make the renaissance of apprenticeships a reality. That is my goal for my city of Gloucester and for Gloucestershire, and I intend to put my money where my speech is. I shall follow the example set by my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) and hire an apprentice for my office in Gloucester, who will do a business admin course at Gloucestershire college. It is not often that we MPs have the chance to practise what we preach, but today provides such an opportunity.

09:57

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on initiating the debate. The quality of his speech and the thoughtfulness of his remarks will be noted by the House. From what I have heard about previous Parliaments, I think that support for apprenticeships among my right hon. and hon. Friends, both here and elsewhere in the House, has definitely increased. I am grateful to my hon. Friend and to the Minister for allowing me time to speak today.

I spoke at length about apprenticeships in my maiden speech on 2 June. I said that one in eight adults in Harlow have literacy problems and that one in five have difficulties with numeracy. We have a huge skills deficit, with nearly 4,000 young people not in employment, education or training. Harlow is one of the towns worst affected by that problem. I have come to the conclusion that education and skills are the real answer, but we need to transform the nature of vocational training and apprenticeships. If we give the young the necessary skills and training, we will give them opportunities and jobs. Expanding and improving apprenticeships is not just about economic efficiency based on pure utilitarianism; it involves profoundly conservative ideas—helping people to help themselves, the work ethic, opportunity and, most important, social justice. I have seen for myself the power of apprenticeships to transform lives.

I have two substantial points to make. First, a change in policy must be supported by a change in culture. Secondly, the pioneering apprenticeship scheme run by Essex county council, to which my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Mr Heald) alluded, could, I believe, be replicated throughout the United Kingdom.

Despite the grand wishes of the previous Government, they made going to university their primary symbol of aspiration, and that came at the expense of vocational training. The right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband) says he wants 60% of all young people to go to university. Not so long ago, young people going to university would get their picture in the local newspaper—I was in my local paper for being only the second ever member of my family to do so. Now, youngsters are burdened with debt and struggle to find skilled jobs when they graduate, and some smart young people are beginning to recognise that a university degree is not always the right qualification—one size does not fit all. The problem is that apprenticeships lack cachet. There is no graduating ceremony, little institutional prestige and few opportunities to network and make friends. The social side of apprenticeship, too, does not hold a candle to that of attending university.

There is also a perception problem. Edge, the apprenticeship organisation, says that two-thirds of teachers regard their knowledge of apprenticeships as poor and that just one in four teachers recommends apprenticeships over higher education. As an MP, I intend to play my part in changing how we regard apprenticeships. I want a Britain in which apprenticeships are not just promoted by teachers, Government and businesses, but seen as the No. 1 option by both students and their families. I want being an apprentice to be as highly regarded as going to Cambridge or any other university.

This Government stood on a platform of change: people voted for change and they have got it. However, if we look closely at the policies of the coalition Government, we will see that they are also about conserving some of the great traditions of our history. Apprenticeships are just one such tradition. Records of British apprenticeships date from the 12th century. By the 14th century, they were flourishing and parents could apprentice their child to a master craftsman from the ages of 14 to 19; they would pay a premium to the craftsman and a contract would be signed. In 1563, the Statute of Artificers and Apprentices was passed to regulate and protect apprenticeships, forbidding anyone from practising a trade without first serving as an apprentice.

From 1601, parish apprenticeships were introduced under Queen Elizabeth’s Poor Law. They were a way of training poor orphans—boys and girls—in farm labour, brick-making and running a 17th century household. The worshipful livery companies of the City of London were the apex of that tradition. They brought to apprenticeships not only rigour, but pageantry and cultural prestige, as we see in the engravings of Hogarth and the novels of Charles Dickens. To be a freeman of the City of London in a livery company was a higher honour than graduating from Oxford or Cambridge university. That is the sort of prestige that I hope this Government will restore to vocational training.

I should like to see a royal society of apprentices, rather like the Law Society or the British Medical Association, with a social and professional network similar to that provided by universities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester said, we should have an annual apprenticeships day in every local authority, which would build on the already successful vocational qualifications day. It would be like a formal graduation ceremony and act as a celebration of apprentices. In addition, the pageantry that is associated with traditions such as the freedom of the City of London could be expanded, localised and made appropriate for different parts of the British Isles. That would give apprentices a sense of civic pride in their area. Young school pupils would see the example of older apprentices and aspire to join their ranks.

In modern times, traditional apprenticeships probably reached their lowest point in the 1970s. By then, the universities were expanding hugely and apprenticeships were allowed almost to vanish. Margaret Thatcher’s Government introduced NVQs—national vocational qualifications—in an attempt to revive the great British tradition. John Major took the policy further: in 1994, his Conservative Government introduced modern apprenticeships that were based on proper frameworks. The effort to restore apprenticeships has always been a key priority for Conservatives.

I am glad that the Minister has had the good sense to examine not just the zeitgeist of the past few years, but the 1,000-year-old history of apprenticeships in Britain. He is not alone. In the 14th century, it was good practice to employ apprentices from the ages of 14 to 19. Now, we have Lord Baker’s university technical college, which will employ apprentices from the ages of 14 to 19. There is a lot to learn from the past, and the technical colleges will make a huge difference to young people across the country who want to pursue vocational education.

I am pleased to announce that a proper apprentice will soon serve in my Westminster office, placed at Harlow college and part-sponsored by Essex county council. The Essex county council wage subsidy for highly skilled apprentices is a pioneering and unique scheme that could serve as a model for local authorities across the UK. I encourage all MPs and Ministers to follow suit. I am pleased to learn that the Minister has decided to have an apprentice in his office.

In addition to providing a 50% wage subsidy for local apprentices in targeted industries, such as engineering and manufacturing, the Essex county council scheme funds apprenticeships in deprived areas and for lone parents returning to work. I urge the Minister to consider such a scheme. Essex county council has provided a blueprint that could be replicated by many local authorities around Britain. By way of an advert—I hope that you will allow me this, Mr Caton—Harlow college runs an excellent course in business administration for apprentices placed in MPs’ offices. If the Minister decides to have an apprentice, I will happily introduce him to the principal, Mr Colin Hindmarch.

In conclusion, I urge the Government to restore the prestige of apprenticeships and to consider whether local authorities can play a larger role in delivering targeted wage subsidies for apprentices, as Essex council does. On the prestige side, a great step forward would be the establishment of a royal society of apprentices, to replicate the vibrant social life of university, and a formal graduation ceremony for every apprentice. I hope that other hon. Members will have suggestions, too.

I welcome the advancement in policy. Despite the troubles we face, this Government have provided more funding for apprenticeships than has ever been provided in our long history. As I said, I want a Britain in which apprenticeships are seen as the No. 1 option by both students and their families. Funding, prestige and local flexibility will be important. We need to encourage local authorities to support the industrial needs of their area.

10:08

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on securing the debate. We have heard interesting speeches from him and my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon).

Let me start by reflecting on my days as an apprentice. Although it was not formally known as an apprenticeship—it was many years ago—I thought that I would mention it because I also had a degree. I am sympathetic to my hon. Friends’ view that we should not regard apprenticeships or vocational skills as a second-rate alternative to academic qualifications; the two are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, the Minister with responsibility for higher education and science has stressed that one of the benefits of the national apprenticeship scheme is that it can be a transition into higher education. In my case, the reverse applied: I had already done a degree when I joined my father’s company in Coventry, essentially as an apprentice to him and the firm. I had a very good secondment to the selling function for security systems, which provided good training for life in selling. I also spent a lot of time shadowing my father and learning from him directly as he bought and sold companies, dealt with banks, lawyers and other professional advisers, managed people and sought advice.

The skills that I learned in my father’s company were invaluable to me when I set up my own business. That apprenticeship, which lasted only for about 18 months, undoubtedly enabled me to do well running my own company. However, I did what many companies fear apprentices will do: I left. That is why many companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, resist investing in apprenticeships. It is commonly believed that apprenticeships just build up skills for competitors. Businesses need to be educated about the benefits of investing in skills and about most people’s inclination to remain loyal to a company that invests in them. Businesses must take some responsibility in this matter.

Several issues have dogged the past decade. My colleagues have mentioned the importance of manufacturing. Apprenticeships are fundamental to manufacturing, but it is important that young people understand that manufacturing is not just about plant, machinery and making processes work. These days, information technology is crucial, as is intellectual property. Manufacturing is a huge part of the knowledge-based economy. People who do not work in the sector tend to have a rather old-fashioned view of manufacturing, involving grimy factories—the very name for my part of the UK, the black country, implies it—but things have moved on hugely. In many cases, manufacturing is now high-tech, and apprenticeships are fundamental to the recovery of our manufacturing sector.

The Government are learning, as we must, from the last Government’s problems with skills and apprenticeships. Train to Gain was not without success. Stourbridge college had record numbers of students in programmes, some of them in business. The trouble with the training offered was that much of it duplicated skills that young people already had. There was too much training at level 2 and not enough at level 3. That was not all the college’s or the Government’s fault; it was partly because business did not want to invest, as I said earlier. Level 2 was free, but level 3 required a significant payment. That is one challenge facing us as we go about making improvements.

My colleagues have mentioned the dreadful complexity of funding streams, which I fear has not improved. The Learning and Skills Council was one of the most shameful fiascos of any quango set up by the previous Government. I am sure that we are all familiar with the story, so I shall not dwell on it. However, to replace the LSC with three funding streams—the Skills Funding Agency, the Young People’s Learning Agency and a plethora of local authorities—is a great risk. There is a good expression for it, which I forget. Stourbridge college must deal with three or four local authorities, not just one, because it has students from different local authority areas. The bureaucracy necessary to deal with all the funding streams is worrisome. I am sure that the Government are right not to rush to change the structure, but I hope that we will keep it under close review to ensure that the problems endemic in the previous Government’s arrangements will not be repeated.

The other major issue is what I call the food chain. The budget started in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. It was then devolved to the Learning and Skills Council, then to colleges and then to other providers. The supposed beneficiaries—students and businesses—are right at the bottom of the food chain. The new Government’s immediate action to reform the system by putting power in the hands of businesses and allowing money to follow the student will be a big improvement.

The final lesson to be learned involves the inflexibility of the previous Government’s approach. Colleges were tied up in knots and companies could not access what they needed. For example, the managing director of an engineering company employing about 25 people—the Minister will be pleased to know that it was based in Lincolnshire—wanted training for the company’s accounts staff. Only a couple of people were to be trained, as the staff numbered only 25, but the provider told the company that it had to supply a minimum of eight people or the course would not be viable. That was too inflexible.

I am delighted by some of the new measures, which I know will improve the system. I will return to those measures in a minute, but first I congratulate the Government on creating 400,000 additional training placements and 50,000 new apprenticeship placements. I hope that many of those will be targeted at sectors that need skills training, such as the green economy and information technology, which traditionally has a poor record of investing in apprenticeships. We should target investment towards those sectors.

Under the old system, not all businesses had the critical mass of people necessary to get apprenticeship support. The group training associations that the Government intend to set up will do an awful lot for SMEs in my area. Overton Recycling, a wonderful company in Stourbridge with a turnover of £5 million, wants to start to offer apprenticeships, but is a bit nervous about investing in too many straight away, as it does not feel that it has the infrastructure to support apprentices’ needs. The group training association, which will bring together apprentices training in different companies and provide them and the companies with infrastructure and support, will be a great boon to companies such as Overton Recycling. I urge the local enterprise partnerships being set up to encourage businesses to take advantage of the new apprenticeship places.

It was marvellous to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Mr Heald) about Essex council’s work. I am proud that Dudley council has an apprenticeships scheme as well. In 2009, the council offered 50 apprenticeships in customer service, IT and other disciplines; some 90% of apprentices got their NVQ and 50% found full-time employment after the apprenticeship ended. I was delighted when my colleague, Councillor Adrian Turner, announced that Dudley council would offer 50 new apprenticeship places in the upcoming civic year.

I congratulate the Government on moving fast to improve dramatically skills, learning and apprenticeship policy. That is fundamental to the revival of manufacturing, as the revival of the private sector is fundamental to our country’s recovery. The Budget will play a key role in encouraging the private sector. I am delighted to see the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills fitting so neatly into the Budget provisions and getting off to such a flying start.

10:18

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

I thank you, Mr Caton, for calling me to speak in this important debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) for securing it. I know that he feels passionately about the subject—so passionate that he has managed to secure two debates on it. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this second occasion. I also thank the Minister for giving up his valuable time to reply to the debate.

I am sure that there is not one of us in this Chamber who does not believe that we should have more apprenticeships. The Minister has stated on the record that his ambition is to build a system that facilitates more apprenticeships in England than we have ever had. That is extremely welcome. I shall briefly explore what such a system might mean and how we can facilitate more apprenticeships. It will not be achieved by Government action alone or by taking a top-down approach; we must bring employers with us and encourage society as a whole to value apprenticeships.

I want to highlight the “100 apprenticeships in 100 days” campaign taking place in my local area in Kingswood, Bristol. The campaign, organised by the Bristol Evening Post, began on 17 June. At the first launch event, 100 apprenticeships were achieved within 100 minutes. That is a fantastic achievement, which I am sure the Minister will welcome. The editor of the Evening Post, Mike Norton, has already stated on the record that apprenticeships provide a

“highly flexible, highly effective work and training programme”

that we need more of.

It is clear that apprenticeships bring in new talent, ideas and passion to businesses. A Populus study shows that 81% of businesses stated that apprenticeships make their business more productive and 67% agreed that apprenticeships led to lower recruitment costs as a whole. We need to show businesses that it is in their interests to take on apprentices. It is not always a case of saying, “Let’s give an apprenticeship to an apprentice for their benefit.” The businesses, too, can benefit. Apprenticeships are a good step for young people and employers. I hope that society in general will move forward under this new Government and take on new apprenticeships.

10:20

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton—possibly for the first time—and to have heard the speeches of hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. I am pleased to hear apprentices and apprenticeships being valued so highly by hon. Members from all parties. Such comments are something of a damascene conversion on the part of the Conservative party because, as the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) said, reviving apprenticeships was a Labour idea.

It was a Labour idea because in 1997, after 18 years of Conservative Governments, the British apprenticeship was dead on its feet. The enthusiasm that we have heard from the Conservatives this morning was certainly not felt by the Conservative Governments between 1979 and 1997, who effectively sounded the death knell of apprenticeship schemes in the UK. Hon. Members should be aware of the tremendous record of the Labour Government in reviving the apprenticeship scheme within the UK. I am very proud indeed of the steps that were taken by the previous Government in re-establishing the importance and status of apprenticeships.

[Chris Skidmore]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Lucas]

I want to make some progress at this stage, but I will give way in due course. I agree that we need to elevate the respect that people have for apprenticeships in industry and across the training field. However, the performance of further education colleges and other providers has improved dramatically over the past decade. The satisfaction rates of employers and learners have risen. Since 2001, about 3 million adults have improved their basic skills and achieved a national qualification and, since 1997, more than 2 million people have commenced apprenticeships, compared with the position under the previous Conservative Government. Even more importantly, completion rates for apprenticeships have more than doubled.

The focus of this morning’s debate is apprenticeships, but it is also important to mention the union learning fund, which is now worth £21.5 million a year. As a result of the fund, more than 23,000 union learning reps across the country are encouraging people to learn within their workplaces and develop their skills. That is what we all want to happen to improve the performance of UK industry. Those representatives helped nearly 250,000 workers into learning last year.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the highly successful transformation fund that supports adult learning. The fund has generated a marked increase in participation and there has been a huge investment of more than £2 billion into the Building Colleges for the Future programme, which has transformed the places in which people learn. In my constituency, through investment via the Welsh Assembly Government, Yale college has rebuilt its Bersham road site to enable it to help train apprentices equipped for 21st-century manufacturing. I hope that the Minister can reaffirm that all the schemes announced in the Building Colleges for the Future programme earlier this year will be going ahead. As manufacturing changes, it is important that colleges’ facilities improve to equip modern apprentices for modern engineering, modern industry and modern work.

The impact of the capital investment in our further education colleges under the Labour Government is part of our proud legacy on skills. Not a single penny was spent on further education capital for colleges in the final year of the Conservatives’ last term in office. Although the £50 million that the Minister has announced is very welcome, it is a one-off raid on revenue, not a long-term commitment.

Our White Paper, “Skills for Growth”, was published last November. It set out clearly the skills challenges for the next decade and gave a clear set of proposals to meet those challenges, including an ambition to ensure that three quarters of people participate in higher education or complete an advanced apprenticeship by the age of 30. The proposals include the expansion of the apprenticeship system to build a new technical class, by doubling apprenticeship places for young adults; apprenticeship scholarships; and focusing the skills budget on the areas from which future jobs will come.

[Chris Skidmore]

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that there is a huge gulf between the image and the reality of what happened under the previous Government? For example, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), the former Prime Minister, promised 500,000 apprenticeships, but the number of apprenticeships fell by 13,200 in 2006-07. Furthermore, between 2007-08 and 2008-09 there was a decrease of 7.5% in the number of 16 to 18-year-olds taking on apprenticeships. The reality of the figures does not match up with what was in the White Paper.

[Ian Lucas]

What is absolutely clear is that, under the Labour Government, there were far more apprentices than in 1997 and the apprenticeship scheme has a value now that it did not have at that time. Later in my speech, I will talk about some individual examples of young people and not-so-young people who have benefited from the progress made under the Labour Government.

I should say to Conservative Members that I am simply not going to allow the previous Government’s record to be trashed in the way that the Conservative party is determined to trash it. The reality is that if it were not for the Labour Government, there would not be any apprentices at all in UK industry; the support that existed in 1997 was parlous in the extreme.

[Chris Skidmore]

Does the hon. Gentleman seriously believe that if it were not for the Labour Government, there would not be a single apprenticeship in this country? Is he willing to make that statement or would he like to retract it? The fact is that the number of young people not in education, employment or training has increased significantly—the figure is even higher than 1997 levels—to 837,000 in 2010, which is up from 618,000 in 2005. It is delusional to suggest that there would not be a single apprenticeship in this country and that apprenticeships would not exist if it were not for the Labour Government. In fact, youth unemployment skyrocketed under the Labour Government. He cannot deny that.

[Ian Lucas]

What I can say is that the Labour Government’s approach to apprenticeships from 1997 was a marked contrast to that of the preceding Government, and that it placed far more emphasis on the apprenticeships scheme. I will come on to talk about some specific examples from my area of which I am personally aware and mention the individuals I have met who have benefited hugely from the apprenticeships scheme.

[Richard Graham]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Lucas]

I will just make a little progress and then I will certainly give way to the hon. Gentleman, whom I should have congratulated on securing the debate; I do so now.

The White Paper’s proposals included a joint investment scheme with sector skills councils, more national skills academies, skills accounts, user-friendly public ratings for colleges and providers, and better skills provision for those on out-of-work benefits. The promotion of apprenticeships as a priority in public procurement is important and we also wish to reduce the number of publicly funded skills agencies by more than 30. It is important that we make apprenticeship schemes as easy as possible for employers to access, and we need to focus resources on key economic strategic areas, so that we can make real progress.

The Labour Government have a strong record of achievement and the Labour party has a clear strategy for the future. I have heard the Minister speak many times of his passion for apprenticeships and I profoundly admire his rhetoric, so I hope that the Government will carry that through with real action. I hope that he will be clear this morning on whether he intends to follow the strategy set out in the White Paper or whether he intends to jettison it.

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Gentleman suggested earlier that the Conservatives had had a damascene conversion on apprenticeships. I suggest gently that if he looks at the Members on this side of the Chamber, he will see that none of us was on any road in 1997, let alone the road to Damascus, as we are all new Members. It is rather telling that few Members from his party, old or new, have attended. Although we could argue about the role of the previous Government and their achievements on apprenticeships, does he not recognise that several positive suggestions for taking forward apprenticeships have been made today and that he might agree with them?

[Ian Lucas]

I do not wish to be churlish in any way and at the outset I welcomed the fact that the debate was taking place. I also welcome the genuine and sincere contributions that have been made. However, my political views were forged in the 1980s and 1990s and my perceptions were based on the Conservatives’ attitude to manufacturing as I saw it in the north-east of England. I know that progress has been made in the apprenticeships scheme and I want to put that on the record, because we have heard a contrary view during the debate.

