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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Outdoor Learning
(14 years ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
May I say what an honour it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Benton, and not for the first time?
I start by declaring an interest. My enthusiasm for this subject started in previous years when I was involved in the creation of a charity, the Countryside Alliance Foundation. That fuelled the fire for this debate and since then, a number of organisations have come on to my radar and helped enormously in shaping my views. I will quickly list them: the Field Studies Council, in particular its excellent staff at West Orielton in Pembrokeshire in my constituency; the National Trust, its Outdoor Britain campaign, and particularly the help of Jonathan Hughes; the English Outdoor Council; the Bushcraft Company; the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds; and the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom. One of the encouraging things about preparing for this debate was the common ground found between so many different organisations.
This debate is not about urban interests versus rural interests; the subject is important to everybody, wherever they come from and whatever their background and aspirations. Nor is the debate aimed at persuading urban children to go out and do things such as skin rabbits; this is about getting everybody—whether teachers or pupils—out of a classroom and into a new environment so that they can find something somewhere that excites them and in which they can excel. In short, the debate is about outdoor education, not outdoor entertainment.
When I looked into this topic, I was struck by the fact that these days only about 10% of children play outdoors, although about 40% of their parents used to do that. A survey conducted a few years ago by Country Life magazine illustrated the challenge that confronts us. A group of children was asked why, in their view, it was important that gates were closed in the countryside. The most popular answer was, “To keep the elephants in.” They were asked why it was perhaps more enjoyable to live in rural rather than urban areas, and the equally depressing, but slightly telling, response was, “There are fewer coppers.” Those are the challenges and the facts that underpin part—although not all—of this debate. We have a big mountain to climb, but we have the consensus and enthusiasm to climb it.
Emerging evidence suggests that outdoor learning meets every social target set. It is good for education, health, behaviour, community cohesion and, of course, for the natural environment. Everybody who takes part, not just those from a disadvantaged background or those who may not excel in a traditional classroom, benefits from the process. Outdoor learning teaches people, in particular teachers, to understand risk.
Depressingly, 76% of teachers turned down the opportunity to go on a field trip because of fears about health and safety. Such learning, however, is low risk and high reward, and the statistics back that up. Over a 10-year period, only 364 legal claims were tabled because of children injured at school, and only half of those cases ended in any kind of payment. On average, most local authorities paid out £293 over that period.
James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate on a topic that I know is dear to his heart. Does he agree that the health and safety culture in this country is hugely damaging, not only in relation to this debate, but overall? A bit of common sense and some good, sensible reforms to encourage people to take reasonable risks when dealing with children, or any other matter, would be of great benefit to our education system and the people of this country.
Simon Hart
My hon. Friend makes a good point. The difficulty with health and safety legislation is that we are trying to create a society where risk is eliminated, but no such thing is possible; risk can be limited and managed, but it cannot be eliminated. My hon. Friend highlights that point well.
In 2008, the most recent year for which we have decent figures, 53% of six to 15-year-olds did not go on a single school trip. A further depressing thought is that over the past 10 years, there has been only £4.5 million of funding for that concept. That is in stark contrast to the music manifesto, for example, which attracted £332 million of funding in 2007. About 97% of teachers believe that it is important for children to learn about the countryside within the national curriculum, and 85% of young children and their parents agree.
Some teachers cannot do what they would like because their school or local authority will not fund their cover when they take children on a trip. That is the “rarely covers” conundrum, and perhaps it goes to the heart of the debate. Under qualified teacher status 30, trainee teachers are asked only to “recognise opportunities” for out-of-classroom learning. It is a weak standard, but even that is not being reached by some initial teacher training providers.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the barriers that stops teachers having the confidence to take kids out of school and into the countryside, to pursue an education about rural life, is that they do not have access to resources and knowledge? Is he aware of the charity FACE, Farming and Countryside Education, based at Stoneleigh in Warwickshire? It offers teachers resources, knowledge and teaching aids to help them form educational lessons and partake in rural education.
Simon Hart
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am aware of that charity and the good work that it does. I am also aware of countless other charities that offer similar, if not identical, services.
I stated earlier that this debate was not about the town versus the countryside. Indeed it is not, and we must be careful not to fall into the trap, as I have myself, of seeing the only benefit of outdoor learning to be that of teaching urban children about rural ways. My hon. Friend’s intervention makes it clear that plenty of people are enthusiastic about reaping the benefits of outdoor learning, but cannot do so either because of insufficient funding through the charitable sector, or because of obstacles due to health and safety legislation, bureaucracy or Government funding.
I have two questions for the Minister. First, will she consider reviewing whether current teacher training provides new teachers with the skills to lead outdoor learning activities in the first place? Secondly, will she review the “rarely covers” guide to residential visits and fieldwork, and look at whether part of the pupil premium may be used for that purpose?
Emerging evidence points to the direct and indirect health benefits of outdoor learning, including personal well-being and—the latest catchphrase—“happiness.” The current gaming epidemic does not lend itself to our mission of stirring a child’s interest in the outside world. A staggering 53 computer games were released on to the market in April 2010, and it is easy to deduce that we cannot leave it to the children to discover the outside world. It is our responsibility to take them there.
Activities such as walking, cycling and riding can burn up to 380 calories an hour. Green spaces can stabilise anger in young people, which can help prevent antisocial behaviour. Outdoor education could therefore play a key role in reducing the amount of permanent and fixed exclusions for physical and verbal abuse in schools, which currently run at the eye-watering level of 300,000 cases per year.
Outdoor learning could also help to reduce the cost of youth crime and obesity, which is estimated at an even more staggering and depressing £5 billion per annum for the taxpayer to pick up. Of course, evidence is an essential prerequisite of any progress that we make on this topic. I shall start with what Ofsted had to say about it. In 2008, Ofsted published a thematic report that stated:
“When planned and implemented well, learning outside the classroom contributed significantly to raising standards and improving pupils’ personal, social and emotional development.”
It went on to recommend that schools and colleges should
“ensure that their curriculum planning includes sufficient well structured opportunities for all learners to engage in learning outside the classroom as a key, integrated element of their experience”
and
“ensure equal and full access for all learners to learning outside the classroom”.
In a similar study in 2006, the National Trust stated:
“We looked at whether schoolchildren’s learning about their local environment would influence the way they treat it.
We found that not only was this the case, but high-quality out-of-classroom learning also influenced how children behave and the lifestyle choices they make.
It shows the potential for school trips not just to change children’s lives, but the lives of whole communities.”
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
I, too, congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the timeliness of the debate. Does he agree that in addition to the issues that he is outlining from those surveys, the battle against childhood obesity can be taken further by learning outside the classroom? It can contribute to that battle, which unfortunately as a society we do not seem to be taking seriously.
Simon Hart
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. There are direct and indirect health benefits to be gained from this educational concept. The direct benefits are simply from getting people out of a windowless and joyless classroom environment into an environment that is more interesting and more demanding physically. That is a good thing, but outdoor education can also teach people about the value of a different and varied diet, the process of food production and the attractions of exercise and entertainment, in whatever form they might come, in open areas.
Of course that will have a positive effect. That used to be just conjecture on our part and on the part of the experts; there is now evidence to support the view that that is the case. That is what is encouraging: we are going beyond just speculating to being able genuinely to point to evidence that supports that view.
The Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families also came up trumps. It stated:
“Learning outside the classroom is important, and the Department must provide adequate funding to achieve maximum impact…there should be an individual entitlement within the National Curriculum to at least one out of school visit a term.”
On the back of those third-party endorsements, I shall pose two more questions to the Minister. Will the Government reconsider plans to include an entitlement to outdoor learning for everyone in the curriculum? Also, can outdoor learning be included as part of the Ofsted inspection protocol? There is a feeling among members of the teaching profession with whom I have contact that if it is not inspected, it is not important. It is clearly important; Ofsted and the Select Committee have said that it is important. If it is important, let us include it in the inspection protocol, so that everyone knows that it is important and we can cement that in the minds of those responsible for outdoor learning projects.
I represent a seat in west Wales and should therefore like to consider for a moment how the Welsh Assembly Government view the issue. It is encouraging that they are a few lengths ahead of Westminster on this topic. I recognise that the matter is devolved, but we can learn lessons from the Welsh Assembly in this regard. The foundation phase is the Welsh Assembly Government’s approach to learning for children aged three to seven years. My own children have benefited from initiatives such as the Forest school. That involves a perfectly non-contentious regular monthly trip into the great outdoors of Wales, which benefits children from quite a young age in many different ways. The Welsh Assembly Government recognise that. Their framework states:
“The Foundation Phase environment should promote discovery and independence and a greater emphasis on using the outdoor environment as a resource for children’s learning.”
They say that they will aim to
“Provide opportunities for children to experience the outdoor learning environment and to become active learners through the play-based Foundation Phase curriculum.”
I say to the Minister that if that is good enough for the Welsh Assembly, surely it is good enough for the UK as a whole.
To conclude my short contribution on this important topic, I shall make these points. We can now prove that outdoor education improves health, education and social benefits for children, young people and society as a whole. We can increasingly prove that if we can obtain those benefits for children and young adults, the economic benefit for the taxpayer in the long term could also be huge and well worth the investment required now.
I want to finish with two case studies. In my last job, I was involved with a project called Fishing for Schools. We took people who often had severe disadvantages and just put them in an environment that they were not used to. We used to marvel at the way in which lives could be transformed as a consequence of that simple project. We had one pupil called Zach on that programme. His teacher wrote to us after the course had finished and said:
“Zach had been suffering from bullying and was often in trouble with regard to behaviour in school, but since the course he has worked hard, been positive, behaves well and is a more mature and sensible young man—wow, what a difference.”
Alex McBarnet, founder of The Bushcraft Company, came into the world of outdoor education as a result of difficulties that he had had in traditional education. Using his own get-up-and-go spirit and his own inspirational zeal, he started his own company. He said:
“Children who struggle a bit more in the classroom have an opportunity here to shine, and you can actually watch their self esteem grow by the day, which is fabulous.”
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there are many outside bodies that can contribute to outdoor learning? One is the Countryside Alliance, which the hon. Gentleman might have an interest in. Does he see a role for such bodies, whether we are talking about the British Association for Shooting and Conservation or the Countryside Alliance, that could help to benefit young people?
Simon Hart
The hon. Gentleman makes a point that he knows I will approve of—and I had deliberately not been making it, for exactly that reason. I think that any way in which we can take young people into interesting, challenging, different and adventurous environments and teach them skills that they do not know and introduce them to ways of life, people and communities that they may not usually have any contact with, must be good.
The more of that we can do, the better. I do not say that just as someone who had a personal and professional interest in it, and to some extent still does. I say it because I have seen many examples of people who have benefited. They are not just rural or urban or suburban people, or people from poor backgrounds or rich backgrounds. Everyone who has had the fantastic privilege of coming into contact with the outside world, whether formally or informally, has come away feeling that they have gained something that traditional education could not provide to them. We all have a social responsibility to encourage youth in that respect, but we need help from central Government to break down the barriers that sometimes prevent us from being able to do that.
That leads nicely to my final question to the Minister. I and other hon. Members and organisations out there in the real world think that outdoor learning could bring benefits to the nation and benefits to people who sometimes struggle, through no fault of their own—and often through no fault of their local authority’s or the Government’s—to obtain benefits from the type of education system that we have.
We have a golden opportunity now to improve the lives of people in a number of communities through a few simple initiatives. Of course, that requires funding, but it does not require obscene levels of funding. In fact, it is not funding but an investment, because the downstream economic consequences of doing it will be profoundly beneficial to the nation. It will save us millions of pounds in the long term if we get it right.
I hope that the Minister will grant an audience with herself and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, not only for hon. Members who may be interested in the issue but for representatives of the wide range of outside bodies that have contributed to the debate and made strides in the right direction. If we could get together early in the new year to see whether we could convert what at the moment is a struggling dream into a deliverable reality, this debate will have been a worthwhile use of our Wednesday morning.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on securing the debate on this hugely important matter. It is timely, as it was only about three weeks ago that I was on Goole moor, in my constituency, meeting Natural England to highlight the opportunities for our local schools on that nationally important nature reserve. Following that, I have worked with our fantastic head teacher at Goole high school to find innovative ways of using the moor and the site for educational and health purposes.
As a former school teacher, I would like to appeal to the Minister over the Ofsted framework; if something is going into the framework, can there be a one-in, one-out principle or, preferably, a one-in, two-out principle? There are huge pressures on teachers already from the inspection regime, and, due to how the profession is structured, naturally, we tend to teach towards Ofsted, rather than the young people whose education we are there to enhance. I make that small appeal to the Minister.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire on his knowledge of the teacher training process. Although trainee teachers are required to prove that they can organise and undertake a trip as part of their postgraduate certificate in education, it is normally a well structured trip to a museum, so they do not come away from the training with particular skills in organising trips outside. There are so many pressures on teachers in terms of advice, risk assessments, and so on, that it can be incredibly difficult to organise trips outside the classroom.
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way on that point. One problem is the cost of minibus insurance for teachers. If something could be done about that, it would make a considerable difference. It often costs more than £1,000, and is a particular barrier to short trips to local open spaces.
Andrew Percy
That is absolutely key, because there are huge costs, and other pressures such as extra staff. When I was training as a history teacher and doing my final teaching practice at Endeavour high school in Hull, we were studying the industrial revolution. The area I taught in had a fantastic outside resource in its buildings from the industrial revolution period. I simply wanted to take my class of year 8s outside to look at some of those buildings, but I was told that I would have to do a risk assessment and get three members of staff, because there were 30 kids in the class and the ratio has to be 1:10. By the end of the day, those kids were running home across those same streets and past those same buildings, but we did not go out and ended up sitting in the classroom looking at pictures instead. Although the teaching profession can certainly do more to enhance outside learning, we need the structures in place to support them and we need to remove some of the pressures. Following some of the sensationalised reports in the press about school trips, my former union advised us not to take them, which, again, is a reaction to all this bureaucracy.
Outdoor education has a particular role for excluded children and children with special needs. As any teacher has to, I have worked with children from across the spectrum. It was often the most challenging children who benefited most from being taken outside the formal school setting—where they were still learning. I referred to this during my maiden speech; it is expensive to deliver education outside the classroom, but, for those children, the value of doing so cannot be quantified. I have seen kids go off on particular courses outside the classroom and come back significantly changed, so that education has a particular role. As the Minister is about to undertake a review into special and additional needs, I hope that that can be taken into account.
With a change in curriculum, the Government have, rightly, outlined how we intend to move to more vocational or joint pathways. There are huge benefits and opportunities not only for visits but to get skills outside school. I was talking to Natural England on the nationally important nature reserve—I will plug it once again—about potentially putting a curriculum together, which kids could access from our local schools, on countryside management. There are not only health benefits, which my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire rightly highlighted, but educational benefits.
Mr Spencer
Is my hon. Friend aware that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has funded a higher-level entry scheme, which includes educational visits to farms by schools? I understand that the scheme is now closed to new entrants. May I take this opportunity to encourage the Minister to pressure DEFRA to clarify whether that scheme is indeed closed to new entrants?
Andrew Percy
I am happy to be a conduit for my hon. Friend’s point. I am sure that, through me, the Minister has heard him and will respond appropriately.
I close by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire again on securing the debate. It is an important area, and it is pleasing to see that so many Members from both sides of the House have attended, particularly my hon. Friends. I look forward to the Minister’s response. Thank you for allowing me to make a small contribution to the debate, Mr Benton.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
It is a privilege to contribute to the debate under your chairmanship, Mr Benton. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on securing the debate and on his excellent contribution, which enhances the subject.
My hon. Friend touched on the foundation phase and the different approach taken in Wales. I want to spend a little time on my experience in that area. I declare an interest in that my son was one of the first children to go through the foundation phase in Wales under the new education structure for key stage 1. It has had an impact and influence on him and on education and the wider community in Wales.
By way of background, it is worth underlining that key stage 1, or the foundation stage as we refer to it, requires 50% of teaching time to be spent outside the classroom. My hon. Friend and others referred to visits to farms, museums or other outside extracurricular activities. They are important, but the point of the foundation phase is to mainstream outdoor learning as part of the education structure. That throws up lots of problems and issues that need resolving, which I shall come on to in a moment.
It is important to underline the significant benefits that children have drawn from the new approach to learning: social skills, their interaction with each other, their individual approach to risk and personal management, the innovation that it allows children to explore and express, and how it helps—although it is too early to assess its contribution—with the challenges of inactivity and obesity, as has been mentioned. It is also about lifestyle and leadership that allows children and teachers to develop. Those are some benefits that the new approach has brought to children, particularly in an environment where computer gaming seems to be the obvious choice and parents, naturally, worry in a different way about children playing outside than they did when we were growing up.
Teachers, as well as children, obviously benefit as well. I am told that some teachers feel claustrophobic because they are kept in the classroom no matter what the weather. They are stuck there, particularly on wet days when the children are not even free to go outside during break time. The new approach has allowed the teachers to innovate, try new approaches and use the environment around them. It is important to say that that is not only true in rural schools, but in urban schools that have been able to adapt learning practice and curriculum to respond to the environment. The children and teachers have been able to react in a first-class way to those demands.
I should add that there have also been benefits for parents, schools and governors in general. The stipulation that 50% of teaching time should be spent outside the classroom has enabled more people to access schools in higher demand. Current guidance limits the number of pupils in classrooms, but I am familiar with a number of admission appeals. In that respect, I should declare an interest in that my wife, who is an education lawyer, has represented children who wanted to gain access to a particular school. The National Assembly for Wales guidance to teachers relates directly to the floor space available and to the number of children who can go to a particular school. However, if, as my wife has argued, children spend half their time outside the classroom, the guidance is out of date and needs to be changed, because it can be argued that half the classroom is outside. That has been accepted in some admission appeals.
As I suggested, the 50% target has thrown up problems that have not been fully resolved. There was a significant need for capital spend, because we needed to ensure that classrooms had better access to the outdoors. There was also a need for investment in wet-weather gear. This might come as something of a surprise, but it is not always sunny in Wales, and if we are to achieve the 50% target, investment in effective, proper wet-weather gear is essential. I regret to have to draw hon. Members’ attention to the fact that, at some schools, it was the parent teacher association that raised the money to deliver that gear. We have talked about having outdoor learning in prosperous and more deprived communities, but it is essential that the same wet-weather equipment is made available to everyone.
The target has also raised challenges and questions in relation to teacher training. My hon. Friends the Members for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) and for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire highlighted the need for such training to reflect the demands of modern parents and pupils.
I want to close by asking how we take the culture of outdoor learning forward into key stage 2 and beyond. Without question, it has become central to learning in key stage 1.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
I am learning today about the difference between Welsh and English education for youngsters. Many things that would be decided by a school, or at least by a county council, in England are decided at national level in Wales. Is the English approach of making decisions at local level not more sensible?
Alun Cairns
My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is fair to say that education structures in Wales are far more centralised than those in England. Of course, it is up to the devolved Administration to decide how best to deliver education, but it is regrettable that some of the freedoms that are to be offered to schools in England will not be offered to those in Wales. That aside, my point in highlighting the merits and benefits of the foundation phase in key stage 1 is that it has allowed teachers and pupils to express themselves and to learn in different ways. I would encourage free schools, whose numbers will increase in England, to learn from the benefits and merits of the different approach taken in Wales.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman seriously think that an aspiration to carry out 50% of learning outside the classroom could be met without that direction from the Government in the curriculum?
Alun Cairns
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question, but, yes, I do think that that is possible. In free schools in England, greater power will be devolved to the head teachers and governors, who will be able to decide how best to approach these issues. The rigid 50% approach taken in Wales may not be right for their school, depending on its environment, its location and its children’s needs, which that school can better reflect.
My point in highlighting the merits and benefits of the different approach taken in Wales is that it has made outdoor learning central to education at key stage 1. That has significant advantages, and I hope that free schools in England will look at that approach and apply it to their pupils’ needs. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole reflected on the requirements of children with special educational needs and on how outdoor learning can better reflect them. Surely, the way in which a school wants to approach outdoor learning will depend on the nature of children’s special educational needs. Although the model in Wales is centralised, and I would disapprove of that, the thrust of outdoor learning at key stage 1 is beneficial overall. Should teachers and governors be given the freedom to introduce such a scheme under the system in England, they could adapt it, and that would be much more beneficial in terms of meeting their pupils’ needs.
