Westminster Hall

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Westminster Hall

Wednesday 17 July 2019

[Sir George Howarth in the Chair]

Music Education in England

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Westminster Hall

09:30

[James Frith (Bury North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered music education in England.

It is a great pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Sir George, and to open this debate—the first parliamentary debate I have led—on music education. I thank all those who contacted me about the debate, especially the schools in Bury North that told me about their experiences, as well as the all-party parliamentary group for music education, the House of Commons Library and the excellent sector organisations, including the British Phonographic Industry, PRS for Music, and of course UK Music. Those organisations demonstrate impressive leadership and make a powerful case for music education in their published works.

As friends will testify, when getting to know someone I soon share with them my passion for music. Shortly after that, I will probably mention that I played at Glastonbury in 2003, on what is now known as the John Peel stage, on a Saturday at 11 o’clock—11 am. It is good to be here for this important debate in another early morning slot. Two simple ideas will guide my argument. First, music education must not fall victim to the tired old argument of traditional versus progressive education; it applies to both. Secondly, this debate must look to the future in the light of calls for music education based on current assessments.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and on being one of only two MPs to have played at Glastonbury. I am not the other. Does he agree that the Government could approach this issue without having to change all their assessments simply by stipulating that no school under inspection could be rated “outstanding” unless it had an outstanding creative offer, including in music education?

[James Frith]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful suggestion. I will come to Ofsted’s role later in my speech, as I believe it can be a friend in this mission.

Music output from the UK remains world leading. Artists such as Stormzy are breaking new boundaries and contributing to the success of our £4.5 billion industry. In seven of the last 11 years, the biggest selling album in the world was by a UK act. The heritage of British music is celebrated worldwide, but we must focus on the future. We cannot afford to be complacent at a time of great economic and cultural change. Britain’s role in the world is under new assessment. The rise in automation means that we must emphasise what makes us human, not compete on learned behaviour with the machines we make. Our education system must emphasise what distinguishes us as human, and music education is a huge part of that effort. Creativity, expression and performance are instincts as important as what we feel from the beat of a drum.

Last year, UK Music, the umbrella body for the commercial music industry, released its “Securing Our Talent Pipeline” report, which sets out in great detail the challenges beneath the success stories facing the industry. The report details evidence that 50% of children at independent schools receive sustained music tuition, while the figure for state schools is only 15%. Seventeen per cent. of music creators were educated at independent schools, compared with 7% across the whole population, and 46% of them received financial help from family or friends to develop their career. Growing inequality of opportunity underlines the problem. In that report, the CEO of UK Music, Michael Dugher—formerly of this parish—argues that a career in music must not become the preserve of those who can rely on the bank of mum and dad, and he is right.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his excellent and passionate speech. Will he pay tribute to organisations such as the Cheltenham Festival for Performing Arts, which provide exactly those opportunities to people from all walks of life—private and state schools—and allow them to perform, build their confidence and, hopefully, build a lifelong interest in music and performing?

[James Frith]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and I pay tribute to any organisation engaged in that endeavour. My argument is that we need a universal approach as opposed to an incidental one, but I absolutely support the work of that organisation.

Our education system must support a deepening of the well of talent that we rely on. Music education is falling in the charts: there has been a drop of nearly 10% year on year for subjects not in the Ebacc, GCSE music entries have fallen by 24%, and since 2010, there has been a 17.8% reduction of music tuition in years 12 and 13. That is a worrying trend that Tom Richmond—a former adviser to the Department for Education and now director of the think-tank EDSK—says can “no longer be ignored.”

There is huge variation between our state and independent schools. Access to music education, with opportunities to learn, play and perform music, remains too exclusive. That must change; we must give every child the opportunity to learn the best of what has ever been said and done. Of course, that means maths and English, literacy and numeracy, but the enrichment that music brings cannot be put to one side. Children should be given the chance to shine at both or either in formal education, whatever their socioeconomic background. They should be invested in with the cultural capital of music education. In March 2019, the BPI’s extensive teacher survey highlighted that just 12% of the most deprived state schools have an orchestra compared with 85% of independent schools, and that over the past five years, state schools have seen a 21% decrease in music provision compared with a net increase of 7% in independent schools over the same period.

All our schools should turn with the natural and developing needs of every child and be more responsive, patient and dynamic, and show less rigidity and more agility. If schools do not have the time, resources or funding to do so, we must address those issues, rather than switching off the approach. Children can be better engaged in their education by expressing their natural creativity and curiosity. In fact, the argument for school tests and exams can be applied to the preparation for a musical performance as well—the idea, the studying, the rehearsal, the performance, and yes, the acclaim. Exam hall meets music hall. If we are to prepare our young people for the emerging landscape and an active, working and loving life, we need to pursue a balanced and expansive curriculum that recognises and hones skills and aptitude.

The school accountability system has pushed music education to the fringes of the way that a school’s success is judged. Music is being squeezed out of the curriculum. The suite of EBacc subjects does not include music, and although the year 9 curriculum changes may attempt to include music and creative subjects more broadly, their carousel approach means that they dilute and reduce time spent learning the speciality that music education represents. That concern is supported by the BPI’s teacher survey, which says that 31% of state-funded schools have seen a reduction in curriculum time for music. In a recent Musicians’ Union survey, more than 90% of music teachers reported that the EBacc has had a negative impact on music education.

The APPG for music education’s excellent report on the future of music education goes further:

“Some schools perceive that they have permission to either ignore the curriculum or justify one-off end of year shows or projects as acceptable forms of music provision. Only weekly progressive music lessons can develop pupils effectively in musicianship skills.”

My question for the Minister is: would the Government prefer to scrap the EBacc, or to include music in it? If students are not able to participate in music in compulsory education, they are far less likely to pursue it in further or higher education. According to Ofqual, over five years the number of students taking music at A-level has declined by 30%. However, I commend the Russell Group of universities for its decision to scrap the published list of preferred A-level subjects.

There is of course good practice, which I do not overlook. Some schools in Bury make a difference to their children’s musical education by collaboration. That is innovative, energising and fulfilling, it promotes curriculum richness, and it gives the wider school lots of memorable musical experiences. Bury’s music service is terrific, but the national evidence is that provision is patchy. Studying that evidence, the indices of value all point the wrong way, with a lack of universal, readily accessed music education during formal education time, in school hours, away from the distractions of often complex lives.