We have also heard from the Minister, who has been trying to soften the savage in-year cuts that the Chancellor has imposed on his budget by recycling £200 million from the skills budget into 50,000 apprenticeship places, costing £150 million—£3,000 per place. What kind of apprenticeship places will the Minister be able to get for a unit cost of £3,000? How has he costed those places, and what will be the breakdown by sector? He sometimes tries to give the impression that he is the first Minister ever to announce investment for extending apprenticeships, but the fact is that the previous Government rescued apprenticeships from the oblivion they faced under the Conservatives, who allowed the number of apprenticeships to fall to 65,000, with a completion rate of only one third.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending a reception for the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders in the House of Commons and of meeting young apprentices. Some were from General Motors at Ellesmere Port, some were from Toyota at Burnaston and some were from Ford at Dagenham. They were of varied ages and backgrounds, but they all shared a passionate belief in what they were doing and the part that they would play in the future of automotive manufacturing in the UK. It was an inspiring reception. I was disappointed not to see a Minister there, who could not only have met the apprentices, but listened to an interesting speech by Ron Dennis, from McLaren, on the future of UK manufacturing. Earlier this year, I attended the Airbus annual awards scheme, where the largest apprenticeships scheme in the UK was celebrated.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

I, too, attended yesterday’s reception and met some of the apprentices from Honda UK, whose head office is based in my constituency. For me, the telling point was that 85% of those who take part in that scheme end up in employment with Honda, and the majority of the remaining 15% find jobs elsewhere, potentially being paid more money. That contrasts with the number of graduates who are unable to find work, as all the newspapers have been reporting. That shows the value of giving people real applied skills with real job opportunities at the end.

[Ian Lucas]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. To bring a little local experience to that observation, I should say that a successful scheme is operating at the Airbus factory in Broughton, close to my constituency. It is very attractive to young people in their teens who are still at school, whether they are capable of going to university or not. I know young people who are perfectly capable of going to university, but who have chosen to go through an apprenticeship programme because they regard it as the best way of developing their future careers. The scheme has been taken forward by combining study at further education colleges with development of that study through a foundation degree at a local university, and there is the added bonus of earning, which for many young people is preferable to incurring debt.

One point on which we can all agree is that apprenticeships need to be valued and their status recognised. The hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) made the interesting suggestion that there should be a royal society for apprenticeships, which is a good idea. The level of expertise and skill required by many apprentices to carry out their jobs is entirely equivalent to that acquired through a degree. Larger companies, such as the car manufacturers I met yesterday—I have visited Honda in Swindon, which was an interesting experience—are doing a great deal to support apprenticeships.

The real challenge lies with smaller businesses, and that is the most difficult area on which we should concentrate. We need to carry forward the good work that has been so successful with many of the large investment companies that I have mentioned, develop it and learn the lessons so that we can extend the apprenticeships scheme to smaller businesses.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that part of the problem with the apprenticeships scheme under the previous Government—I accept that there were many achievements—was that too often they were in a rush to increase the numbers and so approached large companies, particularly in retail and catering, that could easily transform traineeships into apprenticeships to get the numbers up? We must do much more to reach smaller companies, particularly those in manufacturing, such as Aeromet, an aerospace company based in my constituency, whose representatives I met yesterday. They told me that they had not been approached by central or local government at any time about apprenticeships and that they would like to learn more.

[Ian Lucas]

We certainly need to work hard with smaller companies to develop apprenticeship schemes, but there are good examples. I will mention another company in my constituency, Lloyd Morris Electrical. It is a small construction company that deals with electrics. It places great store by its apprentices and the training of its young people. There is a great appetite for apprenticeships among young people. Some of them could go to university but simply do not want to do so because they see their lives developing along an alternative route.

An important point was made earlier when we mentioned teachers and their attitude to apprenticeships. We need to give teachers a much more accurate and up-to-date representation of modern apprenticeships, and I mean that not in a particular sense, but in a broad sense. High-skill, high-technology and high-value jobs are involved, and teachers should encourage their students to follow them.

The Minister has made a commitment on apprenticeships, and I welcome his language, which contrasts, I am afraid, with what was said and done by the Conservative Government before 1997. He needs to be transparent about the details of what will happen in future and not pretend that his commitment is something that it is not. He hopes to announce the creation of 50,000 extra apprenticeships, giving the impression that they are new jobs for young people. First, it is one thing to promise apprenticeship places and another to deliver them—the devil is in persuading businesses, small ones in particular, to take on apprentices. I have often had that discussion with businesses in my area.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

Small and medium-sized businesses are at the heart of my constituency, creating something like 80% of local jobs in Witham. The hon. Gentleman spoke about small businesses. Having been in government, what practical measures would he recommend to enable small businesses to take on more apprentices? The small businesses that I speak to in my constituency are struggling and are fed up with the paperwork and bureaucracy associated with taking on apprentices.

[Ian Lucas]

I ran a small business myself and was Minister with responsibility for regulatory reform, so I do not like paperwork or bureaucracy—no one does, and every Government talks about reducing the burden.

We need to reduce regulations and burdens as much as possible. Saying that is easy, but doing it is difficult, because we have to be accountable for the use of public money. It is important that we should have a scheme tailored to what small businesses need, and that requires commitment by business. Businesses cannot expect such tailoring to happen by accident; they have to commit to working with providers and putting together an appropriate scheme that will be of benefit. That is what we need.

My first point was that it is easy to say that 50,000 apprenticeship places should be delivered, but that we need to get them delivered. Secondly, even if 50,000 places were supported, the Minister needs to guarantee that they will be quality places, helping those who need them most.

We need the Minister to be clear today and to answer questions about his plans. How many of the 50,000 apprentices does he expect to be new recruits and how many will be existing employees? How many will be under 25? That is an important issue. Those questions need to be addressed. Will he please respond to the question about level 3 and level 2 qualifications? Does he value level 2 apprenticeships? We need to look at the detail of what will happen. It is easy, when talking about apprentices, to talk the talk; what we need from the Minister is an assurance that he will walk the walk.

10:42

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr John Hayes)]

Thank you very much, Mr Caton, and it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. It is a pleasure, too, to participate in the debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), who cares about such matters deeply. I welcome the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), who is not in his normal territory but standing in for the shadow apprenticeships Minister, who cannot be here. I know how keen the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) says he is to debate apprenticeships and I hope that he will find the time to do so with me in due course.

The debate is timely. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester spoke at some length about why he, like me and the Government, is so committed to the apprenticeship programme. In his maiden speech on 9 June, he treated the House to a striking description of his constituency past and present, as well as announcing his intention to convene an all-party group on urban regeneration. Many of the issues that he and other hon. Members raised this morning spring logically from such commitment, because they are closely connected with the economic future of all our constituencies.

Like many other places up and down the country, Gloucester remains a city whose prospects depend in large measure on the skill of its people and the success of its businesses, in particular the small and medium-sized enterprises. I shall speak a little about the challenge made by the hon. Member for Wrexham in a minute. Before I do so, however, I will answer one other point made by him. I shall also try to respond to all the points made, although they are numerous. If I cannot do so, I will happily engage with hon. Members one to one and take up the matters not covered today.

The shadow Minister mentioned the White Paper and a strategy for skills. The Government are absolutely determined to build on the best of what the previous Government did. No Government are all bad or all good; they each have good policies, people and ideas. We will take the best of those ideas and build them into our strategy. I look forward to putting that strategy together over the coming months, on a highly consultative basis, but of course it will be coloured by the comprehensive spending review. The hon. Gentleman knows that Ministers are in discussion with the Treasury about spending constraints. The Government are determined that we should spend only what we earn as a nation, but he can be assured, as can this Chamber, that in that context I will make a vigorous case not only for skills in general but for apprenticeships in particular. Our strategy will have apprenticeships at its heart, so I am not by any means ignoring the important principles laid out in the previous Government’s strategy; we will absorb the best of them into a plan for the future.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester and others who have spoken understand, as I do, that apprenticeships must play a vital part in securing our economic future. In the latest year for which figures are available, more than 500 people started an apprenticeship in the city of Gloucester, in sectors as diverse as health and social care, retail and hospitality, catering, hairdressing, construction and engineering. I expect the National Apprenticeship Service and its local partners to increase still further the number and range of apprenticeships in my hon. Friend’s city.

The belief that apprenticeships can play a major role in building the future of Gloucester and our nation as a whole is not founded on transient political fashion or a preoccupation with the zeitgeist, but on the evidence of centuries. To paraphrase Chesterton, education is simply the soul of a nation as it passes from one generation to another, and apprenticeships are indeed time honoured, as hon. Members have described this morning.

I take the point made by my hon. Friends the Members for Gloucester and for Harlow (Robert Halfon) and others that the aesthetic of apprenticeships is critical. I have already made that point to my departmental officials. I am determined to ensure that the role of practical learning is elevated, in terms of its “prestige”—the word used by my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow—and we will look closely at the issue of local apprenticeship days.

We already have annual apprenticeship awards. I was at the ceremony last week and spoke with some eloquence—

[Ian Lucas]

Even though the hon. Gentleman says so himself.

[Mr Hayes]

Even though I say so myself. I was greeted with warmth and appreciation, because of the commitment that the coalition, of which I am a humble member, has made to skills and to apprenticeships in particular.

The important thing to emphasise when considering that aesthetic is that apprenticeships involve not only the crafts we think of when considering the craftsmen who built the great cathedral church of St Peter and the Holy and Undivided Trinity, but those in the modern economy. Growth industries mentioned by various hon. Members include the green economy, the IT industry and high-tech engineering. The whole range of advanced apprenticeships in advanced subjects in the modern economy will do so much to fuel our nation’s recovery and future prosperity.

I have already had meetings with sector skills councils about such high-tech, high-growth areas, and with individual employers, missioning them to develop new apprenticeship frameworks and to make the best of existing ones. In that way, we will make apprenticeships, as described by the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson), relevant to businesses and current economic need, and exciting and seductive from the perspective of learners. That those sectors matter is absolutely right, as the hon. Member for Wrexham said. We will focus on those high-growth sectors because that is what we must do to feed national economic growth. We see our skills strategy as very much tied to our growth strategy. My Department, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, is after all the Department for growth.

Let me pick up some of the other points made by hon. Members this morning. There has been a welcome for the Government’s conviction of the value of apprenticeships and the view that they should be an indispensable component of any effective and responsible further education system. There has also been an appreciation of the fact that we have put our money where our mouth is, and I am grateful for what the hon. Member for Wrexham said in that regard. One of the first things we did in government was transfer £150 million from Train to Gain to the apprenticeship budget. We did that because we know what competencies apprenticeships deliver, how long they take, how much they cost, and that they are valued by employers and supported by learners. Nevertheless, there are important questions to ask about them.

Our plan involves transferring resources from Train to Gain to the apprenticeship programme. That is a challenge for providers, which they have discussed with me and are willing to take up with relish. None the less, it is a challenge. It is important that the apprenticeships that evolve from that are meaningful and are the right product for employers, and it is absolutely right that employers buy into them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) said that such things cannot be managed from the top down but have to be built from the bottom up. We need to look at some of the supply-side reforms mentioned by various hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), and how small businesses in particular are disincentivised from taking on apprentices.

We must ensure that the framework matches current economic need. The economy is dynamic. Perhaps, Mr Caton, I might be allowed, at a tangent, to give a short lecture in economics, as I believe that it will be relevant to the debate. As economies advance, they not only require greater skills but also become more dynamic. Skills needs become more dynamic, too, so it is critical that the skills system is as responsive and flexible as possible.

The best way to deal with that kind of economic change is to ensure that money and competence are devolved to the sharp end—to businesses and those who serve them in terms of training. That is why we are so determined to free up provision and to give further education colleges and independent training providers more flexibility and freedom to respond to employer need. Apprenticeships are at the heart of that, and I have had discussions with the FE sector, which welcomes the changes that I have recently introduced to free up colleges, and with independent training providers, who relish the opportunity in a more freed-up market to be more responsive to an increasingly dynamic economy. But let me move on from that short tributary on the subject of macro-economics that we have travelled up together back to the questions that have been put properly by hon. Members in the course of the few minutes that we have had to discuss apprenticeships.

It is important that we are absolutely certain about where apprenticeships are to be delivered and how. The hon. Member for Wrexham knows very well that we are talking about an average when we talk about £50,000. Some apprenticeship frameworks cost much more than others. An apprenticeship in hair and beauty, for example, will cost the Government less than an apprenticeship in aeronautical engineering, so we are discussing an average. In the end, such things must be demand-led. I cannot dictate exactly how many apprenticeships there will be in a particular sector at a particular time. The dynamism that I described earlier will dictate exact requirements for skills in particular parts of the country.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester said that the programme is too target-driven. I have done some research on the basis of earlier discussions that he and I have had on the subject. I know that he is extremely concerned that there should be flexibility for the National Apprenticeship Service to respond to changing local demand. I assure him that we will not be rigid about setting unalterable targets, and in a meeting that I had earlier today, just after my extremely luxurious breakfast in the Tea Room upstairs, I asked officials to look at those issues.

The truth of the matter is that the success of our plan will depend on our motivating—indeed, galvanising—businesses, and I will look at how we can help small and medium-sized enterprises. There is an argument for giving them particular support, both on supply-side reform and through a series of incentives. We spoke in opposition about an apprenticeship bonus to support SMEs in that way, but hon. Members will understand that we live in difficult economic times. We have inherited circumstances that no incoming Government would have wanted, and we have to see how we can deliver more for less. Nevertheless, I remain committed to the idea that, in particular sectors and for particular kinds of business, we need to have carefully tailored policies that help to make our ambitions for apprenticeships a reality. We must walk the walk and not just talk the talk, although I am immensely grateful for the complimentary comments of the hon. Member for Wrexham about my rhetoric.

I do not want to be too hard on the previous Government and, particularly as the hon. Gentleman is performing outside his natural brief—he is a full back performing as a striker today—I do not want to be too hard on him, either. Nevertheless, it has to be said that the culture of aspiration that apprenticeships should embody—the culture that they feed aspiration and satisfy economic need, which unites people across this House—was previously, unfortunately, swallowed up by a series of meaningless targets and inflated figures. The previous Government forgot Einstein’s dictum:

“Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count”,

And we had the curious business of confusion between level 2 and 3 qualifications. The hon. Gentleman asked me particularly about that.

Let me be clear: it is vital that we identify levels in a meaningful way. I am looking at building a progressive ladder of training, beginning with re-engagement for those who are outside the work force altogether—that might involve small, bite-size, modular chunks of learning as described by various hon. Members—running through to level 2. Of course, much level 2 training is useful and purposeful, but we would move to full apprenticeships at level 3. The idea that we are exploring is for foundation apprenticeships at level 2, full apprenticeships at level 3, and advanced apprenticeships at levels 4 and 5. We are working on and consulting on that kind of clarity, which I feel the previous Government did not deliver.

In addition, we need to look at the costs of what we deliver through the apprenticeship programme and the effects of how it is delivered. In these times in particular, we need to look closely at whether more money can be delivered directly to employers, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge suggested, whether we can be less bureaucratic about how we manage the apprenticeship programme, and whether that too can be made more cost-effective.

Yes, we are committed to the idea of apprenticeships as a route into further learning, whether that further learning is at levels 4 and 5 in a college or in an institution of higher education. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Universities and Science and I have worked together, hand in glove, for many years on these matters and share a view that the division between FE and HE should be more permeable, that the university sector can play an important part in assisting us with the elevation of practical learning, and that we do not need to see this as an either/or, as it is sometimes seen. He is the personification of how one can be both a practical achiever and an academic.

[Esther McVey]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hayes]

I will, but then I must move to my exciting peroration.

[Esther McVey]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we will increase the status of apprenticeships by introducing the apprenticeship rate tied in with the minimum wage from October 2010?

[Mr Hayes]

That is a complex question which I would rather deal with offline, but my hon. Friend is right to say that we need to look at the rewards for businesses and the rules for individuals. People who do apprenticeships accept that they will not earn money while they are doing so at the rate that they might have if they were not training. However, the evidence from cost-benefit analyses carried out in 2007, as she will know, is that a person with an advanced apprenticeship is likely to earn £105,000 more over their working life than someone with a lower qualification. There is a sense that people get trained because they know that they will do better later.

I shall now move to my conclusion. Once again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester for drawing these matters to the attention of the House. As a distinguished historian, he will know that there was another Richard Graham, also a Tory, who was elected successively to represent Cockermouth and then Cumberland. He rose to become Lord President of the Council but, unfortunately, fell when he became involved in Jacobite plots. I hope that my hon. Friend does not fall, and that he continues to advocate the case for apprenticeships. He will certainly have my support. His position is in line with the Government’s policy, as I can assure him and others in this Chamber—

[Martin Caton (in the Chair)]

Order. We must move on to the next debate.

Offshore Financial Centres

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Westminster Hall

11:00

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

As international organisations and major Governments seek to understand the cause of the global financial crisis, small international financial centres have repeatedly endured political attacks and misguided criticisms—from pejorative sniping about their being tax havens and offshore centres for avaricious bankers, to allegations that they provide secrecy jurisdictions for shady figures in the international business community. Those criticisms suggest that they are partly to blame for the shortcomings in the financial markets. The debate about the role of small IFCs has, to date, been remarkably one-sided, which is unfortunate as it demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding about their function and the benefits that they provide to the wider global economy.

Before the United Kingdom and our global partners look to develop further rigorous international standards on financial regulation, it is critical that politicians and policy makers should formulate and implement policy in an informed, consistent and balanced manner and vital that we should now take a dispassionate view of the offshore IFCs and look sensibly at the significant benefits that they can offer, both to our nation and the broader global financial system.

The UK has an almost unique position in the debate about IFCs. We have a constitutional relationship, through our Crown dependencies and overseas territories, with half of the top 30 offshore financial centres. With the Chinese Government successfully lobbying the G20 last month for both Macao and Hong Kong to be excluded from any OECD grey list on matters of tax transparency, it looks increasingly likely that the standards and regulations currently being formulated may be imposed in some jurisdictions yet overlooked in others. Not only is that incompatible with the need to find a global response to the formation of new financial regulation, but it risks undermining the UK’s financial sector and the wider British economy, which is a major recipient of investment capital raised through small IFCs.

Some small international financial centres, such as Jersey and Guernsey, are used by the global financial community for various reasons, including political stability and a favourable economic outlook; familiar legal systems, often based on English common law; a very high quality of service providers; the ability to meet important investor requirements, such as a legal infrastructure to sell shares; a lack of foreign exchange controls that remove restrictions on the payment of interest of dividends; tax neutrality—not to be confused with tax evasion—which enables investors from multiple jurisdictions to ensure they do not meet multiple layers of taxation as funds pass through the global financial system; and legal neutrality, which ensures that no nationality is given special treatment.

For those reasons there has been a mutually beneficial relationship between the City of London, in my constituency, and many Crown dependencies and overseas territories. That is demonstrated not only by the massive capital flows between the two, aiding market liquidity and investment in the UK, but by the legal and constitutional similarities and the transfer of skilled professionals.

To give some idea of the scale of the capital flows, I should say that UK banks had net financing from Guernsey alone—one of the 30 top centres—of $74.1 billion at the end of June 2009. Unfortunately, because the public debate is largely myopic in respect of IFCs, these benefits are often overlooked or conveniently ignored, in part as a result of small IFCs’ relatively low profile and partly because of a lack of seats on intergovernmental bodies that design global financial regulation.

There now needs to be a much greater understanding of the role and proven benefits provided by small international financial centres as part of the City of London’s transaction chain. I therefore seek to dispel some of the popular myths that surround such centres. The first myth is that IFCs have a negative impact on growth in the global economy. In reality, many of the smallest IFCs are able to provide a stable, well regulated and neutral jurisdiction through which to facilitate international and cross-border business. Investment channelled into small IFCs will in turn provide much-needed liquidity, further investment opportunities, genuine competitiveness and access to capital markets for businesses and investors in both the major developed world and, increasingly, in countries with vast emerging markets.

The recent Treasury review of this area, undertaken by Michael Foot—not that one, Mr Caton—concluded:

“The Crown Dependencies make a significant contribution to the liquidity of the UK market. Together they provided net financing to UK banks of $332.5 billion in the second quarter of 2009.”

Those funds are largely accounted for by the up-streaming of deposits collected by UK banks to their UK head offices, including the nationalised or part-nationalised Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland, as well as Barclays, HSBC, Santander and a number of building societies.

In addition to aiding capital flows, a report by the university of Michigan’s Professor James Hines on the relation between IFCs and the world economy reveals that expanding investment opportunities through offshore centres leads to increased domestic investment and employment, creating jobs both at the financial centre and in the domestic economies.

Small IFCs play an important role in helping to allocate capital efficiently. To this end, they act as important financial intermediaries, matching the capital provided by savers in one country with the investment needs of borrowers in another. Although that has, understandably, led to concerns about “round tripping”, in which capital is recycled through an offshore centre to give it the appearance of foreign investment and attract a more favourable tax regime, the experience of China and India throws those concerns into doubt, because both of those countries have removed tax breaks for foreign investment during the past decade and both have seen internal and inward investment continue to soar. As a major net recipient of capital flows from small IFCs, our firms in the City might suffer if they found it more difficult to access capital via the international markets.

A second myth is that small IFCs played a part in causing the global financial crisis over the past three years. Although it is convenient to blame offshore centres for causing the crisis, even those who work in the financial markets do not accept that small IFCs were a major cause. Last year, the Treasury Committee found that Guernsey did not contribute at all to global financial contagion. Indeed, it could be argued that the liquidity provided by the small IFCs was significantly positive for the UK during the crisis.