In closing, I underline the need to advance the approach taken in key stage 1 and to underline its benefits, although there will be drawbacks, which we will need to learn about. We also need to understand how outdoor learning should be approached in key stages 2 and 3. Outdoor learning is central to education in key stage 1, and it would simply be wrong to cut it at key stage 2. It needs to make that transition so that we can meet the needs of older children. I take on board the comments by my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire about the essential need to have outdoor learning throughout education, rather than just at key stage 1.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on securing this debate on such an important subject. I also congratulate other hon. Friends on their contributions.
Many children and teachers in my constituency and in the county of Worcestershire benefit from outdoor education. As my hon. Friend made clear, the benefits are substantial. We do not live in a classroom, and it is vital that education provides children with the tools and skills they need for real life. Outdoor education recognises the fact that we live, not in the controlled environment of a classroom, but on a living, breathing planet. As we seek to give future generations a better understanding of issues such as climate change and pollution, learning outdoors gives children a greater appreciation of the importance of our natural environment. Crucially, some skills, such as teamwork, leadership and an appreciation of risk, are far more effectively developed through outdoor education than they ever can be in a classroom.
Coming from an urban constituency in a rural county, I know that outdoor education has a further advantage for the children of my city of Worcester. It teaches them to appreciate the wonderful countryside around them and to understand better the way in which it works and the opportunities that it offers. For centuries, Worcester has been a county town, and the interaction between city and countryside was automatic. In the age of supermarkets, television and video games, however, things are not always that way. Without outdoor education projects, many children in my constituency who live within a mile or two of wonderful woods and fields would quite literally never visit them. The Wii Fit and “The X Factor” are a powerful draw away from the benefits of the outdoors, and parents who are themselves working flat out to support their families are not always able to take their children into the countryside as much as they would like.
Fortunately, Worcestershire long ago realised the benefits of outdoor education and was an early adopter of the forest school scheme, which is enjoyed at many of our primary schools. Having talked to pupils and teachers at schools from Cherry Orchard and Perry Wood to Dines Green, Gorse Hill primary and Lyppard Grange, I have heard countless stories of the enjoyment and benefit that the scheme brings. More important than the stories, however, is the experience itself. In the case of outdoor learning, seeing really is believing. Seeing the excitement of children who are taken out of the classroom and into the natural environment for the first time, one can see how outdoor learning helps to engage some of the most difficult and easily distracted pupils. Seeing the way in which children learn new respect for teachers who can show them physical skills and relish the opportunity to escape the confines of the classroom, one can immediately understand why forest school status is an important tool for retention at many local primaries.
However, outdoor learning is not, and should not be, restricted to the primary sector. At Tudor Grange academy, in the heart of Warndon, outdoor learning is being developed as a key tool and a key opportunity for engaging students. This new academy serves a large population that will benefit from the pupil premium. It replaced a school that struggled for many years to engage its students and to deal with truancy, apathy and high levels of special needs.
Jim Shannon
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that today’s young people, whether in primary or secondary school, have great awareness of the environment, climate change, litter control, recycling and such things? Does he agree—I think from his remarks that he would—that more needs to be done, and what is already happening needs to be continued?
Mr Walker
Absolutely. I completely agree. Through outdoor learning we can give people more of an opportunity to understand those things even better. That is one reason why it is a positive benefit.
Through outdoor learning, the new and energetic leadership of Tudor Grange has found a way to engage some of the most difficult pupils and provide a pathway to work for some of those who were simply uninterested in an academic education. By taking pupils out of the classroom for part of their day and engaging them in work and learning outdoors, staff have found that behaviour is much improved on their return to the classroom. Pupils who would previously disrupt academic classes are prepared to get down to work in maths and English much better, having spent part of the day outside. A local employer, Cobb House fisheries, has given the academy access to its resources, and the environment is used for forestry, animal husbandry, angling and orienteering. It forms part of a year 12 access to work programme but it also provides an environment for engaging 30 at-risk students who have a bespoke curriculum utilising outdoor education as their key hook.
The academy also works closely with a local farm, and a group of very vulnerable students has achieved the BTEC certificate in agriculture there in one year. The students are now doing a BTEC countryside and environment course as part of their programme. Those students are making significant progress in their literacy and numeracy from a very low baseline. They were not engaging with a mainstream curriculum before, and two students on that route had not attended school for two years before the academy opened the courses. They are now in year 11 and on track to achieve the equivalent of a minimum of six GCSEs, with improved attendance and better results across the board.
Outdoor learning at Tudor Grange extends to a cadet force branch and a course in public services, which is proving particularly popular in the academy with students who presented with extreme behavioural difficulties. The course includes a lot of personal health and fitness units, and local residents are now familiar with the sight of groups from the academy running in units around Worcester as part of their training drills. The principal tells me: “This is developing tenacity and determination in students we would never have attached such attributes to before”.
Speaking of the benefits of outdoor learning in Worcestershire, it would be remiss of me not to mention some of the wonderful work that goes on beyond the boundaries of my constituency. My hon. Friends the Members for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff) and for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) would no doubt speak passionately about the excellent schools in their constituencies that provide fantastic opportunities for outdoor learning. However, they are kept away from this debate by ministerial and Select Committee responsibilities respectively. I would like to give a couple of examples of how the positive influence of schools in their patches has been felt as far afield as my own constituency.
Top Barn farm, just beyond my boundaries, is a hugely inspiring centre for outdoor learning and a test base for the care farming movement. Hon. Members will be aware of that movement, and some may feel that it is beyond the scope of the debate, but the work that is being done there, to bring, in particular, children with special needs on to a farming environment, and ensure that they can benefit from learning opportunities there, deserves a mention.
Another institution that I visited recently, which hugely impressed me, was the Madresfield early years centre in west Worcestershire. That wonderful school—my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire was there on Friday—is the product of a vision for outdoor learning and the boundless energy of its founder Alice Bennett, a farmer’s wife who has devoted her life to bringing outdoor learning into a farming environment. It brings children on to the farm as their learning environment and caters for a broad cross-section of society, from those receiving state support and living in social housing to the children of the grandest houses of the area. Each child has at least two half days a week out of doors and children are encouraged to engage with the environment, take constant exercise and relish the opportunities offered by the countryside.
Perhaps I should conclude with the words of the very inspiring head teacher, who recently returned from a visit to Denmark, where she was looking at how outdoor learning is integrated into the system there. She concluded that
“outdoor education should be a human right. Its benefits in motivation and engagement, teaching co-operation and leadership, fitness gain and better attitude are beyond question.”
She also spoke of the miracles that happen outside with special needs children. I hope that the Minister will carefully consider the miraculous benefits of outdoor learning for her forthcoming Green Paper on special needs education.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Benton. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) for securing this important debate. Perhaps I should declare an interest: like my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), I used to be a teacher. I was a teacher for 12 years and am still a member of my union, the NASUWT.
I very much endorse what other hon. Members have said, which is that this is not simply a debate about rural areas. My hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire has a proud record of championing rural areas, and I concur with him on many of those issues, but he was right to make the point that outdoor education is about urban schools as well.
I start with a couple of anecdotes. One of the most successful field trips I ever organised involved leading a group of children from a deprived school in north Devon down to the city of Plymouth. It was an excellent day’s work that examined the architecture, the effect of the Blitz, the new buildings that went up in Plymouth, the naval town and the economy of the area. Those children would not have experienced that—it is a long way from Barnstaple to Plymouth—had we not given them the opportunity.
Closer to home, I think of the scheme that we embarked on in Powys. We set up a partnership scheme between a local organic farm and our school. We acquired a plot of land and visited each term. Every child in that small village school visited the farm every year, nurtured the plot and grew vegetables. They took the vegetables back to school to make meals.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
My hon. Friend makes a good point about the need for farmers to play a role in outdoor learning. What worries me is the fact that so many schoolchildren do not understand where their food comes from. That is quite frightening, especially when, if we ask some schoolchildren where their potatoes or chips come from, they say, “McDonald’s”. Does my hon. Friend think that the National Farmers Union and farmers need to play a key role in such education, and in improving understanding of where food comes from?
Mr Williams
Absolutely. One of the benefits of the project that I was involved in was that we considered the seasonality of fruit and vegetables. I think that it is assumed that because children live in a rural area they have automatic access to farms and to schemes of the kind that the NFU and others, such as the Farmers Union of Wales, have put forward. That assumption should not be made. That is why the debate is important, for getting some clear guidelines. It is beginning to seem a little like a Welsh debate—I am proud of that, but I shall not stray on to devolved matters.
Every year at the school where I taught we took the year 5 and 6 children to stay at an outdoor pursuit centre in Montgomeryshire, where they could do kayaking, orienteering, rock climbing, mountain walks and canoeing—the very kinds of activities from which many children with special needs, who were not high achievers in the classroom, really gained. We were teaching concepts of teamwork, collaborative work and team building. Those were important opportunities for the children.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
The point that my hon. Friend makes about the outdoor pursuit centre is important. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) made the point that health and safety is an issue when taking children out of the classroom, and such outdoor pursuit centres have health and safety covered; they have the skills to deal with pupils safely and give them the experiences that have been described.
Mr Williams
I agree very much. One of the nice things for a teacher organising such trips was that there was no need to get embroiled in the bureaucracy of organising a risk assessment; it had already been done by trained professionals.
This is a core debate, not a peripheral thing. It is not a trendy lefty debate about the effectiveness of group work or topic work—debates that have happened in the past. It is about enhancing learning in the classroom, teaching in context, teaching in the real world and broadening horizons in the strongest way. As I reflect on my education, I recall that the only such opportunity that I had in secondary school—there was little in primary school—was the Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme. That is a great scheme, with great opportunities for young people, but very much curtailed and limited.
Was there, in the three schools where I taught, always a dedicated member of staff with expertise, responsible for developing the outdoor curriculum? If there was, in some instances it was not very visible. Should we give more prominence to outdoor education in initial teacher training? I did a PGCE course, from which I benefited; I gained my qualification and enjoyed my 12 years in the classroom, but there were limitations with respect to outdoor education.
To repeat a question that has been put to the Minister, is the initial teacher training that we provide giving teachers the skills that they need to lead outdoor learning? It is all very well talking about identifying opportunities; teachers sit there developing their lesson plans and identifying opportunities. It is a matter of whether those opportunities for outdoor learning can be delivered. It is not about burdening the curriculum. I agree with the direction of travel: it is about scaling down the curriculum.
Years ago, I worked as a researcher in the other place. When the national curriculum was introduced in 1988, I remember the huge number of representations from different organisations in favour of including subjects in the national curriculum. That was an over-burdening experience.
I also remember, years later when I was in the classroom, the minutiae of detail directed from the centre about how I should deliver a numeracy hour and a literacy hour, down to the five minutes of a plenary session at the end. We are moving away from that over-prescriptive period. There is consensus among all who have spoken so far that we are seeking to build meaningful cross-curricular links in key areas of the curriculum—notably geography, history and science—for which outdoor activities are appropriate.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire mentioned, the Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families produced its report in April 2010. I want to draw on three of its conclusions. First, the report talked of the ability of families to pay, or their inability to pay, for trips and the deterrent to schools in offering opportunities to pupils. At one school where I taught, there was a blanket policy. We could not countenance any outlandish trips, because we knew that the parents in the deprived wards of that area would be unable even to subsidise their children’s trips.
The Select Committee recognised the principle of subsidies for children from low-income families for school trips, and I think that that should be endorsed. The report also talked about an individual entitlement within the national curriculum to at least one school visit each term. That is integral to the curriculum that needs to be delivered. I would like to hear the Minister’s comments on that individual entitlement to outdoor education.
Mr Andrew Turner
I draw attention to another thing. When I was a teacher, it was perfectly acceptable for one member of staff to take one class into town. What has happened since then?
Mr Mark Williams
My hon. Friend is right. The answer came from my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole when he talked about the one-to-10 rule. That is very hard, and it is also sometimes hard to engage parents to become involved in outdoor pursuits. We think of a captive audience of parents eager to accompany their children on trips, but that is not always the case.
There is a fundamental need for schools to have a policy on learning outside the classroom. As I said, it is not just a matter of having a policy, with words in readiness for the Ofsted or Estyn inspections; it is about being able to deliver. The Government do recognise the importance of outdoor learning—as, to their credit, did the last Government. It is important for the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom to get on with the job. I regret that the Select Committee’s recommendations on additional resources and Government regulation and monitoring guidance were not accepted.
We had a little spirited debate about Welsh Assembly Government policy. I do not want regulation and rules to be over-prescriptive, but we do need some clear guidelines from the centre. Most professionals in most of the schools I have been involved with fully recognise the importance of that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) mentioned. They are delivering the foundation stage with great effectiveness—I have two young children experiencing the foundation stage now. However, that is not always the case across England and elsewhere in the UK. We need those rules and that guidance.
I will not repeat all the figures about the effectiveness of outdoor education mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire. I do, however, want to say something about the risk-averse culture developing in our country, and the characterisation of many children’s lives as “home to school and back home again”—from the classroom to the sitting room, or wherever the TVs are in the house.
I do not agree with everything that the much-maligned Lord Young says—far from it. However, his work “Common Sense, Common Safety” was important. It was a welcome attempt to rebalance the risk-averse culture in the country that has considerably damaged the tradition of school trips, with teachers and schools inevitably concerned about liability if things go wrong.
I remember the frustration and bureaucracy of trying to organise trips. It is not surprising that 76% of teachers identify health and safety risk assessments as the main barrier to delivering outdoor learning. We should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Despite the few but tragic cases where things have gone wrong, there has to be a measure of sensible risk assessment. Action should be taken where negligent behaviour occurs, but we must do all we can to rebalance the system.
In his foreword to Lord Young’s report, the Prime Minister states that we need to
“focus regulations where they are most needed; with a new system that is proportionate, not bureaucratic; that treats adults like adults and reinstates some common…trust”.
Some of us may disagree about what that constitutes, but I hope we can all agree with the sentiment.
The Department for Education launched its “Learning Outside the Classroom” manifesto in 2006. That report highlighted research on the way the brain works. Reading it took me back to teacher training and some of the lectures and seminars I participated in. The research showed that learners can be re-engaged with the world as they experience it, known as “authentic learning”.
That is particularly important when we look at the sciences. The Field Studies Council has seen a decline in the number of people studying secondary science visiting their residential centres across the country, with a drop of 18% between 2008 and 2010. We need to engage with the people who have the potential interest, if it can be captured and promoted in a positive way. It was a sad reflection that only 47% of six to 15-year-olds went on a visit to the countryside with their school in 2008. I am not going to talk about the foundation stage in Wales, other than to say that it has been a huge success.
There is much in the Government’s agenda that suggests that they are keen to encourage more activity. They are keen on volunteering and we have had Lord Young’s review. I hope the Minister will be able to outline what steps are being taken to ensure that more outdoor learning can take place at schools and translate support into concrete achievement.
One final point: I want to commend the young artisans scheme in Ceredigion, in the Penparcau ward of Aberystwyth. It is a deprived area—we have deprived wards in rural Wales as others do across the country. That scheme has largely worked with low achievers and people with special needs, taking the craft, design and technology curriculum out of the classroom. It takes youngsters from years 5 and 6 to work with employers and local colleges, out of the conventional classroom, so that the young people can see links with the real world. It is a pioneering scheme that has been going for years. Later, as 16-year-olds, some participants have found decent gainful employment on the back of an outdoors education policy.
Mr Joe Benton (in the Chair)
Order. Before I call the next speaker—there are two people standing—I should say that I propose to start the wind-ups no later than 10.40 am.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
I will be brief to ensure that every hon. Member who wants to contribute can do so. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on bringing this excellent and positive debate to the House.
My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) declared an interest because he has one child going through the school foundation stage in Wales. I have twin boys and another three children going through the educational system in Wales, so I, too, need to declare an interest. When we talk about the educational benefits of outdoor activities, we in Wales are very fortunate. I do not want to dominate the debate by referring to Wales again, but as a child I used to go to the Urdd Gobaith Cymru centre in Llangrannog in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams). When I was slightly older, I went to the centre at Glan Llyn, where I learned canoeing and white-water rafting. The terrible thing is that I am now old enough to see my children getting the same experiences.
The concept of getting children into the outdoors and enjoying pursuits is important and I fully subscribe to the comments made by several hon. Members.
I wish to focus on a slightly different aspect of the importance of outdoor activities to the educational sector—its economic impact on constituencies such as mine. My constituency of Aberconwy includes a large tract of Snowdonia. The area has had to struggle to create employment and economic opportunities, and we have had to make the best of the facilities and the environment that we have. Agriculture is obviously important, as is food production and our specialist food producers, but a growing part of the economy in my part of the world has been the outdoor activity sector.
That sector is not entirely dependent on educational customers, but they allow companies to offer an all-year service, with year-round employment for young people from my constituency. I could give numerous examples— they will challenge Hansard—of organisations and companies in my part of the world that benefit from providing services to schools in all parts of the United Kingdom.
For instance, Plas y Brenin at Capel Curig is renowned as a mountaineering centre. We have an outdoor education centre at Conwy, which brings young people to the Conwy valley to enjoy white-water rafting and so forth. Tree Top Adventure offers excellent facilities at Betws-y-Coed, but it depends on school trips to allow it to offer employment every day of the week and all year round; it makes an important contribution to the economy of my constituency.
We also have specialist companies that deal with the health and safety aspects. They offer a safe environment for young people to experience the adventure and the challenges offered by the environment in areas such as mine. Snowdonia is not there only for the enjoyment of people who can afford to pay for an expensive hotel or a slightly cheaper bed and breakfast for a weekend visit. The environment of Snowdonia should be enjoyed by young people.
In addition to private sector companies offering services in my constituency and throughout Snowdonia, we have a number of other centres, including the Oaklands Centre at Capel Garmon. Oaklands is owned by Wirral borough council. It is about an hour and a half down the road from the Wirral to my constituency. Young people are brought from an industrialised area and taken to the beauty of Snowdonia where they can enjoy the challenge of getting involved in outdoor activities. The contribution made by the Oaklands centre is also economic. For instance, it employs local people to ensure that there is food on the table when the young people arrive.
Throughout Snowdonia, numerous centres are in danger of being lost because of the priorities of local authorities, which may not emphasise the importance of their contribution to the educational sector. I am therefore concerned about the future of centres such as Oaklands. They are important not only because of the opportunities that they give the young people who visit them, but because they give people in my constituency the opportunity to stay and work in a rural area, often in highly skilled positions. It needs to be said that the opportunities afforded by the outdoor activity centres in my part of the world are extremely important because of the quality of the jobs that are created. Taking responsibility for groups of young people going mountaineering or out on rivers is a highly skilled position.
I applaud the local authorities in my part of the world. We hear a lot about the need for local authorities to work across boundaries. In north-west Wales, Isle of Anglesey county council, Gwynedd county council and Conwy county borough council have come together to form the North Wales Outdoor Partnership. It was developed to give young people from that part of the world an understanding of not only the enjoyment that can be had from the environment of Snowdonia, but the economic opportunities that exist. The partnership takes young people out to enjoy mountaineering, kayaking and so on, but it also highlights the economic opportunities that can develop from becoming skilled in such activities. Numerous young people have found employment as a result of the skills gained through the partnership.
Menter Iaith Conwy, a local company, has highlighted the need to train young people to be responsible for taking people out on to the mountains. The fantastic thing is that the company is training people through the medium of Welsh or English. Again, it highlights the fact that economic opportunities are available through outdoor education.
Government spending is not necessarily the way forward for every part of the economy; those organisations and companies could develop employment opportunities in the private sector. However, the educational market is important in ensuring proper employment all year round. When such decisions are made, it is important that we take account of the economic impact of those activities on the rural economy.
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
I fully support this excellent debate, which was secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart). First, I shall say why I am supportive. I shall then make a plea to the Minister, which I hope will be helpful.
Many of my hon. Friends spoke of the significance of engagement. I have visited Crowdys Hill school in my constituency; it is an excellent school for children with autism and autism spectrum disorders. It is fortunate enough to have a small livestock holding on site. To see at first hand the sheer joy and engagement of the children during their hands-on involvement with nature is fantastic.