Recently, the Government announced that they will refresh the national plan for music education. What plans do they have to consult the industry? When will they be bringing forward recommendations? Does the Minister agree that a refresh of the national plan provides an ideal opportunity to reset the dial on music in education and to take on the challenge outlined in this debate? Will he consider providing creative education a criterion for achieving an “outstanding” rating from Ofsted, as suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan)?

I know that the Minister for Schools recognises the need to get a grip on the issue. He established a music curriculum expert group, and a contract to write a new model music curriculum has been awarded to the Royal Schools of Music exam board. Will he update us on the progress of that work? Will he also assure us that the model music curriculum will work for non-music specialist schools, to ensure that reduced capacity or a lack of specialism in our schools is not a further barrier to progress? Will he explain how monitoring of the impact of any such guidance will be undertaken? According to the BPI, only 44% of music lessons in primary schools are delivered by a music specialist. Support is still needed alongside the model curriculum for teachers who want to specialise in music, whether through a teaching route or a conversion through the postgraduate certificate in education programme. Will the national plan therefore ensure that teacher training and support for music education is improved?

I welcome recent news that Ofsted is to develop its focus on schools providing cultural capital for children. That is a step forward in ensuring that the role of music education is re-evaluated and reintroduced as a norm for all children in our schools. I note favourably that Ofsted will pick that up as part of its new framework. The Cultural Learning Alliance claims that music enhances cognitive abilities by 17%; does the Minister have a view on that proposition, or has he seen any evidence for it? Will the Minister develop the powerful cultural capital argument through his responsibilities at the Department for Education? Indeed, does he agree that one key goal should be for all children, regardless of socioeconomics, to have fair and free access to music education?

My final suggestion is that the Government should renew the effort to put music venues at the heart of high street renewal and economic development. The industry business model has been flipped in the past 15 years by digital platforms, streaming services and self-publishing. Yes, all the industry went through a period of denial of the change.

[Kevin Brennan]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government missed a real opportunity when rate relief was offered to pubs, shops and other organisations on the high street, but the guidelines specifically excluded music venues from that list? Despite appeals to the Chancellor by me, UK Music and others, the Government refused to change that ruling.

[James Frith]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The Government seem to have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to music venues—or perhaps a tin ear is a better phrase.

The industry business model has been flipped in recent years, as I was saying, but will the Government look, for example, at YouTube paying artists next to nothing per stream of their work? Some of the revenue that Google makes from that enormous imbalance could go to support live venues for emerging talent across the country and towards our efforts on music education, whether as a new tax or from a partnership.

Building on the Government’s embrace of the superb agent-of-change campaign, with the protections that brought in, we need more new or improved music facilities for young people outside school hours. UK Music has a network of rehearsal spaces based in deprived and disadvantaged communities to offer improved access to music. What plans do the UK Government have to develop and enhance that scheme? Can Bury have one, please?

Above the funding argument sits a bigger one. Funding plays its part, of course, but there is a bigger one even than that. It is one of choice and a question of priority. What do we expect from our schools and for all our children? If we recognise the value that independent schools place on music and music education, do we still opt to ignore that for the vast majority of all children, accepting the growing inequality of opportunity? Or do we—as I believe we must—ingrain into all our schools the rights of all children to have access to the same opportunities to learn, play, perform and enjoy music?

The truth is, it is hard to do justice to or to outline in policy what is in fact a deep passion and love. Put simply, one’s faith in the power and possibilities of music, performed, recorded and live, is not just a belief in a light that never goes out; it is the knowledge that music makes life better. Music can still your senses or stir your heart, its message motivates and mobilises, it entertains and, given the chance, it educates us all.

09:46

[Mr Edward Vaizey (Wantage) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George, in particular because you are someone who has campaigned hard for the arts in your constituency. I hope that your Shakespeare North theatre is coming along well.

As I look around at the small but high-quality attendance at the debate, I see before me a fellow member and an officer of the all-party group on arts, health and wellbeing, the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane); an excellent Labour spokesman, the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), who is also a fantastic asset of that group; and the shadow Arts Minister for the Labour party, the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin). That is not to mention those sitting on our Benches: my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton), a member of the National Youth Music Theatre and of the National Youth Orchestra; the media star, my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell); and of course my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), who represents such a centre of artistic excellence. I will come to the Minister at the end.

I have been a passionate supporter of music education throughout my time in Parliament. Having checked the records, I am pleased that I can still say, hand on heart, that I did not come to the subject late in the day. Shortly after being appointed as Arts Minister in May 2010, I commissioned Darren Henley, who was then the chief executive of Classic FM, to do a report on music education which he duly delivered in February 2011. It might astound and shock the Chamber to learn that the report was commissioned jointly with my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), who was then the Secretary of State for Education, showing his commitment to music education.

The biggest thing to come out of the report was the creation of music hubs, which I felt strongly we should have for a number of reasons. Despite the fact that I only look 21, I am old enough to remember when we introduced local management of schools in the 1980s, and the first thing that went out of the window was funding for music education. When schools took control of their own budgets, perhaps understandably they chose to spend on repairing the roof or other initiatives that the headteacher wanted to follow, and music education suffered. I did not want that to happen again with the introduction of free schools and academies; I wanted to ensure ring-fenced funding for music education. We did secure it: there were some bumps in the road and some anomalies to be ironed out—obviously most of us in the Chamber would want the funding to be doubled, tripled, quadrupled or even more, to make a real difference—but the fact is that the money was saved and ring-fenced.

Music hubs were meant to be innovative organisations; not just money spent by local authorities, but money spent together with local music organisations. It seems ridiculous not to take advantage of the expertise not just of a local orchestra but of innumerable music organisations that might exist in a local area, including perhaps the local music venue, as the hon. Member for Bury North (James Frith) described so well—it was remiss of me not to have congratulated him in my opening remarks on securing this important and welcome debate.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for mentioning music hubs. Before I came to this place, I used to work with a local music hub in Leeds, which opened up vocational routes in music composition, such as work in film, television and video games. Music hubs create new non-traditional opportunities in music. Does he agree that they are important for creating new vocational opportunities for people involved in music?

[Mr Vaizey]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman brought up that example; let me take the opportunity to praise the important work he does in this House on video games policy. I am really pleased to hear that example, because the thrust behind music hubs was that they be innovative, different and open up music education in its widest form, not just perhaps in the traditional way.

There were other dogs that did not bark—schemes that have been maintained by the Government and remain effective. One of the most effective was the music and dance scheme, where funding has been maintained to train young musicians to excellent standards and ensure their access to the highest quality specialist music education. Let us not forget that in the wider economy, the Arts Council funding goes to 99 music organisations—not just our major orchestras but important organisations such as Youth Music.