The third myth is that IFCs engage in harmful tax practices. The Foot review suggested that the potential for tax leakage from so-called full tax jurisdictions, such as the UK, towards low-tax or zero-tax regimes, is relatively limited. Although the TUC has argued that the tax gap created in UK Government tax receipts as a result of offshore centres is some £25 billion, the Deloitte report commissioned by the Treasury at the time of the Foot report showed that only £2 billion is potentially lost in tax leakage per annum. Foot also concluded that the real figure might even be lower than that.

Concerns about the UK’s tax base being stripped by unfair competition have also been overstated. It is clear that the debate about tax competition needs to be properly redefined and any further policy initiatives need to protect the important principle of tax sovereignty, as well as adequately recognising the impact of tax regimes on the productive sector. The OECD has clearly warned about the detrimental effects of high corporate tax on productivity. In that regard, I welcome the moves to reduce corporation tax and peg capital gains tax. The recent attacks on the zero-10 tax regimes reveal a worrying trend, in which the sovereignty of independent states to set their own tax rates is undermined and high-tax countries seek to export their high tax rates around the world.

Economic models vary country by country. The adoption of a tax regime premised on the principles of lower tax burdens, efficient government and dynamic private sector activity is legitimate and some degree of tax competition should therefore be recognised as positive. Regardless of that, small IFCs have shown a willingness to engage with the concerns raised by their tax regime—for example, Guernsey and Jersey are voluntarily undertaking a corporate tax review to act within the spirit of the EU tax code.

A fourth myth suggests that small IFCs have a negative impact on transparency, regulation and information exchange. With the G20 placing tax transparency at the top of its agenda, understandably, small IFCs are actively participating in the expansion of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information. Indeed, an International Monetary Fund review of Jersey’s regulatory standards in September last year concluded that it was in the top division of financial centres, and gave it the highest ranking ever achieved by a financial centre in respect of compliance with IMF recommendations.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about tax transparency, and he also mentions capital flows. Does he accept that offshore centres such as the British Virgin Islands, which are on the OECD’s white list and peer review group, have set the trend in many ways on transparency? The Government should recognise that, and that such centres help rather than hinder the UK’s economy.

[Mr Field]

I agree, and that is greatly to the credit of the British Virgin Islands and other overseas dependencies, as well as some of the Crown dependencies to which I have referred. They have played an important role and led the way in the transparency agenda.

One of the great myths to have grown up is that small offshore centres do not benefit developing countries. Small IFCs have been accused of supporting capital flight out of developing countries, but the Commonwealth secretariat is publishing a new report this month to illustrate the importance of the role played by IFCs in helping developing countries, by enabling them to rent financial expertise from other countries while they develop their own financial centres. Crucially, they also offer investors greater protection of their property rights against domestic political uncertainty.

It is no exaggeration to say that without smaller offshore financial centres many developing countries would not secure key funding for project finance, which makes a substantial improvement to the lives of some of the most vulnerable global citizens. Furthermore, the financial action task force gives many IFCs a positive assessment in meeting its 49 rigorous recommendations on anti-money laundering and terrorism finance. Centres such as the Channel Islands perform better in fighting financial crime compared even with bigger countries such as France, Italy, the US or—dare I say it?— the United Kingdom.

Finally, the UK’s Crown dependencies are often accused of being fiscally unsustainable. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. The debate within the UK Government has, naturally, been framed by events surrounding the collapse of Iceland’s banking system. When the Icelandic banks imploded in September 2008, it quickly became apparent that the contagion would spread to British savers and ultimately to British taxpayers. Furthermore, the role of the Isle of Man as a core financial intermediary between British savers and Icelandic borrowers illustrated the UK’s exposure to offshore centres.

However, the subsequent Treasury review went some way towards allaying the two main concerns. In particular, the worries over the fiscal sustainability of UK Crown dependencies proved to be massively overstated. Throughout the years, IFCs such as Gibraltar, the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey, have amassed large budget surpluses while actively diversifying their tax base, as Foot recommended. Indeed, the Foot report commented on the fact that none of Britain’s Crown dependencies has taken on significant levels of borrowing.

It is important that the G20 summit in Korea later this year is made aware of the beneficial role that small IFCs play in the global economy. Above all, we must stand up to misinformed or narrow views of the valuable contributions that small IFCs can offer to the world economy in terms of liquidity, efficiency, investment and economic growth. Let us make no mistake: ensuring that the voices of small IFCs are heard in Korea is very much in our national interest. If we look at the example of Jersey and its positive effect on the wider UK economy, we see that the island provides a conduit through which mobile capital from around the world can be aggregated and invested, primarily here in London.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

My hon. Friend’s speech is very welcome. People from overseas territories and Crown dependencies will thank him for raising these important matters. Does he agree that one issue that is always ignored, and which is linked to what he is saying, is that we, unlike other countries with overseas territories and dependencies, do not allow the Governments or people of those territories any say in this place? They have no way of being represented or of speaking up for themselves. They depend on Members of Parliament to raise issues. Does he also believe that, as with other countries with overseas territories and dependencies, there should be some way for those people to be able to speak and to raise their concerns here, in the Parliament that makes laws on their behalf?

[Mr Field]

I have some sympathy with my hon. Friend’s view. This debate is an example of the way in which we are to do that. If he is suggesting that we have a constituency, similar to the French system, that takes in Gibraltar, Jersey and Guernsey, I am sure that he would be only too happy to be a Member. Most people in Gibraltar already believe that my hon. Friend is the Member who looks after their interests. He makes a serious point, and the tremendous contribution that our Crown dependencies and overseas territories make to this country should not be understated. I hope that this debate plays a small part in addressing some of the myths that have arisen.

I want to speak about Jersey, which is a significant provider of administrative and legal services to international businesses that are active in the City of London and help to make it a more attractive place to do business. For example, Vallar plc successfully raised more than £700 million in an initial public offering in London earlier this month, and used a Jersey structure. That showed the respect that investors, professional advisers and companies have for Jersey as a jurisdiction. It also provides banking services to a large number of UK expatriates who are unable to access the UK banking system because they do not have a UK address.

The Crown dependencies also provide an important platform from which to learn about and access the British economy. For example, the Isle of Man acts as the No. 1 jurisdiction for the incorporation of Indian businesses listed in London, and has been identified by a Chinese Government economic unit as an important link in China’s “going out” strategy in relation to Chinese businesses setting up in the EU.

The Isle of Man plays an important and symbiotic role in London’s shipping and insurance markets, inter alia by having such a successful white list ship registry, as well as its fast-growing aircraft registry. Similarly, with satellite, space and film business, the Isle of Man brings into a British sphere of influence important strategic global businesses that might otherwise be drawn to a competitor such as Singapore, Hong Kong or the US. The Crown dependencies are keen to continue acting on this hub-and-spoke basis with the UK and adding value to Britain’s international offering in a proper and transparent way.

Small IFCs desire fair recognition for their high regulatory and supervisory standards and therefore wish to make policy makers from all G20 member countries aware of their true operation, as well as allowing them an effective voice at the table. In that regard, it would be helpful if the Minister gave an indication of what measures the Government can take to ensure that the G20 process is more inclusive, and that policy prescriptions that aim to restore financial stability strike the right balance between the onshore and offshore financial communities and recognise the mutual interests that exist between the two. It would also be helpful to have an update on progress in meeting the Foot recommendations and information on the progress being made through EU and OECD efforts to assist the overseas territories in meeting their own international requirements.

In conclusion, too few people who now seek to impose rigorous regulation on offshore jurisdictions truly understand how those jurisdictions operate. They fail to understand their positive rankings of compliance with major regulatory standards or their beneficial role in promoting investment and growth in the widest elements of the global economy.

It is inevitable that Governments will attempt to prevent further financial crises from occurring—and so they should—and I fear that that will result in the development of global standards that may have an unintended impact on all jurisdictions. It is critical that politicians and policy makers should not depart from the need to formulate and implement policy in an informed, consistent and balanced way. When it comes to our naked self-interest, it would be foolish at this juncture if the UK ignored the proven benefits provided by small international financial centres as part of the City of London’s world-class operations.

11:19

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Mark Hoban)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) on securing the debate and talking very clearly about the challenges and benefits that arise from offshore financial centres. He is right to highlight the UK’s particular interest in this area. Crown dependencies and offshore territories that have a link with the UK form half the top 30 offshore financial centres, so we have an interest.

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the important link in retail financial services with the Crown dependencies. A number of hon. Members will have had correspondence from constituents or former constituents about the impact of the Icelandic banking crisis on them, because they had deposits in the Isle of Man with Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander (Isle of Man) or in Guernsey with Landsbanki Guernsey. We have an interest on that level because those places are used as centres for banking by expatriates and a number of people who want to place their money offshore.

It is also right to identify the significant links between these offshore financial centres and the City of London. My hon. Friend highlighted their importance as a mechanism for providing funding for the UK financial services sector: people place their money on deposit in offshore financial centres and then deals flow through to London. I was struck by the fact that in quarter 2 of 2009, as mentioned in the Foot review, $332 billion of funding was provided to the City of London from those centres. That shows their importance.

I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) is no longer in his place, as I am about to refer to the British Virgin Islands, which he mentioned in an intervention, saying that the BVI are on the OECD white list. We welcome the fact that offshore financial centres are keen to take steps to appear on that list and we would encourage more to do so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) asked about representation in this place for Crown dependencies and overseas territories. Under the present Government, the imperial days of the Treasury are long gone. It is very much for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Justice to take responsibility in that regard, and I am sure that since the election my hon. Friend has not been slow in making his views known to Ministers in those Departments, either.

The financial crisis highlighted the need to protect our public finances. The Government have taken steps to deal with the fiscal deficit that we inherited, and we will follow that up with the comprehensive spending review in the autumn. However, that increased vigilance must run through everything that the Government do, and part of that involves pressing for high international standards that protect against the risks posed by jurisdictions that fail effectively to impose prudential regulation, tax transparency, anti-money laundering measures and standards on countering the financing of terrorism. At last year’s G20 summit in London, leaders called on all jurisdictions to adhere to international standards in those areas. They called on the appropriate international bodies to strengthen peer review to assess jurisdictions’ compliance with the standards and to consider possible counter-measures for those that fail to comply. It is important that the international standards are applied without discrimination, allowing all jurisdictions that meet them to compete freely in international markets.

Michael Foot was asked by the previous Government to conduct an independent review of British offshore financial centres, and he reported his conclusions last October. The aim of the review was to deal with concerns about the risks caused by the financial crisis to the Crown dependencies and overseas territories and, by association, to the UK. The report provided a health check of the economic sustainability and viability of the financial services sectors in the Crown dependencies and overseas territories. The message from the report was clear: offshore financial centres must meet international standards if they want to maintain active and trusted financial sectors. The challenge for offshore financial centres was to take greater responsibility for their economic future, demonstrating that they are capable of responding to financial stability risks, while strengthening their long-term commitment to meeting globally recognised standards—issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster.

Michael Foot’s report set out a series of steps that jurisdictions must take to ensure that they are inside the scope of international regulation and that they secure their long-term sustainability. To demonstrate their performance against international standards, British offshore financial centres were invited periodically to publish the details of their progress, setting out the international standards that they have met, covering tax transparency, prudential regulation and preventing financial crime, and the standards that they have not met, with details of how they intend to meet them in the future and how soon they expect to do so. We are talking about the setting out of clear benchmarks about what the territories should do and how far they are going in achieving those standards. That sends a clear signal that both we and the wider global community are interested in what they are doing. The more transparency there is about how much progress the territories are making towards those goals, the greater the acceptance will be of their activities in the wider global community.

[Mr Field]

I am also keen to ensure that the point is made robustly about capital flows. We have had a credit crunch quite recently and we may be facing another one with all the sovereign default concerns in Europe. The free movement and liquidity provided by IFCs is key. That case needs to be made robustly at a time when others are dismissive of offshore financial centres.

[Mr Hoban]

Indeed. My hon. Friend makes an important point. Adherence to the standards makes the case that offshore financial centres should be part of the global network of financial centres and that they are valued. It is also important to ensure that when people talk about offshore financial centres, the debate is proportionate and evidence based. That is the best basis for debate in the UK, EU and G20. My hon. Friend made important points in that respect in his remarks.

The Foot review recommended that Crown dependencies and overseas territories should have to meet key international standards on tax information exchange, financial regulation, countering the financing of terrorism and anti-money laundering. The review strongly recommended that British Crown dependencies and overseas territories need to diversify their tax bases in a way that helps to secure their long-term economic sustainability. My hon. Friend made the argument that a number of territories had already done that and had withstood the financial crisis.

[Andrew Rosindell]

My hon. Friend the Minister talks about long-term stability. Does he agree that any attempt to undermine the ability of Crown dependencies and overseas territories to be self-sufficient and to look after their own affairs would in the end rebound on the British Government, with the possibility that we would have to finance some of those territories, so it is vital that policies from here, from Brussels or from anywhere else do not undermine the ability of our territories to be self-sufficient for the long term?

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, but what he refers to must be done within the context of adhering to the highest possible international standards. We need to ensure that that international framework exists and that the territories comply with it; otherwise they are open to attack by other nations. Yes, it is important that the territories are economically sustainable and are not dependent on the UK, but at the same time they must meet those international standards, and a number of territories have made quite significant progress towards that goal.

With regard to the sustainability of overseas territories, they were encouraged to improve the management of their public finances to ensure that they were well equipped to withstand unexpected economic and financial shocks without external fiscal assistance. We need to recognise the progress that has been made to comply with the standards. I understand that 28 jurisdictions—almost exclusively tax havens and offshore financial centres—have moved into the category of jurisdictions that have substantially implemented international standards on tax transparency. That shows that overseas territories are taking the measures seriously, and we encourage them to continue to do so. Over the next three years, 100 jurisdictions will be peer reviewed, which will be an important part of the process to give confidence in how the standards are being implemented.

I recognise the importance of the role that offshore financial centres can play. They are an important contributor to the City of London. They provide services to UK citizens, whether at home or abroad. However, it is vital that they comply with the highest international standards on tax transparency and dealing with terrorism financing and money laundering. Adhering to those standards would be the best safeguard for their future prosperity.

11:29

Sitting suspended.

Building Schools for the Future

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr James Gray in the Chair]

14:30

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

This is the first opportunity formally to debate the consequences of the announcement made by the Secretary of State for Education on 5 July about axing the previous Labour Government’s Building Schools for the Future programme. There is widespread anger and disbelief among colleagues from all parties about the devastating impact that such a move will have on education provision in the communities that they serve. Proportionally, no community has felt the impact more than Halton.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) intended to contribute to the debate, but he cannot attend due to unforeseen circumstances. He takes a particular interest in the issue. The announcement by the Secretary of State for Education will affect the following schools in my constituency: Ashley special school, Cavendish special school and Chestnut Lodge special school. Fairfield high school had been proposed for closure, but the Secretary of State decided that the programme should be stopped, due to a clerical error on the form. That decision was made in the same week that a party was held as a thank you to those people who supported the school over the years prior to its closure—another error. Saints Peter and Paul Catholic high school will also be affected, as will St Chad’s Catholic high school, the Bankfield school—my former school—the Bridge pupil referral unit, the Gateway pupil referral unit, and the Heath school.

Three school-building programmes are pending review: Halton high school academy, which is not in my constituency, but in that of the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans); Grange comprehensive; and the Wade Deacon high school, which was to absorb those pupils who would have gone to Fairfield high school prior to its closure.

All the secondary schools in Halton have been affected, as have the lives of 7,300 children, together with their teachers, parents and the wider community. The dedication of staff and governors and the hard work of pupils has produced a marked improvement in GCSE results over recent years, making Halton one of the most improved areas in the country. Last year, 72% of pupils acquired at least five top grades, surpassing the national average, and for the second year running, Halton has achieved more than 70% attainment. That is a remarkable increase of 34% from 1998 results. The percentage of pupils in Halton who gained a minimum of five A to C grades at GCSE, including English and maths, has increased by nearly one fifth since 1998, from 24.7% to 44.4% in 2009. In one of the most deprived boroughs in the country, that is a spectacular result.

It is disgraceful that the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government have taken a devastating axe to the vital funding for schools in Halton, which is one of four Labour-held constituencies among the six seats in England and Wales where school culls that go into double figures have been inflicted. We all remember how the previous Conservative Government left many school buildings dilapidated and crumbling, and the Labour Government had to pick up the pieces and initiate the biggest school building programme in over a century.

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

Although I appreciate the pain that is felt across communities due to the cuts that have had to be made, is the hon. Gentleman aware of some of the downfalls in the mechanism of the BSF programme and the local education partnerships that delivered it? I have heard representations from schools that have undergone rebuilding under BSF. They were concerned that 90% of the local education partnerships that delivered the programme were owned by the contractor, and therefore the interests of the local education partnership and the builder were those of the contractor, not of the school. Another concern was that the contractor operated at an overhead and profit level of 8% plus, as opposed to 4% on the market. Those concerns were raised by teachers and head teachers who saw money going not to their school but to contractors and consultants.

[Derek Twigg]

I do not try to pretend that the BSF programme was perfect. If the hon. Lady is patient, I shall deal with some of those issues later in my speech. She raises an important point.

It seems abundantly clear that many of the assertions made by the Secretary of State in his announcement of 5 July are plain wrong. First, his boast about the Government’s determination

“to make opportunity more equal”

and

“to help the most disadvantaged pupils”—[Official Report, 5 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 47.]

is laughable—well, it would be laughable if the consequences of his policies were not so tragically devastating to communities such as those in Halton that I represent. I fail to see how targeting the second smallest unitary authority in England, which serves the country’s 30th most deprived area, with the worst cuts to the BSF programme in the north-west will bring any benefit to the disadvantaged. Will the Minister explain how the cull of 100 BSF projects, with a further 21 under discussion, in the relatively deprived region of the north-west—over half the projects affected are in Cheshire and Merseyside—constitutes proportionate, fair and decent action by the Government?

[Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if the Labour party had returned to government, it would have cut BSF funding?

[Derek Twigg]

We were committed to the programme as it stood, but a myth has been put around by the Government. With the loss of five new schools in Wigan, 10 in Blackpool, 25 in Liverpool and 27 across Greater Manchester, the only aspect of equality in the policies of the Secretary of State is the collective discrimination against the schools and colleges of the north-west. I also wish to challenge the Secretary of State’s implicit view that the BSF programme is incompatible with prioritising the raising of school standards in pupil attainment and behaviour through the quality of teaching and learning.

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

On the hon. Gentleman’s point about the policy commitments given by the previous Government, a commitment was made, but it was dependent on underspend—something that the Treasury has subsequently confirmed does not exist. Therefore, the policy was unobtainable.

[Derek Twigg]

We need to get to the nub of the problem. We can go back and look at who was responsible for the economic crisis, the world crisis and so forth. The Conservative party keeps trying to suggest that somehow this problem is down to the way that the previous Government managed the economy.

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Derek Twigg]

I have not yet answered the last question. The permanent secretary in the Department for Education wrote to my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) and clearly said that the money was there. He would have asked for a letter of direction if there had been any impropriety or problems with that, but he did not do so. That is the key point, and something that the Conservative party keeps trying to push, although it is plain wrong.

I would like to make some progress. It is self-evident that the quality of the built teaching and learning environment, which embraces school buildings and the state-of-the-art facilities that they should house, will have a bearing on pupil attainment and the quality of teaching.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that although the cuts to the BSF programme are devastating, cuts to the information and communications technology upgrade are equally, if not more, damaging to the future of our children’s education?

[Derek Twigg]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I shall return to it at the end of my speech in some of the questions that I put to the Minister. He should not take my word on the situation, but should consider the findings of the 2010 school environment survey, conducted by the British Council for School Environments and the Teacher Support Network, in conjunction with the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. The report shows that 95.8% of teachers believe that the school built environment influences pupil behaviour, and over half felt that their surroundings had a negative effect. Investment in school buildings has had a more positive impact on teachers and learners, and such work must continue. That is evidenced by the fact that three quarters of teachers now regard their school as effective and adequate at providing an effective learning environment. That compares with two thirds of teachers in 2007.

Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, asserts:

“Teachers work incredibly hard to give their pupils a good education regardless of the physical environment, but it is much harder for children to concentrate if the classroom is too hot or cold or they can’t hear properly. We can’t stress enough that for teachers and children to teach and learn in an effective manner, school buildings need to be safe, clean, and inspiring.”