Not many schools have livestock holdings, but several have some form of nature reserve. It concerns me that many modern private finance initiative schools do not have the space. That is a real challenge, as we look forward to the next wave of schools being built.
We have the headquarters of the National Trust in my constituency. In its contribution to the debate, it says that, generation by generation, we are spending less and less time with nature and reducing our capacity to understand, respect and conserve the natural environment.
Having spoken on similar subjects before, and having been a councillor for 10 years, I know that back gardens in new-build houses are a third of the size that they were in the 1960s. Parents are concerned about letting their children venture too far, but nowadays they cannot venture out even on their own doorstep. New developments are often concrete jungles, with limited open space. That is a major concern.
The outdoors provides a wealth of leisure opportunities for a healthy, active lifestyle, and is often available at no cost. As a lead council member for leisure, I considered investing in leisure centres, and I support that. However, the outdoors gives families and people of all ages a wonderful opportunity to be active without having to spend huge amounts of money. That is why I call it the great outdoors.
I have many happy memories of growing up and charging around Arley and the Malvern hills with my classmates, doing orienteering and burning off huge amounts of energy. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) will be pleased to know that we often got lost, partly because we were not supervised, but we learned some good teambuilding skills. Certainly, my map-reading skills benefited greatly.
I touched on the subject in an intervention, but my plea is about insurance for schools. If the cost proves to be a barrier, it limits access. I believe that the Department for Education should negotiate a national insurance contract to cover all schools. Putting all those insurance renewals together would be one hell of a piece of buying power, giving potential economies of scale. That would benefit sport and many other activities for which schools need to bus children elsewhere. It would be a constructive thing for the Department to do.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on securing the debate.
Someone pointed out earlier that the debate had a distinctly Welsh feel. Indeed, we also heard from the hon. Members for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns), for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) and for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb). I should mention the others who spoke, but I may struggle when pronouncing the English names of their constituencies. We heard from the Member for— was it Wore-ses-ter?—the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker). The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) contributed, and at the end we heard from the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), which I think I can pronounce properly.
All contributions to the debate were good. Indeed, I wish I had thought of the last point made by the hon. Member for North Swindon when I was a Minister. It is an excellent proposition, and I hope that the Minister will respond positively. I hope that I have mentioned everyone who spoke in this enjoyable debate. It reflects the fact that there is a degree of consensus on learning outside the classroom; there has been for many years.
Hon. Members have mentioned the many reasons why this is a good thing. They talked about the health benefits and practical skills that can be gained; the broadening of horizons; and the influence on behaviour, with improving relationships between pupils themselves or between teachers and pupils—adults and children. During my time as a Minister, I was keen to promote learning outside the classroom. I used to say that, for whatever reason, we have managed to raise a generation of battery-farm children and it is time to allow them to go free range. That is what we all think in this debate; we need to liberate children from the bounds of the classroom and get them to enjoy all the benefits of the great outdoors. I am a big enthusiast of that, which is why I congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire on securing this debate.
Like other hon. Members here, I have also spent time as a teacher and organised field trips. I remember one particular trip to Llanbradach in the Welsh valleys where I confiscated an awful lot of cigarettes, but where we had a wonderful time. I have fond memories of the various trips that I took as a pupil, as I am sure other hon. Members have. As a teacher, I used to say that it is important to make something memorable for students; to give them something that they will remember in years to come. The things that we often remember and that have a positive influence on us are the kinds of experiences that we gain outside the classroom.
Risk, which has been raised this morning, is very important. We must get people focused on the real risks. There are risks; the hon. Member for Ceredigion pointed that out. Irresponsible actions can sometimes be taken by those who supervise learning outside the classroom, but it is the real risks rather than the rare risks on which we should focus in this debate. It is essential to get that message across to teachers, governors, pupils and to everyone involved in organising learning outside the classroom.
Several hon. Members have mentioned the foundation phase in Wales, or the key stage 1 curriculum. I visited Kitchener Road primary school in my own constituency last year. Anyone who knows anything about Cardiff will know that one could not find a more urban school than the one on Kitchener Road. It is a classic Victorian primary school on a very constrained site, right next to a main road. It is a multi-ethnic school. As part of the foundation phase, the teachers found a bit of scrubland on the school site and held their forest school there. If anyone saw those children gathered around the campfire making toast on the end of a stick, they would not know that a main road was only five yards away. It is a classic example of what can be done with a bit of imagination. It did not need a great deal of resources. Yes, it was a damp day, and the children needed outdoor gear, but that was no reason for them not to go outside. It was absolutely wonderful to see them benefiting from such an experience. I am sure that many of them would not have had that experience had it not been for the fact that the curriculum was organised, as the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan pointed out, to ensure that those very young children spent half their time outside.
There is a great deal of consensus in the Chamber about what we need to do and, I think, in fairness, about the fact that the previous Government made a big effort in this area. If hon. Members have done their research they will know that that is the case. I was Minister in the old Department for Children, Schools and Families, which organised and launched the “out and about package” in 2008. The quality badge scheme was designed to assure schools that organisations that are great at offering opportunities for outdoor learning, such as those mentioned by the hon. Member for Aberconwy, can meet the standards and requirements that are needed.
The Government’s response to the Select Committee report that was published just before the general election in April states:
“Under the previous Administration, significant progress was made in bringing together organisations with an interest in promoting learning outside the classroom. These organisations have worked together on guidance and support for schools and on the development of the Quality Badge accreditation scheme under the direction of a new council for learning outside the classroom.”
I give the Minister credit for that. It recognises the efforts that have been made so far to try to overcome the culture that was getting in the way of learning outside the classroom.
In preparing for today’s debate, I was a little surprised to read the briefing from the Countryside Alliance, of which the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire used to be in charge. I met the alliance the other day and we had a very good meeting about this matter. I commend the trust that the hon. Gentleman set up and its aims and what it is attempting to do. None the less, its briefing said:
“The previous government confirmed in its response, which was published at the end of October, that it does not believe outdoor education can contribute to the development of a child”.
There is, I think, a typo in there. It was not the previous Government who issued the response to the Select Committee’s report; it was this Government, who, the Countryside Alliance says, do not believe that outdoor education can contribute to the development of a child. I do not believe that that is true. I am quoting the Countryside Alliance briefing for this debate; it is not me saying this. I am sure that what it says is not the case and that the Minister will confirm that in a moment, but I can understand why the alliance might be concerned.
I have read the Government’s response to the Select Committee’s report on outdoor education. It does not make good reading for members of the Select Committee, because it is tantamount to a wholesale rejection of the report. Running through the response is this ideology of laissez-faire that seems to have overtaken the Department. The thinking is that if we let everything go, do not drive anything and let schools and governors get on with it, we will suddenly, miraculously, end up with a situation—as the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan believes—in which children will spend 50% of their time outside the classroom. All we need, the Government think, is a general feeling good about things, osmosis and a laissez-faire approach. However, it will not happen.
Clear guidance is needed from the centre, as the hon. Member for Ceredigion pointed out. It is important. Teachers take note of it as do governors, local authorities and providers. We must give a clear indication of what we want to see schools doing. Sometimes, we have to put resources into it and sometimes Ministers who want to get things done will have to apply a bit of stick as well to ensure that it happens on the ground. I am afraid that just wishing will not make it happen.
I will not go through all the Government’s responses to the Select Committee report, but if we look at them, we can see that most of them start with the words:
“We do not agree with the suggestion”.
For example, one of the responses states:
“We do not agree with the suggestion that an entitlement to one school visit a term should be built into the National Curriculum.”
Here is another one:
“We think this is unnecessary and is an issue which should be left to the professional judgement of teachers.”
Those are fine words and everyone welcomes them, but the Government will be judged on what actually happens on the ground and whether there is an increase in the amount of time that children spend on learning outside the classroom.
Another response states:
“We are not pursuing the previous plans for a School Report Card”—
which was one of the recommendations of the Select Committee—
“but we are looking at the performance tables with a view to providing parents with a wider range of performance information than is currently available.”
I hope that learning outside the classroom will be part of that.
Here is yet another response:
“We do not agree that schools should have to provide such information to the DfE, at a time when schools are asking us to reduce bureaucratic and data collection burdens.”
Such burdens should be reduced, but whether data are collected can send a signal to schools about what is thought to be important.
In closing, I just want to say that I am afraid that the idea that has been put forward by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds before this debate that the pupil premium can provide some funding for outdoor learning is cloud cuckoo land, because the pupil premium is a con. It does not add any additional money whatsoever in real terms to the school budget and it will be exposed when head teachers start looking at it. I can guarantee the Minister that, because of the way that the Government have played “funny figures” with school funding, she will have head teachers queuing up to tell her that the pupil premium is a con very shortly.
The Government are cutting school sport and we are still awaiting an announcement on it. I hope that the Prime Minister has not sold the country a dummy on school sport, because we are still awaiting the announcement about whether the Government will do anything to reinstate the structure of school sport, which is important if we are talking about children’s health. The School Food Trust is being abolished and we will see food standards fall as a result. We will be back to turkey twizzlers, with no proper physical education and a lottery for learning outside the classroom.
I hope that the Minister, in responding to the debate, can tell us what she will do to promote learning outside the classroom and to face down the laissez-faire ideology that has infected her Department.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Sarah Teather)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Benton. I was going to say that it is a great pleasure to participate in this debate, until I heard the end-point of the speech by the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan). His speech began so well and ended with such nonsense, but I guess that the Opposition have to be the Opposition and demonstrate that they oppose everything.
I want to congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on securing this debate on a really important topic. It is good to see Westminster Hall so full of people. I am aware of the hon. Gentleman’s previous role as chief executive of the Countryside Alliance and of his involvement in charitable work with that organisation to promote outdoor learning. It is really good to see that he is continuing that work now as a Member of this House.
We have had a good and well informed debate. The hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) gave particular detail about the situation in Wales. There were contributions from former teachers, my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) and the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy). We have heard about a number of examples of outdoor learning from Members’ constituencies. The hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) spoke about forest schools. I was very interested to hear about the particular examples given by the hon. Members for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) and for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson).
The Government absolutely believe that outdoor learning is vital and provides so many opportunities for young people to expand their horizons and to put learning into context, so that they can actually see what is happening and are not just learning the theory. Moreover, outdoor learning provides opportunities to break down barriers. It is very easy for someone to fulfil a role if they go into the same place and perform the same function every day. However, when a group of people are taken out of that place and put somewhere else, it breaks down the old traditional roles, which of course is exactly why outdoor learning has the impact that it does on behaviour. It is able suddenly to boost the confidence of many children who may not succeed in other activities in the classroom.
Many hon. Members began their contribution by declaring an interest in this sector and I should probably declare an interest too, in that my brother works for the Outward Bound Trust as a fundraiser. When I listened to him talk about the history of the trust, I was fascinated. It is perhaps worth saying something about that history as it is really relevant to the debate.
The Outward Bound Trust began as part of the war effort in 1941, so it will celebrate its 70th anniversary next year. It began because of the experience of people who had watched merchant seamen after their ships had been torpedoed. Some merchant seamen survived longer than others and it was really obvious that the ones who did not survive were the young people. So a lot of young seamen were taken out of their ships and taught survival skills and team-building exercises, and it was found that those activities had a real impact on their ability to cope in strenuous situations. After the war, the effect of that training on those particular seamen was so great that the trust decided to roll out the training to many other young people. Last year, it was able to provide 26,000 young people with opportunities for such training, much of which was funded through charitable donations.
So the Outward Bound Trust is a prime example of the organisations that many hon. Members have spoken about during the debate, from forest schools to Farming and Countryside Education, which the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) spoke about. Often, those organisations have a very strong charitable arm and so they are able to take young people who could not otherwise afford those outdoor experiences and really change their perspective on life. I want to pay tribute to all the organisations, whether they are private or charitable, that do this kind of work for young people.
However, it is important to say that the Government view outdoor learning as being much wider than just that type of adventure activity. Outdoor learning is not just about getting out into the countryside, although that is absolutely vital. Many of the contributions to the debate have been about the necessity of giving children experience of the countryside. A couple of hon. Members spoke about the fact that many of our young people do not know, for example, how food is produced. All of those activities are part of outdoor learning, but they are not the only aspect. Getting out and experiencing music, theatre or the visual arts is also part of outdoor learning. Furthermore, outdoor learning is a vital part of understanding history and field trips in science and geography are all important.
Not all of those trips have to be trips to places that are a long way away. In fact, the hon. Member for Cardiff West gave the example of a school trip in his constituency that stayed very close to the school. Sometimes such activities can take place just outside the school and even occasionally within the school gates. Getting out of the classroom is what is so vital.
The hon. Gentleman also spoke about the previous Government’s record on outdoor learning. I absolutely acknowledge that the previous Government invested an awful lot of effort, time and money in trying to improve outdoor learning. However, as the Children, Schools and Families Committee stated very clearly in its report on outdoor learning, we are not there yet and we are a long way away from being where we need to be. Far too few young people have the opportunity for outdoor learning and there are all sorts of reasons for that, which were drawn out in the Select Committee report. I just want to refer to a few of those reasons.
I think that part of the problem is related to an overcrowded curriculum, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion spoke about. There are so many compulsory elements in the curriculum that it is difficult to find the space in the day for teachers to explore outdoor activity. A number of hon. Members were trying to request that extra things should be put into the curriculum, particularly in relation to outdoor learning. In the same way that the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole suggested one thing out, one thing in, I am resisting the tendency to put extra things into the curriculum. However, I can perhaps offer a word of comfort to hon. Members who raised this issue. The national curriculum review is particularly looking at what should go into the curriculum. For subjects such as science and geography, it may well be that the review looks at the particular components of outdoor learning. I do not want to pre-empt the review, but I will say that it is ongoing.
Sarah Teather
I have only three minutes left and I have quite a lot still to say, so I had better not give way just now.
I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire for raising issues of health and safety. I absolutely agree with him on those issues and it was helpful of him to put on record the statistics that he cited about how rare difficult events are. The Government take very seriously the report by Lord Young and it is absolutely vital that we get out the message that such difficult events are very rare and that we should take a much more common-sense approach to outdoor learning.
The Government believe that, by offering more flexible funding to schools with less ring-fencing, we have a much better chance of encouraging schools to take up opportunities for outdoor learning. For example, schools are free to spend the pupil premium on supporting particular activities for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. If the priority is to hire a minibus, that might be what a school chooses to do. However, I will undertake to examine the suggestion of the hon. Member for North Swindon about an insurance scheme for schools that is bought en bloc, to see if there is anything that can be done with respect to that suggestion.
The White Paper on schools also speaks specifically about “access to live theatre” and encouraging
“the appreciation of the visual and plastic arts and work with our great museums and libraries to support their educational mission.”
That is something that the Government take very seriously.
I have mentioned history, and the understanding of citizenship is also very important, which is precisely why we support the Holocaust Educational Trust in its programme “Lessons from Auschwitz”. I have experienced that programme myself and it is a fantastic programme that offers the opportunity to change people’s perspectives. For those who have not had that experience at school, the Government are providing extra opportunities through the national citizen service, which will give young people an opportunity to experience outdoor activity first-hand at the start of that scheme and really change their lives.
The hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire asked a number of questions. With respect to teacher training, a paper on that subject will be released next year and I will ensure that his comments about teacher training are drawn to the attention of the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), who is the Minister with responsibility for schools.
With respect to the foundation stage, I will ensure that the comments that have been made about it during the debate are fed into Dame Clare Tickell’s review of the early years foundation stage.
With regard to the “rarely cover” guidance, if schools plan trips in advance that guidance should not really be an issue. However, the Department for Education is looking at the guidance.
With respect to the idea of an entitlement for one particular outdoor learning activity, I think that this process is much more about understanding outdoor learning as a part of a child’s whole learning experience. Just having one trip does not really meet the need for outdoor learning. What we need to do is to mainstream outdoor learning into the whole way that we are looking at the curriculum, which is why I made the point earlier about geography and science trips.
Pollution (Horn Lane, Acton)
(14 years ago)
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Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Benton. The Horn lane industrial site sits on a busy single carriageway in my constituency, connecting the Uxbridge road with the north of the constituency, which is home to the Park Royal industrial and business park and through which runs the A40. The purpose of bringing that part of the world to your attention is to highlight a long-standing problem that shows no signs of abating: the unacceptable pollution levels emanating from the Horn lane industrial site and the palpable failure of any agency to enforce legal pollution limits in the area.
It is local residents who have really upped the ante on the issue by putting it firmly on the agenda and starting to campaign for genuine action and, hopefully, an end to the pollution plight that menaces their daily lives. Ably led by a former Acton Central councillor, Vlod Barchuk, and local activist, Rosco White, SHLAP—Stop Horn Lane Pollution—has attracted considerable support from a community that, understandably, wants to hear less about monitoring pollution levels and more about active policing and enforcement.
Having consulted the Environment Agency and corresponded with the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the matter, I am still a little unclear on how best to move forward and achieve genuine action on the matter. The site is the problem, because it sits uncomfortably, slap bang in the middle of a large residential community. It is surrounded on three sides by residential properties that are supported by a parade of shops and local businesses, all directly alongside the industrial site. Despite living and working along a busy road, a real sense of community exists among local residents, who feel that they are living in an area with great potential and already benefit from Acton’s excellent transport links and the easy access it offers to central London.
That ease of access makes it obvious why Horn lane was chosen to house an industrial site in the first place. It has first-rate rail links and is right on the doorstep of the Park Royal estate. The A40 is to the north and the Uxbridge road is to the south. That made sense in the past, when Horn lane was home to factories, rather than flats and houses as it is now. It must seem odd to those who work on the site that they drive their lorries, unload their skips and transfer their waste right in the heart of a residential community. To local residents, it is ridiculous that their quality of life is being impaired by that throwback, which produces literally sky-high levels of pollution.
Incidentally, although we are looking at air pollution today, the noise pollution from some of those units is also intolerable. The beeping of lorries backing up to empty their loads, the clanking of skips being unloaded and reloaded, and the general din of deafening noise produced by large vehicles moving back and forth in a confined space is also pretty awful for residents. There is no doubt that a more modern and enclosed site would limit both air and noise pollution and increase efficiency. Those units are way behind their times, another reason why they are so unsuitable for the area they remain in.
However, it is the high levels of small, carcinogenic PM1O particles that produce the really serious health problems. They are produced when the units transfer aggregates and building materials from rail to road and engage in their waste-transfer activities. PMIO particles are proven to have a range of effects on health, including effects on the respiratory and cardiovascular systems, asthma and mortality. As the evidence that I will share shows, PM1O levels originating from the Horn lane site have consistently overshot the maximum permitted from any one location. That that is allowed to continue in a heavily populated residential area is just not on.
Monitoring of pollution levels at the Horn lane site is already in place. The Environment Agency is now comparing readings from all three of the monitoring devices at the site in the hope that the sources of the PM1O can be more precisely located. However, residents who complain about the unacceptably high levels of pollution have for years heard the familiar refrain from the Environment Agency that it is monitoring pollution from the site and will take action if the industrial units exceed the limits agreed under their operating licences. Indeed the monitoring equipment takes readings every 15 minutes, which allows pollution patterns to be identified. The readings show that both measures for pollution levels—the daily and annual average readings—far exceed the maximum levels permitted.
The European Commission has set a target that no location should have an annual average of more than 40 micrograms of PM1O particles per cubic metre. So far this year, the Horn lane site has averaged 42 micrograms per cubic metre. The EU states that in any one location there should be no more than 35 days a year when PMIO levels average more than 50 micrograms per cubic metre. That happened on 96 days in 2008, 73 days in 2009 and on 91 days so far this year. Based on those readings, in the last three years pollution levels have been more than double the agreed acceptable levels. Where is the enforcement? What is the point of all the monitoring if it does not actually lead to anything?
The lack of enforcement brings about cynicism of the worst sort among the public. Residents are told that there are acceptable levels of pollution and that anything beyond those limits incurs a penalty, but in reality those levels are breached with frightening regularity and nothing is ever done. For instance, a bell has been installed at one of the units on the Horn lane site to ring when levels rise above a certain point. At that point, all activity at the unit is supposed to cease immediately until the level drops back down. Residents say that they cannot hear the bell because there is so much noise, but the figures reveal that pollution was above the acceptable level, and yet no one has ever seen activity stopped for any period whatsoever during a working day. It is no good being told after the event that pollution levels were too high if nothing is done at the time to rectify the situation. People will just ask, “What is the point?”