Another aim of the Henley report that I wanted to be implemented was the integration of the In Harmony scheme started by the last Labour Government, which to a certain extent copied the well-known El Sistema scheme in Venezuela. It was whole-class music education. I remember being moved almost to tears visiting a scheme in Everton—not that far from your own patch, Sir George—and seeing incredible children learning music in class. In fact, I was more moved when I met their parents, because the scheme brought the parents and the kids together and brought the parents into school. It gave the kids such pride and belief in what they could achieve. That leads on to a truism that we all know yet we do not act on: things such as music education have a massive impact on kids’ self-esteem and, therefore, on their academic attainment and life chances. If I could wave a magic wand, every school in the country would be part of the In Harmony scheme.

I am very pleased to be on the board of the charity London Music Masters, which does something similar in five inner city primary schools in London. It is heavy going to raise the money but, again, we see an inspiring effect on pupils. I was delighted when they came and played “Here Comes the Sun” in Westminster Hall, breaking every rule possible, but making a fantastic YouTube video. We should all acknowledge not just that music education is important in and of itself, but that it has a massive impact on academic achievement, self-esteem and, as I am sure we will hear from the hon. Member for Cardiff West, people’s health, life chances and mental wellbeing. I know he chairs numerous meditation all-party parliamentary groups.

An important challenge, for the classical music industry more than anything, is diversity. Music education brings the opportunity to learn instruments to a wide range of pupils who would otherwise not get that chance. The creation of the Chineke! orchestra shows the efforts being made in the classical music world to increase diversity, which is urgent.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

For classical musicians or otherwise, it is important to remember the role that technology plays in producing music is enormous. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there should be more investment in the technology side, and that it should be part of the curriculum?

[Mr Vaizey]

I do; it is important to go with the grain of society, and it seems absurd not to engage children in music education by using the kind of technology that they will use in their day-to-day lives, and will use when they leave school and university and go into the workforce.

I want to make two brief points that are somewhat linked. While I have no doubt at all that Members on the Opposition Benches, and perhaps even on the Government Benches, might have a go at the Government about music education, I feel strongly that headteachers—I will try to put this delicately—should not be absolved of all responsibility. School leadership plays a massive part in ensuring high-quality music and arts education. In my constituency, I have been to Didcot Girls’ School and St Birinus School, where there are passionate music and arts teachers who have put those subjects at the heart of the school curriculum, thanks to the support of their headteacher. They do not say to me, “We can’t afford it.” They do it because they understand why it is so important.

[Kevin Brennan]

No one would doubt the right hon. Gentleman’s passionate support for the arts and for music education, but does he not agree that while headteachers should not be absolved of blame, they react to the incentive and accountability measures put in place by this Government? Quite frankly, they have led to the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Frith) raised, namely the decline in the number of music teachers and the number of children taking music examinations. The Government have some responsibility to make sure they set those expectations centrally.

[Mr Vaizey]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention shows why those of us in this House who care so passionately about the arts put party politics aside and unite in how we advocate for the arts. I wanted to get on record the point that headteachers must step up to the plate; they have the opportunity to introduce the arts and music.

[Thelma Walker (Colne Valley) (Lab)]

As a former headteacher, when I meet my former colleagues in Colne Valley they tell me that where budgets are concerned, they have crossed a red line. They are making cuts primarily with support staff and the creative arts and music curriculum.

[Mr Vaizey]

Funding of schools and education is a matter of concern to all Members, particularly those of us who represent rural constituencies where we lobby Ministers for a fairer funding formula. As I say, at the schools I visit where the headteacher is passionate about the arts and music, they do not say it is a budget issue; for me, it is a leadership issue.

To pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Cardiff West, I agree that Government can and should provide leadership. One of the frustrations of working with the former Secretary of State for Education was that on the one hand, he was a fantastic colleague who supported me in campaigning for better funding and clearer organisation of music and arts education; but on the other hand, he was relentlessly focused on science, technology, engineering and maths, reading, writing and arithmetic, and the EBacc. That created not only an enormous amount of confusion for teachers in an ever-shifting curriculum, but a clear signal to them that they would not be rewarded for putting arts and music at the centre of their schools. A terrible paradox was created where teachers became afraid to do that, because they felt they would be penalised in the league table. That can and must change.

That brings me to my final point. Leadership is absolutely violent—not violent, vital. We need vital leadership, not violent leadership, from Ministers, to emphasise that the arts are important, particularly in a world of technology and automation where British creativity will be centre stage in our success. I remember battling hard with successive Education Secretaries, desperately asking them just to make a speech about the importance of the arts. That leadership is needed now more than ever.

The Minister has a week left in his job—[Laughter.] In his current job—who knows what will happen to him when my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) comes in on his no-deal ticket? From my own experience, let me tell him that if he is sacked, it will not be on the first day, but if he is promoted, it will be on the first day. All I say to the funky Gibb that sits before us is, “Get on your feet! Stand up for music and arts education.” In his heart, I know he believes in it and he can do that funky Gibb dance today.

09:59

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I extend my thanks and gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Frith), who convened this debate. I want to thank a number of organisations that supplied us all, in preparation for the debate, with information on what is a vital issue. They include the all-party parliamentary group on music, the BPI, PRS for Music, UK Music, the What Works Centre for Wellbeing, the Musicians Union and the all-party parliamentary group on arts, health and wellbeing, which is ably co-chaired by Lord Howarth of Newport and the right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey).

I have to declare an interest. I have loved music since I was a child. I sang to my children when they were babies—three songs every night. My two girls now have grade 8 in singing. I do not put it all down to me, but I think that little bit of impetus when they were so young had an effect. I sing on my way to work in the morning. Even in these terrible Brexit times I still manage to get a tune or two out as I walk in through the Victoria gardens. I was Pharaoh in the school production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” and even got an encore, but unfortunately at the tender age of 17 I did not know what an encore was, and just carried on. I have been a member of Rhyl folk club for 37 years. It celebrated its 50th anniversary in the Jubilee Room here a few years ago.

I was a teacher for 15 years before becoming an MP, and for six of those years I was deputy head of a Catholic primary school. Music infused the curriculum of the school where I worked, Ysgol Mair. A lovely lady, Mrs Malleliu, would hold singing lessons in the break and dinner times, in her own time. Mrs Jemmet would hold recorder and guitar lessons. Mr Russel was a grade 8 piano teacher who played music at every assembly. We had Christmas and Easter musical productions.