I also draw the Minister’s attention to last year’s report by the Government’s favourite auditor, KPMG, on the effects of the private finance initiative, which is central to many BSF projects, on education standards. It concluded that student attainment is 44% higher in PFI schools than in conventional schools, and it built on an American report from 2002 entitled, “Do school facilities affect academic outcomes?” That report found that

“spatial configurations, noise, heat, cold, light and air quality obviously bear on students’ and teachers’ ability to perform. This can be achieved within the limits of existing knowledge, technology and materials; it just requires adequate funding, competent design, construction and maintenance.”

In his article in The Guardian on 8 July, John Crace said that Michael Gove underestimates the impact of surroundings on school pupils.

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says about buildings and their impact on teaching and children. I also heard him talk of dilapidated and crumbling schools. I wonder what he would say to the parents and teachers at two schools in my constituency: Todmorden and Calder high schools’ buildings are falling down and are among the five worst in the country. The local authority has spent more than £3.5 million in the last two years alone to keep them open. However, the previous Government’s BSF programme did not apply to those schools because they attain too highly and are not considered to have deprivation. What would the hon. Gentleman say to my constituents?

[Derek Twigg]

I do not know about schools attaining too highly, but I shall mention later a couple of schools in my constituency in that regard. The fact remains that, during all the years in the 1980s and 1990s when the Conservative party was in government, schools fell into a state of ever more disrepair, because there was little money for repairs. When Labour was in government, at least £24 million was spent in my constituency on improving the state of school buildings.

In his statement to the House on 5 July, the Secretary of State referred to a BSF school from which pupils had been sent home because of bad ventilation, leading to the use of additional mobile air conditioners in the summer months. However, as a direct consequence of the measures that he announced this month, mobile classrooms, decades-old prefabs and the occasional shipping container that are either too hot in summer or too cold in the winter will not now be replaced with 21st century state-of-the-art facilities, leaving staff and students at dozens of schools dejected at having dilapidated classrooms after years of work on Building Schools for the Future.

The BSF cuts mean that Halton goes from being an authority with sufficient school places overall to one with insufficient capacity. They mean that an increasing number of children will have their lessons in mobile classrooms when they should have been in brand new schools. With Labour, it was building for the future; with the Con-Lib coalition, it is more like “Back to the Future” of the 1980s, with rampant ideological cuts and failing facilities in schools.

The Secretary of State justified his axing of Building Schools for the Future on the ground that it failed to provide value for money. I suggest to the Minister that precisely the opposite is true. Although the National Audit Office of March last year made some criticisms of BSF, on the question of value for money it said:

“The cost of the programme has increased by 16 to 23 per cent in real terms to between £52 and £55 billion, in large part because of decisions to increase its scope but also because of increased building cost inflation.”

Tellingly, the NAO went on to say:

“The Department and PfS”—

Partnerships for Schools—

“have taken measures to help control capital costs so that BSF school capital costs are similar to most other school buildings programmes and cheaper than Academies built before their integration into BSF.”

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

My local authority is Lancashire county council, which has just lost Building Schools for the Future phases 4 and 5. The administrative cost of the £100 million programme for phase 4 work was £893,000. I return to the point that my hon. Friend made about politics. Does he agree that the comments made by Conservative Members are focused on the politics, not on the facts, given that £893,000 is less than 1% of £100 million and construction was due to start at the end of this year?

[Derek Twigg]

The focus should be that our children have been robbed of state-of-the-art school buildings. The fact remains that the money was there to carry out the programme, but the coalition Government chose, for ideological reasons, to put it towards free schools. It was their choice.

I return to the importance of the changes in my constituency. In Halton and across the piece, I suspect, the reduction in the number of school sites would have led to reduced operational staffing and running costs, allowing more money to be spent on improving pupil attainment and ensuring the high-quality teaching that the Secretary of State purports to prioritise. Indeed, Halton council was commended by the previous Government for the manner in which it approached the proposed reorganisation of secondary school provision throughout the borough, not least for achieving value for money. In Halton, significant costs savings have been achieved since the inception of the programme through the establishment of a joint delivery team with Warrington borough council. That enabled both authorities to share procurement costs, staff, expertise and best practice. At each stage of the BSF programme, the authority met the key milestones and used the lessons learned to reduce the time scale and milestones for the Warrington wave 7 programme.

Another key point is that, whereas the Secretary of State says that the money is not there and that BSF was badly bureaucratic, Halton borough council has shown that it can be done and that there are benefits.

[Mr Rob Wilson]

The hon. Gentleman seems to be living in a parallel universe in which no cuts would have been made under Labour. However, the former Education Secretary said in The Sunday Times that he would like to cut the number of heads and deputy heads by 3,000.

[Derek Twigg]

The hon. Gentleman is now quite an experienced Member and I respect him, but we have never said that there would have been no cuts. There would have been cuts. I put it to him that his Government said that they would not cut front-line education services, but what is more front-line than school buildings and the importance of improving them?

Going back to what was done by Halton borough council, the timeline for the programme has been reduced by 50% compared with the PFS standard. Efficiencies were also planned through the integration of multi-agency services within school facilities such as health, leisure and outreach services. A strategic approach to ensure that we moved away from a “patch and mend” model—the hallmark of the Conservative years—to an overarching model that considers condition, suitability and sufficiency is now in jeopardy.

The Secretary of State says that the Government remain committed to supporting capital spending in schools and has instituted a review aimed at ensuring that value for money is guaranteed through the process. However, he could not answer my written question of 12 July about when he expects the review to be completed. That is more evidence of a rushed decision. Investing in capital spending and culling BSF would appear to be an oxymoron of the highest order. I fear that, like their vague aspiration to replace the future jobs fund, the nation will be lumbered with another watered-down and ineffective alternative, published at a yet unspecified time.

Another feature of the ill thought out and rushed nature of the policy is the prospect hanging over local authorities of legal action by contractors following the termination of school building projects. Last week, I asked whether the Education Department intends to issue advice to councils that may face litigation. The Minister said that he would reply as soon as possible, so I ask him again whether he can provide me with an answer to that question. Again, it shows that this was a rushed, botched job.

As in the wider economy, the Government seem intent on choking growth and development, and the BSF cull will play its part. Although it is easy to recognise the physical benefits that will be lost due to the end of the building programme, added value benefits will also be lost that would have been a major boost for the local economy and would have addressed many of the social, economic and educational challenges faced by Halton and Warrington. Halton borough council has told me that a number of social, economic and regeneration initiatives had been developed within its BSF submissions. The management and ongoing development of those initiatives were fully costed and allocated within the local education partnership, and the generation of social and economic benefits would have given truly additional value. Some 500 jobs would have been created, whether directly or through the supply chain and so on. that would have been a most important factor in the process.

It is important to recognise how schools in my borough, such as Heath and St Chad schools, will be hit. They are expanding schools and would have had extra capacity, but that is now in jeopardy. Those schools will not be able to expand, despite their popularity, even though it is an important part of the Government’s policy to recognise and expand such schools. That is also the case with Bankfield school, my old school, which will now have difficulty in expanding. As a result, yet more children will have to be educated in mobile classrooms, which takes us back to the conditions of the 1980s and 1990s.

Wade Deacon high school, which had a 100% pass mark for grades A to C last year, serves both disadvantaged and more prosperous areas. When it amalgamates with Fairfield school, which has been closed, it will face a difficult job managing the two sites. The situation is far from ideal; there are busy roads to cross and it will be hard to manage teachers’ timetables. Under the BSF programme, the two schools would have been on one site. In another example, the Grange would have been an all-through school, catering for children between the ages of three and 16, with a number of schools coming together on one site. There will be major consequences if that school does not go ahead. There are significant public health and safety concerns—I mentioned Bankfield and the problems of moving between different school buildings—as well as a problem of insufficient capacity at other schools. Visiting schools in my constituency last week, I saw that profound impact of the decision on them.

Community access to schools has many advantages, not least in raising educational interest and encouraging adult involvement, which leads to the development of a better learning culture. In areas such as mine, where that culture has not always prevailed in many homes, community access provides a massive opportunity for improvement.

[Charlotte Leslie]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that problems were caused in many schools by the private finance initiative of the BSF programme? Communities have had to pay extra money, or there has been a lack of flexibility in their being able to use rebuilt BSF school facilities.

[Derek Twigg]

I can speak only for my own constituency. Having spoken to a number of head teachers in the past week, I found the exact opposite to be the case. Schools were being designed to bring in the communities and increase involvement, particularly through some of the wider initiatives. Schools in my constituency did not face that problem—quite the opposite.

Because Halton’s population suffers some of the poorest health in the country, health is a top priority, which is why it was part of the BSF project. A lot of work was done locally to consider how better community facilities could be used to promote improvements in health and to tackle, for instance, the very high teenage pregnancy rate within the Halton borough. The social return on investment in terms of savings from reductions in the numbers of exclusions and of those not in employment, education or training, from welfare benefits and from improvements to mental health and community inclusion and cohesion—all goals the Government claim to aspire to and cherish—could amount to something like £34 million. Yet gone are the opportunities that have already consumed thousands of work hours and millions of pounds to create well designed, environmentally sustainable, Disability Discrimination Act-compliant state-of-the-art classrooms and facilities fit for purpose for the 21st century in schools in Halton and throughout the country.

I end with a few questions. What are the Government doing about the ICT funding that is part of the project? If the sample schools in my constituency were to get the go-ahead—that would be superb—they would get ICT funding as well, but what about the other schools that are not given capital funding to rebuild, after the Government’s review is finished?

I also have a question about the terms of reference for the capital spending review—I hope that we will get some idea when that will report. Buried deep down in those terms is the requirement to look at regulations relating to school playing fields. The regulations are there to protect school playing fields, so can the Minister give a categorical assurance that no changes will be made that will make the sale of school playing fields easier, or is he content not only to steal schools out of the hands of children but to sell off their playing fields as well? Will the Minister guarantee a strategic approach to the school estate following the demise of BSF by delivering 21st century learning space in the schools in my constituency? BSF would have provided them with a 25-year commitment to continue to invest in their buildings.

The chaos caused by the various incorrect lists continues. The Department does not take a consistent approach to the different education authorities and schools. For instance, academies or their sponsors had five days to provide the information that was requested from them, whereas the sample schools were asked last Friday to provide the information this Monday. At 8 o’clock last night, my local authority had a phone call asking it to provide building condition information for one school by 8 this morning, and for another school at 8.20 am. In addition, the local authority was told that Partnerships for Schools officers would be in Halton today, taking photographs of the condition problems that had been highlighted. That just shows the continued chaos that we are having to put up with as part of the process started by the Secretary of State. Why have some schools been asked to provide condition surveys and others not? That is a simple question.

The Prime Minister says that he wants to change the image of his party and its policies, but the Liberal Democrat fig leaf is barely disguising a return to the nakedly ideological attacks against predominantly Labour-supporting areas. The full extent of the severity of the austerity cuts to be implemented by the coalition Government is only beginning to be realised by the general public. It is a sombre thought that it will take the destruction of buildings of hundreds of schools and colleges across the country to reduce to ashes the claims of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to stand up for fairness, and with it their electoral fortunes.

14:56

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) mentioned chaos. As far as the Building Schools for the Future programme is concerned, I very much hope that at some stage there will be an independent inquiry into the conduct of Ministers in the previous Labour Government; the more I hear about the scheme and the conduct of Labour Ministers, the more scandalous it all becomes.

A project that was originally supposed to cost £45 billion ended up costing £55 billion. The previous Government spent £10 million simply setting up the procurement vehicle for Building Schools for the Future before a single brick had been laid. One person received £1.35 million in consultancy fees. It is difficult to see how that sum can possibly be justified. A single individual in this project received more than £1 million.

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman name the individual?

[Tony Baldry]

The hon. Gentleman who has just intervened was a Minister of the Crown in the last Government. Is he asserting from the Front Bench that no individual received more than £1 million in consultancy fees from this project? Is that what the hon. Gentleman is saying?

[Mr Wright]

indicated assent.

[Tony Baldry]

So the hon. Gentleman is inferring that the Secretary of State, in putting that forward on the advice of officials, was misleading the House?

[Mr Wright]

indicated assent.

[Tony Baldry]

What I am saying is what the Secretary of State asserted in the main Chamber last week. The hon. Gentleman is essentially asserting that the Secretary of State misled the House. Is that what he is saying?

[Mr Wright]

I am suggesting that not one single individual received the amount of money that the hon. Gentleman alludes to. It was a consultancy firm that received that money, following a wide range of different projects relating to BSF. It was not a single individual.

[Tony Baldry]

This is an important point. The hon. Gentleman is implying that the Secretary of State misled the House last week when he said very clearly, in terms, that an individual had received more than £1 million. I am confident that the Secretary of State would not have misled the House, either knowingly or unknowingly.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tony Baldry]

Let me finish this point.

That is all the more reason why we need an independent inquiry into the BSF programme and the chaos in which the previous Government left it.

[Mr Slaughter]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tony Baldry]

Let me finish my next points.

The money that went in consultancy fees could have gone into the front line. The BSF scheme took no account of the fact that, in many parts of the country, there is a real need for new school building as a result of the growing population. That is particularly true for primary schools, but the BSF project simply did not cover primary schools at all.

In the run-up to the general election, the previous Government sought to pretend that there was more money in the BSF programme, but they did so on the basis of hoping that they would get funds from the Treasury through the use of end-of-year flexibility of capital. It is becoming apparent, as the permanent secretary to the Department for Education has now made clear, that that was never properly cleared with the Treasury by the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), then Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. The Treasury has said clearly that the right hon. Gentleman was playing fast and loose with that particular capital stream. The Treasury has made clear its opposition.

I would very much welcome an inquiry into what went wrong with the Building Schools for the Future programme and Partnerships for Schools under the previous Government. It is very unreasonable to attach any culpability to new Ministers for a grim situation that they clearly inherited and are having to deal with.

Banbury school, a large comprehensive in my constituency, was put into the Building Schools for the Future programme. Its principal has written to the Secretary of State and she has made her comments clear in local newspapers. I should like to share with hon. Members what she said in her letter to the Secretary of State:

“I wanted to write to support your decision to stop the vast majority of BSF projects currently under way, and for the reasons that you outlined. Whilst Banbury School was one of the last schools to be included in the BSF programme, nevertheless, the huge bureaucratic hurdles and ridiculous amount of wasted time in meetings with advisors and consultants, etc, means there could never be value for money for the investment…On an immediate positive note, both myself and our Senior Vice Principal now have days released from former BSF meetings, where we can spend time looking directly at our school, the needs of our youngsters and how we can support further improvement in standards.”

Even the schools in the BSF programme thought that it was a bureaucratic nightmare.

[Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)]

In 2009, North Tyneside elected a Conservative mayor with a Conservative cabinet, and one of the first things that they did was to review the BSF programme because they were concerned about bureaucracy, consultants and value for money. Is the hon. Gentleman surprised that they confirmed that they would continue with the programme in my constituency without any change whatever?

[Tony Baldry]

The hon. Gentleman can make his points—[Interruption.] No, the hon. Gentleman can make his points about his constituency because I am not in a position to cross-examine or test the evidence. What I am giving hon. Members is the primary advice—the primary evidence—of a principal in my constituency. Let me repeat what that principal said:

“bureaucratic hurdles and ridiculous amount of wasted time in meetings with advisors and consultants…means there could never be value for money for the investment.”

With all due respect to the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell), I am content to take the advice of the principal of Banbury school on this matter.

[Mr Slaughter]

The hon. Gentleman was in a position to assert that a single individual received £1.35 million. He has been asked to name that individual. It appears from his comments that he was simply parroting what the Secretary of State said in the House. If the hon. Gentleman cannot name that individual, will he withdraw that accusation today?

[Tony Baldry]

The position of the Opposition on this issue is pathetic. They come to this Chamber with synthetic anger, having got the country and schools up and down the country into a real position of difficulty, and they then have the audacity to suggest—[Interruption.] No, they then have the audacity to suggest that the Secretary of State was misleading the House. That is what the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) has been saying.

I want to make it very clear to the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) that I will trust my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education implicitly on this, because I do not believe that he would have misled the House on this matter. If that is the best point that the hon. Gentleman can make to defend the previous Government’s being so incompetent that they gave more than £1 million to an individual consultant, it is a very sad situation.

The Secretary of State has made it clear that the present Government intend to continue to invest in school capital projects, whether they involve primary or secondary schools, either to ensure that the most dilapidated schools are repaired as quickly as possible or to provide extra school places where they are needed in areas of growing population. It would be helpful if the Minister gave us all an indication of how the Government intend to approach that. I think that all Government Members recognise that the Building Schools for the Future programme was a travesty of a scheme, but there clearly are schools that require capital investment.

It is clear, for example, that Banbury school, on my patch, still requires capital investment. It serves an area that includes a number of wards with a disadvantaged school population and it has some very mature buildings. I hope that the review that the Secretary of State has set up will make recommendations about capital investment that adhere to the principles of value for money and ensure that capital investment goes to the front line to benefit pupils and schools, not consultants. It would be helpful to have an indication of how the Government intend to invest money in school buildings in the future.

Another important point is that in the Building Schools for the Future programme, the previous Government simply ignored primary schools, although often in our constituencies it is in primary schools where the school population is growing. In counties such as Oxfordshire, there is a double whammy at the moment. The fact that the previous Government left our nation’s finances in such a parlous state, with one pound in every four being spent on interest, means that it is increasingly difficult for county councils, through their schools capital programme, to allocate money for new school building projects.

For example, the Grange school in Banbury, which has a number of temporary classrooms, was hoping that it would be able to receive money from the county council’s own capital programme. That is looking increasingly difficult, simply because there is not the money in the budget.

None of us in any way underestimates the difficult decisions that have to be made by Ministers. I hope that this Minister will not be distracted by the rather synthetic anger from those on the Opposition Benches, because they are the guilty men who have got us into this situation. Rather than coming to this Chamber and chuntering as they are this afternoon, they should be ashamed of themselves for the position in which they left our nation’s schools and our nation’s education.

No debate or contribution on education should pass without our remarking on the fact that 10 years ago, the United Kingdom was fourth in the world for the quality of our science education; we are now 14th. Ten years ago, we were seventh in the world for the quality of our children’s literacy; we are now 17th. Ten years ago, we were eighth in the world for the quality of our children’s mathematics; we are now 24th. So we are talking about every area of academic endeavour over the past 10 years. It is not just the Building Schools for the Future programme that the Labour party left in a shambles, but educational standards as a whole. The present Government will have to sort out all that in the coming years.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. We have about half an hour until the winding-up speeches and at least seven or eight hon. Members are trying to catch my eye. I therefore ask Members to be as brief as possible to allow others to speak. For the benefit of new Members, I point out in passing that it is helpful if Members write to Mr Speaker in advance of Westminster Hall debates, indicating their wish to speak. That makes it easier to work out who is to speak next.

15:08

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) on securing the debate. Like him and like thousands of people in my constituency and millions throughout the country, I was appalled that the very first casualty of the Conservative and Lib Dem policy of savage cuts was investment in our schools. That will be deeply damaging to education and demoralising for students, parents, governors and teachers alike. It is also a big political mistake, because a lot of people who voted Lib Dem or Conservative were certainly not voting for that. In future, when people think of this Government, they will remember that the very first thing Ministers did was take the axe to our schools.

I want to highlight the casualties among schools in my constituency. Iffley Mead is a great special school. Ofsted rated it outstanding for care, guidance and support, and for personal development and well-being, and good in all other respects. The school anticipated the total replacement of outdated buildings, with state-of-the-art teaching areas for special needs, residential accommodation for looked-after children and respite facilities for families in need of additional support. People will find it impossible to understand why they evidently do not figure as part of the big society.

Cheney school, which is a community secondary, has been doing excellent work and has been building on an overall good Ofsted rating. It was looking forward to extensive rebuilding, including the replacement of science labs that were condemned as unsafe last year and which have now been closed. The school has significant numbers of children with special needs, for whom the current buildings, which do not have lifts, are not fit for purpose.

[Lyn Brown]

I am enjoying my right hon. Friend’s contribution very much, and it chimes totally with what is happening in Newham, where the John F Kennedy special school is one of 14 projects to have been cancelled by the Conservative party. Is it not ironic that some mainstream schools will be far better resourced than some schools that cater specifically for special needs children, who are the most vulnerable children in our communities?

[Mr Smith]

Indeed. My hon. Friend makes a good point.

Cheney is a good school that serves mixed communities and gets great results. It is a specialist school in languages and leadership, but, to add insult to injury, it has now heard that its £250,000 specialist schools money is also being cut.

We have to ask what message it sends simply to hack support away from schools such as these. I can assure the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), who has just spoken, that there is nothing synthetic about the anger of Labour Members or the teachers, students and communities affected. There has been no assessment or evaluation of schools’ particular needs, and programmes are simply cut. Schools are now in limbo: they are told that Building Schools for the Future has been cancelled, yet they do not know what resources, if any, will be available to meet their pressing needs. That is a kick in the teeth for everybody who cares about those schools and who has been working hard for their success. What is the Minister’s message to those schools for the future?