In the meeting that I organised in Parliament between the Environment Agency and SHLAP, the agency’s representatives explained the great difficulties that they face in enforcing the legal pollution limits set out in the industrial units’ licensing agreements. My understanding is that the principal problem with that enforcement is that one has to go to court and prove that an individual unit is exclusively responsible for the pollution, but that is clearly impossible in the case of the Horn lane site, because a number of different potential polluters operate there at the same time. What are we to do? The public simply cannot continue to be told that there is unacceptable pollution at the site and then be informed that nothing can be done about it or that no agency is prepared to do anything about it.
The added problem at Horn lane is that it is not just the Environment Agency that is responsible for enforcing pollution levels, as some of the units come under the remit of the local authority, Ealing borough council. I am not making a partisan point, because both main parties have run the council and neither have managed to get to grips with the problem. It will always be difficult when two separate authorities are responsible for different units at the same place and when it is necessary to prove that an individual site is at fault. The situation is just too confusing.
The operators have not always been entirely open to positive discussions with their neighbours, which is unfortunate. Some residents have at times felt noticeable hostility when they have been “too active in making complaints”. It might be fair to say that since the arrival of SHLAP there is a growing recognition by those companies that the residents are now much more united and determined to get things done. For that reason, we have noticed certain improvements at the industrial site, such as proper wetting of the ground, which captures the dust before it flies into the air. It seems that that is now being done on a more regular basis, but my point is that residents should not need to dedicate their lives to the cause of getting genuine action on enforcing legal pollution limits.
The Environment Agency will be on schedule 7 of the Public Bodies Bill currently going through Parliament. If the Bill becomes law, it will be subject to review on a regular basis, and we are hoping that that will help to sharpen its approach.
Also going through Parliament is the Localism Bill, which is about returning power to the local level. It includes a general power of competence that would allow local authorities to do anything that is not specifically prohibited by law. It may well provide an opportunity for the local authority to take a more proactive approach to the problem emanating from the Horn lane site. It should be noted that the local authority did take a more proactive approach in 2006, when it brought a prosecution under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. That was effective in improving the unit’s performance, albeit only in moving pollution levels down from the outrageous to the unacceptable. Broadly speaking, focus and leadership have been seriously lacking in the past. The Localism Bill coupled with regular reviews of the Environment Agency’s approach might just get things going.
The real long-term answer to the problem must be to shift this small industrial remnant and to rezone the area for residential and office use. The problem has existed for too long—it is absolutely time to sort it out. The arrival of Crossrail at Acton mainline station, which is now guaranteed in the comprehensive spending review, cannot come soon enough. It will provide the perfect opportunity for complete rezoning of the area. There will be great demand for offices and residential units, and they would surely be a much more suitable way to use land in what could become an appealing location.
There have also been growing calls for Network Rail to sell off some of its valuable land assets, bearing in mind the public purse in these times of austerity. When Crossrail finally comes to Acton with a brand new station, the surrounding land owned by Network Rail will increase considerably in value. That is yet another argument for rezoning the area.
Obviously, I am not trying to put people out of business. The last thing that I want to do is to close the industrial units down, as such—I just want to move them a little. In fact, there is a perfectly sensible alternative. The Park Royal business and industrial estate is, literally, just up the road. It offers excellent access to the A40, there is still plenty of free space, and there is easy access to rail links from the estate. Surely that would be a better location for this kind of industrial activity than a heavily populated residential area.
But, of course, that is for the future. Crossrail is not due to open for business much before 2018 or 2019, and we have a problem that has to be dealt with here and now. That is why I have focused my attention today on the current needs of the Acton residents who live along Horn lane, alongside the industrial site. They need action now, not endless monitoring and statistics.
I recognise that the agencies I have spoken to want solutions, but, as I said earlier, this is about focus and leadership, and a determination to act on the information, rather than to provide all kinds of reasons for why nothing can be done. My constituents deserve much better than that, and I hope that the Minister will provide us with some helpful thoughts on a meaningful way forward. I thank him, and you, Mr Benton, for listening to our case this morning.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) on raising this matter again in the House. She raised it last week in Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions. She has held frequent meetings and has been a prolific letter writer on behalf of her constituents, and is to be commended for her tenacity in raising an important issue for her local residents.
The emergence of SHLAP—Stop Horn Lane Pollution—is a great credit to the community. It shows strength of spirit and determination to resolve a problem that is clearly blighting the lives of local people. I will deal in detail with the circumstances later, but it is important first to set the context.
Good air quality is fundamental to health and the quality of life. The public health White Paper, which was published only last week, highlighted that. It also highlighted the important role that local authorities play in ensuring that their citizens and communities have clean air to breathe and, with other agencies and local businesses, in ensuring that pollution is kept under control and its impacts minimised.
We have seen significant improvements in air quality over many decades, but, as this case demonstrates, poor air quality continues to have an impact on peoples’ lives. Moreover, poor air quality and pollution hotspots, as in the case of Horn lane and the industrial site located there, can blight the lives of local communities significantly. The coalition Government have made a clear commitment to work towards achieving air quality pollution limits in the UK, and co-operation between the Environment Agency, local authorities and others is key to achieving that commitment.
Several points that my hon. Friend made have to be dealt with at the local level—they cannot be dealt with from the desk of a DEFRA Minister. However, she was right to say that leadership at every level is vital. I shall ensure that her powerful words are heard by the Environment Agency, and I am sure that she will ensure that they are heard by the local authority. I shall also ensure that we continue to work with her to get a proper solution to the problem.
Local communities and citizens have an important role to play in highlighting shortcomings and in drawing them to the attention of higher authorities if they cannot achieve local solutions. I am pleased, therefore, to have this opportunity to say more about the action that is being taken to deal with the matter.
This case shows that safeguarding local air quality is not a simple matter, and that many different sources can contribute to the problem. An air quality monitoring site was installed on Horn lane by the London borough of Ealing in 2005. As my hon. Friend said, it measured very high levels of dust particulates, also known as PM10, which is particulate matter of less than 10 microns in diameter—smaller than the width of a single human hair. PM10 is composed of dust from exhaust fumes, brakes and tyres, aggregates, which she referred to, and industrial processes such as waste management and construction and demolition works. It is not visible to the naked eye but can be monitored, and it impacts on human health, particularly that of vulnerable groups with respiratory problems.
In the case of Horn lane, there are several potential sources of PM10 close to the monitoring station, including transport from Horn lane and the nearby A40, other transport sources such as buses and trains, and pollution from the industrial site, which has several units engaged in concrete production, aggregate supply, scrap metal and waste transfer, and also heavy vehicle movements. That combination of sources adds to the load of dust and pollution and requires that several agencies work together with operators to control it.
The local authority has overall responsibility for local air quality in Ealing and for plans to improve it. The Environment Agency is responsible for ensuring that waste management sites regulated under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010 do not contribute significantly to breaches of national air quality objectives. If a site is contributing to such a breach, the agency develops site action plans with the operator to achieve improvement within an agreed time scale. If improvements do not happen, the agency has the power to serve improvement notices, to stop the activity, to initiate criminal proceedings or to revoke the site’s environmental permit.
At Horn lane, the Environment Agency regulates part of the Yeoman Aggregates site, the Gowing & Pursey waste transfer site and Horn Lane Metals. Ealing council regulates one other unit and, with Transport for London, has responsibility for reducing pollution from transport sources. That is a complex picture, and I know that my hon. Friend and local residents have been concerned about how the arrangements ensure that proper controls are in place. It is right to take into account the valuable local employment provided by firms such as those operating in Horn lane, but these firms must take all reasonable steps to minimise their environmental impact.
The Environment Agency has focused particularly on Gowing & Pursey and has pressed this company over the past four years to improve its control and management of dust, especially from vehicles using the site. Both the London borough of Ealing and the Environment Agency have taken enforcement action against Gowing & Pursey. Most recently, in 2009, the agency served a notice under the environmental permitting regulations, requiring the company to supply it with air quality monitoring data. The company failed to do that, but, following the initiation of enforcement action, it is now supplying the required information.
Further legal enforcement, in principle, remains an option. However, due to the sensitive location at Horn lane, the agency believes that the best option is for all waste activities to occur within a building. I am told that the operator has started discussions with Ealing council on planning permission for this activity to take place in a building.
In addition to these actions, the agency continues to require Gowing & Pursey to monitor for particulates arising from its operations and has increased its inspection and audit frequency for all the sites that it regulates on Horn lane. The agency also carries out regular joint visits with the London borough of Ealing, so that the statutory powers available can be used to improve air quality.
My hon. Friend mentioned relocating facilities on the site. That might be the ideal solution. Planning is a matter for the local authority. I urge her to explore that option—I know that she is doing that—to ensure that in the medium term, at least, a solution can be achieved, leading to different zoning, so that all the benefits that she sees coming forward from a development such as Crossrail can be integrated and factored into a plan dealing with the inappropriate activities that take place so close to so many people’s homes.
Since 2006, levels of particulate matter pollution have declined from an annual average of more than 217 micrograms per cubic metre to 75 micrograms per cubic metre most recently. This is a significant improvement and the data are publicly available if further details are wanted. I am sure that that is of no comfort to the members of SHLAP, who just want this matter resolved and are not particularly fascinated by the details of the data. Although pollution has reduced, all the parties involved recognise that levels are still too high and further improvements are needed.
I understand that the area manager for the Environment Agency met my hon. Friend and the community representatives she mentioned. From that meeting, it was agreed that the agency would continue to monitor air quality around the site to pinpoint the source and would make frequent unannounced visits to ensure that the site was operating in line with its permitting requirements.
I will take away the points raised by my hon. Friend about the pollution alarm and will personally ensure that the Environment Agency requires that, if a site licence requirement says that once the alarm is triggered activities must cease until pollutants reach an acceptable level, and if that is not happening and it is within the means of the Environment Agency to solve the problem—not some other agency—action will be taken.
The agency also agreed to facilitate a meeting with the operators and the community to explore further control measures. I understand that that meeting has yet to take place. This co-operative and transparent approach is important to provide assurance to the local community that action is being taken to improve matters, particularly in this case, where a number of sources could be contributing to breaches of air quality objectives. It is only possible to take enforcement action once the most significant source has been isolated. Although the majority of particulates that are causing problems may or may not be coming from one major source, they might not be coming exclusively from there. It is important that we get the full picture.
As can be seen, this is a complex matter and it is necessary for the local authority, the Environment Agency and others to work together to identify pollution sources. They must also ensure that the responsible operators on the site take suitable measures to improve air quality and monitor levels of pollution. Both the local authority and the agency have taken enforcement action and air pollution has reduced over the years since this engagement, but everyone would agree that more improvements are necessary.
I encourage local residents to continue their dialogue with the Environment Agency and the London borough of Ealing; to keep this site under close scrutiny; and to work with the operators to identify further improvements.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for turning a spotlight on this issue and championing the concerns of local residents. They should know how hard and assiduously their Member of Parliament works for them, dealing with important problems for people living in that area.
Financial Support (Students)
(14 years ago)
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Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
It is a privilege to have this debate under your chairmanship, Ms Clark. I am pleased to see so many hon. Members here to talk about an important issue. I will try to keep my speech brief, so that everybody can get in to make their points and, more importantly, to ask questions.
I asked for this debate for two reasons. First, we need to highlight the effect that the decision to scrap the education maintenance allowance will have on young people throughout the country. Secondly, we need answers about how the proposed financial support scheme, the enhanced discretionary learner support fund, will work.
Last week in the main Chamber, a vote was carried that will allow university tuition fees to rise up to £9,000 in a year to plug the gaping hole in the higher education budget left by the Government’s 80% cut. I voted against that rise with other Opposition Members. The Government fail to grasp that, by cutting EMA, many young people from poorer backgrounds, particularly in constituencies such as mine, will never reach the level at which they will be able even to consider attending university. Taken together, the tuition fee increase and the scrapping of EMA are a heavy blow to young people in constituencies such as mine.
The EMA keeps many young people in Erith and Thamesmead in college or sixth form—and in some cases, it has to be said, on the straight and narrow. Their families rely on payments to cover the costs of attending college, including transport and books, and they often help top up the family budget. One of my constituents, Trudy Mackie, wrote to me recently, saying:
“I am a single parent”,
living in Thamesmead,
“and have worked full time since leaving school myself. I have managed to purchase my own home and save a little money while supporting my daughter throughout her school life…She was identified as gifted and talented, as a school student likely to do well with support, and we have hoped and aimed for her to go to university for a long time on that basis. We are very concerned about the scrapping of the EMA and how this will affect our budgets. This…really does help my daughter to do extracurricular activities”
that enhance her education, such as
“theatre trips and additional lectures…Our household will struggle without this money.”
Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
My constituent, Timar Misghina, a student, said precisely the sorts of things that my hon. Friend has just quoted. Tellingly, she said that EMA not only helps with books, transport and clothing, but helps to get her through her studies with fewer worries. It is important that, when people are trying to study, they and their families are not in a state of constant worry about money.
Teresa Pearce
I agree. It makes a difference if people know that they can concentrate on their education without worrying about the bus fare.
Some 43% of students at Bexley college and 38% of students at Greenwich college—the two largest colleges serving my constituency—receive EMA, the vast majority receiving the higher rate of £30 a week. Some argue that this money does not have an effect, but the principal of Bexley college, Danny Ridgeway, has confirmed that, in the past two academic years, students at his college in receipt of EMA have been more likely to pass their course than their colleagues who have not received EMA support. I believe that this positive outcome is linked to the attendance requirement attached to EMA payments.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
On that point, I received an e-mail from the principal of Hugh Baird college in Bootle, telling me that 84% of young people at the college currently receive EMA. She says that it is clear that the EMA has become a key part of family income and that its discontinuation is very likely to impact on the participation rate locally. In addition, a study in Merseyside colleges shows that the results of those on EMA are 7% higher than those of people who do not receive it.
Teresa Pearce
I agree. More importantly, Danny Ridgeway, the principal of Bexley college, agrees. He says:
“It is our view that the conditions that link payment to attendance and completion of work have been a motivator to help these students to success and progress”.
At this stage, we do not know whether the Government’s plans for enhanced discretionary learner support will have a similar attendance requirement. Will the Minister tell me whether it will?
The Government’s current line is that many students would have stayed in education anyway and that EMA is therefore a dead-weight. When the Minister makes this point—I am sure that he will—I would be grateful if he commented on the following points. First, research underpinning the dead-weight assertion was flawed, because it was undertaken only among schools, when 69% of the recipients of EMA attend colleges not schools. Furthermore, a significant number of EMA recipients are black and ethnic minority, yet those surveyed were 91% white. If a survey is undertaken with an unrepresentative sample, I believe that the results are irrelevant to the debate.
Secondly, research from the Institute of Fiscal Studies showed that where EMA is available, participation in education and attainment levels increased. Does the Minister not think that those are worthwhile objectives?
Thirdly, many public policies involve a high amount of dead-weight—for example, the initiative announced in the June Budget about temporary relief from national insurance contributions for new businesses. The Treasury’s costing shows that 96% of that tax cut will go to employers who would have set up anyway and that 4% will go to employers who have set up in response to the incentives. If the sole aim of this policy is to stimulate new business, it would be regarded as 96% dead-weight. Why are employers worthy of support, while young people, who are the future of this country, are not?
Before I turn to the details of the enhanced discretionary learner support fund, I wish to discuss what will happen to those students who currently receive EMA and are mid-way through their courses.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is right to say that the Government have based their whole case for withdrawing EMA on the research that she mentioned. The Minister will base his case on that research, saying that only a minority of students say that they would not have pursued any course at all if they had not received EMA, but that is not the sole point, is it? Surely the point is the level of sacrifice that families will have to make so that their young people can pursue education.
Does the Minister accept that if he withdraws EMA, even from those students who say that they would proceed with a course, the sacrifice that families have to make will be increased, particularly among those who need the help most—students with learning disabilities, teen parents and those from the poorest families? Does he really want to pursue that policy?
Katy Clark (in the Chair)
Order. Can I remind hon. Members that interventions should be short?
Teresa Pearce
My right hon. Friend raises an interesting point.
Students who receive EMA and are mid-way through their courses began those courses in good faith and could not have foreseen that the funding that they were promised would be withdrawn later. On 25 November, my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) and I wrote to the Secretary of State for Education, urging him to ensure that students would continue to receive EMA for the duration of their courses. We have not yet had a clear response from him, so I would be grateful if the Minister clarified what is to happen to those students, particularly given the recent confusion between written answers and information appearing on Government websites.
In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on 15 November, the Minister said that £174 million would be set aside for EMA in 2011-12, the next school year. Yet the Directgov website states:
“If you currently get EMA you will continue to receive it for the rest of this academic year, but you will not receive it next academic year”.
I would be grateful if the Minister clarified which is the correct answer.
EMA keeps young people focused on their studies, as other hon. Members have mentioned, meaning that they do not have to take on part-time jobs to see them through their education. Long gone are the days when students could get Saturday jobs to do that, because those jobs are often taken by middle-aged women. The jobs just are not there.
In a letter that I received yesterday, the Minister says that
“the expectation that young people will remain in education or training post-16 is much stronger…than…when EMA was introduced. Already, 96 per cent of 16 year olds and 94 per cent of 17 year olds participate in education, employment or training. Attitudes to staying on in education post-16 have changed.”
I totally agree with the Minister, but that change is precisely because of EMA.
The Government have indicated that future decisions on who will receive payments will be made at individual institutions. The coalition Government say that that is because the school or college is closer to students and can make better judgments, but those very institutions are opposing the withdrawal of EMA. If the Minister trusts their judgment about the administration of the enhanced discretionary learners support fund, perhaps he will tell us why he does not trust their judgment on the value of EMA as a whole.
I would like answers to the following questions. Will the new scheme take account of travel costs? A written answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan shows that the last time the Government assessed the average travel costs per student was in 2003. How will we know what the costs are now if the figures are eight years old?
Will the enhanced discretionary learners support fund even include travel costs? At the moment, it does not. What safety net will be in place if too many students need funding, but not enough money is available locally to fund them? Will that mean less funding per student, will allocation be on a first come, first served basis, will students have to parade their poverty to see who is at the front of the queue, or will more funding be made available? If a college does not use all its grant, what will happen to the surplus? My constituency could be considered to be an area with a high level of student need, and those questions are important to me and the people who sent me here.
Katy Clark (in the Chair)
Order. I have received written indications from 12 Back-Bench Members who wish to speak, and I ask hon. Members to bear that in mind when making their contributions.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
It is a pleasure, Ms Clark, to serve under your chairmanship, and I thank you for calling me. I know that many hon. Members want to speak, so I will try to keep my comments brief. I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing this undoubtedly important debate today, and I note that members of the public are also present. The debate is especially important given last week’s prominent and controversial debate on higher education, so it is extremely timely to discuss financial support for students over the age of 16.
I want to make my position clear. I strongly believe that it is right for some form of financial assistance to be targeted at those aged 16 to 18 from the poorest backgrounds. That is really important. The key components of any post-16 education debate should focus on the education maintenance allowance. That has always been the case, and I want to focus my comments on that.
I am sure that some hon. Members here will have received a lot of correspondence about the matter. I have certainly seen a lot, and the principals of Askham Bryan and York colleges in my constituency have raised the issue. Among all concerned groups, there is a real fear that the loss of the weekly allowance will lead to the poorest abandoning their courses, and perhaps not starting them in the first place. That is an entirely understandable concern. However, I stress that the issue is not simplistic or clear cut. The impression portrayed in some corners suggests that the choice is between EMA and the end of all financial assistance to 16 to 18-year-olds. That is quite wrong. I suggest that the majority—I include myself—stand in the middle on this sensitive issue.
Joan Ruddock
What does the hon. Gentleman think will be the consequence of students not knowing whether they are eligible for EMA? There might be a grant, but they would not know. When it comes to choosing a further education college, such as Lewisham college in my constituency, eligible students can get the money and have some certainty. They can make a real choice about where they take their education. What is the future?