In my class I would weave music into as many areas of the curriculum as possible. We would use Don McLean’s “Vincent” when we were painting in the style of Van Gogh. We would use “The Last Leviathan”, a beautiful song sung by Melanie Harrold, when we studied the demise of the whale in environmental science. I used classical music as a background, to quieten the class for reflection and prayer, or just to prepare for studies. We would use disco music in the gym and for dancing lessons. It was a Catholic school so we sang hymns and prayers morning, noon and night. That steeped the whole school in music. I would encourage the children, even out of lessons, in the playground, to work on songs and perform them in the 10 or 15-minute reflection period at the end of the day.

The right hon. Member for Wantage said that music can raise an individual’s self-esteem, and that is true. I spoke to a young man—well, he is now in his forties—whom I taught when he was eight. He would practise to be Freddie Mercury in Queen, and would be out practising at break times. At the end of the day he would burst forward with a rendition of “We Will Rock You.” He said those were the best moments of his life. I attended a school reunion three weeks ago, and former pupils in their 30s and 40s fondly remembered those times gilded by music and song in their old primary school. Music was central to their education, and their education was all the better for it.

We know intuitively that music is good for us. I think that goes back to the womb. From the time when we first hear the metronome of our mother’s heartbeat, we are accompanied by beat, pace and rhythm. What we feel intuitively is backed up by top-quality scientific research. I thank the What Works Centre for Wellbeing for supplying information on dozens of scientific randomised controlled tests on the benefits of music for individuals at all stages of life. There is high-level scientific proof that if a mother plays classical music for 30 minutes a day for two weeks it will reduce stress, anxiety and depression. I believe that if we want to encourage a lifelong love of music for children, it should start in the womb. Other research showed that for pensioners choral singing in groups had a positive effect on morale, depression and loneliness. The What Works Centre said that there were dozens of those experiments, including on teenagers and young adults, but very few looked at the effect of music on school-age children. Perhaps the Minister’s Department could commission some research on that. The What Works Centre summarised the research:

“Listening to music can alleviate anxiety and improve wellbeing in young adults. Regular group singing can enhance morale and metal health related quality of life and reduce loneliness, anxiety and depression in older people compared with usual activities. Participatory singing can maintain a sense of wellbeing and is perceived as both acceptable and beneficial for older participants. Engagement in music activities can help older people connect with their life experiences and with other people, and be more stimulated.”

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I am not sure whether it has been mentioned yet, but community bands are important in working in tandem with music education in schools. The hon. Gentleman may not know—I expect he will enlighten me if he does—that last week there was a tremendous opportunity to see some community bands performing in our own Northern Ireland cultural tradition. There are flute bands, accordion bands, pipe bands and brass bands, and they create character and personality, and friendships that last forever. They bring people together in love of music in every sphere, and that—community bands, education and music together—is important.

[Chris Ruane]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I am half Irish, and the Irish are probably one of the most musical nations on earth. I know that the debate is about music education in England, but we should look further afield to Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, and anywhere where music is central to education and society.

It is not just humans who benefit from music and song. There is a field of research called zoomusicology, which studies the impact of music on living creatures. Whales, dolphins and other mammals sing to each other in the courtship process. The production of cows’ milk has been enhanced by 3% by listening to classical music—and it is a better quality of milk as well. The stress levels in dogs in kennels has been shown to reduce when they are exposed to classical music. Perhaps the most beautiful sound in the animal kingdom is birdsong. Older birds teach the younger ones in colonies how to sing, for the purpose of mating and marking out territory.

Should not something that is good enough for whales, dolphins, cows, dogs and birds be good enough for our young people? It is not just a human foundational capacity but an animal one that goes back to the beginning of time. We should encourage it in words but also in deeds. Teachers, parents and pupils need to know that politicians value music in education, and that that value extends to proper funding and guidelines, and indeed to celebration. We should use this House to celebrate music in education more.

Music is appreciated in certain types of school. In the independent sector it is right up there: we have heard statistics that 50% of pupils in the independent sector get regular music week in, week out, and that the figure is only 15% in the state sector. The independent sector recognises music education by putting its money where its mouth is and funding it. There is already inequality in the education system in England, but the inequality does not end with the school bell at 3 or 3.30. It is perpetuated in the home life of children from different socioeconomic groups. Children from middle-class backgrounds are twice as likely to learn an instrument because they are encouraged to by their parents. A societal, cultural and educational change is needed.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North has given a list of excellent recommendations, which I fully support. I urge the Minister to commission research on education in music, as I said before, and I remind him of the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), suggesting that it should be stipulated that no school can gain “outstanding” status without its full complement of music.

10:09

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bury North (James Frith) on securing this important debate. I, too, have a musical background, but a classical one; I am a choral conductor and an organist. When I mentioned that before in the main Chamber, I was astonished at the speed with which the former hon. Member for Banbury came up to me and booked me as the organist for his funeral. Fortunately, I have not yet had to play for that, as he is still very much alive and thriving, but at least I have one booking in the bag.

I congratulate the all-party parliamentary group for music education on a fantastic report, which sets out a huge number of criteria and statistics. I will not repeat them, but I will draw attention to the report and the points it makes. It mentions that music tuition is compulsory between the ages of five and 14. That is fine, but the problem comes a bit later and in that earlier period, where I feel that the music teaching profession has been so put down that we need to do something to improve it. I will come back to that at the end of my speech.

A number of hon. Members have already mentioned how the sheer love of expressing themselves goes to the heart of what being a child is all about. If they cannot express that through music, I do not know how they can express it. I quite agree with those who have said that whatever sort of music we try to achieve, it brings out the inner person within us.

The hon. Member for Bury North touched on the importance of the music industry to the UK, but I will just repeat some of that. The industry is worth close to £4.5 billion a year for the UK—a phenomenal amount. The all-party parliamentary group brought out the point that we punch well above our weight internationally. We have something like 1% of the world’s population, but when we think of the hard-hitting albums that have been sold, we realise that a huge number have come from the UK.

If we look at the impact of music, as a number of hon. Members have already commented, we see the imagination it creates among young people. I would also bring out another thing it creates: team building. Anyone who has ever played in an orchestra will know how much team building counts in producing a good sound. Certainly, in the days when I was a clarinettist and played in a number of orchestras, it was a discipline that I appreciated.