I would also like to press the case of Bayards Hill primary school, which is due for total rebuilding and which had primary capital grant approved a couple of years ago. The catchment area includes one of the most disadvantaged communities in my constituency, and rebuilding would be a huge boost to aspiration and confidence. The school’s plans were all set to go, but they are now at real risk because Oxfordshire county council is looking at making huge cuts in all its programmes. I call on the county council to honour the pledges that have been made and to ensure that the project can go ahead.

This saga of school cuts is a shameful indictment of the priorities of the coalition Government, who are diverting resources from good schools with a proven track record and a clear need for investment to the damaging ideological experiment of their so-called free schools—let us remember that that is where the money is going. If the Government were listening to parents, teachers and governors, they would abandon this damaging policy now and reinstate investment in schools in our communities so that they could deliver the best opportunities and standards. If the Government do not listen, everyone will know in the years to come that the first big message from this coalition Government was that whereas Labour invested in the future of our schools and brought hope and opportunity, the Conservatives and Lib Dems brought cuts and despair. It is a tragedy that children’s education is paying the price for the Government’s monumental misjudgment.

15:14

[Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)]

I wish to highlight two key issues: the problems with the Building Schools for the Future scheme and the financial difficulties that the country is in. We have to place any discussion of future programmes for schools in that context.

We know that the financial crisis exists, and that has to be the background for our debate. Bennerley school, which is in my constituency in the east midlands, is one of 151 schools that are up for discussion. It is a possible academy school; indeed, I have spoken to the relevant Minister to put the school’s case on behalf of parents, teachers and our local community. In doing that, however, I am mindful of the context of the financial crisis that the country faces, and any decisions that the Government make will reflect that context.

I want to make three points about why the Building Schools for the Future programme is failing and needs to be looked at. The first relates to bureaucracy, the second to delays and the third to construction and design difficulties.

The Secretary of State summed up the design difficulties when he addressed the House on 5 July:

“One… school was built with corridors so narrow the whole building had to be reconstructed; another had to be closed because the doors could not cope with high winds. One was so badly ventilated that additional mobile air conditioners had to be brought in during the summer, and pupils were sent home.”—[Official Report, 5 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 49.]

Nobody here could possibly agree that that is a sensible use of public money, and such cases raise concerns about some of the design and construction that has taken place.

The Times Educational Supplement accepts that there has been a problem with the scheme. Although it is concerned about part of the programme coming to an end or being paused, it comments:

“BSF suffered from too much bureaucracy and wasted costs in the procurement process, and that should be addressed.”

I agree with it on that point.

Professionals working in the sector also acknowledge and recognise the problems in the scheme. Sir Bruce Liddington commented:

“The current BSF programme is very bureaucratic, slow and unwieldy and I would welcome a review.”

Oasis Community Learning commented:

“We welcome the review of the BSF programme as to learn lessons from past experience in order to find a better way of working for the future can only be a good thing.”

The problems with the scheme are not to be underestimated, and some professionals have acknowledged that. Debbie Jones, chair of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, which has good first-hand knowledge of the issues, says of the programme:

“While the aims were sound, the process left a lot to be desired, embroiling local authorities and head teachers in some torturous bureaucracy and wasteful procedures and did not make the most of the expertise in local authorities in managing capital projects.”

Again, that cannot be right, and we must address such problems.

Finally, if the point has still not been made clear, the Secretary of State set out for the House on 5 July the structure in place under the Building Schools for the Future programme. The process is quite long, and I hope that hon. Members can bear with me. It begins with the Department for Education. There is then the quango, Partnerships for Schools. Then there is another body, 4Ps, and Partnerships UK. Following that, local authorities set up a project governance and delivery structure, including a project board of 10 people, a separate project team of another 10 people and a separate stakeholder board of 20 people. They form the core group supervising the project. Then we have a design champion and a client design adviser—the list goes on and on.

I have said a few times that any programme of reforms must be put in the context of this country’s financial state, and it never ceases to amaze me that Opposition Members appear to sigh, moan and raise their eyebrows when that point is made on the Floor of the House. However, we cannot ignore the position that our country is in. “There is no money.” That was the note that was left; we all know that.

There are difficult decisions facing us. National debt is approaching £1 trillion and there is a budget deficit of £155 billion. The debt interest costs every year are more than the entire schools budget. This country must prioritise. The concern is that if Labour had formed the next Government, they would have turned their attention to jobs and that head or deputy head teachers’ jobs might have been at risk. The coalition Government are looking elsewhere. I urge the Department to consider the merits of each school that is being reviewed, but I accept, on behalf of the school in Erewash that I mentioned, that that consideration must take place in the context of our limited budget.

A responsible Government must make hard decisions. I am in agreement with the steps that the Government are taking to review the BSF project for two reasons: it is responsible to take those steps in the light of the bureaucratic problems with the scheme, and because of the financial mess that has been inherited from the previous Government. On the doorstep during the general election campaign, Erewash constituents would often ask me why, since they must balance their household budgets, the Government cannot do the same. They have a point.

The new Government have real will and a bold, reforming programme for education: the academies programme, free schools and getting to grips straight away with the bureaucratic problems of Building Schools for the Future. Those are positive ways to start, because we need to set teachers and schools free and support them in making choices so that they can make the best decisions for their pupils and the future. The time for writing blank cheques is over. I support the Government in prioritising good teaching and sensibly-afforded programmes for building in schools.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

I call Mr Chuka Umunna, and apologise if I have mispronounced his name. He may want to correct me.

15:21

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr. Gray; you did okay.

I start by declaring an interest: two projects in my constituency have been scrapped and one hangs in the balance. The two that have been scrapped are the La Retraite and Bishop Thomas Grant secondary schools projects, and the one in the balance is for Dunraven school.

I have lived in my constituency all my life. I love my area and think that our young people are fantastic—they have drive and talent and want to succeed. I do not buy into the view that is often promulgated in the media that our young people are a problem. To answer the point made by the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) about so-called synthetic anger, that is where my anger comes from: there is nothing synthetic about it. I want to provide young people in my constituency with a platform from which to succeed. That is why I feel emotional about the topic, and if the hon. Gentleman does not get that, I am not sure he will get anything.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Umunna]

I will make some progress, if the hon. Gentleman will allow me, and perhaps take interventions a bit later.

Having declared my interest, I want to discuss the manner in which the BSF cuts were announced. I welcome the Secretary of State’s apology, but that does not excuse the shabby, dysfunctional way in which he made the announcement on 5 July. One of the problems was that he came to the Chamber almost as if he were attending an Oxford Union debating society-type event. He made the announcement in a way that seemed to show no recognition or appreciation of the gravity of what he was saying, or its effect on communities such as mine. As for the content, it included massively sweeping statements about the BSF project, some of which we have heard again this afternoon. We were told, at column 49 of Hansard, that it was “dysfunctional” and “did not guarantee quality”. It was portrayed as a wasteful programme, delivering second-rate buildings and facilities or, as I think the Secretary of State put it at column 48 on the same occasion, “botched construction projects”. I do not think that any Labour Members would say that the BSF programme was perfect, or that every aspect of it operated perfectly, or that it was 100% efficient; however, big and sweeping statements have been made, and I want to know—I will be grateful if the Minister elaborates—where the overall evidence is to support those statements.

A National Audit Office report on the BSF programme was produced last year. Although it noted that initial timings and budgets were too optimistic, it found that BSF was delivering school buildings more cheaply than academies and other school building programmes, and it was making it easier for local authorities to use their capital funding strategically. The hon. Member for Banbury put a premium on what school principals say about the project, and I would not disagree with taking note of what school heads and principals say about it. PricewaterhouseCoopers published an evaluation of BSF in February in which more than four fifths of head teachers agreed that the programme would contribute to educational transformation in their schools; three quarters agreed that it had more potential to deliver educational transformation than previous capital investment programmes; and all the head teachers surveyed agreed that it delivered a more stimulating environment and tackled fundamental design issues in schools. That is the overall evidence.

There are examples in my constituency of the BSF programme being very effective and highly successful. They undermine and contradict the overall view put forward by the Government and the Secretary of State. One example is Elm Court school, a special school in the Brixton area. An old Victorian building was transformed into a modern learning space, with fantastic new facilities including a theatre, a drama space and multi-use games and sports areas. The young people love it. Again, I ask for the evidence for what the Government say.

The lack of evidence calls into question the coalition’s motives for the announcement that they have made. They have said that the money being taken from the programme is not being diverted into free schools, but do they not accept that it adds insult to injury when the parents and teachers in my constituency, whose schools are affected by the cuts, see all that money being ploughed into the Secretary of State’s pet project, the free school model? The hon. Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee) mentioned the structural deficit, which tends to come up every time we talk about anything relating to resource. [Hon. Members: “ Of course it does.”] Okay, I accept that, but one of the ways of dealing with the deficit is to bring about growth. That is ultimately the best way to eradicate the deficit, in many respects. Why take investment away from the people to whom we are looking for the growth of the economy in the future? It does not make sense to me.

Above all, although I accept that BSF may not operate perfectly—the hon. Member for Erewash outlined the process—why not review and reform the process? Why sweep away an entire programme? I do not know whether there are any Liberal Democrat Members in the Chamber, but I cannot believe that they are going along with what is happening.

[Mary Macleod]

Does the hon. Gentleman realise that the Government are reviewing what is currently in the programme? If he accepts that the programme was not perfect, he should welcome a review to ensure that the capital funding that is being provided is spent in the right schools.

[Mr Umunna]

I argue that we need to wait until after the review, instead of scrapping all the ongoing projects. I shall talk about what doing that will mean for schools in my area, and I am sure that the same effects will be felt in other constituencies.

I mentioned the Liberal Democrats because, for the best part of two years, they have been spending literally hundreds of thousands of pounds in my constituency flowering their leaflets with their promises of the best start for children and pledging a boost for schools. There was recently a by-election in the Tulse Hill ward—this was after the announcement— and the literature promised:

“We will provide a fair start to all children by giving schools the extra money they need”.

Well, gosh. I would say they have forfeited any right to claim to speak for my community after the announcement that has been made.

The bottom line is this: we need the money. We need the projects to go ahead, and not only because school buildings in my area need reforming and updating. We have plenty of statistics to show that where we have invested in infrastructure using the BSF programme, it has massively increased the educational attainment of pupils in Lambeth, the London borough in which my constituency is located. School places are an issue there and the impact of the decision will be massive.

Just before coming to the debate, I received a copy of a letter that Susan Powell, the head teacher at La Retraite school, had just sent to the Secretary of State about the significance of the scrapping of the BSF project at her school. She explains how, in anticipation of receiving the BSF moneys, her school took on site three mobile classrooms:

“The reason for these mobile classrooms was that, two years ago, we agreed with the local authority to take on extra pupils and to extend the intake to 5 forms of entry. We agreed to do this as part of the arrangements for BSF; it was part of our bid. We believe that we have a moral right to new buildings to house the extra pupils, which we only took on in return for this promise. You may not know that pupil places are at a premium in Lambeth which is, as an authority, extremely short of places.”

Many hours, weeks and months of planning have gone into projects in my community that have been scrapped. I appeal to the Minister not only to approve the project at Dunraven school, which is in the balance, but to reverse the decision on the La Retraite and Bishop Thomas Grant schools. We are talking about our children’s future, and the coalition needs to wake up and come to its senses.

As I have already mentioned, last week the Secretary of State came and apologised to the House, saying that:

“when mistakes are made, we apologise and we take responsibility.”—[Official Report, 12 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 641.]

In 1997, the Labour party inherited a legacy of chronic underinvestment from successive Conservative Governments. That is a fact, and the new Administration need to learn the lessons of the past. I am more interested in that than in any apology.

15:31

[Patrick Mercer (Newark) (Con)]

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), who made some extremely good points, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) on having procured the debate. He knows how much I respect his views, but he weakened his case with needless party political posturing, especially with his reference to the burden of the changed scheme falling particularly on Labour-held constituencies. That is not the case, as I am about to explain.

I thank the Minister for two things. First, the Secretary of State has promised that I may visit him to talk about this subject—I shall return to that in a moment. Secondly, the Minister will be aware that a promise has also been made that either the Secretary of State or a Minister will visit my Newark constituency. I am extremely grateful, and I await both dates with great interest. My point is that, in just a few weeks, I have received two promises from this Government that I got absolutely nowhere near receiving from the previous Government.

The Minister and all Members present will know that in 2001, very few seats changed hands from the Labour party to the Conservative party. Newark was one of those that did. I campaigned hard upon the fact that the disgraceful state of the schools in my constituency would be addressed, and with urgency. To give credit where credit is due, two outstanding schools have been refurbished in the west and north parts of my constituency: one in Tuxford, of which I am a governor, and one in Southwell. They are both excellent schools and look grand, they really do. However, the four secondary schools—now three—in the centre of Newark remained in a dreadful state. I campaigned again in 2005 on the principal point that something would be done about those schools. I constantly asked Labour Ministers for meetings. The requests were refused. I constantly asked Labour Ministers to visit the constituency. That was refused. Views constantly changed, amounts of money changed and there was obfuscation about which particular wave of the Building Schools for the Future programme my schools would be in. I never knew. When the education authority came under Conservative control, it was similarly frustrated by a process that left it flabbergasted by its incompetence.

Enough. Enough of complaining about the past. The hon. Member for Streatham made the point that this debate is about the future. It is about our children and delivering the education that they need. I am not interested in knowing what has gone before. I am not interested in the incompetence. I am interested in why The Grove school in Newark has to cease teaching when there is a heavy fall of rain and the children have to hold buckets under the roof. I am interested to know why Magnus school, which is just coming out of special measures, has nothing to look forward to. I am interested to know why the Orchard special needs school similarly has no idea what its future will be. Whatever the faults of the past, I am interested to know what the future is for these three schools on four sites—covering all the secondary schooling in the centre of my constituency—which have had their projects cancelled without a glimmer of hope being given to them.

We are told, “You can teach in a tent,” and I am sure that that is possible. The staff in Newark are first class, but the grave difficulty is recruiting new staff to a site that is a shambles. The new schools that I have are recruiting staff and pupils easily. The difficulty in Newark, which is right on the border between Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, is that so many of my children are drifting away over the border into Lincolnshire to be educated there.

My message is very simple: one does not take away a lollipop without promising a child a visit to the zoo the next weekend, or something similar. It is basic psychology. All sorts of members of staff from The Grove, Orchard and Magnus schools have expressed their disappointment and horror and have asked why schools in north Lincolnshire and Sheffield, for example, are totally unaffected while all Nottinghamshire schools are affected. The Grove school has been described by the local authority as having the worst buildings in Nottinghamshire, although I think that it has strong competition from Toot Hill, in Bingham, which is also in my constituency. What is the future for those schools?

The Building Schools for the Future programme was deeply flawed. I had nothing from it but frustration, anger and obfuscation, and the performance of those who were trying to administer it was simply bathetic—not pathetic. I ask the Minister please to give me some dates for the visits and for when I can see the Secretary of State, and to let me say something to my head teachers that gives us some hope that the schools’ capital projects will help Newark and that I can deliver on the promises that I made in 2001, 2005 and 2010, which took Newark out of the hands of Labour and delivered it to the Conservative party with a 16,000 majority.

15:38

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I believe that the Building Schools for the Future programme is a classic example of what we have seen over the past 13 years of Labour: a project that was supposed to cost £45 billion and ended up being costed at £55 billion. Bureaucracy was the absolute cornerstone. As my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee) so graphically described, there were nine stages of preparation with multiple sub-stages, and many councils that entered the process six years ago only now have building work starting.

Labour, of course, set up a quango to deliver the project: Partnerships for Schools. I understand that running the quango cost the taxpayer £24.4 million last year and that the CEO earns about £215,000 a year—very nice work if one can get it. Finally, Labour achieved completion of works on only 97 secondary schools in seven years. That is absolutely typical of the endlessly aspirational but completely failing projects in so many areas. If that were not enough, the issue that I wish to raise is even more fundamental.

[Mr Umunna]

The hon. Lady has cited one example. Can she provide us with detailed evidence suggesting how widespread that alleged dysfunctionality was overall?

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman will have to forgive me. I do not have time to go into the details, but I will happily speak to him after the debate.

None of south Northamptonshire’s six secondary schools had any prospect of a look-in on the programme before 2015. My constituency has one school in special measures and another that has just come out. The buildings are appalling, presumably because attainment is reasonable. Like many partly rural constituencies, mine has great areas of deprivation. That is simply not fair. I urge the Minister to ensure that our plans provide fairness across the country.

15:40

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) on securing this timely and hugely important debate. He has campaigned tenaciously on this issue on behalf of the schools in his constituency and I applaud him for it.

This has been an energetic and passionate debate, and rightly so. Education fires up people’s passions. Many hon. Members from various parties were drawn into politics because they want to work to give all our children and young people the best possible start—an aim with which I think we all agree. However, the whole House should also agree that cutting Building Schools for the Future so soon after the birth of the coalition Government is a shameful and shambolic example of ministerial arrogance and incompetence.

Time and time again in this debate, we have heard of the anger in hon. Members’ constituencies—real anger, not synthetic—about the decision to scrap school buildings. My hon. Friend the Member for Halton, my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) and my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) have made excellent speeches. I also highlight the excellent contribution made by the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer), who illustrated the cross-party anger about the matter. The rally in London on Monday organised by the teaching unions and my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Education showed the depth of anger not just in the House, but across the country among parents, young people, teachers, school governors and local authorities.

We have heard that the manner in which the decision was made showed breathtaking incompetence and arrogance. It was incompetent because the Secretary of State, whom I like very much and think is an incredibly intelligent man, was not on top of his brief. It was a debacle because information was not provided to hon. Members when the Secretary of State made his statement to the House on 5 July. It was a shambles because error after error appeared in the cancellation lists. I think that we are currently on our fifth or sixth list, but I might be a bit behind the curve.

What matters more than any of that is the fact that 735 schools will now not be refurbished or rebuilt as planned. It is confusing. Dyke House school in my constituency was due for financial closure this Friday. It has decanted all its students to another site ahead of the two-year building programme. The head teacher has invested another £400,000 to facilitate the build, and the local authority has invested £3 million to ensure that it takes place. There has been no word whatever about whether the project can proceed. I asked a named day question about Dyke House school on 6 July, to be answered on 12 July. Almost two weeks after that answer was due to be provided, I have not yet got a response from the Department. I had the privilege to serve as a Minister in the Department for Children, Schools and Families, and I found it an incredible honour to work with the most passionate, energetic and professional officials anywhere in Whitehall. This is not the officials’ fault; it is a symptom and a sign of ministerial dysfunction and incompetence, and the ministerial team should be ashamed of themselves.

[Mr Slaughter]

My hon. Friend is identifying some of the perhaps unintended consequences. It is not just that schools are being left with crumbling buildings; local authorities’ plans for redeveloping schools have also been thrown into chaos, causing not only financial loss but the sort of loss that my hon. Friend is discussing. In some local authorities, including mine, academies have had a full modernisation programme but other schools have been left to rot, resulting in a two-tier system. It is a complete shambles.

[Mr Wright]

I agree absolutely. At the moment, we are debating the Academies Bill on the Floor of the House; I think that we are about to suspend for a Division on it. The Academies Bill will set up a two-tier system of education as well.

15:45

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

16:00

On resuming—

[Mr Iain Wright]

rose—

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Minister—[Interruption.] I beg your pardon; I mean Mr Iain Wright.

[Mr Wright]

If only that were still the case, Mr Gray, some school buildings might still be being refurbished and rebuilt.

Before the Division, we were discussing the arrogance and incompetence of the current ministerial team. When the Secretary of State announced his decision, he committed the cardinal sin of failing to ask the right questions. That was arrogant, because he thought that there was no need to consult or ask whether his information was correct and accurate. That is an example of top-down government—the belief that the Minister in Whitehall knows best and that there is no need to check data or facts with schools, trade unions or local authorities.

Building Schools for the Future was not perfect; I have not suggested that and nor has any other hon. Member who has contributed to this debate. However, it was ambitious in its scope, and that was something that we had not seen in this country for the best part of a century. It represented nothing less than a 15-year programme to refurbish or replace every single secondary school in England.

[Ben Gummer]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Wright]

The hon. Gentleman must forgive me, but I have only four minutes left. In cancelling BSF, the Secretary of State told the House that rising standards in schools are not based on new or improved school buildings.

[Derek Twigg]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Wright]

Given that my hon. Friend secured the debate, I feel that I should give way.

[Derek Twigg]

On the point about rising standards, there was some suggestion that standards had not risen under Labour, yet in Halton they have risen significantly in all secondary schools. In fact, only today Bankfield school, my old school, has been rated as outstanding by Ofsted.

[Mr Wright]

I congratulate Bankfield school on that achievement. Hartlepool local education authority was the fastest-improving education authority in the past 10 years, with regard to rising economic standards, and we have just lost out on £104 million of BSF funding. That could have been the last piece in the jigsaw that would allow our young people in Hartlepool, Halton and elsewhere to meet their potential and thrive.