Julian Sturdy
I accept the right hon. Lady’s point. There is no doubt that we must ensure that the policy is clear. That has not always been the case, which is why I want to speak up. However, I broadly support the policy, and I will go into the reasons later. We must make sure that information is clear because it is important for young people to have it at their fingertips so that they can make the critical decisions that will affect their future lives. The right hon. Lady makes a valid point.
A matter that has already been touched on is that Government research shows that 90% of EMA spending is dead-weight, going to students who would have stayed in education regardless of the scheme. The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead touched on that, and I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say. I share the Government’s view that taxpayers’ money deserves far greater respect. If EMA is truly only needed by just 12% of those who receive it—
Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)
My constituency is in the 19th most deprived local authority area in England. On the dead-weight issue—I do not accept the survey’s figures—does the hon. Gentleman share my frustration about the way the argument is made? If young people say that despite abolition of EMA they will remain in education, that is being used against them. I met a group of students this morning who said that they would do whatever it takes to stay in education because that is their future, even if abolition of EMA means that they cannot have lunch for a few days a week at least, or pay for transport and will have to walk to college instead. The issue is not just about people being put off and abolition of EMA deterring young people from going into further education. A member of Lambeth youth council, Stephen, is sitting behind me and can back me up on that. For those who choose to stay in education regardless, the abolition of EMA will subject them to extreme hardship.
Katy Clark (in the Chair)
Order. I remind hon. Members that interventions should be brief.
Julian Sturdy
There is no doubt that there must be support for the poorest and most deprived areas to help young people into education, and I will come to that. Government policy allows for that, but the question is whether the money is best used and targeted at people who fall outside and are at the top end of the threshold. Perhaps it is not.
Simon Kirby (Brighton, Kemptown) (Con)
Is the issue not about fairness? In my constituency, many children live in deprived areas with no state sixth-form provision. Support should be effectively targeted. Am I not right in thinking that that is what the Government intend to do?
Julian Sturdy
Absolutely, and that is what I want to go on to. For me, the fundamental point is ensuring that the money gets through to the people who really need it, and ensuring that they can make the decisions that could change their lives.
Bill Esterson
The issue of how to tell who really needs EMA to attend college has been raised with me by a number of college principals. Does the hon. Gentleman have any thoughts—I hope that the Minister will also address the point—on how college principals are supposed to identify who really needs support, and who to withdraw it from and who to leave it with under the new arrangements? What will be the basis for those decisions? There is an estimate that 10% of students will drop out. How will they be identified?
Julian Sturdy
If I am correct—I hope the Minister will highlight this point—we are saying that we will give college principals the power to allocate funding. It is about devolving local decisions to local people and I will speak further about that later in my remarks. I am looking at this issue from the point of view of those in my constituency, including the two principals who have contacted me. I believe that such people are best placed to take such decisions because they have local knowledge, which is important. I am not present just to speak in support of the Government—I do broadly support them, but I have some concerns that I shall outline in more detail.
The flaws in the central administration of EMA are well known. Last year alone, the running costs of the scheme totalled a staggering £35.8 million. That is of concern and I welcome news of the increased discretionary learner support funds that will replace the EMA. That support will be targeted more directly towards those from the lowest income households to ensure that accessibility to post-16 study remains viable and attractive for all students. That is the crucial part of the policy.
I welcome the decision to localise the distribution of the learner support funds by empowering local colleges and educational providers to carry out that administrative role. That process will hopefully save money that should be going to students in the first place. Some will argue that such a transfer of responsibility will increase the workload for colleges, but in my view it is right for local education providers to use their local knowledge to tailor the support offered to young people in their specific areas. That is a local and flexible solution to the problems of poor and costly administration.
I am generally supportive of the measures outlined by the coalition but I hold two reservations about the new system. First, I am concerned about ending the scheme for those students who will be only half-way through their courses by next summer. I support the new system, but I believe that it would be better for those already receiving EMA payments to see the initial agreements honoured. My second concern, which has been raised already, relates to transport. Many students who attend colleges across York and North Yorkshire rely on EMA to help meet their travel costs. Many have £10 automatically withdrawn from their allowance in return for a free bus pass. Given the likelihood of cuts to local authority transport subsidies, I would be interested to know whether the Government are considering the introduction of any transport-related financial assistance for full-time 16 to18-year-old students. In essence, however, I hope that all of us in the Chamber today share the same goal to protect and enhance the accessibility to education that our 16 to 18-year-olds currently enjoy and deserve. That is a noble and worthwhile ambition, and countless colleagues across the coalition genuinely share that vision.
The choice is not merely between EMA on one hand and no financial support whatsoever for 16 to 18-year-olds on the other. If that were the case, it would be quite wrong. Instead, an unwavering commitment to those who face genuine financial barriers to participation can be delivered through a more localised and efficient scheme, and that is why I broadly support what the coalition Government are doing.
Katy Clark (in the Chair)
Order. I remind hon. Members that they must stand if they wish to speak.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate and welcome the fact that there is a show of strength here today. That will give some heart to those students sitting in the audience or watching the debate on the television who will have been horrified to hear themselves described as dead-weight by some hon. Members. Hon. Members from all parties should be careful in the way that they talk about this important issue. Those students and their financial support are not dead-weight in any sense. They are not dead-weight in the offensive way in which such language is used, and neither are they dead-weight based on the evidence. I echo the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) when she pointed out that the study on which the Government have based most of their evidence is highly unrepresentative of her constituency and of mine, and of most of those students who rely on EMA to finish their courses and ensure that they do not suffer extreme hardship as a result.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Is my hon. Friend aware that before the EMA was introduced it was trialled in Hackney, which had an amazingly successful response and a much higher take-up of college places? That has now led to a much higher take-up of university places and the scheme has proved a success all along the way in what is Britain’s poorest borough. Does she think that the Government study ought to look at places such as Hackney that have a much longer experience of such schemes, rather than looking at other places and coming up with those rather curious figures? EMA is the gateway to higher education, is it not?
Lisa Nandy
I thank my hon. Friend; I was not aware that the scheme had been piloted first in Hackney. I urge the Minister to take heed of those words and also look at places such as Wigan where the scheme has had considerable success. My hon. Friend touched on an incredibly important point. Last Friday I went to my local college, Winstanley college, and heard from students. They said that not only was EMA incredibly important for them to get through college, but that they were now facing the double whammy of thinking that even if they get through college and face considerable hardship in order to do that, they will then have to pay incredibly high tuition fees. Those students feel that barriers are being put in their way over and again, and many of them are wondering whether it is worth enduring such a level of hardship because even if they get the opportunity of going to university, that will not be a realistic option. We must consider that point.
A vast range of research shows that EMA has actually been incredibly successful. I have examples from the Manchester college, CfBT education trust, the Learning and Skills Council and Wigan and Leigh college, which sent me an incredibly powerful set of evidence based on surveys and interviews with students. The point made powerfully by students and the principal of that college was that EMA is not only about alleviating hardship, but it is a bargain between the state and the students. That bargain says that if someone works hard and tries hard, it does not matter what sort of background they come from and they deserve to do well and be supported. It is outrageous that those students should now be asked to face financial hardship in order to achieve at the same level as their peers. It is also outrageous that 50% of students who receive EMA in my local college have a 99% retention rate, yet they are now being told by the Government that it does not matter that they have stayed on, worked hard and kept their side of the bargain. That is particularly urgent for those students who are in their first year of college. They have recently been told in responses to questions asked by myself and my hon. Friends, that they will now lose their EMA halfway through their course. Of the 1,000 students currently in the first year of study at Wigan and Leigh college, 75% say that they will drop out at the end of this year. That is horrifying, and I hope that the Minister will listen to that.
Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
Apart from Askham Bryan campus in Guisborough, and Prior Pursglove college and neighbouring FE colleges in Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland, a number of small and medium-sized enterprises are concerned about the withdrawal of EMA. EMA funds a number of apprenticeships in engineering and other skilled trades that have traditionally been sceptical and scared of investing in apprenticeships, unlike bigger former companies such as Imperial Chemistry Industries and British Steel in Teesside. The new SMEs have not been as proactive, and are only now beginning to increase the number of apprenticeships. By getting rid of the EMA, we may undermine those skill programmes.
Lisa Nandy
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I agree with him. One of the worst things that we saw under the previous Conservative Government was that a range of young people throughout the country were left with no sense of hope for the future. Seeing people without hope for the future is devastating, but seeing young people without hope for the future is even worse. We must not return to that situation.
I have three final points. First, colleges urgently need to know what will replace the EMA. The details of the discretionary learner support fund are sketchy. Colleges need to know whether, in reality, this will be a £500 million cut. Yesterday, the Secretary of State, appearing before the Select Committee on Education, could not confirm the position to hon. Members.
We need to know urgently whether travel costs will be taken into account and what else the discretionary hardship fund will be able to cover. In my constituency, like many other constituencies, travel is one of the prohibitive factors to attending college. Despite a number of people living in the town centre, Wigan is essentially a rural seat, and students would not be able to travel to college without the EMA.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
The travel situation in Somerset is exactly the same, but there are aspects to rural education that are even more critical. Towns such as Shepton Mallet and Glastonbury do not have sixth forms attached to their schools. Therefore there is no option for students but to travel. There are schools that do have sixth forms, but they do not cover the full range of subjects, so people such as my daughter, who wanted to study environmental science and politics, had to travel to Bridgwater college, which is some distance away. Cutting the EMA will place serious restrictions on the courses that young people can study.
Lisa Nandy
The hon. Lady is passionate about this issue and has raised it many times. I would like to echo her comments.
There is compelling evidence that the EMA pumps millions of pounds into local economies throughout the country. In my Wigan constituency, where people are losing jobs and homes, and particularly in former coalfield areas, where, despite significant investment, the legacy of those times remains, the EMA could not be more important. The policy is short-sighted from that perspective.
I draw hon. Members’ attention to the IFS study published yesterday. It points out that savings in the short term simply do not make sense, because if we invested in our young people in the short term, we would more than recoup that in the long term.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
I was very interested in what my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) had to say about the pilot in Hackney, because as a young education officer 25 years ago in Gateshead, I was managing a service that was delivering EMAs. It was paid for by the local authority. The young people who received EMAs then are now the parents of the schoolchildren in Gateshead, who, as the Secretary of State often points out, are outperforming similar children under similar authorities across the country. The EMA is not only about student support. It is a gateway to higher education. It is about investing in the local community. Indeed, it is a long-term investment in standards.
Lisa Nandy
I agree with my hon. Friend . Many hon. Members want to speak, so I shall end by saying that it is precisely in such difficult economic times that we should be investing in our young people and sending a very strong signal to them that they matter and their futures matter. I urge the Minister to think again.
Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)
Thank you for allowing me to speak, Ms Clark. I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing the debate just before the end of the year at such a timely point in the Government’s decision-making cycle.
Before the comprehensive spending review, I wrote to my hon. Friend the Minister, urging him to retain the EMA. There are two excellent colleges in my constituency: a sixth-form college, King Edward’s, where 35% of students receive the EMA, and a very good further education college, Stourbridge college, where 63% of students receive it. I wrote to the Minister to express my concern that the withdrawal of that benefit would deter students from poorer backgrounds from continuing their education, so I well understand the points that have been made in the debate.
I accept that we are in a very different situation, economically and in terms of raising the compulsory leaving age for those in full-time education to 18, from the position that applied when the EMA was introduced, almost a decade ago. My purpose in taking part in the debate is not to seek to change the decision to replace the EMA with a more targeted, enhanced discretionary fund, but to bring to this Chamber the views and concerns about the successor arrangements expressed to me by staff and students of both the colleges that I mentioned.
Last week, during the debate on tuition fees, I was lobbied by Kim Hughes, president of the student union at Dudley college. Dudley college is not in my constituency, but a lot of students studying there reside in my constituency, so it was a pleasure to meet Kim and her accompanying member of staff, Natasha Millward, who approached the mass lobby of Parliament in the true democratic spirit, seeking to inform me, as one of the Members whom they visited, in a proper manner. I was indeed informed about things that I had not previously realised concerning the enhanced discretionary fund proposals.
I shall explain the main concerns that Kim Hughes and Natasha Millward raised with me. First, the rules governing the existing learner support fund exclude the use of moneys from that fund to pay for travel, which is the point that almost every hon. Member in the debate so far has made. Secondly, they raised the issue of the increased burden on colleges in administering an enhanced form of the learner support fund at a time when colleges, like every other public sector organisation, are being expected to reduce their administrative costs.
I am particularly grateful to the principal of King Edward’s college, Sharon Phillips, for questioning this week a random sample of students who attend the college. I appreciate the fact that the students took part and gave such honest feedback. Just 10% of those interviewed said that they thought that they would not have attended college if they had been unable to claim the EMA. I accept the point made by some hon. Members that that is not necessarily the only way in which we should judge whether the other 90% were suitable candidates for the EMA, but I do believe that it is a relevant point and it backs up the research already mentioned in the debate.
Some students who took part in the interviews suggested that the system has been open to abuse and that one way of dealing with that would be to substitute vouchers or free travel passes for the payment. Vouchers would add too much of an administrative burden, but we already administer a system of travel passes for older people, so surely it is not beyond our wit to administer them to young people from poorer backgrounds. That could be a way round the administrative burden falling exclusively on colleges.
The students made other points, and I want to bring to the Minister’s attention the principal’s comment on the findings from her research. Although only 10% of her students told her that they would have been unable to attend college without the EMA, she felt that recruitment by colleges in less affluent areas might be disproportionately hit by the withdrawal of the EMA.
Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)
My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. My point follows on from the one made by the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) about rurality, because that is where things get disproportionately out of sync. Even if there are vouchers or whatever, these children will not have a chance, and places such as Bridgwater college will lose a vast number of students, as will Strode college in the Wells constituency. Does my hon. Friend agree that the matter needs to be reconsidered completely where rurality is in play?
Margot James
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I am not sure that we are in a position now to revisit the entire proposal to replace the EMA with the enhanced learner support fund. I very much appreciate his intention to do that, but the challenge for the Minister is to ensure that the replacement arrangements are adequate and err on the side of generosity to ensure that students from poorer backgrounds can continue to access further education.
Let me conclude by reinforcing the three messages that I want the Government to consider as they move forward. First, the enhanced discretionary fund should be revised to allow recipients to spend part of their remuneration on travel to and from college. That is particularly important, and I think that I am right in saying that every Member who has contributed so far has mentioned it.
Jeremy Corbyn
The hon. Lady must be aware that among Ken Livingstone’s many achievements while Mayor of London was the provision of free bus travel for students. That has encouraged many students to stay on at college, and it has greatly assisted them. Might not other local authorities and transport areas think of following suit?
Margot James
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I am well aware of the former Mayor’s generous travel schemes. Consideration should be given to allowing students—young people from poorer backgrounds—to have similar free travel passes. I would certainly support that proposal.
Let me return to the other two points that I wanted to make to the Minister. Colleges are closer than central Government to their students, and they are therefore better placed to decide who is in real need of financial support, but the additional administrative burden that the change will place on them needs to be acknowledged, and there needs to be some practical support.
Finally, I mentioned that I would like the Government to err on the side of generosity in the replacement arrangements and to increase significantly the money that we invest in enhancing the learner support fund. A greater proportion of students from less affluent parts of our country and less affluent backgrounds who really are in need will then gain some benefit. I trust that the Minister will recommend those enhanced arrangements to Parliament as soon as possible in the new year.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Clark. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing the debate—its timing could not have been better.
I will focus my remarks on EMA and, more appropriately, on the Government’s intention to scrap it. EMA is absolutely crucial for my constituents. Removing it will damage the hopes and aspirations of young people across the country, but the effect will be particularly bad in my constituency. The present policy represents yet another damaging U-turn by this Government; it is another Lib Dem let-down and a massive betrayal of the hopes and dreams of young people. It sends a resounding message to 16-year-olds who aspire to improve their lives. It leaves talent unfound and unnurtured, while reinforcing poverty traps and dividing further those who are fortunate from those who are not.
Before I develop those points further, it is important to highlight EMA’s success. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) was right to say that it was piloted in Hackney. That was in 1999, and EMA was launched across England in 2004. Research by the Responsive College Unit found that it encouraged 18,500 young people to participate in further education in the first year it was rolled out nationally. Those young people would not have had that financial support or that incentive to enter further education were it not for EMA. Similar research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests that young people who receive EMA go on to achieve the qualifications required to succeed in life. The percentage of learners receiving EMA who achieve level 2 qualifications has increased by approximately 6%, with specific improvements in ethnic and minority groups.
The facts are clear: this policy was an absolute success, and we should make no mistake about that. To suggest otherwise is completely misleading. EMA truly encouraged young people to go on to achieve what they deserved and desired. It boosted attainment among those facing the biggest challenges in life and enabled them to succeed.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend add one important element to that—confidence? EMA gave young people confidence.
Karl Turner
I absolutely agree. I am sure that that point will be reiterated time and again throughout the debate.
The Minister is well aware of the facts and of EMA’s successes. So, for that matter, are the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Education. Before the election, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties were quick to deliver assurances that EMA would be protected. Referring to the then Secretary of State for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), the Secretary of State, in a Guardian question and answer session on 2 March, stated:
“Ed Balls keeps saying that we are committed to scrapping the EMA. I have never said this. We won’t.”
That was not true.
Speaking of education maintenance allowances, the then Leader of the Opposition, who is now the Prime Minister—he is never one to miss an opportunity—said,
“no we don’t have any plans to get rid of them.”
Seven months is a long time in politics. What message is the coalition sending to young people about politics and our society? Sixteen to 18-year-olds across the country are being told that education is for those who can afford it, while those who cannot, need not apply.
Given EMA’s successes and the help that it has offered thousands of young people, the current proposal raises the question of whether the Government are comfortable punishing the disadvantaged.
Karl Turner
Not at the moment.
The message is clear. Young people have felt the brute force of this economic vandalism. This generation of young people have had the cruellest introduction to the world of politics. They have barely dipped their toe in the water, but they have been hit by wave after wave of ignored pledges, broken promises and closed ears. The coalition has defined politics for an entire generation in terms of distrust, and the coalition parties will not easily be forgiven. The scrapping of EMA leaves us in a situation where talent will be stunted due to inadequate means. Just under 5,000 young people in Hull will be locked out of further education and, therefore, higher education, and they will have any aspiration quashed.
As I said at the outset, my constituents are particularly affected. Gary, who lives on the Longhill estate in east Hull, cannot afford to pay for his textbooks, stationery or travel, but his EMA allows him to.
Karl Turner
Not at the moment. Many hon. Members are eager to speak, so you will forgive me, Ms Clark, if I do not give way.
Debbie, who lives on Bransholme, does not have the luxury of ambitious parents. She says her parents do not understand the value of further education. She says that they cannot afford to, and will not, pay for her to study, but that EMA does just that. Darren lives on Greatfield estate. His parents are among the lowest 10% of earners in the country, earning just less than £16,000 a year. He needs to pay board, but he cannot afford to. However, his EMA allows him to contribute to the family pot. EMA allows individuals to break through the boundaries and access further education. It puts an end to generation after generation of young people being locked out of further education. It truly enables social mobility.
It is illogical that, on the one hand, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is emphasising the importance of breaking the cycle of welfare dependency, while, on the other, the Education Secretary is removing the support that would enable young people to do better for themselves. If we want families to break free from welfare traps, surely it is important that we instil in our young people a thirst for education, and underline the importance of that. Offering students EMA provides them with an incentive and support to help them along the way. If Gary is without his EMA he will be without his A-levels, and therefore without his physics degree. The domino effect continues. Science and the state will be without that young talent. Can the Government honestly say that they will withdraw their support for Debbie to complete her course, denying her the chance of achieving her true potential? What about Darren, who will no longer be able to complete his NVQ in fashion design? Should he be locked out because he simply cannot afford to do the course without financial support?