Music therefore has a big impact on mental health, and the sustainability of music education is something we should pay a lot of attention to. As the Minister himself has said, music should not simply be the preserve of the elite; it should be available to us all. The school curriculum is not enough on its own to achieve all that; we need a range of extracurricular activities—school orchestras, school bands or whatever they may be. We need a range of other activities that fit in with what is going on in the school curriculum.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) mentioned Youth Music, a national charity helping young people to change their lives through music. I have a great deal of affection for Youth Music, not least because my son is an ambassador for the charity, helping to push forward its aims. I met him last night, because I knew I was going to participate in this debate, and we discussed a number of these points.

Personally, I am disappointed to see the declining number of areas in which singing is encouraged. When Sing Up was Government funded, it had an enormous reach in schools and provided a great base for primary school children. I would like to see more done to help to push that along, and to keep on developing the skills needed to keep a singing culture alive. We are one of the few cultures in Europe that has largely lost its tradition of folk songs; most people do not sing folk songs to their children, despite what the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) may have sung.

[Kevin Brennan]

May I invite the hon. Gentleman to join the all-party parliamentary group on folk arts, chaired by myself with my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) as vice-chair? We are looking for more Tory members.

[John Howell]

For a moment, I thought the hon. Gentleman was going to invite me to sing, which I promise, Sir George, I will not do in this session. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his very kind invitation and I will certainly look closely at that.

We have already discussed how powerful music is in developing the personal and social skills of all those who participate in it, but there is one area that I brought up in an intervention that I would like to bring up again. The Music Commission and Youth Music have challenged the curriculum because it does not provide enough technology. The reason they stress technology is that, whether someone is a classical musician or not, the technology involved in composing or producing the music is the same across the whole industry. My son is a composer and uses a tremendous amount of technology to do that. I urge more emphasis on the technology aspect of music.

I said I would return to one thing in particular that I think we can do. We have had a number of campaigns in the past that have taken social workers, for example, and tried to ensure that they feel loved, valued and part of society. We should do the same for music teachers too. We need a great effort on all our parts to ensure that music teaching is appreciated, that it is seen to be appreciated, and that we can all play our part in taking it forward.

10:18

[Thelma Walker (Colne Valley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Frith) for securing the debate, and I will also say how much I enjoy working with him on the Education Committee.

I will begin by sharing some of my own musical journey and the important role that music has played, and does play, in my life. At the age of around six I had a new teacher. She was the youngest teacher I had ever had, because I went to a very formal, traditional primary school. She was warm, she was funny, she was different, and I loved her. She read us Longfellow’s “The Song of Hiawatha”, but on the second reading she asked us to beat the rhythm of the poem on to our wooden desks with our fists. I could not believe that we were allowed to do that or that we could make such a noise. I remember the excitement and liberation of being allowed to bang my fists on the desk. She then gave out different percussion instruments, and on the third recitation we were asked to use our instruments, keeping to the rhythm. It was chaos, but it was fun, and it was very noisy. It was like an awakening. I was so excited that I could hardly breathe. I longed for every lesson where this new teacher would play music and we could experiment.

She allowed me to play on the piano in the school hall, as my parents could not afford for me to have formal lessons. She gave up her own time to sit with me, and I never forgot her kindness or the joy of touching the keys of that piano for the first time. I did not get the opportunity to continue with the piano sessions, as my parents could not afford it, and the fact that I cannot play an instrument today is one of my few regrets. However, I do know that, throughout the most important times in our lives, music is the thread. At family celebrations, the music chosen is key. At funerals, the songs that we play to say goodbye are so important to us all.

Then for me there was the ’70s disco dancing—including the funky gibbon—around handbags. These are the musical milestones of everyone’s life. Fast forward and I am a teacher and a parent. I vowed that my own children and the pupils in my school would have every opportunity to enjoy and experience music. My own children knew the joy of local authority-funded music lessons. Both now play an instrument and have a lifelong love of music. The local music centre gave young people the opportunity to perform at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Royal Albert Hall. They loved playing and they made friends for life, one of whom, Tom Challenger, went on to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and is now a professional saxophonist.

As head of a large primary school in a deprived area, I was determined that every child would get the opportunity to sing and play instruments. The creative curriculum was valued and invested in. I appointed a specialist music teacher, and every child experienced that quality teaching. For every child, music mattered. One of my proudest moments was having pupils perform on Radio 3 as part of the Huddersfield contemporary music festival. The following year, our school was awarded Artsmark Gold. It was an inclusive school, filled with music and the children’s joy of learning through music.

What do most children experience today? The Fabian Society report entitled “Primary Colours” tells us that 68% of teachers in England say that arts provision in their primary school has decreased since 2010, and 49% believe that the quality of arts provision has worsened since 2010. There is also a significant regional disparity, with primary school teachers in the north 16 percentage points more likely than teachers in the east of England to feel that there is a lack of resources.

I asked Thom Meredith, principal of Musica Kirklees, how he sees music in our local schools today. Thom has been an inspirational and much respected conductor for choral and instrumental music in Kirklees for many years. He said that school funding cuts mean that schools simply do not have the money to pay for resources or teachers. Musica Kirklees used to receive £299,000 from Kirklees Council each year, but by 2016 that was cut to nothing as a result of local government cuts. That resulted in the closure of two music centres, and lessons for gifted young musicians had to be cut. Although it currently appears that nationally there has been an increase in the number of young people engaging with music education, schools are actually lumping more students into larger classes. In fact, the number of young people in smaller, long-term music classes or lessons in which they are properly engaged and learn how to play an instrument or sing has dropped dramatically.

Music can comfort and heal. It can lift our spirits and bring people together. As Shakespeare said,

“If music be the food of love, play on”.

Let us fund music properly in our schools, so that working-class kids, just as I was, can be given the chance to play on.

10:23

[David Warburton (Somerton and Frome) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George, and to take part in this debate. We have heard so many eloquent and passionate speeches, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Bury North (James Frith) on bringing us to this place and allowing us to enjoy talking about such an important topic.

I, too, have to declare an interest. I was lucky enough to have an extensive classical music education at music college—I tried to stay there as long as possible so as not to get a proper job, which I continue to try to do. I was lucky enough also to be a music teacher for many years, and I now chair the all-party parliamentary group on music and am vice-chair of the APPG for music education, and I serve on the boards of various organisations—the National Youth Orchestra and so on. I therefore have lots of conversations with many inspiring and passionate advocates for music education and hear about a lot of their successes at first hand. However, it is easy to let the activities of great organisations such as that hide the bigger picture—the picture as it is for most people around the country.