The Labour Government were allowing teachers, who are professional and well respected, to use their professionalism to inspire and impart knowledge. The CBI produced an interesting report last year that found that exam results in BSF schools improved at more than four times the rate of other schools. It also found that in those schools 30% of pupils felt safer, that bullying and vandalism had decreased by 23% and 51% respectively and that 13% more pupils said that they intended to stay on for the sixth form. Therefore, there is a close relationship between rising standards and inspiring buildings.

To allow Britain to compete in the modern globalised economy, surely we need world-class facilities. If we are to lead the world in science in the 21st century, surely we need state-of-the-art science labs to help motivate and inspire the next generation of scientists. If we are to be at the cutting edge of climate change mitigation, surely a good start would be to demonstrate to pupils, from the youngest possible age, that green buildings can help protect the environment. On a slightly more mundane level, surely it is right that this country, which is still the world’s fifth largest economy—despite the comments of Government Members who want to run down our economic performance—should be able to provide school buildings that do not leak.

The Minister must answer several questions that the Secretary of State seems pathologically incapable of answering. If the Minister does not have time to answer them, I would appreciate it if he wrote to me, and to the Members who have participated in the debate, with specific answers.

Did the Secretary of State at any point receive written or oral advice from his officials or from Partnership for Schools urging him not to publish a list of schools until after he had consulted local authorities to ensure that his criteria were sound and his facts right? Was he advised of the risk of legal challenge from private building contractors? What contingency has his Department put in place for possible judicial reviews from schools, local authorities and private contractors? Will the Minister admit that the decision was not about inefficiency, cumbersome bureaucracy or insufficient funds, but was considered necessary by the Secretary of State to free up money for his dogmatic and ideological free market experiment in schools?

When the Secretary of State announced the cuts to BSF to the House, he stated:

“Action is urgently needed today because the whole of my predecessor’s Department’s spending plans were based on unsustainable assumptions and led to unfunded promises.”—[Official Report, 5 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 50.]

That is a serious allegation about the financial controls and the accountancy and budgetary procedures at the Department for Children, Schools and Families. It alleges that the permanent secretary, as accounting officer, allowed the then Secretary of State to make uncosted promises for short-term political gain.

However, the permanent secretary has stated in a letter to my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls):

“During your time as Secretary of State, I can confirm that the Department for Children, Schools and Families worked closely with Her Majesty’s Treasury to ensure that appropriate cover was provided for spending decisions. Decisions on capital expenditure, including those relating to Building Schools for the Future, were subject to Treasury clearance where appropriate...If any actions on this or any matter were in breach of the requirements of propriety or regularity, I would have sought a ministerial direction. I can confirm that I made no such requests during your time as Secretary of State.”

Will the Minister concede that there were no unfunded promises in the BSF programme and that all schemes went through appropriate procedures of appraisal at both the Department and the Treasury? Will he now apologise for the scurrilous allegations about my right hon. Friend’s conduct?

In conclusion, the Secretary of State’s decision on Building Schools for the Future has cost him a lot; in the space of an afternoon, his reputation—hard won over many years—was reduced to tatters. More importantly, the decision has cost the private sector the potential for recovery and local authorities millions of pounds in opportunity costs and sunk spending. Even more importantly, by denying hundreds of thousands of children and young people the opportunity to be taught in world-class facilities of outstanding design, that decision will be to the cost of the educational potential, and hence the social and economic progress, of this country for many decades to come.

16:06

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

I am sure that we are all glad that the former Minister has got that off his chest, but he has not left me much time in which to answer the real questions that hon. Members have asked. This is the first time that I have served under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and it is a pleasure. I welcome the large number of Members who have sought to participate in the debate. That demonstrates the interest in this matter, although it is notable that there are twice as many Conservative Members present as there are Labour Members.

[Lyn Brown]

Will the Minister give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I will not give way.

[Lyn Brown]

I have sat through the whole debate to ask one question—

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Tim Loughton]

Conservative Members have shown great interest in the debate, while Labour Members who have jumped up and down cannot be bothered to come here in the numbers we were promised.

[Lyn Brown]

Will the Minister give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I will not give way.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) on securing this interesting debate. I certainly recognise his passion for the subject and for the schools in his constituency. I also recognise the big impact that the Building Schools for the Future changes have had on his constituency and the good progress that those schools have made. He acknowledged that the BSF system was certainly not perfect, but he did not state what the effect on BSF would have been in the event of the re-election of a Labour Government committed to axing 50% from capital spending. The cuts have not just come about—

[Derek Twigg]

Will the Minister give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I will not give way because I want to answer the specific questions that the hon. Gentleman has asked. I can either take more interventions and not answer his questions, or I can answer his questions. The choice is his.

[Lyn Brown]

Will the Minister give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I will try to answer the hon. Gentleman’s questions.

The right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) said in his speech that the coalition Government’s first cut was to the BSF budget, but it would have been the same had the Labour Government been re-elected because the money was never there for the scheme, despite all their vague promises.

Many hon. Members from both sides of the House have spoken passionately about the effects of the BSF changes in their constituencies. My hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) has built a reputation for standing up for the schools in his constituency since his election in 2001, and I will certainly nudge my colleagues about the visits to his constituency and to the Department that he was promised. I also acknowledge the passion with which the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) spoke, particularly on his work in the interests of the young people in his constituency. I will answer three of the specific questions from the hon. Member for Halton, but if I miss any other hon. Members’ questions I will be happy to write to them if they nudge me afterwards.

First, the hon. Member for Halton asked about the review. It is led by Sebastian James, the director of DSG International, and is due to be completed by the end of the calendar year, with interim advice to be produced in September, ahead of the comprehensive spending review. Secondly, he asked about the impact on ICT funding. Basically, those decisions will be taken along with those on schools still under consideration and on the future of the scheme, which is being decided under the James review. Such considerations will be part of that review.

Thirdly, the hon. Gentleman made a point about playing fields. The review will include consideration of all requirements on schools, including their buildings and land. However, there is simply no intention to get rid of playing field regulations. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the review will support the coalition aim to protect such playing fields.

I also want to respond to the specific point made by the former Minister, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), about the consultant paid £1.35 million. The National Audit Office’s BSF report of 2009 said clearly, on page 37, in section 4.8, that the £1.35 million was paid to the firm KPMG for the financial services of “one individual” exclusively in that period. The hon. Gentleman knew that—[Interruption.] If he did not know that, he had not done his homework. He was a Minister in the Department at the time.

Let me restate the Government’s absolute commitment to raising standards of education in this country, an ambition shared by all hon. Members and certainly those in the Chamber today. From day one, we have been totally committed to raising educational standards and to tackling head-on some of the big problems bequeathed to us by the former Government.

The achievement gap between private and state schools has grown over the past 13 years. Just as painfully, standards have declined to the point at which 42% of pupils eligible for free school meals are not achieving a single GCSE above grade D. Only a quarter of GCSE students are achieving five or more GCSEs including English, maths, science and a foreign language. We are 24th in the league table for maths, as my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) mentioned.

The hon. Member for Halton claimed that all the changes to BSF are ideologically driven. That is true: the Government are ideologically ambitious to raise the quality of education for every child and to raise the standard of education in every school. The hon. Gentleman also said that the changes were the biggest attack against Labour-supporting areas. What about the attack on the aspirations of the constituents in those areas, building up their hopes of new school buildings when there was never any prospect of a re-elected Labour Government delivering them? That is the attack, and it was misleading, dishonest, opportunistic and immoral. Yet now Labour Members cry foul about how things are happening.

In contrast, we have committed to doubling the number of highly accomplished graduates teaching in our schools, to make sure that every child—especially the poorest—has access to excellent teaching.

I understand the grave disappointments of hon. Members about the BSF programme. I also understand the disappointment of the affected heads, teachers and pupils in the constituencies of the hon. Member for Halton and others who have spoken. It would have been wonderful to have inherited a decent financial legacy so that we could carry on with an efficient building programme to renew all our schools.

The hon. Member for Streatham said that abandoning the BSF programme made no sense. However, what does not make any sense is to leave our Government with a Budget deficit of £155 billion and a public sector net debt of £926.9 billion, or 63.9% of GDP. That is what does not make sense, and that is what is unfair to the children, teachers and parents who are now being let down by a plan that would never have been delivered in practice. It also discriminated against many schools in the later phases. They had no prospect of the money, because it had been lavished disproportionately—wasted—on the earlier schools. That is the truth of the matter.

It is vital to repeat the fact that, contrary to some of the wild reports, the BSF changes do not mean that school buildings and capital works will suddenly be stopped dead in their tracks. We remain committed to investing in the schools estate, to ensure that pupils are educated in buildings of a good standard, where they feel safe, comfortable and ready to learn. However, we must acknowledge that, as the Chancellor made clear in his Budget last month, we are living in a difficult fiscal climate and one in which £1 of every £4 we spend is borrowed. Increasingly, professionals across all public services are being asked to do more with less.

BSF was the flagship programme of the previous Government. Where it has delivered, it has seen some impressive new buildings, but at a huge cost—rebuilding a school under BSF is three times more expensive than a commercial building and twice as expensive as building a school in Ireland.

Social Housing (Houghton and Sunderland South)

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Westminster Hall

16:15

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I refer to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, in which I declare that I own a house, which I rent out privately.

The debate is the first in Westminster Hall that I have secured. I am pleased to take the opportunity to raise an issue of such importance to my constituents. Housing remains a pressing priority in Houghton and Sunderland South, and indeed across the north-east region. Time and again, constituents tell me of their frustration at being unable to secure a home to rent, in particular in a community in which they grew up and where their family continue to live. Their expectations are not unreasonable, and shortage of supply understandably gives rise to frustration and resentment.

In April 2009, there were 2,184 households on Sunderland city council’s waiting list for social housing. In 2008-09, 217 people in Sunderland were accepted as homeless and in priority need. That figure is down from 597 in 2004-05, and I commend Sunderland city council’s housing advice team, whose preventive work, advice and mediation prevent more families from becoming homeless. In 2008-09, the team undertook 710 homelessness prevention cases outside the statutory framework, helping to protect families from the misery and chaos of losing their home and all the social problems that that causes.

However, I am concerned that cuts to local authority funding, with more expected in the autumn, will financially squeeze councils such as Sunderland. Councils will find it increasingly difficult to invest in the vital preventive work that ultimately saves money and alleviates pressure on social housing. I seek reassurance from the Minister on that point.

Under the previous Labour Government, Sunderland’s largest registered social landlord, Gentoo, secured a grant of £34 million from the Homes and Communities Agency under the kick-start scheme. That funding has been crucial in regenerating key areas in Houghton and Sunderland South, such as Doxford Park and the Racecourse estate. I know that such funding has also been crucial in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott).

Research carried out by Gentoo estimates that the overall benefit to the local economy of that Government investment was £60 million—from a grant of £34 million. Jobs in construction and associated trades were secured and created through the investment, which is important in the context of the global recession, when construction workers were struggling to find work as home building ground to a halt.

Local people have benefited from hundreds of new homes to rent and much needed regeneration. I must also commend Gentoo for ensuring that all its social housing stock meets the decent homes standard, five years ahead of the previous Government’s deadline. The challenge is not simply ensuring that we have adequate social housing built to meet our needs, but enabling existing tenants to live in modern homes.

Social housing, which many of us used to know as council housing, has an important role to play in our society. For too long, we heard negative comment about so-called sink estates, with social housing seen as, at best, a second-class option and, at worst, a last resort. As someone who grew up in a council street, the major problem to affect our quality of life and that of our neighbours was the lack of investment in our homes in the 1980s and 1990s—no proper heating systems, damp, no damp-proof course and rotten windows.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friend said, mine is the neighbouring constituency—Sunderland Central has housing provided by Gentoo and Sunderland city council. Does she agree that the standard of housing built in recent years by Gentoo in my constituency, such as Leafields, has not only improved the standard of housing that people live in, but had a great impact on reviving communities and improving their facilities? Often, such housing projects have been built in conjunction with other new builds such as Sure Start centres and schools. That impact is in danger of being lost through the cuts being threatened in such areas.

[Bridget Phillipson]

Yes, I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend. Doxford Park is a particularly good example in my constituency of social housing at its best. Like the development in her constituency, it has a variety of homes: bungalows, flats and family homes. Equally, there is mixed tenure in such developments. There are homes for rent and homes that can be bought, often at affordable prices that are in the reach of local people.

My hon. Friend makes the good point that such development needs to be continued. We still have a pressing need for regeneration in some areas of Sunderland. I appreciate and accept the concerns of many of my constituents that, at times, regeneration has been too slow. I am keen to see it continue, but from discussions that I have had with Gentoo I know about the difficulty that it faces. It would like to build more homes for rent, but because of lack of money from the Government, at times it has little option but to reduce the number of homes it can rent, relative to the number of affordable homes it can sell.

In 1997, the Labour Government inherited a vast backlog of necessary repairs to the social housing stock. The homes were simply not fit for habitation and were crumbling. Social housing should be a genuine choice for my constituents, and I would argue strongly for that choice. Owning a home remains out of the reach of many of them due to their income, so investment in social housing must remain a key priority of the new Government.

As the housing market has slowed and the deposit required for a mortgage has sharply increased, turnover of social homes has dropped significantly in Houghton and Sunderland South, and across Sunderland. That particularly affects young families, who are forced to turn to the private sector, where rents are often higher, there are still unscrupulous landlords and there is not the same security of tenure.

I contend that if the Government will not prioritise investment in social housing, it is all the more important that additional safeguards are put in place to tackle rogue private landlords. However, the Government have offered no commitment on that issue and have dismissed as bureaucratic any suggestion that further regulation of the private rented sector is needed. Further measures are required to provide protection to private tenants in constituencies such as mine, and to provide protection against antisocial behaviour committed by tenants where the landlord does not take action, or where properties are left to stand idle by absentee landlords who are sometimes as far afield as Hong Kong.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) used to live in my constituency. Some of the private landlords who bought properties in the area lived in Hong Kong, and the city council had significant difficulty tracking them down to push forward much-needed regeneration. Sometimes homes become a public health hazard or a focus of antisocial behaviour.

Moreover, the proposed reforms to the housing benefit system will push private tenants into poverty as they struggle in constituencies such as mine to make up the shortfall. It is not uncommon for private tenants in Houghton and Sunderland South to top up their rent by some £10 to £15 a week. For such tenants, the top-up could double when their finances will already be under pressure because of a freeze in child benefits, cuts to tax credits and the VAT rise.

The changes to housing benefit will increase homelessness in my constituency, which will, in turn, lead to greater pressure on social housing stock when we already have a shortage. Local authority housing advice teams such as those in Sunderland will struggle to deal with the additional people who register as homeless. In fact, many local councils support homeless people in accessing private tenancies, and they will now face a massive strain on their already limited budgets. I urge the Government to rethink that damaging element of the housing benefit reforms. In my constituency, it will prove divisive and punitive, and exacerbate social housing need.

Along with many others, I urged the Labour Government to prioritise investment in social housing and recognise the need felt in communities such as Houghton and Sunderland South. Investment did increase, and I was pleased that they listened. However, I am deeply concerned that that progress will be lost. The House of Commons Library makes it clear that the Homes and Communities Agency will see a 10% reduction in its capital budget this year—a total of £450 million when our need for social housing remains as strong as ever, and when crucial construction industry jobs might be secured or created.

Indeed, that cut, combined with the cuts to the Building Schools for the Future programme, will damage the already struggling construction industry in Sunderland, where vital jobs could have been created and much-needed projects could have gone ahead for the benefit of my constituents.

I shall draw my comments to a close as I am anxious to hear the Minister’s response. Again, I am grateful for this early opportunity to draw attention to a serious issue that affects my constituency and wider Sunderland.

16:19

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson). She is following in the path of her distinguished parliamentary predecessor, Fraser Kemp, and I am sure that she will in time establish the same strong reputation that he had for sticking up for constituents. She has done so very well just now. I thank her for bringing this question to the attention of the House and for giving me an opportunity to respond to it.

We need to start with the real situation facing this country as far as financial circumstances are concerned. The hon. Lady made it sound as though the coalition Government have taken decisions purely on a whim—as though we had a choice—and overlooked the fact that we have inherited the worst financial situation of any Government in western Europe, save Ireland.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) to the House. It is great that she is now the MP for the place where I spent some of the happiest years of my life.

The Minister makes a point that we hear continuously—that there was no choice. The truth is that there was a choice. We all agree that we have a terrible deficit to sort out, but the choice that the Government parties are taking is different from the one that my party would have taken if it had been in government. We do not have to choose what the Minister has chosen. That needs to be nailed to the wall now.

[Andrew Stunell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution, which is one that I have heard several times from Members on the other side of the House. Unfortunately, it is no more relevant or close to reality than the projections that were made before the election, which were that everything was fine and that we could just carry on.

If things were so good beforehand, it is astonishing that so little social housing was built by the previous Government. House building in England is now at its lowest level since 1946, with just 118,000 completions in 2009. I remind Opposition Members that they were in charge at that time. Excluding the war years, they achieved the lowest rate of house building across England and Wales since 1923. That is not a record that allows them the strength to criticise what this Government are doing now.

[Bridget Phillipson]

The argument that the Minister makes is a good one in many ways. He refers to 1946 as a key point. Much of my constituency is composed of post-war modern developments built when Britain was groaning under the weight of the debt we accrued to fight the second world war. Surely, sometimes it is a question of priorities. We choose to prioritise what matters, and if we choose to prioritise housing, we not only secure the future of our communities and regenerate them, but, equally, create much-needed jobs in a time of deficit.

I accept the Minister’s point that the previous Government should have done more on social housing. I pushed hard on that point. I would contend that latterly they were doing more, but that the rug is now being pulled—

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions should be as brief as possible.

[Andrew Stunell]

I thank the hon. Lady, who acknowledged the reality of what I said. As she correctly says, this is a matter of priority. I shall come to exactly what the Government’s priorities are, and why we took the decisions that we have announced.

We need to be clear that there is a significant gap between the supply and demand for new homes. For decades, the housing market failed to keep up with the needs of our growing population, which has led to problems with affordability, people coming on to the council house waiting list and people seeking to buy their first home. That, in turn, has led to social and economic problems, and the hon. Lady eloquently set out some of the problems affecting her own community.

The long-term demand for housing is strong and fed by rising population, increasing affluence—taking 10 or 20 years at a time—and people’s strong cultural preference for homes of their own. Under-supply has led to some serious consequences for us.

I want to make it clear to the hon. Lady that we, too, share her commitment to having more affordable housing, and we remain committed to the provision of social rented housing for those in need. We will promote shared ownership schemes and help social tenants and others to get on to the housing ladder, although that has to be done within the constraints of the financial position that the Government find themselves in.

If constituents came to hon. Members’ surgeries with a problem and explained that they were on £300 a week but were spending £400 a week and putting the extra £100 on their credit cards, which had £50,000 on them, we would, as responsible Members of Parliament, say, “You need to see whether you can increase your income and reduce your expenditure.” People would get such advice from any sensible debt counsellor or MP. We, as sensible MPs, and as a sensible coalition Government, have to say that our commitments and aspirations must be measured against the resources available and the constraints of the financial position that we are in.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

We hear that mantra from the Government every time they open their mouth; it is their answer to every question. The Government are looking to wipe out the deficit in three to four years simply so that they can deliver tax cuts before an election. They are doing that at the expense of the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson).

[Andrew Stunell]

It would be nice to think that we could wipe out the deficit, but the Government’s financial plans say that we will have stopped adding to the overdraft. It is not that we will reduce the £50,000 credit card debt that I mentioned, but that we will stop increasing it. The hon. Lady needs to get a grip on reality.

To return to the subject of the debate, we are absolutely committed to wider home ownership and helping those who aspire to own their own home; the figure is estimated at some 1.4 million households. We want first-time buyers who cannot get into the housing market to do so, and we want social housing waiting lists to be reduced. We want to ensure that the affordable housing supply is increased.

That means building new homes, where they are sustainable, in places that are attractive to people and near to work. We know from the performance of the previous Government that top-down targets are not the right way to go about that. In fact, the higher the targets were raised by the Labour Government, the fewer houses were completed.

We intend to return decision making to democratically elected councils and to remove regional housing targets. We will reform the planning system to give neighbourhoods more say, provide incentives to local authorities to deliver sustainable development and create new land trusts that will make it simpler for communities to provide homes for local people. We will drive up housing supply by providing financial incentives to local authorities that build additional housing. I would have thought that that was helpful to the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South in respect of the debate.

Ours will be a bottom-up approach, allowing local communities to control the way villages, towns and cities develop through local plans and letting them derive direct benefits from the proceeds of growth in their areas. We need to remind ourselves again that the affordable housing supply was down by more than a third under the previous Government. We recognise that there is continued need for affordable housing for social rent and for low-cost home-ownership housing, and we remain committed to delivering on that.