I have not even mentioned the unprecedented hike in tuition fees. Even those who are lucky enough to make it through further education will have a mountain to climb on the other side as they face the prospect of £9,000-a-year fees. Let us imagine the situation, in which any of the 16-year-olds whom I have mentioned managed to complete access-to-university courses without support, but then are faced with the prospect of convincing their parents, who are of modest backgrounds, that they are about to embark on a three-year degree course that will cost them £27,00—and no doubt an awful lot more, when accommodation and living are taken into account. I know what my parents would have said to me. I left school at 16 with few qualifications. I ran a business for a while and eventually, when I was financially stable, I went off to do A-levels before completing a law degree. I eventually qualified as a barrister in 2005 at the age of 34. When I was nearing the end of pupillage, I was possibly the most elderly pupil at the Bar; so I know what a struggle it is to get educated.
I have no doubt that without the Labour Government’s lifelong learning agenda I would never have had the academic success and confidence to reach the dizzy heights of membership of the Bar, and of being elected to this place. We should make no mistake. The Government’s policy on further and higher education is not progressive. It is shamefully regressive. It effectively does away with further and higher education for those who cannot afford to pay for it. The Government are more than happy for further and higher education to become the privilege of the few. Those who can afford an education will pay for it and those who cannot simply will not have one. That is the reality of the Government agenda. I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if I appear angry, but the subject makes me extremely annoyed. The Government will not easily be forgiven by those young people, who are locked out of further and higher education.
EMA is important not only to the family and the student; it has a wider social benefit. Why do the Government insist on washing their hands of post-16 education, leaving the next generation unable to get access to the qualifications that they require to improve their lives? We hear a lot of talk from the Government about fairness. Is this fair? Is it productive, or is not it narrow-minded, ideological, regressive and wholly flawed? I know where I stand. I ask the Minister to look again and to think very carefully about the choices that are being made, and about the aspirations of our constituents. I ask him to put the brakes on and allow Gary, Debbie and Darren, my constituents who have bothered and troubled themselves to e-mail me about their stories, the chance to improve their situations for the benefit of us all. I cannot support the Government’s attempts to create a divide in the education system between those well off enough to pay and those less fortunate, who cannot. For those reasons I will actively oppose the Government every step of the way.
Katy Clark (in the Chair)
Order. I remind hon. Members that a considerable number still want to speak; the shorter the contributions, the more I can call.
Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Clark. I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing the debate and introducing it in measured terms that addressed the issues—unlike, perhaps, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), who would not take an intervention from the Government side but was happy to repeat the same two points endlessly. I do not think he really took the debate any further forward.
I have concerns about a change from EMA to a college-based system, as, of course, do many students. My constituency has five secondary schools, four of which have sixth forms. That is the model on which much education has been delivered in such market towns. Of course, we also have an excellent and large dispersed Cornwall college group, including Duchy college in my constituency, which I visited on Friday, and several other campuses throughout the peninsula, which deliver a huge range of vocational and academic courses that are vital to the future of the young people concerned.
We must consider the situation we are in. The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East was very clear about where he stood and about wanting to condemn and attack the Government, but I did not hear a lot about options for doing anything different. That is what we have to consider about the present situation. I should be quite happy to enter into a debate if we heard exactly what his Government would have done. In the run-up to the election, they talked about the cuts they would have to make if they were re-elected, but of course there is no detail about where those cuts or changes would have come from.
Dan Rogerson
The hon. Gentleman can look at Hansard and see how everyone in the Chamber voted. I think we should stick to the debate that we are having today.
The key question for me is how we are using money that should be targeted at the people who need it most. I have had e-mails from constituents who are very concerned, and I accept that there will be some people whose plans for the future will be affected and who will need to think very carefully about what they can do. I shall return to the issue of transport, which is crucial, particularly in an area such as mine.
I have had e-mails from a constituent in Camelford, whose daughter and son get EMA for their education and feel that it is not enough. There is a transport element to getting to the college, and other costs. They believe that they need greater support to secure that. However, they are also aware of other people in the town—and I accept that this is anecdotal—who they feel do very nicely, go on all sorts of holidays and have a wonderful time, and are still in receipt of EMA. That suggests to me that there are, as happens in all areas, some people who are getting support that would perhaps be better targeted at those who need it most.
The Government’s response to the issue is, understandably, to consider the overall budget; but it is also to think about targeting. There are concerns, in a college group such as Cornwall college group, that some people have come into education in the past few years because support is available. I do not accept the argument of dead-weight, but we must also accept that there are people who get EMA who would have gone into further education at 16.
Dan Rogerson
I shall give way in a moment, but I want to finish the point. The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead was keen to point out that there are perhaps other benefits to the support, rather than just whether someone would attend. That is an important consideration, but the primary one, and what most of the debate has focused on—particularly the remarks of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East—is people not being in education at all and getting out entirely.
Whether people in receipt of EMA may attend a bit more because it has the attendance component is a separate issue. The hon. Gentleman levelled the charge at the Government that people will just not receive education; they will just not go. I do not accept that, because the Government system will have to, and will, address—or if it does not, a lot of Members on this side will want to know why—those people on the margin, where there is an effect on the decision whether to attend.
Dan Rogerson
I have already agreed that I will give way to the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock).
Joan Ruddock
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. EMA was also piloted in my constituency, so would he accept from me that there is a dimension with which he will be less familiar than I am—ethnic minorities? At Lewisham college, half the students pursuing FE courses are from ethnic minorities and 45% of students are on EMA. He may like to acknowledge that there is a special reason why it has created new advantages and encouragement to people who might have been less inclined to stay on at school.
Dan Rogerson
I welcome the right hon. Lady’s intervention. There will be significant other factors in areas different from our own, despite proximity and good public transport. They will be issues such as the ability of families to offer support. In my area, there are issues such as whether young people can physically get to education, which is why transport is crucial for me.
Dan Rogerson
I shall give way to my hon. Friend, and then bring my remarks to a close so that others can speak.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
Following the point made by the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock), I have real concerns about where the Government are going on this—let me put my hands up and say that clearly. The Government have to get this right, otherwise lots of people, in all our communities, will not choose to go to FE college at 16 or 17. The viability of some FE colleges will be threatened if we do not get this right.
Does my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) agree that, before making any decisions, the Government need not only a national profile, but to know the impact of the policy by local authority area? We need to look at the ethnic mix and at the socio-economic background of the families involved, to see where the youngsters come from. Are they single-parent families, families with no parent earning or families with parents and more than one child or young person in education? They are all factors, and we need the information before any sensible, methodological decision is made.
Dan Rogerson
I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. He is right: we need to be confident that the system the Government are moving to and adopting is fit for purpose and provides a framework in which colleges can operate. That point was made in an earlier intervention as well. How will colleges take the decisions? In what framework will they operate? That is important.
I would like to question the Minister on transport and on ensuring that, in an area such as rural north Cornwall, choice will not be restricted simply by the inability of young people to access the courses they can access at the moment, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) said. I hope the Minister and his colleagues will take into account all local factors when they look at the system, which will have different impacts in different areas. If the total budget is reduced, as, unfortunately, it has to be, we should have a system that is targeted effectively and ensures that people are not deprived of the educational opportunities that will mean so much to them in future.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Clark, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing the debate. I shall try to keep my comments brief, because I know that others wish to speak.
The discretionary learners support fund is a mere 13% of the money provided under the educational maintenance allowance. Do the Government estimate that the number of people in need of financial support through further education is only 13% of what it once was or are Members arguing, as has been suggested, that youngsters will still go to college, but they will go impoverished?
Nearly 19,000 students in Lancashire rely on the EMA to give families the financial flexibility that allows them to continue to study. My hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), who is no longer in his place, and my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), noted that students in receipt of EMA outperformed other students—by 7% in Sefton and 6% in Hull East, I think. In areas such as my constituency, the EMA often means the difference between going on to further study and not doing so.
Stephen Carlisle, the principal of Accrington and Rossendale college, which is our local college, told me that he is expecting a big drop in numbers. He believes the withdrawal of the EMA
“will impact on the ability of poorer students to go to college”.
The college will have to use its already stretched budget to help those disadvantaged students because, as Mr Carlisle said:
“We can’t cast them aside and just educate those who can afford to go”.
Graham Jones
I will not give way. I want to make some progress, because there are other Members who wish to speak. I do not have a lot of comments to make.
The experience in the college reflects the comments of a lot of other principals; it is not only Mr Carlisle who is expressing that opinion, and when it comes from the educational establishment, I think we should listen.
I could suggest that, in reality, the figure set aside for the new fund was plucked out of thin air and does not reflect any proven need. One might go as far as to say that it is nothing more than a token attempt to ease the pain of taking money from those who need it. However, this is just one part of a wider attack on education. If the Government are so keen to show adherence to the Browne report, why are they ignoring one of its main recommendations—the increase in university participation by 10%—by scrapping a policy that has been shown to increase attendance?
Even by the estimate, which the Government accepted, of the National Foundation for Educational Research, the EMA accounted for 12% of those who attended university. They are people who otherwise may not have gone. The trebling of tuition fees has already made meeting Lord Browne’s 10% increase in participation unlikely, and scrapping the EMA will make it extremely difficult.
Government Members ask what the alternative is; I think the alternative is simple. The cuts are too fast, too deep and they go too far, as we, on this side of the House, have stated. That is a basis for rejecting the proposal. To sum up, the discretionary learners support fund is a token attempt to give a facelift to a counter-intuitive policy.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
During the conference recess, I took the opportunity to visit the sixth forms in my constituency. Many of the students I met were underwhelmed by EMA. Many felt that it was unfair because it was poorly targeted, and many told me stories of friends who spent the money inappropriately. Overwhelmingly, the students felt that the priority, particularly in my very rural constituency, was getting to college in the first place. The hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) made the point that in London students already benefit from free travel passes. In a rural constituency such as Devon, that would be extremely difficult for the council to implement.
I would like the students in my constituency, who attend excellent colleges such as KEVICC—King Edward VI community college—South Devon college and Paignton community college, to be able physically to get to them in the first place. The students were asking for free or greatly subsidised travel. I call on the Minister to respond to the point that many hon. Members have made today and make transport part of a much enhanced programme of support arrangements—particularly for disadvantaged students, such as those from low-income families, for whom that really makes a difference in helping them to get to college. They do use the allowance for that.
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing the debate. I shall take a couple of minutes to give voice to some of the students I met on Monday at the Manchester college Benchill campus in my constituency. Manchester college has 6,000 students aged 16 to 19, 60% of whom claim EMA. They told me about the practical benefits that EMA brings them. It means that they can pay for their bus fares, food at college, books and equipment.
Some of the young men, who were explaining the training that they were doing for trades, told me that they need to build up a kit while they are studying, which can cost as much as £600. Those are real, substantial costs, which the EMA is helping to offset. They all feared the burden that they may become to their parents, particularly bearing in mind that many of them have brothers and sisters who, when the EMA is gone, will face the same dilemmas. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy): we should stop using the dead-weight cost expression—it is not any way to describe hard-working students.
With regard to staying on, the majority of students told me that without EMA they would still have gone to college. Some of them would not. All, without exception, said that without EMA they would not have studied as successfully, because they would have been under more pressure to take on part-time work, and would have had the wrong balance between studying and the rest of their lives.
EMA makes an incredible difference to how students are able to focus and concentrate on their studies, settle into work on their courses and achieve a great deal. I urge the Minister to think again about this policy; it is even more destructive to the hopes and ambitions of my young constituents than the decision that the Government put through last week.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing this important and timely debate. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), who has had to leave. I know she has been trying for some time to secure the debate, together with our hon. Friend.
Both hon. Friends are proven great champions of young people from low-income backgrounds. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the strong arguments that we have heard today. My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan is also a prolific tabler of parliamentary questions, and I commend her for her persistence on this issue; I only wish that Ministers would get into the spirit of open democracy and answer some of the questions more promptly.
This has been a good-natured and high-quality debate, considering the passion that the subject evokes, especially in our party. The debate is not yet over, so perhaps I should not speak too soon. However, I will try to stay within that spirit. We have had some strong speeches, although probably not as many as we would have liked, as a number of hon. Members have not been able to speak. I hope the Minister will take that on board and perhaps ask whether this matter should be debated on the Floor of the House in Government time.
Those who have spoken include: the hon. Members for York Outer (Julian Sturdy), for Stourbridge (Margot James) and for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson); my hon. Friends the Members for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) and for Hyndburn (Graham Jones); and the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who was very brief, as was my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins). There were some excellent contributions and I am sorry that I do not have time to go through them all in detail.
We have had a lot of debate on EMA this week, including the “Save EMA” national campaign day in Westminster and around the country, when 60,000 young people sent a clear message to the Government that this policy is unfair. Yesterday, we had an extremely embarrassing report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies—referred to by some hon. Friends—which laid bare the ridiculously weak evidence base the Government use to support their position.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
In mentioning the IFS, my hon. Friend draws attention to the fact that the Government spent a lot of time insisting on the NFER study, which focuses only on participation. EMA, does she not agree, has four main purposes—participation, attendance, attainment and supporting the well-being of people from disadvantaged backgrounds in education? Those things have not been evaluated properly, though the IFS study reported yesterday started to do so.
Mrs Hodgson
My hon. Friend makes a valuable point, one which I hope the Minister and Government will consider before coming forward with an announcement in this regard.
This morning we had a very good seminar in the Boothroyd room, at which young people, teachers and administrators from across the country—including Becky, Codie, John and Jordan from Hylton skills campus in my constituency—talked to politicians about what scrapping EMA will mean to them. It was a shame that the Minister could not be there. With respect to all hon. Members who have contributed to this debate, it would have been much more valuable for the Minister to have heard first-hand what young people and those who work with them say to those of us willing to listen, about how much impact this choice will have on the lives of people from the poorest backgrounds.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
I wanted to put that question to the Minister, had I had the opportunity to speak. How many colleges have the Government spoken to about this policy? I spoke recently to staff from Newcastle college, which carried out a survey of all its EMA recipients, 85% of whom use it for transport costs. I was alarmed to hear it stated in this debate that EMA is regularly and widely abused. That is not the experience of colleges that I have spoken to.
Mrs Hodgson
That was definitely not the experience that Members heard from students this morning. We heard some powerful and at times very moving contributions. Many students told us how EMA is barely enough at the moment to cover their travel costs and their lunch. A young man called Luke told us of his peers who could not eat before or at college because their money did not go far enough. How many more will be in that position when EMA is removed? We know that eating well leads to better attainment. Even though the Minister and his colleagues scrapped the extension to free school meals, he must acknowledge the scientific evidence.
We heard from the principal of Lambeth college that EMA had led to a rise in participation and achievement and a fall in drop-outs. We heard from Cath and Alex, who had brought the young people all the way down from my constituency in Sunderland, that EMA helps young people with financial planning, which reduces the likelihood of their getting into debt in later life. We heard from a student who had dropped out of school in year 8, but was now studying towards GCSE-level qualifications because of EMA. We heard from a young single mother, who could only attend college and take her child to the crèche because of EMA. We also heard from all the staff that EMA was helping young people.
The most poignant moment was a comment from John, who with his peers had got up at 4 am to come down from Sunderland for the meeting. He sat there until the end, then said:
“Sharon said on Friday that I should follow my dreams. EMA gives me the chance to follow my dreams, and if you take it away, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I will be brief. I wanted to share an example from my constituency. Kyle Simpson is a young Olympic hopeful training alongside Rebecca Adlington. He says EMA makes such a difference. His mum contributes to his training fees, and EMA enables him to go to college and have a little bit of money for transport, food and something of a social life, when he is not training and competing in swimming competitions.
Mrs Hodgson
That is another very good example. Many of the young people I met today were in their first year of study, and had undertaken to stay on in the sixth form or college on the understanding that that support would remain for the full two years. Why would they think otherwise?
After all, the man who painted himself as a modern, trustworthy leader of the Conservative party went around telling people that EMA was safe. In March, the current Education Secretary told the Guardian—in the nicest possible terms, as is his way—that his predecessor was a liar for suggesting that a Conservative Government would scrap EMA. In June, the very Minister sent here today to defend this policy put his commitment to the future of EMA on the parliamentary record.
Imagine the surprise of these young people at finding out that a promise from any of these men is not worth the paper it is written on. If the Minister and his colleagues in the Conservative party were as committed as they say they are to the principle of helping working-class kids access further education, why have they now turned their backs on them?
In the last debate on this subject, I heard the Government and the Minister, as well as some Government Back Benchers here, repeatedly trot out the line that 90% of EMA recipients are what they call “dead-weight”. We might hear it again in the Minister’s response—I hope not—despite the fact that we have heard plenty of contradictory evidence over the last hour. They should not be referred to in that manner.
I have a lot of respect for the Minister but, frankly, I find it disgusting to hear him and his colleagues talk about ambitious but poor young people as dead-weight. Never mind the fact that without EMA they might have to work every evening and weekend just to afford bus fares, food and books, because they want to better themselves. Because they want to better themselves, he believes that they are undeserving of support.
I do not know about the Minister, but I have actually bothered to go to my local colleges, as have hon. Friends to theirs, and speak to young people who receive EMA. The Minister says that nine out 10 of them would fall into the category of dead-weight, but I can inform him that the young people whom I visited are very much alive and working hard to better themselves, and they are angry with him. Some of them are around today, and they might try to catch his ear as he leaves. Perhaps he should prepare a response.
The Minister will undoubtedly be aware that the Hylton skills campus is part of the City of Sunderland college. Its excellent principal, Angela O’Donoghue, e-mailed me yesterday to tell me that the cuts would have a massive impact on her college. Some 70% of her students receive EMA, and 90% of those receive the full £30. How many of those young people would the Minister say are undeserving of help?
I shall bring my remarks to a close because we want to hear what the Minister has to say. I have done loads of sums—I know that people like to hear about my calculations—but I may have to save them for another day. However, I might write to the Minister and pass the benefit of those sums to him.
Richard Thorold, the principal of Gateshead college, which my son attends, wrote to me. He said:
“Whilst I accept that these are difficult times financially, I believe that financial support for young people continuing their education and training is a valuable investment towards creating a sustainable future for us all.”
The key question for the Minister is why do the Government not think so?
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Clark. I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing today’s debate. I know that she cares passionately about supporting young people in their continuing education, a passion that I share.
One of the Government’s objectives is full participation in education, training, or employment with training, for all young people up to the age of 18. I listened to the hon. Lady carefully, and I understand the concerns of students at Bexley further education college, where 43% of students qualify for education maintenance allowance, and those at Greenwich community college, where 38% of students qualify. Nationally, 45% of students qualify for EMA, so I am aware that the decisions that we have taken affect a large number of 16 to 18-year-olds.
We need to set the debate in the context of the budget deficit. It is £156 billion this year, the highest among G20 countries.
Mr Gibb
I shall give way once I have finished this point.
The interest on accumulated Government debt to date is £42.7 billion per year, which represents 70% of the entire Department for Education budget. Unless we take serious measures to tackle the deficit, we will face a higher cost of borrowing as capital markets demand greater compensation for the heightened risk. Without the action that the Government are taking, we would ultimately face the economic crises that now confront Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal. This country was on the brink of financial crisis.
Mr Gibb
I will give way once I have finished the point.
This country took action in the emergency Budget and the spending review. As a result, that crisis has been averted. I listened to the 14 or 15 Opposition Members who spoke during the debate, and I did not hear one alternative suggestion of how to find a saving of £500 million elsewhere in the Budget. They had no answer on how to avoid financial meltdown, or how to tackle the record budget deficit that the Labour Government left for this Government to clear up. They had no answer on how to bring our economy back from the brink.
Labour’s stewardship of the economy has left young people struggling to find jobs, as employers freeze recruitment. Unless we get the economy moving again, that tragedy will persist. Not tackling the deficit will put that recovery in jeopardy. I give way to the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones), to see whether he can tell us how to find £500 million of savings elsewhere in the Budget.
Graham Jones
Is it not the case that it was the Government’s choice to cut so deep? Is it not the case that, before the election and afterwards, the Government accused Labour Members of not cutting deep enough? Is it not the case, therefore, that the Government chose to remove the EMA for the economic decisions that the Minister has outlined? The Opposition would not have needed to do that, nor go as far, because, as the Minister says, we would not have cut the deficit so fast.
Mr Gibb
The economy would have suffered as a result.