As hon. Members will be aware and as we have heard today, Ofqual statistics show that between 2014 and 2019 the number of students taking A-level music has declined by a whopping 30%. I think that is a statistical canary down the mineshaft, warning us of the result if current practice continues. If that decline came from any general disinclination to study music that has suddenly appeared, that would be regrettable but unavoidable. But I think it rather improbable that a wave of musical apathy has swept over Britain’s young people, so we have to ask ourselves why fewer students are choosing to take their musical education further. If there is no mysterious and spontaneous reason, what barriers are preventing those who do wish to pursue it, and how do we eradicate those barriers?

If we look at earlier age groups, we can see critical points at which the pipeline also narrows. The availability of music tuition at key stage 3 is a factor. According to the “Music Education: State of the Nation” report, between 2010 and 2017 there was a fall of 6.4% in curriculum time dedicated to music. Department for Education workforce data shows a drop in music teacher numbers at key stage 3 of more than one quarter.

I do understand, as a former music teacher myself, that more of one subject means less of another. I know how it feels to face the problem of matching students’ aspirations with the realities of available time, and I realise that the EBacc is there not to shrink opportunities, but to allow talent from every area of society to flourish. But to me, a core curriculum that excludes the arts is not a core curriculum—that is an oxymoron—so I would welcome a re-examination, as other hon. Members have said, of the possibility of adding a sixth pillar to the EBacc for creative subjects, including music.

The thoughtful and wide-ranging remarks made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education at the Church of England Foundation for Educational Leadership conference in February described very well some of the fundamental issues in making education work across all areas of the country and all sectors of society. He focused on

“the five foundations of building character”.

Two of those—creativity and performing—directly correlate with music. His focus on those five foundations was very welcome and is significant in the context of this debate.

Given the consensus on cultural capital in relation to life chances, the gap in music provision between the state system and independent schools, which we have heard discussed, is a trend that must be stopped. The BPI reports a decline in state music provision in the past five years alongside an increase in the independent sector. The gap is widest—surprise, surprise—in schools with a higher percentage of students on free school meals. Relative poverty does not equate to a relative poverty of ambition, but ambition without the opportunity to visualise and then pursue its fulfilment leads to frustration and then disengagement.

The UK’s music industry contributes £4.5 billion to the economy, as we have heard. We saw it generate £2.6 billion in total export revenue in 2017—that figure was up 7%—and it is an instrument of soft power that will only become more important in the years ahead, given the wobbly world picture out there. However, that is just part of the story. The creative industries as a whole contribute more than £100 billion to our economy. We are very good at this stuff, despite the barriers that come before us. Therefore, even if we look at things in a purely utilitarian way, a greater investment of curriculum time and resources can only make sense.

I know that it is much more difficult to quantify the cognitive benefits of understanding the structure of a Bach chorale or the blues scale than it is to see an uptake in STEM subjects or exam entries leading directly to jobs in the engineering industry, but equipping our students with an understanding of our musical, philosophical and artistic heritage does something even more difficult and important: it allows those students to anchor themselves within the centuries-old progression of thought and to understand their place in the society in which they live. The anchor provided by the arts is not just a means of generating economic value; it allows young people to understand what is of value in others. Denying them an understanding of the value of their artistic heritage hides their eyes, ears and minds from the world around them.

As we look ahead to the new national plan for music education, it is vital that we re-examine both the performance of music provision within secondary schools and the metrics used to measure that performance. As we heard from the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), it is clear to me that no school should be awarded an outstanding judgment by Ofsted if it fails to provide strong arts and cultural education. The next national plan for music must focus on ensuring that these benefits are spread as widely as possible. As well as looking at the curriculum, that should also involve thinking about how to ensure that the flexibility given to academies is not a licence for them to sideline music education or treat it as an optional extra, especially given that 72% of secondary schools are now academies.

The greatest artistic achievements, from the encyclopédistes of the enlightenment through to “Sgt. Pepper”, aspire to universality. As such, they have a democratic impulse at their core. A failure to share their benefits as widely as possible not only lets down our young people, but runs contrary to the spirit of the arts themselves.

10:31

[Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. Sir George. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Frith) for securing the debate. If this is his first Westminster Hall debate, he has a great career ahead of him; his speech was powerful and impassioned and addressed an important and urgent question that will affect many youngsters across the country. We have heard several excellent contributions from people who have lived experience in this world. Their concerns about the crisis of music education in England are profound and compelling. I will pick out a couple of moments of great interest.

The right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) was, as always, a passionate advocate for the creative subjects for all. The work he did creating music hubs and the Henley report is a solid base from which we all work. The highlight of his speech must be funky Gibb, which will stick with us from now on. My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) talked about singing for pleasure and the element of wellbeing. His statistic about cows will also stay with me. The hon. Member for Henley (John Howell), who I will book for my own funeral—he is obviously going to have several bookings now—mentioned early years. Although music is in the list of Ofsted’s expectations, what is the quality of the music provision for the under-5s? We had a debate yesterday about the first 1,001 days of life, and we know that brain development is supported by access and exposure to music. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution.

My hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Thelma Walker) made a profound contribution, speaking about her own experience. No one could challenge her experience of being on the frontline as the head teacher of a school, creating a brilliant experience for young people and giving them an opportunity to live a full and enriched life.

Finally, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) talked about the extra pillar to the EBacc. I had a meeting with the Secretary of State to discuss that. His response was, “It will not make a difference.” I hope that when he looks back at this debate he will read the profound and passionate pleas from people who know and have experienced it in their life, and see that this would make a difference.

I welcome the work undertaken by UK Music, Music Industries Association and the Musicians’ Union highlighting the perilous state of music education across the country. As we heard from the hon. Member for Henley, UK Music’s “Measuring Music” reports that the music industry’s contribution to the economy is £4.5 billion, with £2.6 billion export revenue. Britain has less than 1% of the global population but one in seven albums sold worldwide in 2014 was by a British act; I can only imagine those numbers have gone up. Music is a critical part of Britain’s soft power and in the current climate, as we career out of the EU, that power could not be more vital.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s own report on sector economic estimates showed the value of the creative industries rose by 7.1% in 2017—almost twice as much as the UK economy as a whole—to £101.5 billion. Sadly, the evidence gathered, not just by the unions and other trade bodies but by the all-party parliamentary group for music education, shows that music education is at a point of crisis, with creeping cuts to music education, chaotic music education policies and plummeting morale among teachers and educators.