Some Library figures on spending reductions being applied to the Homes and Communities Agency were mentioned. If the hon. Lady looks carefully at the expenditure plans that we have set before the House, she will see that the previous Government’s housing pledge committed £1.5 billion to the agency’s funding. We have now secured and authorised £1.25 billion. In other words, by struggling and kicking we have pushed forward a sum that is just £250 million short of the original pledge, which was based on wobbly finance. The Government are strongly committed to pushing that programme forward. We will make the radical changes needed to incentivise housing supply and ensure that local communities are empowered so that they can take advantage of that.

On Monday, the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government attended an event in Liverpool, which was the first of a series of events to kick-start the big society. It was announced that four pilot local authorities would immediately be given the opportunity to take forward some of the ideas for devolving power and making things happen locally, to supersede top-down decision making from Whitehall and get things going on the ground. I hope that, soon, the hon. Lady will see those pilots delivering success and that she will strongly encourage Sunderland city council to join in.

The hon. Lady mentioned housing benefit, which I want to discuss. We—the Government and taxpayers—are paying more in housing benefit than we do for the police and universities combined. In real terms, the cost of housing benefit has risen from £14 billion to £21 billion in the past 10 years. I will give her the opportunity after the debate to score a few points at my expense. This is the second time that I have debated housing benefit in Westminster Hall with a Member representing Sunderland South. The previous time was on 12 January 2000, with her predecessor—she may want to look it up in Hansard—who said:

“The overriding objective of the housing benefit system is to enable those with no income of their own and those on low incomes to provide for their reasonable housing costs… housing benefit should not subsidise someone to live in a property that is unreasonably expensive. If it did, tenants would… have no incentive to look for more reasonably priced accommodation and landlords would have no incentive to seek more reasonable rents.”—[Official Report, 12 January 2000; Vol. 342, c. 108WH.]

At that time, her predecessor was a Minister with responsibility for communities and I was in the hon. Lady’s place, making bitter complaints about what was happening to housing benefit. Since then, housing benefit expenditure has risen by £7 billion.

[Bridget Phillipson]

Does the Minister accept that, subsequently, the local housing allowance was introduced to deal with that problem and that although the reforms of the housing benefit system were far from perfect—it is a complicated, means-tested system—the LHA was designed to tackle some of the difficulties, including rents being too high or tenants not being encouraged to find more affordable accommodation? We do not need wholesale cuts to adapt system more adequately to meet the needs of tenants.

[Andrew Stunell]

I am sure that those matters will be debated during the consultation on the plans that have been announced. Since the hon. Lady’s predecessor made that statement to the Chamber, expenditure on housing benefit has increased by 50%, from £14 billion to £21 billion. A simple ready reckoner helpfully provided by my Department shows that that £7 billion would have allowed us to build 60,000 social houses in each of the past 10 years—600,000 houses could have been constructed. That would have satisfied her and me, but it would have required restraint on housing benefit.

If the coalition Government’s proposals are implemented in the form in which they have been introduced, they will save £1.8 billion, which is equivalent to 20,000 social houses. In a time of constraint, the hon. Lady and I must weigh up housing benefit costs against the possibility of increased social housing. Those are the tough choices that her predecessor offered to me 10 years ago, and which it is now my duty to offer to her today. The reforms that have been announced will allow us to make better use of our social housing. A key point relates to the way that social housing is occupied. We all know that there is a mismatch between the size of households and the size of many council houses. We know that that is also an issue.

When resources, affordable housing and rented accommodation are scarce, waiting lists are high, and financial constraints on the country are great, we must ensure that we make efficient and effective use of the resources and homes that we have. The hon. Lady referred to the hardship that will be caused to her constituents as a result of applying the new rules, but I remind her that the discretionary housing payment allowance to local authorities is £20 million, which will rise threefold to £60 million to help households to adjust. As the name suggests, the payments will be entirely at the discretion of local authorities.

Hon. Members are rightly interested in housing need, which increased under the previous Government, despite a 50% increase in spending through housing benefit. I suspect that there is not much of a gap between the hon. Lady and me on what might have been a better use of that money in delivering social housing for people to rent. We have inherited record-low house building. We have waiting lists for social housing of 1,800,000 households, and turning that around will not be easy. However, I assure the hon. Lady and other hon. Members that we are absolutely committed to turning it around and to providing safe, secure, sustainable housing for all who need it.

[Mr Anderson]

I thank the Minister for taking this intervention; I did not want to interrupt his flow. Will he provide us with the figures? I lost track a little, but I think he said that 600,000 houses could be built for £7 billion. Can those figures be put in the Library or shared with Members so we can check them out?

[Andrew Stunell]

It is a good job that I did not say that, because if I had it would have been completely incorrect. If I conveyed that impression, it is a good job I am responding now, because that allows me to say that the difference in the cost of housing benefit in real terms between 10 years ago and now is £7 billion a year. I believe that the hon. Gentleman has seen my point. I do not think that there was anything wrong with what I meant to say. If there was something wrong with what I actually said, I am happy to put that right.

Local Education Partnerships

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Westminster Hall

16:44

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is my first Westminster Hall debate, so if I mess up the protocol—

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

You addressed me as Mr Speaker, which is flattering, but incorrect. I am not yet the Speaker. Mr Gray is perfectly sufficient.

[Charlotte Leslie]

Thank you, Mr Gray. That was my first mess-up.

The focus in recent weeks has been on the Building Schools for the Future programme, but I wanted to bring this debate to Westminster Hall because the mechanisms underlying that programme—local education partnerships—have been overlooked. They are public-private partnerships between local authorities and a private sector partner selected to carry out contracting for the local authority. I have initiated this debate because I want to talk about the inefficiencies of local education partnerships and a certain lack of democratic accountability.

On value for money, I have previously worked with academy sponsors and a number have come to me in little less than despair about the measures and mechanisms that they have to go through with local education partnerships, to the extent that one even told me that the introduction of the partnership would be enough to put them off sponsoring another academy. I shall give a few details of an academy sponsor who sponsored an academy before the local education partnership came into effect, and then did so again after that, to give the Minister the benefit of experiences that that academy sponsor related to me about the way the partnership process works.

I shall also speak about the democratic accountability of local education partnerships. I shall refer, for illustration only, to a specific case in my constituency: the rebuild of Elmlea infants school, which badly needs a rebuild and has a very hard-working head teacher. That rebuild will not be done under the Building Schools for the Future programme.

First, on the academy sponsor and its concerns about efficiencies, the sponsor told me that the local education partnership in Bristol—the contractor partner was Skanska—was 90% owned by Skanska as contractor and 10% owned by the local authority. Obviously, that raises questions. The interests not of the school but of Skanska were put first, because of its stake in the LEP. Moreover, the local authority was a 10% shareholder, so it was compromised because the higher the building costs for Skanska, the higher the fees to the LEP. It was apparent that the school’s interests were not represented in that dynamic.

My second concern is about responsibilities. A partnership may function very well, but there may be a lack of accountability as to who takes responsibility for what. That problem has been raised frequently in connection with academy projects. In a local education partnership academy project, the school that is converting to an academy is not the client; the local authority is the client. In the case that I am referring to—it may be replicated because of the structural nature of LEPs—the council is reluctant to accept responsibility for the contract, because the school that it is looking after will no longer be its school. There is an imbalance in responsibility for the LEP contract and responsibility for the school afterwards. During discussions on the rebuild and the education to be provided in the new academy, the school was unable to speak directly to the architect dealing with the build but had to go through the contractor, Skanska, which did not necessarily have the expertise that the school had in providing buildings fit for educational purpose.

On costs, the school, which was being sponsored by sponsors who had sponsored other academies, was forced to take on the LEP procurement process rather than open tender. That caused much concern and some frustration, because the sponsor had managed to bring in an academy on time and under budget—the Minister will know that that is unusual for academy procurement and set-up. The sponsors had proved to be extremely efficient and had found extremely efficient partners, and they wanted to replicate that best practice, but were unable to do so because of the rigidity of the local education partnership. They also reported that Skanska had an overhead and profit margin of 8% plus, compared with the market rate of 4%. The sponsor estimated that that deprived the school of £500,000 of new build for that element alone.

On legal fees, because of the nature of the local educational partnership, there were three sets of solicitors. There were no challenges to the legal costs, which were substantial and, I would suggest, in a number of cases arose from replication of a task.

Those are illustrations of a wider problem that I am sure is replicated up and down the country. In another case, a school was forced to take the LEP ICT option, even though it already had its own ICT equipment that it could run itself, and which was fully functioning and used to great effect. That equipment was not compatible with the LEP version of ICT equipment required, so it was replaced at great cost, with complex contracts having to be negotiated. New ICT equipment had to be bought in at the taxpayer’s expense, and the school’s existing, perfectly functional ICT equipment became redundant because of the rigidity of the procurement process.

I could go on and on—I have a long list of inefficiencies, but I know that the Minister has better things to do, so I will not do that. Those examples of waste were provided to me by just one academy sponsor, which came to me with its concerns, but they are an indication of the kind of waste that is occurring under local educational partnerships. In this climate of economic austerity, I suggest that such waste should be looked at carefully.

My second concern is slightly less reported and has to do with democratic accountability and transparency. To illustrate my point, I will refer to the rebuild of Elmlea infants school in my constituency. The infants school shares a site with Elmlea junior school. Both schools have playgrounds and Elmlea junior school has a large playing field, which is an excellent facility for the community and is used to fulfil the curriculum requirements of both the infants and the junior school. The infants school is in urgent need of a rebuild—it has classrooms with no windows. The head teacher works hard for her children and the school is successful despite its substandard facilities.

The local educational partnership was responsible for drawing up a projected rebuild of Elmlea infants school. All along the line, the LEP process has derailed, been postponed and caused confusion among almost all the stakeholders—the local authority, head teachers in the schools and, most particularly, parents and the public. In January 2009, a feasibility study presented options 1, 2 and 3 for a rebuild of Elmlea infants school—this will get technical, but it illustrates the point. Options 1 and 2 were based on rebuilding on the existing site, and option 3 was based on rebuilding on the junior school’s playing field.

Throughout the process, it seemed that there was an LEP bias towards option 3. Option 2 was presented as the favoured option in January 2009, but rather undemocratically and quickly—it is difficult to get to the bottom of why this happened—option 3 was suddenly presented as the preferred option. All sorts of questions were raised about why that happened. Questions were asked by parents and by myself at public meetings, because incomparable costs had been presented in an attempt to move public opinion and the opinion of those in the local authority in favour of option 3—the rebuild on the playing field. The key question is why the LEP was able to provide incomparable costs. I have asked for breakdowns of the costs for the individual options so that the process can be conducted in a transparent manner and value for money can be ascertained; but to date, I have not received those breakdowns, so it is difficult to see how the money is being spent.

In conjunction with the knowledge that, in the academies process, 90% of the LEP was owned by Skanska, it has been asked whether Skanska’s interests are driving the school rebuild, or whether the rebuild is being driven by the interests of the school, parents and education. In my constituency, it has become a massive issue. The lack of transparency has delayed the process because people are seeking democratic accountability and answers. The school is worried that the rebuild it needs so much will be jeopardised because the LEP process has been so long-winded and has evaded so many questions that need answering.

I could go on and on about the failings and the questions that hang over the local educational partnership, but I will mention just a few. The preferred option for rebuild presented to the elected member for education on the council was changed at the last minute, with no debate or scrutiny. That put people on the council in a difficult position. The local educational partnership refers to independent partners, such as KEY Educational Associates, as independent in their scrutiny, whereas in fact at least one member of that independent body is employed by Skanska, so there is a question about that independence. More generally, democratic accountability has been poor.

In conclusion, I ask the Minister what his views are—if he has formed any—on the role of local educational partnerships, given that the Building Schools for the Future programme has been reviewed. Will he look closely at the value for money and the democratic accountability and efficiency represented by local educational partnerships, over which I have grave concerns?

16:55

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

May I say what a double pleasure it is, Mr Gray, to serve under your chairmanship again this afternoon?

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) on securing the debate, especially as it is her first in Westminster Hall. I also offer my congratulations on her recent election. I am sure that she will serve the people of Bristol North West for many years to come with the greatest distinction and dedication. Even if her endeavours this afternoon were not witnessed by a packed Chamber, the quality of her exposition of the problem, which showed great technical know-how, did her great credit. Her points about local education partnerships, waste, value for money, democratic accountability and transparency, are important.

I also congratulate my hon. Friend on her election to the Education Committee, and I hope that she will have a rather larger audience during that Committee’s deliberations. As a leading expert in the field, she brings us a wealth of experience and knowledge of a range of educational matters—we heard about one this afternoon—and I look forward to working closely with her and the rest of the Committee.

My hon. Friend wishes specifically to discuss the role of local education partnerships and academies in her part of Bristol. I am delighted to do that, but I shall first put matters into a wider context. In her excellent maiden speech, my hon. Friend eloquently described the huge disparity between the opportunities extended to the richest and the poorest children in her constituency—the achievement gap. That poverty of attainment marks too much of the educational system, particularly for those in the most deprived areas. She described it as

“a tale of two cities, whereby extreme poverty and deprivation exist side by side with some of the richest wards in the country.”—[Official Report, 2 June 2010; Vol. 510, c. 499.]

She is right, but that problem is by no means unique to Bristol North West or even the rest of Bristol. It is a sad reflection on our education system that, out of a cohort of 600,000 pupils, 80,000 are eligible for free school meals, of whom just 45 made it to Oxbridge last year.

Making opportunity more equal is the aim of the coalition Government in all of their policies, and it also guides our approach to education. That comes against the backdrop of the appalling state of public finances. Our first priority must be to reduce the deficit, but we must also ensure that we improve public services in order to improve the chances of every child. Because we prioritised education, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor was able to announce that we will protect front-line spending this year on schools, on 16-to-19 funding and on Sure Start. Because tackling educational inequality is at the heart of our reforms, we will introduce a pupil premium to ensure that money is better targeted at the poorest pupils. I know that my hon. Friend has contributed both energy and enthusiasm to that policy in the past and we are extremely grateful to her for that.

Because we are determined to ensure that every child—especially the poorest—has access to excellent teaching, we will double the number of highly accomplished graduates teaching in our schools, recruit hundreds more graduate teachers into areas of poverty where they can help to raise attainment in the most challenging places and, for the first time, fund the expansion of graduate teachers into primary schools. As my hon. Friend pointed out, we must ensure that we spend taxpayers’ money in the most efficient and responsible way possible at all times and on all elements of our programme, especially capital spending on refurbishing existing schools and building new ones—including, of course, academies.

It is deeply regrettable that, throughout its life, the Building Schools for the Future programme, which included academies, has been characterised by massive overspends, tragic delays and needless bureaucracy. Its startling inefficiency means that stopping the programme was the right thing to do. Having extended its scope, its budget bulged from £45 billion to £55 billion, and its time scale went from 10 years to a projected 18. Of the £250 million spent before building began, £60 million was spent on consultants or advisory costs to support layer upon layer of process. In some areas, it took more than two years to negotiate the bureaucracy, and that was before a single builder had been engaged or a single brick laid. Only 5% of the 3,500 secondary schools in this country were rebuilt, refurbished or received BSF funding for ICT—only 185 schools, which is astonishingly few given how much money was spent. Perhaps worst of all, considering the state of public finances, is that BSF schools cost three times what it costs to procure buildings in the commercial world, and twice what it costs to build a school in Ireland.

The programme could not be allowed to continue, so my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education announced on 5 July that we would end the previous Government’s school rebuilding programme. However, the end of the BSF programme does not mean the end of investing in our schools. We are still absolutely committed to rebuilding and refurbishing, but we do not believe that the BSF programme was spending taxpayers’ money anywhere near efficiently enough, and money wasted on that programme was money that could not be used elsewhere, either in schools or other parts of the education establishment. We want to review all ways in which schools are built to ensure that money is allocated more efficiently, less expensively and, most important, more fairly. The cancellation of BSF does not represent the end of capital investment in schools. The review announced on 5 July will consider how the Department invests capital money, and its recommendations will help to shape the design of future capital investment in schools to ensure that we have enough school places in enough good buildings where pupils can learn effectively.

I turn to local education partnerships. As the previous Government’s preferred mechanism for local areas procuring BSF building services, local education partnerships have been a major component of the old process. Although the reason for establishing LEPs was specifically to support BSF projects, some local authorities chose to use their LEPs for projects outside BSF, as happened in the case of Elmlea school, cited by my hon. Friend. However, whether or not LEPs are part of the BSF programme, they should take responsibility for offering value for money to the taxpayer in all their capital spending—indeed, we would expect nothing less. That is why we will be reviewing procurement and delivery models as part of the terms of reference in our capital review.

The aim of the review is to ensure that future capital investment represents good value for money and that it responds to schools’ real needs. The review is already under way, and I shall not pre-empt its findings today. It will report to Ministers in mid-September, and a forward plan for capital investment over the next spending review period will be produced by the end of the calendar year. However, it is as clear to me as it is to my hon. Friend that LEPs are part of a truly cumbersome process, which needs to be closely examined and fundamentally re-engineered to ensure that a higher proportion of our capital investment gets rapidly to the schools that need it most. I therefore congratulate my hon. Friend on the immense detail that she has given us on the LEP that covers her constituency.

Whatever the detailed outcome of the review, we must ensure that the views of head teachers, teachers, parents and local communities are more effectively and swiftly acted upon and that there is a much greater focus on achieving value for money. When it comes to procuring services to build schools, we should have proper accountability and real efficiency. That will be good for local areas, schools, pupils and the taxpayer.

I turn to the Bristol local education partnership. My hon. Friend said that the partnership was split 90% to Skanska and 10% to Bristol city council. I gather that the figures are 80% to Skanska, 10% Bristol city council and 10% to a local BSF partnership, which is a slightly different equation. I have deep sympathy with the plight of those in my hon. Friend’s constituency who have suffered from the excessive bureaucracy of the current process. I hope the situation at Elmlea school can be resolved for the long-term benefit of the pupils, and that a solution is found that is efficient and effective and that represents good value for money.

The Bristol LEP has delivered four PFI-funded schemes on time and on budget, with six further secondary school projects in various stages of completion and a further three academy projects either handed over or under construction. Aside from one slightly delayed handover of a new building, its track record has been generally solid in terms of budget, quality and programme. However, the LEP model in Bristol has not proved so adept in delivering smaller-scale primary school projects where the needs of the local communities required a greater level of consultation and understanding. We are aware of the demand of parents in north-west Bristol for more primary school places and for more choice in secondary schools. We will have to wait for greater certainty about the various ideas that have emerged from there and the outcome of the review before decisions can be made, but whatever comes out of the review, we can be sure that future investment will be characterised by speediness and value for money.

I reiterate our commitment to investing in schools in Bristol and around the country. We have set out a comprehensive programme of reforms, founded on the need to make opportunity more equal. Part of that will be to ensure that schools across the country that need rebuilding and renovation will, in future, receive that money in a more timely and efficient manner. That is the only way to give every pupil in Bristol and beyond a better chance of success.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on having considered the problem, and I would be more than happy were she to highlight further anomalies in the local education partnership. If she refers them to the Secretary of State or the Minister for Schools, I shall ensure that they receive proper attention. I congratulate her on bringing the matter to a not entirely crowded Chamber, and I note that in her short time in the House as Member for Bristol North West she has made great endeavours to ensure a fairer and better education system for all her constituents.

Question put and agreed to.

17:06

Sitting adjourned.

Written Ministerial Statements

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Written Statements

Wednesday 21 July 2010

Free-to-Air Listed Events

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Hugh Robertson)]

A free-to-air listed events regime has operated in the UK for many years and has been reviewed periodically. A review of the current list was commissioned in late 2008 and undertaken by an independent advisory panel chaired by ex-FA executive director, David Davies. The review looked at the principle of having a list, the criteria for listing events and the specific events which should be listed. Full details of the current list and the Davies panel’s recommendations are listed below.

In response to the Davies’ proposals, the previous Government launched their own consultation at the end of 2009. This consultation closed on 19 March 2010.

This Government begin their consideration of this subject from the perspective of not wishing to increase—and ideally seeking to reduce—the degree of regulation faced by sports bodies and broadcasters while ensuring that viewers continue to have access to the biggest sporting events on free-to-air television, through live coverage or highlights.

Furthermore, the current economic climate also points to us not taking action which could adversely impact on sport, particularly at grassroots level.

In making a decision on the best way forward we have taken account of a range of major developments that are likely to have a significant effect on sports rights markets and the broadcasting landscape in the near future. Digital switchover will conclude in 2012 and will result in the widespread availability of a significantly increased number of television channels. It will also release spectrum which could be used for, among other things, yet more digital channels. Other technological advances could significantly alter the way the sports broadcasting environment operates in the UK. Furthermore, there are issues such as the BBC’s strategy review, which will cover sports rights, and the Ofcom pay TV review, the consequences of which still have to work themselves through.