EMA costs £560 million a year. As we heard, it has been in existence for about six years; it was rolled out nationally in 2004, following a pilot. It was successful in raising participation rates among 16-year-olds from 87% in 2004 to 96% this year. As a consequence, attitudes among 16-year-olds to staying on in education have changed. When the National Foundation for Educational Research questioned recipients of EMA, it found that 90% would have stayed on in education regardless of whether they received EMA.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Does he accept that the two strands of the allowance are becoming intermixed? There is the role of the allowance in persuading people to stay on, and there is the role of the allowance in enabling people to stay on who might otherwise not be able to afford to do so.
A briefing from the Conservative Councillors’ Association points out that the staying-on age will be raised, but that will not happen until 2015. What worries people such as the principal of Brockenhurst college in my constituency is that the EMA will stop in September 2011. In the limited time that remains, I hope that my hon. Friend will focus on the transition arrangements, which are of great concern to us all.
Katy Clark (in the Chair)
I remind Members that interventions should be short.
Mr Gibb
I shall come to that point in a moment.
The fact is that 90% of recipients of EMA would have stayed on in education regardless. Given that evidence, the fact that we have a major budget deficit crisis and the fact that the programme costs so much each year, it was clearly going to be a candidate for major reform.
Mr Gibb
I am sorry, but I cannot give way as I have only four minutes left.
In reaching the decision to end EMA, we were of course concerned that the 10% of recipients whom the evidence said would have been put off from staying in education but for the money might then drop out of education. We believe that a payment designed as an incentive to participate—a point hinted at by my hon. Friend—is no longer the way to ensure that those facing real financial barriers to participation get the support that they need. That point was made well by my hon. Friends the Members for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby) and for York Outer (Julian Sturdy).
We therefore decided to use a proportion of that £560 million to increase the value of the discretionary learner support fund. Final decisions about the quantum of that extra funding still have to be taken, but we have already spoken of increasing the value of that fund by up to three times its current value, which stands at £25.4 million. A fund of that size would enable 100,000 young people to receive £760 each year. Those 100,000 students represent about 15% of those young people who receive EMA, which is more than the 10% about whom we are particularly concerned who might not stay on in education. The figure of £760 is more than the average annual EMA paid in 2009-10 of £730, and only slightly less than the £813 paid to 16-year-olds who received the full £30 a week, or the £796 paid to 17-year-olds receiving the full £30 per week.
We are erring on the side of doing all that we can to assist the poorest, as sought by my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James). However, the Government will not set expectations on how much young people should receive from the enhanced discretionary fund. It will be up to schools and colleges to determine which young people should receive support under the new arrangements, and what form that support should take. In answer to a question, I can tell the House that colleges can use 5% of the fund for administration.
To help schools and colleges administer the fund, and to ensure that those young people who really need support to enable them to continue their education or training have access to the new fund, we are working with schools and colleges, and other key organisations such as the Association of Colleges, Centrepoint and the Sutton Trust, to develop a model approach that schools and colleges can choose to adopt or adapt.
In the remaining minute, I shall try to answer some of the questions raised during the debate. Many hon. Members asked about transport. Under current arrangements, discretionary support funding cannot be routinely used for transport to and from college. It is local authorities that have the statutory responsibility for making the necessary transport arrangements. However, we will consider that restriction as we develop the arrangements for enhanced discretionary learner support funding. The House can be assured on that point.
I have dealt with the question about administration. The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead asked about the sum of £174 million. That is the estimate of what will be spent on EMA in the 2011-12 financial year, the payments being made during the 2010-11 academic year. However, it will not be available in the next academic year.
Small Manufacturing Businesses
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Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
This debate is about small businesses and it is also about people. In September 2005, the life of my constituent, Don Wilson, was turned upside down when his son was tragically killed in a rugby accident while serving in the British Army. Toby was just 29 when he died, and he left behind an eight-year-old daughter. Don wanted a new start and a chance to get on with something that would ease his grief. A short while later, the opportunity came along. Don had joined Loughboro Designs (UK) Ltd in July 1984 as a metal fabricator. He rose to be a foreman and worked on high-profile projects for international clients, including New York’s Mayor Bloomberg and the Saudi royal family.
Shortly after Toby’s death, Don’s boss retired and Don was given the chance to buy the company. Given everything that had happened in British industrial manufacturing over the past 25 years, it seemed like a good opportunity. Any high-skills specialist metals manufacturing company that could prosper for so long—the Loughboro name had been trading for more than 50 years—must be doing something right. Don said that when he bought the company, his whole family became involved. He said that it was a way to move forward in memory of Toby.
Not long after 2005, there was the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US that led to the credit crunch and then worldwide economic meltdown. Over 18 months, the economy in Britain contracted by 6%. It is estimated that our economy is about 10% smaller now than it would have been had the recession not taken place. Inevitably, that has had a major impact on small businesses, particularly on those that are heavily reliant on capital investment for their success, because loans for capital investment dried up. In short, the slump that began with bad lending policies by the banks has hit industrial manufacturing twice as hard because of yet more bad lending policies. Loughboro is one of many firms that is under threat. My first point is about the banks and what they should do to help companies such as Loughboro for the sake of the British economy.
In August, Loughboro’s bank, HSBC, announced half-yearly profits of more than £7 billion. That is the equivalent of nearly £1 million profit every half hour of every day, or of a brand new general hospital, such as St Helier that serves my constituency, every 10 days. Also in August, the Chancellor warned the UK’s banks that they needed to start increasing their lending to businesses. He said that the Government would
“not tolerate banks piling the pressure”
on to small firms. Moreover, the banks have an economic obligation to assist small and medium-sized businesses. However, many small businesses still find that they are unable to get the support that they need from the banks. In Loughboro’s case, despite having worked hard to reduce significantly its loan from £30,000 to £6,000, HSBC cut its overdraft facility from £25,0000 to £5,000. With new contracts due to begin in January 2011, Loughboro’s inability to increase its cash flow and invest in capital puts the future of those contracts in jeopardy.
Reading other reports from elsewhere, it is clear that firms such as Loughboro are not the only ones that are teetering on the edge partly as a result of the banks’ policies. The BBC recently highlighted the plight of a number of similar firms. For instance, Abcoma, a manufacturing company in Oldham, had predicted the economic downturn and had managed to pay off all its debts about four years ago. It complains that even though the downturn is over, it cannot get any working capital from the banks to make the machinery that it needs. That is despite the fact that it has a full order book worth some £1 million and that it wants to employ an extra 10 to 12 engineers. Abcoma says that even though the local bank manager wants to lend money for working capital, the powers above him make that almost impossible, even with security against property.
I have been in touch with the Merton chamber of commerce, which covers my constituency, about these issues. It has done a light-touch survey of its members. Although 45% think that next year will be good for business and 53% think that they will grow, 31% say that 2011 will be worse than this year and nearly half think that they might not grow. One of the key reasons for such pessimism is the banks’ policies. Some 30% of businesses say that their main challenges in 2011 will include constraints on their working capital and 16.5% complain about the difficulty of raising finances.
I thank the Merton chamber of commerce for its help, and praise it and other business organisations for the work that they do in promoting local business. I have also contacted the Federation of Small Businesses—I cannot praise it highly enough—about banks’ lending policies. It, too, made a range of very good points. As small businesses do not have the range of options that medium and large businesses have to raise finance, they rely heavily on banks for support. The FSB complains that small manufacturers have not been able to access affordable finance from the banks, and that that has been holding back the economic recovery. It also complains that many bank managers, particularly those who are distant from the firms, do not understand the manufacturing sector and do not appreciate the kind of finance that it needs from them. Many firms that want loans of only £10,000 to £20,000 are told that £35,000 is the minimum, and that adds unnecessarily to their costs.
Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this very important debate. Small businesses are so vital to economic recovery. May I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to this recent report by IfM Education and Consultancy Services on effective support for smaller manufacturing businesses? The key finding to emerge from all its studies was the common-sense one that effective support has to be carefully targeted at the particular circumstances and priorities for growth of each individual small business. Does not the experience of the firm in her constituency and the others that she talks about bear that out, and is that not something that the Government need to take on board?
Siobhain McDonagh
I wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend. Loughboro found that its most flexible short-term access to money, through its overdrafts, was suddenly and arbitrarily cut. The FSB would like to see a broader range of affordable finance to small manufacturers to reduce the dominance of the banks—for instance by creating community development finance initiatives to help small manufacturers. The FSB also wants high street banks to create a central contact point for manufacturers so that they can be supported more effectively, and reform to the banks application systems better to understand the needs of small manufacturers.
I am sure that the expensive lobby firms and the in-house public affairs teams employed by the banks will be listening to this debate or reading it in Hansard. I urge them to tell their chief executives and their boards that they are doing themselves and our economy no favours, and that the British public will continue to hold them to blame. I call on them to listen to the points that our small businesses are making through me today.
Earlier today, nearly a month after I contacted HSBC about Loughboro, and after weeks of chasing, I had a phone call from Andy Grisdale, its head of strategy implementation for UK commercial banking. I cannot say whether it was because of this debate that I finally got the call from HSBC, but we can all draw our own conclusions. I have just been informed by Dee, my secretary, that within the last few minutes I have also received an e-mail from HSBC. I am sorry that I do not know its contents. I was on my way over here and so did not have the chance to read it.
Mr Grisdale said that the reason the bank was not prepared to offer any more money to Loughboro was that the information that it had about the company was out of date. He said that it has not had details of profit-and-loss projections or up-to-date accounts for more than a year, that the bank needs to lend responsibly, and not just throw good money after bad, and that it was not HSBC’s role to help pay off debts to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. No doubt some of those excuses are valid, but small firms are made up of human beings, and sometimes the help that they need is to do with planning ahead responsibly, and the banks have a role there, too. I therefore hope that HSBC will think again about its policy towards Loughboro and work more proactively and urgently with people such as myself to help us, rather than ignoring us or hoping that we will just go away.
If this firm goes over the edge because of a short-sighted approach to lending by banks, yet another little bit of Britain’s manufacturing industry will be gone and eight more real, live human beings will lose their jobs after a lifetime of hard work—real people such as Don Wilson, who have real families. If the worst happens, we in this House will not forget. Almost all of us have met people such as Don and we will not forget the role that banks such as HSBC play in killing their dreams, when they could play a role in keeping those dreams alive.
I think that that is a fair summary of what many Members feel about the approach of the banks at this time. However, I also want to ask the Minister what he can do to put an end to bad practice in the banking sector. It is four months since his right hon. Friend the Chancellor told the banks about their “obligations”. On the ground, however, there is little evidence of increased lending. What can this Government do to make the banks lend and what can they do to help firms directly if the banks will not help them?
Many firms fought bravely through the recession, often thanks to Government measures such as the cut in VAT, but what will be the point of that fight if, now that the economy appears to be stabilising thanks to those policies, the taps are turned off again and the manufacturing sector suffers a double-dip? I believe that there are parallels between what is happening to firms such as Loughboro and what could happen to the wider economy. Perhaps if the tap of investment is turned off too soon in an attempt to end the deficit quickly, the businesses and the human resources capacity that are needed to build a solid recovery will be killed off.
That brings me to my second point. It is not just the banks that are bringing down firms such as Loughboro. In this case, the other and more immediate villain of the piece is the inflexibility of the public purse, in the guise of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.
Once again, I want to take this opportunity to complain about the attitude of HMRC to dealing with Members’ concerns. Just as with HSBC, I have had great difficulty—
Siobhain McDonagh
Just as with HSBC, I have had great difficulty getting anyone at HMRC to answer my calls or respond to my messages. I called for this debate much as a result of how difficult it has been for the two organisations to deal with my constituent’s case with any sense of urgency. Perhaps if they had responded with more courtesy towards me and my constituent, the debate would not have been necessary. We have almost come to expect that the banks, with their billion-pound profits and eye-watering bonuses would behave arrogantly, as if they are untouchable masters of the universe, but it is disappointing that a public body such as HMRC has proved equally uninterested in people’s lives.
The past year has been a continuing struggle for small businesses. In the case of Loughboro, the amount owed to HMRC has been the biggest indicator of that. Over the year, its debt to the taxman has grown to around £60,000. Loughboro has been trying to negotiate with HMRC, but the bailiffs are now involved. Before the debate was announced, the bailiffs were due to go in today, to take away machinery, which would have meant the end of the business. Again, we can only speculate about whether today’s debate is the reason why the bailiffs are not going in after all—HMRC has been particularly difficult to talk to, so it has not been able to tell me.
I understand that Loughboro has written to HMRC today to offer three different payment plans: one to repay the £60,000 over nine months, another over six months and the last over just four months. The last would mean having to pay back nearly £4,000 a week, which would be difficult considering that wages, rents, suppliers and costs still have to be paid, but Loughboro was willing to try.
If HMRC does not behave reasonably, companies will not be able to continue trading. If that happens, not only would the taxman fail to get back all he is owed, but he would not get anything in future—no more tax receipts from the company or its employees—and, indeed, the taxpayer would probably end up having to pay benefits to the workers and their families. Taxpayers would also end up paying the staff statutory redundancy which, as some of them have been with Loughboro for 25 years, is likely to be around £35,000. If I had not secured the debate today, HMRC’s bailiffs could have already taken away Loughboro’s last hope, removing specialist machinery for scrap and putting people on the scrapheap, even though that would cost the taxpayer more in the long run than the machines are actually worth.
The FSB says that there are many ways in which the tax system could be improved to prevent such things from happening. Many small businesses complain that the tax system is too complex and confusing for them—it is a disincentive. The FSB wants the tax system simplified to allow more manufacturers to take advantage of the allowances and reliefs available. It also believes that there is a lack of confidence in the tax system and wants the Government to create a dedicated unit in HMRC to help small manufacturers. As people say, “Tax shouldn’t have to be taxing.”
People whose expertise is in manufacturing rather than accountancy often need help, and they should be given it. Indeed, on occasion, Governments have listened to small manufacturing businesses, to the benefit of all. The Time to Pay scheme for small businesses has been successful, and the FSB is working with HMRC to ensure that it is part of a wider shift to a friendlier approach to small businesses. Time to Pay has been crucial to thousands of businesses with limited cash flow, and more such schemes are needed.
Unfortunately, many small business owners still find the taxman very unsympathetic and obstructive. For instance, some businesses have asked HMRC if they can spread payments but are being told that, if they have paid any dividends during the year, they will be disbarred immediately from any help. That is even though they have done nothing illegal, just arranged their affairs to minimise outgoing payments, and the FSB has told me, forcefully, that that is unreasonable.
I am therefore calling on the Minister to instruct HMRC to be helpful—not to ignore MPs and their constituents, not to be uninterested in businesses that are struggling, but to be helpful. In my constituent’s case, I also ask him please to talk to HMRC and persuade it to take a pragmatic approach towards Loughboro. It might take longer to get the money, but spreading payments over a longer period could save the country money in the long run. I appreciate that the Minister’s bosses have taken a more short-sighted view with the wider economy, as they want to pay back the deficit sooner and quicker than many people believe is sensible, irrespective of the damage that might be caused. However, I hope that he can persuade HMRC to take a longer-term view with Loughboro.
I do not often get contacted by manufacturing businesses—Mitcham and Morden is not a big industrial centre. Firms such as Loughboro do not often appear on our radar, but small businesses make up 99% of the 4.8 million businesses across the UK. They employ approximately 50% of the UK work force and are responsible for almost 40% of our economic output. The manufacturing sector in the UK contributes £155 billion to the economy and employs 2.6 million people.
Even in constituencies such as Mitcham and Morden, which do not seem to be hubs of business enterprise, small firms make a big difference. For the economy to have any chance of emerging successfully from the recession and from the cuts, we depend on the success of small manufacturers, and they should be listened to by the Government. If our small manufacturing firms suffer, we all suffer. We need those firms. If companies such as Loughboro cannot be helped to survive, how will we persuade people such as Don to take them on in the future? Why would anyone want the grief? Yes, they are businesses, but they are full of human beings and, if they struggle, the cost is a human cost.
Don Wilson has already been through many difficult times in his life. He is a human being who did a good thing. He worked hard and took over a company employing local people when the previous owner retired. He kept it going and brought in new contracts. However, Don Wilson told me:
“I have had to lay men off, I have literally halved my work force and still have found it hard to continue. Some mornings, I don’t want to get up and go to work, but I think of my son and the people who are depending on me and this is what drives me on—my wife, my children, my family.”
Now that it looks as though we are coming through the worst of our economic troubles, I hope that we will not let him, his family or his employees down. They are good people, the sort that this country badly needs, and the banks, HMRC and Ministers should stand up for them, just as Members like me are standing up for them. Thank you Ms Clark, for the opportunity to put their case.
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Mark Prisk)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) on securing the debate, but also on setting out with real passion and determination how we ensure that the smallest enterprises are able to cope in difficult times. Given the Division, I think I am right, Ms Clark, in saying that I have until 4.40 pm. I want to ensure that I do not either run out of puff or get the wrong deadline and not get to the questions asked.
There are a number of broader issues, as well as the specific issue of this particular business. I would like to start with Loughboro Designs, so that I can then move on to the broader issues raised by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden and the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith), on cash flow, tax and the ability of small and medium-sized enterprises to access finance.
Having run my own business, I understand the problems that the hon. Lady described. I was concerned to hear about the difficulties that Loughboro Designs has had, and she is absolutely right that the tragic death of Mr Wilson’s son adds to the human aspect of the case. I totally agree that we often forget that SMEs are in many ways about people far more than about cash sheets or balance sheets. The character of a business is always shaped by the character of the owner, and the difficulties on a personal level, to which she has referred, should be borne in mind.
When I learnt about the hon. Lady’s concerns, I instructed my officials to investigate the case, and they have been holding discussions with HMRC to see whether it would be possible to arrange a repayment plan for Loughboro Designs’s VAT bill. The hon. Lady highlighted some initial difficulties about contact with HMRC, which I have noted and will raise with my colleagues and officials. HMRC has been shown to be sympathetic to SMEs, and in the case of Loughboro Designs it has confirmed that it is willing in principle to conclude a further agreement under its Time to Pay initiative. It is willing, exceptionally, to receive a further payment proposal, which the business obviously will now need to draft.
Before seeing that new proposal, we cannot guarantee that it will be accepted, but I will ensure that it gets a fair hearing. In the meantime, the distraint action that the hon. Lady described will be held in abeyance. I hope that an agreement can be reached so that the company will be able to fulfil the orders that I understand it has for next January and thereafter. I hope that she will agree that those are initial, positive steps to try to unpick what is obviously a difficult problem.
My officials have also been in contact with the company’s bank, HSBC, to explore whether there is any scope for making additional lending facilities available. I share the hon. Lady’s concern that no viable company should be driven out of business unnecessarily. In that context, once the Time to Pay agreement is resolved, that will be the moment when the bank can act. We will keep in contact with her and the business, and I hope that those measures will give some comfort to her and to Mr Wilson. I also hope that that brings to the attention of Members the role of our “Real help for businesses now” team within the Department, which is able, willing and ready to help viable companies in distress.
The hon. Lady referred to the broader question of HMRC and the Time to Pay initiative, which I think is important. To be fair to HMRC, although there will inevitably be times when businesses are frustrated about discussions, it has set up the business payments support service so that companies that find themselves under pressure can quickly and easily arrange an agreement. Under that scheme, businesses can delay payment of VAT, corporation tax and other taxes to help manage short-term financial difficulties.
In that context, I take the view that cash is king. Time to Pay is about providing a lifeline for SMEs, which, more than any large business, find that tightened cash flow is the factor that drives them down and prevents them from proceeding. Interestingly, the figures available to date show that more than 370,000 such arrangements have been agreed, involving the deferral of around £6.3 billion in taxes.
I emphasise—it is a fair point to make—that Time to Pay is intended to support businesses that are fundamentally sound. The taxman clearly cannot support businesses whose financial viability is dependent on not paying taxes. That would not make sense; it would be good neither for them nor for the economy as a whole. The issue is about helping companies that are fundamentally sound, but might have a short-term problem.
The hon. Lady also mentioned how the tax system works and referred to the FSB. We agree with it that we need a simpler, more predictable and internationally competitive corporate tax regime. That is why in our first few months in government we have tried to take some positive steps. It is one of the reasons why we stopped much of the previous Government’s planned rise in national insurance contributions.