The Music Industries Association report, “The State of Play—a review of music education in England 2019”, proved beyond doubt that the inequalities in music provision are real, concluding that children from families earning under £28,000 a year are half as likely to learn a musical instrument as those with a family income above £48,000. There are children, certainly in Batley and Spen, for whom coming from a family with an income of £28,000 would make them feel very well off. We should always be mindful of children whose lives are so chaotic that they will never get the chance to experience the joy of playing an instrument or singing in a choir.

Eight years have elapsed since the coalition unveiled its national plan for music education; there was much fanfare around the commitment to give every child the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, with the establishment of Government-funded music hubs. Despite this commitment, as we have heard, the truth is that coherent and impactful music education is entirely dependent on the whims and talents of headteachers, the priorities of the music hub and the youngsters’ postcode. Added to this, the decline in take-up of schools offering music at GCSE and A-level means even those kids who do not necessarily want to play but have a love of music do not get the chance unless their parents can pay for costly out-of-school provision.

Of those surveyed in the “State of Play” report, 60% said the introduction of the EBacc has directly affected music provision in their schools. In a recent National Education Union—then the National Union of Teachers—survey, 97% of the union’s teachers agreed that SATs preparation did not support children’s access to a broad and balanced curriculum, saying the time taken to prepare children for assessment in maths and English has squeezed out other subjects and activities. The problem does not go away when our children leave primary school. As we have heard, the proportion of 15 and 16-year-olds taking subjects like music and drama has fallen to its lowest levels. There are outliers: Feversham Primary Academy in Bradford recently made headlines with its focus on music leading to improved outcomes for its pupils. It made the national press, which would suggest it is unusual. It should not be.

While this is not a competition between schools, one of the many reasons parents pay the eye-watering fees to send their children to places like Eton is the attractive music provision. At Eton, there is a purpose-built orchestral rehearsal room, a recording studio, a 250-seat concert hall, an organ room, the opportunity to learn music taught by seven full-time professionals, 70 visiting teachers with over 1,000 lessons a week, teaching the full range of orchestral and solo instruments, as well as the sitar and tabla. Pupils can join the symphony orchestra, chamber ensembles, jazz, wind and pipe bands, choirs and choral groups, as well as write and produce their own music in the well-equipped music-tech studios.

I am not saying this to attack other schools in any way, but to reinforce the point that those parents know the value of this enrichment. They know that not every child will go on to be a professional musician, a composer or a singer, but they will have developed as a human being and young person with a love for music and it will stay with them all their life. A recent report from the University of Oxford suggested that 15 million jobs are at risk from automation, but artists such as musicians are at less risk. Parents who send their children to schools with great arts provision are future-proofing their children’s destinies.

Creative subjects are marginalised in the curriculum and the number of post-grad students training to be music teachers has shrunk. As Members of Parliament we can encourage local opportunities. I have seen how music can transform the lives of youngsters and adults in the Batley and Spen Youth Theatre Company’s production of “Les Misérables” and Creative Scene’s production “Batley Does Opera”. They transformed lives, reduced loneliness and mental health issues, boosted confidence and raised aspirations.

We know that creative subjects are a magnet for children who are not naturally academic. They might struggle to read, but come to life on stage; they might be unable to concentrate in class, but play the ukulele for hours. No one loses in music, so we all benefit; there are no winners or losers. Music aids better brain development and maths skills, and it increases human connectivity and concentration levels, but we should look at music for its own sake. It is a gift handed down from generation to generation. Everywhere we go we are surrounded by music. We all attach music to pivotal moments in our lives.

What can we do? Labour is committed to reviewing and reforming the EBacc and ensuring that children get the broad and balanced curriculum they need for the 21st century. Creative subjects will be at the heart of that, with a boost of £160 million for arts education. We will use the cultural capital fund to invest in instruments for music hubs and upgrade music facilities in state schools to match the those found in many private schools. Each child will have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument and we will instigate a creative careers advice campaign. Our creative pupil premium will support schools, ensuring that every child has access to the cultural capital that others in less disadvantaged areas can easily access.

Post Brexit, we will need our arts more than ever, not only for jobs and the economy, but for our spirit and soul. We must support children by giving them every opportunity to love music and engage with it, and to be better human beings from accessing music.

[Sir George Howarth (in the Chair)]

I am sure the Minister needs no reminding, but he needs to leave a bit of time for the encore by the mover of the motion.

10:42

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bury North (James Frith) on securing this debate. He speaks with a passion for music, which I share. He is preaching to the choir—excuse the pun. I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) that this funky Gibb will and does stand up for music in our schools. One of the initiatives that I am most proud of in my time as Schools Minister is the Classical 100 website, promoting classical music in primary schools, which was produced by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, Classic FM and Decca Records. Over 5,000 primary schools are already signed up to the site and I urge every primary school to do so.

The opportunity to study and explore music should not be a privilege; it is a vital part of a broad and balanced curriculum. All pupils should have access to a world-class music education. That is why music is compulsory for all pupils aged five to 14 in state-maintained schools. Academies, which do not have to follow the national curriculum, have to provide a broad and balanced curriculum. Ofsted’s new inspection framework, coming into force from September, will support that, providing a greater focus on the provision of a broad and balanced curriculum.

This Government are committed to music education. We are putting nearly half a billion pounds into arts education programmes—more money than any subject other than PE—to fund a range of cultural and music programmes between 2016 and 2020, in addition to the funding schools receive to deliver their curriculum. In November 2011, we published the national plan for music—referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage—which sets our vision for music in schools: to enable children from all backgrounds in every part of England to have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, to make music with others, to learn to sing and to have the opportunity to progress to the next level of expertise. We will refresh the national plan. We will consult widely on it and make further announcements in the coming plans.

Schools are responsible for delivering the music curriculum, but they cannot do it alone. Our network of music education hubs supports schools to provide high-quality music tuition. I pay tribute to the vital role my right hon. Friend played in the development of that policy. Between 2016 and 2020, we are providing in total over £300 million of ring-fenced funding for music education hubs, in addition to the funding that goes to schools to deliver the curriculum. Earlier this year, we announced an extra £1.3 million for those hubs. That funding supports pupils, whatever their background, family income, or special needs. No child should be excluded from music because their parents cannot afford to pay for lessons or an instrument, or because they have physical disabilities or other special needs.