These issues all point to a full review of the current list being deferred until after digital switchover has concluded and its consequences are known. In reaching that view I have looked at the material put forward by respondents to the previous Government’s consultation document to see if it contained any evidence to suggest that I should not defer a decision. I did not consider that there was any such evidence: accordingly, I propose to defer a decision on the listed events regime but with a commitment to review the position more fully in 2013—following the completion of digital switchover. The current list therefore remains in force.

Annex A

Current List of Events

Group A (Full Live Coverage Protected)

The Olympic Games

The FIFA World Cup Finals Tournament

The European Football Championship Finals Tournament

The FA Cup Final

The Scottish FA Cup Final (in Scotland)

The Grand National

The Wimbledon Tennis Finals

The Rugby World Cup Final

The Derby

The Rugby League Challenge Cup Final

Group B (Secondary Coverage Protected)

Cricket Test Matches played in England

Non-Finals play in the Wimbledon Tournament

All Other Matches in the Rugby World Cup Finals Tournament

Six Nations Rugby Tournament Matches Involving Home Countries

The Commonwealth Games

The World Athletics Championship

The Cricket World Cup—the Final, Semi-finals and Matches Involving Home Nations’ Teams

The Ryder Cup

The Open Golf Championship

Davies Review

A review of the current list was commissioned in late 2008 and undertaken by an independent advisory panel chaired by ex-FA executive director, David Davies. The review looked at the principle of having a list, the criteria for listing events and the specific events which should be listed. It concluded the following events should be listed:

Group A (Full Live Coverage Protected)

Summer Olympic Games (recommended de-listing winter games)

The FIFA World Cup Finals Tournament

The European Football Championship Finals Tournament

The FA Cup Final

The Scottish FA Cup Final (in Scotland)

The Grand National

The Wimbledon Tennis Championship in its entirety

The Rugby Union World Cup Tournament in its entirety

Events Davies proposed be added to Group A List

Home and Away qualification matches in the FIFA World Cup

Home and Away qualification matches in the UEFA European Football Championships

The Open Golf Championship

Cricket’s Home Ashes Test Matches

Wales matches in the Six Nations Rugby Championship (in Wales only)

The Davies Panel proposed abolishing the Group B List

Armed Forces Compensation Scheme

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

The outcome of Admiral Lord Boyce’s review of the armed forces compensation scheme (AFCS) was announced in February. While the review found that the AFCS was fundamentally sound it made a number of recommendations for improvement. The majority of these improvements require legislative amendment to the scheme. While all the changes recommended by Lord Boyce will be implemented in new legislation by February 2011, I have taken the opportunity to make some changes more quickly, and these will take effect in early August.

Most importantly, the time limit to make a claim for injury or illness is to be increased from five to seven years. This ensures anyone who wishes to make a claim for compensation for an injury or illness that has arisen since the scheme was introduced in 2005 can still make a claim.

As well as the increase to time-limits, I have also made the following changes:

Increase in the maximum level of bereavement grant from £20,000 to £25,000. This reflects the increase in armed forces pay since 2005, and as a result the only change recommended by Lord Boyce as applying to future claimants only.

Increase in the maximum level of bereavement grant for reservists who are not members of a reserve forces pension scheme to £37,500, to help bring their benefits in line with their regular forces colleagues.

Uplift of the majority of awards for hearing loss by one tariff level.

No one will lose out as a result of these changes, or those that are to be implemented next year. All those who have already made a claim under the scheme since 6 April 2005 will have their award automatically revisited and will receive an uplift. Due to the complexity involved in revisiting such a large number of previous awards, this process will take time. We aim to have all additional payments made by June 2012.

Making these changes demonstrates the Government’s commitment to injured service personnel, and to implementing the recommendations of the Boyce review as soon as is practicable. I will provide a further update when the remainder of the recommendations are put in legislation early next year, after which time the review of awards already made can commence.

Animal Welfare Advisory Committee

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Peter Luff)]

I am pleased to announce an early contribution to this Government’s commitment to reduce the costs of bureaucracy following a review of public bodies sponsored by the Ministry of Defence (MOD).

All of the bodies have been reviewed against the technical, impartiality and transparency tests. We have concluded that they are all still needed, except for the Animal Welfare Advisory Council (AWAC). The AWAC was formed in 1996 to provide independent scientific advice to the Secretary of State for Defence on the care and welfare of animals used in procedures for defence research purposes in the United Kingdom. The AWAC is not responsible for monitoring compliance with animal welfare regulations since this is done by the Home Office and their independent Animal Procedures Committee (APC). Consequently the AWAC has not met since 2007. We have consulted with all interested parties and it has been agreed that the AWAC will be dissolved immediately. We are confident that the Home Office and their independent APC will ensure that the MOD continues to take the issue of animal health and welfare seriously and complies fully with all animal welfare regulations.

Food and Environment Research Agency and Animal Health

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)]

The 2009-10 annual report and accounts for the Food and Environment Research Agency and Animal Health will be laid before Parliament today.

UK Seas

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)]

I am today placing in the Library of the House a copy of the report prepared by the UK marine monitoring and assessment strategy (UKMMAS) community entitled “Charting Progress 2: the state of UK seas”. A copy will also be available on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ website (http://chartingprogress. defra.gov.uk).

Charting Progress 2 is the most comprehensive report on the state of the UK marine environment ever undertaken and is the result of a five-year study into how human use and other pressures, such as climate change, are affecting our seas. It draws on evidence gathered by scientists from marine agencies, research institutes, universities, environmental organisations and industries around the UK. All the evidence has been peer reviewed by national and international scientists.

The top findings of the report are:

Sea levels have risen by 14 cm during the last century and surface temperatures have increased by 1^° centigrade since the late nineteenth century;

Fish stocks have improved but many are still fished unsustainably;

Many estuaries are cleaner and this has increased the biodiversity and number of fish species;

Contamination by hazardous substances (such as heavy metals) has reduced in most regions and there are few or no problems relating to radioactivity, eutrophication or algal toxins in seafood;

Litter, particularly plastic, was found on all beaches surveyed, as well as in the sea and on the seabed;

The main pressures on the marine environment are damage to and loss of habitat on the seabed from fishing and the presence of physical structures.

Our seas are three times the size of our land and yet while we have many reports that tell us what is happening to our land, we have little to inform us about the state of our seas. Charting Progress 2 allows us to monitor our progress and prioritise what action Government and business need to take to achieve clean, healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas. As a first step, we have published a Government commentary on Charting Progress 2 (http://chartingprogress.defra. gov.uk) which highlights the important messages coming from UKMMAS’s work and our approach to them and also identifies where we need to improve knowledge or reduce uncertainty before we can make policy and management decisions.

Marine Policy Statement

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)]

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the devolved Administrations are launching today a public consultation on the draft UK Marine Policy Statement (MPS). As required by the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, I am laying the consultation draft before both Houses of Parliament, and placing copies in the House Libraries.

The MPS forms a key element of the coalition Government’s programme for implementing the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009. The draft MPS is UK-wide and has been developed jointly with officials in the devolved Administrations. The Marine Act provides for the introduction of marine planning in UK waters for the first time and the MPS is the first step in this new marine planning system.

The MPS is defined by the requirements placed on it by the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, with the overall aim of contributing to the achievement of sustainable development. The MPS will be the decision-making framework for the UK marine area and will guide the development of marine plans and licensing regimes across the UK. It will ensure that, going forward, decisions about the marine area are made strategically, according to a clearly set out vision, policies and objectives. The MPS therefore covers all major activities and sectors from renewable energy to nature conservation and from fishing to tourism. The MPS sets the policy context and direction in each of these areas and the considerations that must be given to each activity in the development of marine plans or when licensing decisions are taken. By bringing together the wealth of policy objectives for the marine area, and by setting out in one place the breadth of the legislation that exists for the marine environment, the MPS will provide clarity for regulators and developers. The aim of the MPS is to ensure the necessary consistency and coherence across the UK in the way we manage our seas, while providing the flexibility for marine plans to reflect the characteristics and needs of different marine areas.

The draft MPS is supported by an appraisal of sustainability (incorporating a strategic environmental assessment), a habitats regulations assessment, an equality impact assessment screening report and an impact assessment. These documents have also been published today as part of the consultation package, and copies will be placed in the House Libraries.

The public consultation being launched today invites comments on all the documents listed above. The consultation can be found online at: www.defra. gov.uk/corporate/consult/marine-policy/index.htm. The consultation closes on 13 October 2010. All interested parties are invited to participate in consultation events being organised by my Department and in the wider engagement programme set out in our revised Statement of Public Participation, which can be found at: http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/marine/documents/legislation/ukpolicy-publicpart.pdf. My officials will make a summary of the consultation responses available to Parliament at the end of the consultation period.

Paragraph 10(7) of schedule 5 to the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 requires the Secretary of State to specify the period allocated for legislative scrutiny of the consultation draft of the MPS. The relevant period for this purpose begins on 21 July 2010 and ends on 28 January 2011.

My Department is also launching today consultations on the marine planning system and the marine licensing systems in England. Together, these three consultations represent a coherent package of action that the Government are taking to improve the management of our seas.

Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Written Statements

[The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)]

On 16 to 17 July 2010 I attended an informal meeting of OSCE Foreign Ministers in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The overriding aim of the Kazakh OSCE chairmanship-in-office was to secure political endorsement of their proposal for an OSCE summit. During my interventions at both the dinner on 16 July and the two plenary sessions on 17 July I stressed the need for a substantive agenda, if there was to be a summit, and for the OSCE to demonstrate the capacity to act across four specific areas of OSCE activity: conflict prevention and resolution; arms control; human rights and democracy; and transnational threats, including those linked to Afghanistan. On the afternoon of 17 July Ministers reached consensus on a summit taking place in Astana, Kazakhstan by the end of 2010.

During my time in Kazakhstan I was able to have bilateral meetings with 14 Foreign Ministers and other Heads of Delegation¹, the director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, and the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. In my meeting with the Foreign Minister of Kyrgyzstan I underlined the need for the Kyrgyz authorities to take forward the difficult process of reconciliation and reconstruction, particularly in terms of organising a credible investigation into the tragic events in April and June. I also noted that DFID would represent the British Government at the 27 July donor conference in Bishkek.

The ongoing crisis in Kyrgyzstan was taken up by a number of delegations during the plenary session, including the Foreign Ministers of France and Germany, who arrived in Kazakhstan direct from a joint visit to Kyrgyzstan. They tabled a paper on the role the OSCE could play across the board in Kyrgyzstan and the need to despatch a Police Advisory Group (PAG). I am placing a copy of this paper in the Library of the House. I and many other delegations welcomed the proposals. The Kyrgyz Government and the OSCE reached agreement on the arrangements for the PAG subject to agreement by the OSCE Permanent Council on 22 July.

¹Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, US, Uzbekistan.

Kabul Conference Commitments

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)]

On 10 June the Prime Minister announced an additional 40% of aid funding over four years, to support measurable outcomes to promote stability in Afghanistan. Following consultations with other Government Departments, my recent visit to Afghanistan alongside the Foreign Secretary for the Kabul conference, and discussions with the Afghan Government, I am pleased to confirm that the increase will focus on three key areas, which I see as critical to a better future for the Afghan people and a secure future for the UK:

First, improving security and political stability:

The Afghan Government are committed to stabilising 80 insecure districts. The UK is directly supporting this effort in central Helmand and will work with coalition partners to roll out the district delivery programme in all 80 districts. In Nad Ali, for example, a district in Helmand, a community council has been elected and has identified priority actions in education and roads. With UK funding, the Afghan Government are building two new schools in Nad Ali, to educate 1,900 children, and repairing up to 80 km of roads to open up trade and commerce.

In Kabul, President Karzai reiterated the commitment made at the London conference to increase police numbers to 134,000 by October 2011. The UK will work with European and US colleagues to help build a clean, competent future leadership cadre. We will support the development of professional standards for police and a complaints system to improve accountability and reduce corruption. In Helmand the UK will build new police stations, patrol bases and checkpoints, giving 2,500 recently trained police men and women the additional infrastructure they need to operate effectively.

The Afghan Government are committed to holding elections in communities across all 366 districts over the coming three years. The UK will help the Government work out how to elect local bodies that are genuinely democratic, represent the people, particularly women, and do this in an affordable way.

Second, stimulating the economy:

The Afghan Government have set out an ambitious programme of investment in mining, roads, power stations and irrigation to stimulate economic growth and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. The Government aim to maintain growth at 9% per year. The UK will support the infrastructure programme through the World Bank managed Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund, which reimburses the Afghan Government on the basis of receipts.

Agriculture and rural development will remain the bedrock of the economy. The UK’s support to these sectors will contribute to better access to safe drinking water, 12,400 km of new or repaired roads connecting district centres and farms to markets and 3,900 new or repaired village schools.

To reduce its dependence on foreign assistance, the Afghan Government are seeking to increase revenues by 0.7% of GDP each year. The UK will continue to provide expertise to the Government to meet this stretching but realisable target, and provide technical assistance to the Ministry of Mines to establish a fair and transparent process for managing Afghanistan’s mineral wealth.

Third, helping the Afghan Government deliver vital basic services:

The UK will continue to support primary and secondary education through the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund, so that within two years 6 million children are regularly attending school, up from 5.4 million today.

The UK will contribute to programmes which provide technical skills for up to 300,000 people, many of whom have never attended school.

The UK will support programmes that increase the number of young people receiving vocational training from 26,000 to 100,000 in the next three years.

Cutting across all Afghan Government programmes is the need to improve financial management and enhance accountability. At the Kabul conference, President Karzai set out important measures to reduce corruption, including strengthening oversight and enforcement bodies, and increasing penalties for ministers and officials who do not comply with rules on asset declaration. The UK will help improve the weak capacity of the Afghan Government, strengthening financial management, and equipping it to take action against corruption in 10 key spending Ministries.



At the Kabul conference, the Afghan Government reiterated their aspiration that at least 50% of aid should flow through Government systems. The UK remains committed to that target. Following intensive work with senior Afghan Ministers, a set of benchmarks have been agreed to measure progress on a six-monthly basis. The UK and other donors will need to see progress against those benchmarks to remain confident that funds are well spent and results and outcomes achieved.



I am committed to ensuring close monitoring and evaluation of all DFID support in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and will be ready to reallocate resources if programmes fail to deliver, or our partners underperform.

Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr Owen Paterson)]

I have today placed a copy of the Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland’s annual report for the period 2009-10 in the Libraries of both Houses. Copies are also available on the Boundary Commission website at: www.boundarycommission.org.uk.

Airports (Economic Regulation)

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Philip Hammond)]

In the Queen’s Speech the Government announced their intention to reform the framework for the economic regulation of airports. Today I am announcing the direction of our proposals.

The Government have previously announced that they do not support the construction of a third runway at Heathrow airport nor additional runways at either Stansted or Gatwick airports. Instead, it is the Government’s intention to make these airports better and not bigger, delivering better outcomes for passengers without additional runways.

To deliver operational improvements at these airports, I have recently announced the creation of the South East Airports Taskforce and that group has already begun its work.

I plan to introduce a new set of duties for the Civil Aviation Authority’s (CAA) economic regulation of airports which will put the interests of passengers unambiguously at the heart of the regime. Under these proposals the CAA’s primary duty will be to promote the interests of existing and future passengers.

Where regulation is necessary it must be proportionate. Airports vary in size and market power and therefore should not be subject to identical regulation. To allow economic regulation to be used in a targeted way, I plan to introduce a new licensing regime to be applied only to airports with substantial market power and where such regulation adds real value. We presently expect this regime will apply initially to Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports.

Airports subject to economic regulation by the CAA need to operate efficiently and effectively and I am clear that significant investment will be required if passengers’ expectations are to be met. The proposals I am outlining today are to reform the framework for airport economic regulation to drive passenger-focused investment in better facilities such as baggage handling equipment or terminal improvements. These proposals will allow economic regulation to be used in a more targeted way to deliver passengers’ priorities and will remove unnecessary bureaucracy and political involvement from the regulatory process.

In order to ensure the financial resilience of UK airports, I will also introduce a supplementary financing duty and minimum credit worthiness requirements as well as ring-fencing conditions where there is a net benefit in introducing such measures, and require the preparation of plans for continuity of service should an airport operator get into financial difficulties.

All too often, regulation can crowd out commercial incentives to make improvements, so I intend to provide the CAA with the option, where appropriate, to respond to anti-competitive behaviour using competition law powers rather than by applying its regulatory tools. I propose to bring airport economic regulation into line with other regulated sectors of the economy by granting the CAA concurrent powers with the Office of Fair Trading. This will enable the CAA to investigate and remedy anti-competitive behaviour in the provision of airport services at airports, and where appropriate to make referrals to the Competition Commission for investigation. Supporting competition in this way may, in time, allow the regulator to gradually loosen its regulatory grip.

Effective enforcement is critical to the efficiency of any regulatory system. To bring airport economic regulation into line with other regulated sectors of the economy I plan to introduce civil sanctions, including financial penalties, for the CAA to enforce licence conditions, creating a more efficient and responsive enforcement regime.

An efficient and credible appeals mechanism is necessary to ensure a regulator is accountable. Under the current regime, persons with sufficient interest may apply for judicial review of the CAA’s decisions. The industry is unanimous in its view that judicial review alone is an unsuitable process for providing accountability. The option to apply for judicial review must remain, but I propose to introduce a system for merit-based appeals, to a body with relevant expertise, against certain decisions taken by the regulator. This new system will apply to appeals against decisions on which airports should be regulated and to appeals arising out of contested licence modifications, including new price controls.

After careful consideration, I have decided not to give a new remit to Passenger Focus to represent air passengers as had previously been proposed. While it is important to have strong passenger representation, this is not the time to be make additional structural changes which would add to the regulatory burden on industry. I will therefore be exploring options for strengthening existing passenger representation arrangements.

I am also publishing today analysis of responses to further consultations on certain detailed provisions relating to financial resilience of operators and to concurrency powers. Copies have been placed in the Library of the House.

Port of Dover

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)]

In January 2010 Dover Harbour Board published its proposals for a transfer scheme to enable it to privatise the port of Dover so that, among other things, it could access private investment to build capacity at the port. There was a statutory period of eight weeks for those with an interest to make representations about the transfer scheme, which ended on 25 March.

Since publishing its proposals in January, Dover Harbour Board has continued to discuss the proposed transfer scheme and the associated proposals for a port of Dover Community Trust and Employee Share Ownership Trust with local organisations, including the local councils, as well as port users. In recognition of this and the importance of the issue to the people of Dover, I have therefore decided to ask Dover Harbour Board to publish more information about the nature and likely impact of the scheme than was available at the time of the statutory consultation, including details of the port of Dover Community Trust and Employee Share Ownership Trust. This will give those organisations and individuals with an interest in the port of Dover a further and better-informed opportunity to comment on Dover Harbour Board’s proposals.

Notices inviting written representations will be published in local newspapers, and those who have already written to the Department, including the local councils, local organisations and port users, are welcome to write again and provide any further comments they may have.

The period for further comments will run until Friday 27 August 2010.

Vehicle Registration Certificate

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)]

I am today announcing the immediate introduction of a redesigned and more secure Registration Certificate (V5C) for vehicles in the United Kingdom. The new documents will be issued from 15 August 2010 for all newly registered vehicles and when there are changes to an existing registration, such as a change of keeper or address.

I am introducing the new certificate as a matter of urgency to help protect motorists from vehicle crime following the theft of a number of blank certificates in 2006. Vehicles have been stolen, cloned and sold to consumers using some of the stolen V5Cs. Buyers often mistakenly believe the V5C to be proof of ownership of a vehicle. This is not the case. The new V5C, which is a different colour, will make it clear the document is not proof of ownership and will help draw to an end the threat posed by the stolen documents. This will help buyers to protect themselves.

From July 2011, the new-style V5C will be issued to all remaining vehicles when they are next re-licensed or declared to be off the road. Their existing blue V5C will remain valid until it is replaced and at that time we will not be asking for the old V5C to be returned.

DVLA and the Driver and Vehicle Agency (DVA) in Northern Ireland are also promoting a “Buyer Beware” message aimed at helping motorists understand the risks around stolen or cloned vehicles. In particular, buyers need to ask for proof of ownership, for example a bill of sale. The DirectGov website now has a list of checks that should be carried out by prospective buyers when looking to buy a second-hand vehicle. The list is printable, to make it easy to use when going to inspect a vehicle.

DVLA and DVA are working in partnership with industry leaders and consumer champions to make the DirectGov and NI Direct websites a central point for expert knowledge on how to avoid being sold a stolen vehicle. While no one can guarantee that motorists will not ever become the victims of vehicle crime, DVLA and DVA believe they can help individuals to make the right decisions by helping them understand the risks involved.