The FSB reckons that that rise could have cost about 57,000 jobs, so we have made an important change. We are also cutting the main rate of corporation tax over the next four years from 28% to 24%, so that this country will have one of the lowest rates of any major western economy. That means, particularly for manufacturers, that the balance between the corporation tax reforms and the reforms that we are planning for capital allowances will leave £250 million a year in the coffers of manufacturing businesses, which is good news. With regard to smaller firms, we are also reducing the small companies corporation tax rate to 20p, rather than increasing it to 22p, as the previous Administration planned to do.
The hon. Lady rightly mentioned access to finance, which is important. Clearly, some businesses are still feeling that pressure, and as we move out of recession and into the early stages of recovery, there tends to be a tightening on the position for businesses, particularly on the availability of working capital. Our view with banking is clear: where we are presented with evidence that banks are behaving unreasonably on lending decisions or the terms and conditions related to them, we will consistently and persistently challenge the banks involved. We need to ensure that we have that evidence. Where we do, we act, and we will continue to do so.
It has been encouraging in the past six months to see the banks start to step forward with clear commitments. The British Bankers Association brought forward 17 commitments in its new proposals to help move things forward, and those words now need to become actions. The proposals include a revised lending code for small firms and a new appeals process for cases in which finance has been declined, and those proposals are especially relevant to smaller businesses. It also includes a £1.5 billion growth fund to be spread over the next 10 years, which is important for companies wishing to grow.
I suggest that the question of competition is just as important so that business have a choice. At the moment, the choice is narrow—principally four high street banks. That is why we have asked the Independent Commission on Banking to look carefully at how we can broaden that, and it will set out its initial ideas in the spring.
The hon. Lady rightly asked what the Government can do in the meantime to bridge the gap. We are taking action to extend the enterprise finance guarantee, which was rightly established under the previous Administration, and are now providing £600 million extra over the coming year. We are rolling the enterprise finance guarantee out over the next four years, which means unlocking about £2 billion extra in bank lending.
The hon. Lady also rightly referred to community development finance institutions. I am pleased to be able to tell her that on Monday I met the Community Development Finance Association and spelt out that we will not only reform the enterprise finance guarantee for existing lenders, but do so in a way that makes it easier for CDFIs to be part of it. The Government will therefore be able to underpin our lending to those small micro-businesses that, frankly, many of the banks do not reach. Those will make some important differences to some of the micro-businesses involved. We are also increasing the enterprise capital funds by around £200 million over the next four years, which will provide around £300 million in additional venture capital investments. Therefore, there is help with debt and with equity.
However, there is another aspect that I find is increasingly raised by the small business community, particularly in those areas of manufacturing where capital investment is important: the role of business angels. We are keen to see an expansion of business angels and are interested in how we can make the climate for them more investment friendly. That is why we are encouraging them, together with Capital for Enterprise Ltd, the Government’s SME investment arm, to put a bid to the regional growth fund to create a business angel co-investment fund.
Mr Andrew Smith
How helpful does the Minister think the Government’s changes to capital gains tax have been in that respect?
Mr Prisk
I think that they have been helpful. Certainly, the representations I have received indicate that the fact that the entrepreneur’s relief, which is now 10%, has been extended from £2 million to £5 million, has been welcomed by many people in the investment community and the small business community. Those reforms matter, because if we can make progress in that area, we can move forward.
I am conscious of the time and so will bring my remarks to a conclusion. I commend the hon. Lady on securing the debate and hope that the specific actions to which I have referred for supporting Loughboro Designs will progress. The Government are also trying to help with regard to tax, finance and cash flow, all of which are crucial. I hope that the developments I have mentioned will proceed, and I will be happy to talk with her after the debate and in the coming weeks to see whether further action will be necessary in the case that she has discussed or similar cases in her constituency.
Flooding (Cornwall)
(14 years ago)
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Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)
I am delighted to introduce my first Westminster Hall debate with you in the Chair, Ms Clark, and I am pleased that this important debate is happening almost a month to the day since the floods hit Cornwall early in the morning on 17 November. It is a mark of how significant the events were in Cornwall that other Members of Parliament are present and hoping to make a contribution. My hon. Friends the Members for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) and for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) are here. Both of their constituencies, like mine, were affected by the flooding.
At the outset, I would like to take a moment to commend the professionalism and dedication of the Cornish emergency services, Cornwall council, local town and parish councils, the Environment Agency, and local churches, chapels, clubs and residents associations which, in a typical display of Cornish solidarity, pulled together to do an outstanding job in difficult circumstances. As the extent of the damage caused by the floods became apparent, all those groups rallied together to do what they could to help.
When I spoke to people in St Austell, Polmassick, Mevagissey, Pentewan, St Blazey and Par, having seen for myself the devastation that had been caused, I heard stories about the responses of neighbours and family who provided the essentials that people needed.
It is not often that a local MP welcomes both the Prime Minister and the Prince of Wales to their constituency on the same day. It would be wrong of me not to put on the record how grateful we in Cornwall were for their time on that day and for their continued interest since then—and, indeed, for the continued interest of the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. On a personal level, I am grateful for the support that the Minister gave me throughout the following days and weeks.
The combined information from the Environment Agency and Cornwall council indicates that hundreds of homes and businesses were damaged. The repair bill is estimated to be tens of millions of pounds. The Environment Agency and partner organisations have been working in the affected areas on clean-up, inspecting and repairing flood defence systems, and speaking with communities to learn what they thought went wrong in the places where schemes already existed. There are particular issues in each part of my constituency, and I believe that it is worth bringing them to the attention of the House.
In St Austell, there are concerns that over-development of the hillsides surrounding the town has led to added risks of flooding in basements in the town centre. In Pentewan, a recent flood defence investment did not work as it should have. In St Blazey and Par, pumps seem not to have been turned on in a timely way, and there is the issue of the regular cleaning of culverts and storm drains, which might have eased some of the problems.
In Polmassick, the ancient bridge simply could not cope with the volume of water trying to get under it to the flood plain just beyond it. Across the constituency, the warning systems that were supposed to notify residents of problems ahead universally failed.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
Although there were far fewer homes affected in my constituency, businesses and homes in Portloe on the Roseland peninsula were badly affected. I very much agree with my hon. Friend that, in the future, timely warnings of impending flood risk would help people to prepare what defences they are able to prepare.
Stephen Gilbert
I thank my hon. Friend for that point, because she could not be more accurate. There was the potential to deliver warnings, and we must ensure that when warnings are issued by statutory agencies, they are passed on to the public.
Despite the problems, steps are already being taken to facilitate the clear-up. In Mevagissey, 30 tonnes of flood debris has been cleared away. In Pentewan, a demountable defence system is being installed as a temporary defence on the beach channel to balance the tidal and fluvial flood risk in that community. In St Blazey, like other places, Cornwall council and the Environment Agency have been holding flood surgeries where local residents can share their experiences and concerns. And, of course, the Environment Agency is conducting a thorough review of the events of the few days of the flood to identify what other steps it can take.
The Environment Agency told me that approximately 3,250 homes and businesses in Cornwall were protected by schemes already in place. It is worth commending that work, which has been done over several years. Despite all that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth suggested, we can undoubtedly learn lessons from the experience in Cornwall. I shall spell out some of my concerns, and I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to them.
The first issue is about providing early warnings to residents. The Met Office issued a severe weather warning with an 80% chance of flooding at about 10.30 pm on the night of 16 November. That was some six hours before any damage had been done to homes and businesses, but the warning never made it to the majority of residents, who could have taken action to protect their property or business.
We all know that weather prediction is not an exact science, but if the emergency services and emergency responders could be notified much earlier in the day of a 20% risk of a severe flooding event, surely it behoves us as a Government to ensure that the public are made aware when the risk reaches 80%, so that they can take the measures that they deem appropriate.
The Government also need to do more to support the establishment of community flood plans, which could include dedicated flood wardens with access to state-of-the-art household defences. I was pleased to hear similar thoughts from the Secretary of State during departmental questions last week.
Taking steps to prepare for a flood will help communities to avoid damage and to keep the costs of future repairs low. It may also help those in flood risk areas to obtain insurance after the 2013 end of the insurance industry’s statement of principles. In the vast majority of cases, the insurance industry responded in a timely way, getting loss adjusters in, assessing the damage and closing claims quickly, but we need to ensure that all homes, not just in Cornwall but across the country, are able to access insurance at affordable premiums now and when the statement of principles ends in 2013.
The third and final subject I would like to raise is the need to look at the financial support that is available to local authorities when such emergency situations happen. As the Minister will know, the Bellwin scheme provides financial support to local authorities, but, in the case of Cornwall, it has become clear that the scheme might not be working in quite the way it was originally intended.
Cornwall council’s threshold for help under the scheme is 0.2% of the authority’s net budget requirement, which includes the delegated schools grant. Therefore, the threshold in cash terms is just shy of £1.5 million—that is, the money that the council must spend before central Government will step in.
Cornwall council is at a distinct disadvantage as a new unitary authority. If we were still under the old system, the burden would have fallen on two district councils with a total threshold in the region of some £60,000 before the Government stepped in, not the £1.5 million that Cornwall council has assessed the figure to be. Many would argue that the new unitary authority would have more resources and could use them in the best way, but the calculation does not seem to be in line with the costs that could be incurred, and it is certainly unfair when compared with the calculations for counties with two-tier systems.
Furthermore, as well as being a unitary authority, Cornwall is a fire and rescue authority. Again, that is atypical. In Cornwall, the costs incurred by fire and rescue are part of the unitary authority overall, and they have the effect of increasing the council’s threshold further, by some £40,000.
In summary, as a new unitary authority, and a fire and rescue authority to boot, Cornwall council seems to be treated unfairly under the Bellwin scheme. It also seems unfair to all top-tier organisations to include the delegated schools grant in the calculation. The Minister is well aware that local authorities have no control over the allocation of the schools grant; it simply passports through the council. I would ask the Minister to consider whether the Bellwin scheme should be reviewed, particularly in the light of some of the examples thrown up by the case of Cornwall.
The flooding in Cornwall last month brought to the fore the community spirit that I grew up with in Cornwall. There are lessons to be learned. We need to improve the early warning system, work with the insurance industry and look again at the threshold at which the Government step in to help local councils. These issues need to be dealt with so that we in Cornwall, as well the rest of the country, are as prepared as we can be for possible events in future.
Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
I praise my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert), for securing this debate. I also thank the Minister for the prompt communication that his Department had with me and, I am sure, my hon. Friend, when the flooding and the serious situation in Lostwithiel in my constituency first became known.
I reiterate the points that my hon. Friend made about the Bellwin formula. Cornwall’s transition to a unitary council happened a couple of years ago. Sadly, this formula is outdated. Will the Minister consider updating and reviewing it so that it does not act against unitary authorities in future incidents?
I praise the work of Cornwall council and the Environment Agency. I accept that nobody could have predicted the level of flooding that we saw in Lostwithiel, particularly, which resulted from surface flooding rather than the normal, historical flooding. It may not happen again for another 100 years, but we have to get the message out to the community, and to other communities that could be affected, to ensure not only that they put in place flood prevention measures when they get the warnings, but that at least lockable metal gates are put on doors every evening to prevent the kind of damage that we saw from happening.
Just before Christmas, many businesses in Lostwithiel were flooded when they should be preparing for a busy time, and a lot of their stock was damaged. I praise the insurance companies for sending their loss adjustors, who were working hard on the ground with people. I drove through Lostwithiel at the weekend and business is going on as usual. I praise the community for showing resilience and community spirit to ensure that business carried on as best it could as soon as possible.
I should like to hear from the Minister about the Bellwin formula, and about any ideas that he has that my hon. Friend and I can put in place to help the community prevent flooding, which is expensive—I know that there is no money to do that in these economic times—and to prevent flood damage so that if it happened again, the properties of the people of Lostwithiel might be saved.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Clark.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) for securing this debate, and to him and my hon. Friends the Members for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) and for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) for their leadership in dealing with the aftermath of this incident, which is to their credit. It is also to their credit that they have generously praised many others, whom I will talk about. The good contact that we had with my hon. Friends and their understanding of the problems is noted in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I am delighted that that communication worked so well.
As my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay said, the intense rainfall in the early hours of 17 November had a huge impact on his constituency and the constituencies of my hon. Friends the Members for South East Cornwall and for Truro and Falmouth. Such events are not unknown in the south-west. We have seen from previous flooding how resilient communities in that part of the world are. The recent flooding only reinforces that view.
The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State were both moved by the obvious examples of good neighbourliness—the work that people were doing to support their friends and neighbours in this crisis. My hon. Friend rightly mentioned the good work done by Cornwall council, the emergency services and many others. I echo every word of his praise.
The severity of the flooding came as a surprise to many, but that is not to say that the forecasts were wrong. The flood forecasting centre issued an extreme rainfall alert at 16.22 hours on 16 November, highlighting the risk of heavy rainfall overnight that may lead to surface water flooding. The main purpose of such alerts is to allow local authorities and emergency responders to prepare to respond in accordance with their multi-agency plans. I will talk in a minute about my hon. Friend’s important point on widening the recipient base of these warnings to ensure that we can get to more people when such events are predicted.
My hon. Friend made a good point about surface water flooding, which I noticed in my constituency in 2007; if we can develop flood warden schemes, similar to the neighbourhood watch scheme, that would be a useful, successful way of allowing people to do emergency resilience work to protect their homes and belongings. Not everybody is on e-mail or able to get a mobile phone signal, particularly in remote parts of the country. Nevertheless, if we can find ways to get the information to people so that they can start preparing, on a street-by-street basis or by locality, we can improve it. We are not yet where we want to be in terms of getting more people aware of flood risk. I welcome my hon. Friend’s suggestions, some of which I will discuss shortly.
The Met Office issued a flash severe weather warning, as my hon. Friend said, at 22.32 hours on Tuesday 16 November. Flash warnings are issued when the Met Office has 80% or greater confidence that severe weather is expected in the following few hours. The Met Office routinely issues early warnings in advance of severe weather that is expected to lead to significant and widespread disruption. In this case, the Met Office, in consultation with the FFC and the EA, did not issue an early weather warning, as the rainfall was considered unlikely to result in widespread disruption.
In the lead-up to the event, the national and local weather forecasts on television and radio, and on the Met Office website, highlighted the risk of heavy rain and gale-force winds in the south-west. Forecasts of heavy rainfall and extreme rainfall alerts are not rare, as we all know. The total amount of rainfall in Cornwall was not as great as in other significant flooding events. However, it is important to note that the intensity of the rainfall—38 mm in one hour in some locations—was unusual and a combination of surface water, small watercourses being overwhelmed and drains not being able to cope with the intense rainfall, resulted in torrents of water flowing through the streets and into people’s homes and businesses.
Weather forecasting plays a critical role in flood-risk management and the Met Office is independently recognised as world-leading in this regard. However, it is important to manage expectations in terms of what is currently scientifically possible. Those very localised weather events are challenging to predict with a long lead time, but I am confident that the Met Office will continue to push the boundaries of what is possible. It remains as important as ever that local authorities, emergency responders, utility companies and others have well practised plans for dealing with flooding events. In Cornwall, those plans clearly worked very well. The speed of the emergency was matched by the speed of the emergency responders, for which they deserve great praise.
In the cold light of day, my hon. Friend, not unreasonably, pointed to the need for improved warnings for those who are at risk of such events. The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State commented on that when they visited Cornwall in the days following the flooding. Let me stress that the Government are committed to improving their warning and information systems for all types of emergency, including flooding, and are looking at a number of options to deliver better public warnings.
The current consultation on our flood and coastal erosion risk management strategy for England says that the Environment Agency and the Met Office will continue to develop and improve the national flood warning service provided through their joint flood forecasting service. They will do so by providing, among other things, warnings and flood information that are geographically as specific as possible so that all who receive flood warnings will know what to do and, where possible, have enough time to take action. These are not simple tasks, and it will take time to get them absolutely right.
The extreme rainfall alert that was first issued at 16.22 would not have been issued before the Pitt review following the 2007 floods. We witnessed the welcome sight in the Met Office of meteorologists sitting next to hydrologists and being able to predict much more accurately where flooding is likely to occur, and to warn communities accordingly. We are building on that capacity and partnership working to ensure that we get better and better at getting it right. We will not get it right every time, because of the freak nature of some extreme rainfall conditions.
We would all prefer our flood management to focus on preventing extreme rainfall from causing damage to property in the first place. I do not want to play down the impact of flooding, but it is right to point out, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay did, that more than 3,000 properties in vulnerable areas throughout Cornwall were protected as a result of flood defence schemes. I share his concern about the failure of some flood defences, and it is imperative that, with the Environment Agency, we look at where those failures occurred, learn from them, and provide the right protection in those places as a matter of urgency.
I take the points that my hon. Friends the Members for St Austell and Newquay and for South East Cornwall made about the Bellwin scheme. I may be going above my pay grade, but I represent a constituency that is part of a small unitary authority. My hon. Friends represent constituencies that are part of a relatively large unitary. When my constituency was flooded in 2007, we triggered Bellwin very quickly. Clearly, the matter is a cause for concern that I understand. Bellwin is dealt with by my colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government, and the Treasury, but review is important. In the light of changing weather patterns, we must liaise at ministerial level, as the Department is doing, to ensure that Bellwin is not too blunt a tool, and that local circumstances are taken into account. However, that is a matter higher up the governmental tree.
Many of those who were affected have already done a huge amount to get their lives and businesses back in order, which is more evidence of the remarkable resilience of people in that part of the world, and of a thriving big society. The Environment Agency has been doing its bit to help clear up and provide full support for the county council. I pay tribute to the surgeries that were held last month in St Blazey, Mevagissey, Lostwithiel and Pentewan.
The Environment Agency is also working with local people to develop community flood plans in those areas. Part of the work will consider what improvements can be made to flood warnings for those communities. That is not a new concept; it already exists. Fill-in-the-blank toolkits are readily available, and are being taken up in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay. I hope that we can expand the flood forums to communities that have been affected, and to communities that have not been flooded, because those are the difficult ones to reach.
Over the next few years, there will be huge technological advances. We are looking at rolling out opt-out schemes for text and telephone warnings, and there is the possibility one day, if it is not too intrusive, of a cell basis so that an emergency can be flashed to a mobile phone cell area and everyone in the area with a mobile phone receives it. That will not reach everyone, but it is a possibility, and such technologies are coming forward. We want to be at the cutting edge, not just because we want to, but because we must if we are to cope with the changing climate.
Insurance cover, and its future availability, is always a concern for those who have suffered damage from flooding. It is fair to say that the Association of British Insurers was very quick to state at the time that insurers’ first priority was to ensure that every claim was dealt with as quickly as possible. Advice was provided on its website for people who were affected. More generally, at a flood summit that I hosted on 16 September, we agreed that the Government, insurers and other stakeholders would continue to work in partnership towards 2013 when, as my hon. Friend said, the current agreement between insurers and the Government will expire.
Looking forward, we know that the risk of flooding is likely to increase. We also know that the current economic situation is very challenging and that, although the floods budget was protected as far as possible in the recent spending review, there will always be a limit to what national taxpayers can be asked to fund. Currently, the costs fall almost entirely on general taxpayers, and that constrains how much can be done, as well as creating the potential for inequity in the system. Nevertheless, DEFRA expects to spend at least £2.1 billion on flood and coastal erosion management over the next four years, and to deliver better protection to 145,000 households by March 2015.
In future, the Government would like to encourage additional local investment in flood and coastal erosion risk management in return for giving areas at risk a bigger say in the action taken. We want decisions to be made locally and voluntarily on whether and how to contribute to schemes. Government support will, of course, continue to focus on those most at risk and least able to afford to protect themselves. That is important.
These are difficult matters and we must get them right. That is why we are consulting on the national flood and coastal erosion risk management strategy for England, and why it is so important. It will help us make the difficult decisions about what Government funding is used for, and how it should be allocated between the different tasks and risk management authorities. I urge everyone with an interest to have their say.
The events in Cornwall four weeks ago posed a huge challenge to individuals, communities, businesses and organisations. None of us wants that to happen again, and we must learn the lessons. But it would be naive to think that we will never face similar challenges in the future. Such events are consistent with the predictions for climate change, and are likely to occur more frequently. The good news is that the people of Cornwall have shown us again their remarkable resilience and capacity for recovery. That was shown not least in the leadership of the Members of Parliament for the constituencies where the flooding took place.
Question put and agreed to.