Music education hubs help hundreds of thousands of young people learn to play an instrument in whole classes every year. They also ensure that clear progression routes are available and affordable. Many hubs subsidise the cost of lessons for pupils. The programme helps schools to nurture the budding seeds of musical passion that can unlock so much pleasure throughout life, as we heard from the hon. Member for Bury North. In the years to come, many adults with a passion for music will have the work of music hubs to thank for first introducing them to the joys of playing an instrument and playing in ensembles. In the provision of music education, the Government believe in excellence, as well as equity. Talented young musicians need the opportunity to make music with others of a similar standard, and access to selective ensembles and a demanding repertoire. Music education hubs provide high-quality borough or county-wide ensembles and direct the most talented towards specialist provision.

Bury North is served by the Bury music hub, which works as part of the collaborative Greater Manchester music hub. In this academic year, the Bury hub has received over £292,000 of funding from the Government. Last year the hub delivered over 3,500 individual singing and instrumental lessons, and 14,000 small group singing and instrumental lessons. A report by Birmingham City University showed that in 2016-17, hubs worked with 89% of schools on at least one core role and helped over 700,000 pupils to learn to play a musical instrument in whole-class ensemble teaching. That is an increase of 19% on 2013-14, the first year in which like-for-like figures are available, when the number was 596,000.

My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) spoke about singing. The Government recognise the value of singing in schools. Developing a singing strategy to ensure that every pupil sings regularly is a core role of the music education hubs. According to the last published figures, 70% of schools in England were supported by hubs with singing strategies.

I want to ensure that the music lessons young people receive are of the highest quality and that pupils leave school having experienced an excellent music education, so that those who wish to do so can take up opportunities to pursue musical careers. To ensure that, we have started work with music experts to develop a high-quality model music curriculum, which builds on the national curriculum and forms part of our plans to ensure that all pupils can benefit from knowledge-rich lessons. It is being drafted under the direction of an expert panel composed of practitioners, education leaders and music specialists, and will provide schools with a sequenced and structured template curriculum for Key Stages 1, 2 and 3. I hope that the curriculum will make it easier for teachers, including non-specialist teachers, to plan lessons and will help to reduce their workload. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Henley that folk songs are an important part of our musical heritage and I hope they will be included in that curriculum.

The hon. Member for Bury North raised concerns that careers in the arts have become the preserve of the privileged and privately educated. To ensure that that is not the case in years to come, the Government are continuing to fund more than 500 full-time places at four specialist music schools, including the Yehudi Menuhin School and the Purcell School, and a similar number of places at four specialist dance schools, including the Royal Ballet School, through the music and dance scheme. The vast majority of pupils board, and means-tested bursaries are available to ensure that entry to the schools is based on pupils’ talent, not on their parents’ ability to pay fees. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage pointed out, funding for the music and dance scheme has been maintained since we came into power. The scheme also funds places at the junior departments of six music conservatoires.

As well as supporting the music hubs, the Government are committed to a number of programmes, including the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain and the National Youth Orchestra, that aim to enhance the musical opportunities of young people and ensure that the talent pipeline that is so important to this country remains open. Our funding helps to ensure that no one is turned away because their parents cannot pay. We also provide funding for In Harmony, an intensive orchestral experience focused on schools in some of the country’s most deprived communities.

The EBacc, which the hon. Member for Bury North and others raised, was introduced to give young people the same chances to succeed through education. It is key to increasing social mobility, and an important part of that is giving all children the opportunity to study the five core academic areas at GCSE: English, maths, science, humanities and a foreign language. The range of subjects that the EBacc offers provides a sound basis for enriching pupils’ studies, opening up a variety of careers beyond the age of 16 and giving a broad general knowledge that will enable pupils to participate in and contribute to society. Research published in August 2017 by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies found that studying the EBacc combination of GCSEs increases the likelihood that a pupil will stay on in full-time education.

It is not the case, however, that the EBacc has had an impact on the uptake of music GCSEs. Since 2010, the proportion of pupils entered for GCSE music has fluctuated but remained broadly stable at approximately 6% or 7% of the total GCSE cohort. People tend to cite the raw numbers, which have fallen since 2010 along with the total number of secondary school pupils, but the proportions have remained broadly stable.

[Tracy Brabin]

The question is about the family backgrounds of those 6% or 7%. Are those children taking music because they are supported by wealthy families who can afford the instruments and the lessons?

[Nick Gibb]

The proportions have remained broadly stable during that period. I do not have a breakdown of the free school meal figures, but there is nothing to suggest from the raw proportions that there should be any change in those figures. However, I will come back to the hon. Lady with the precise numbers, which I hope will reassure her.

The EBacc was designed to be limited in scope to allow pupils to study additional important subjects such as music. The percentage of time spent teaching the arts subjects in secondary schools remained broadly stable between 2010 and 2018, and our survey of primary schools indicates that they spend the same amount of time teaching music as they spend teaching other important subjects such as history and geography.

It should also be recognised that many pupils decide not to study the arts as academic subjects, but continue to take part in artistic activities in and out of school, such as singing in choirs, playing in orchestras and bands, and performing in school plays. The DCMS Taking Part survey in 2018 showed that 96% of children aged five to 15 had engaged with the arts in the previous 12 months. We are investing more than £70 million this year to support young people and adults to get high-quality careers provision, including careers advice on arts-related careers.

Northampton School for Boys is an example of how the EBacc does not necessarily mean a reduction in the arts. It has more than 20 ensembles and choirs, yet it also enters 70% of its pupils for the EBacc combination of GCSEs—significantly above the national average of 38%. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage cited Didcot Girls’ School in his constituency for its exemplary music provision; at 52%, its EBacc entry figures are way above the national average.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) pointed out, the music industry is vital to this country; the hon. Member for Bury North was absolutely right to pay tribute to it. We are a nation with natural musical talent and a love for music that we all have an interest in cultivating. UK Music’s report “Securing Our Talent Pipeline” helpfully highlights the importance of the music industry to the UK economy, and I agree with its conclusion that if we want to produce the stars of the future, we must invest in talent for the future. I hope that it is clear to all hon. Members present that the Government are committed to doing precisely that.

I am enormously grateful to the hon. Member for Bury North for his securing this debate and for his passionate case for the importance of music education. He raised some important concerns, and I hope that I have reassured him that the Government share his commitment to ensuring that music can be enjoyed by every young person. The new model curriculum, the refreshed national plan for music, the ongoing support for our successful music hubs and our other music programmes will make sure that the next generation of music superstars have all the support that they need in schools, from their first exposure to the joys of music at a young age to provision for the brightest and most talented young musicians. All children deserve the chance to fulfil their musical potential. Thanks to the national network of music hubs, the music and dance scheme, and the support of organisations such as UK Music, I believe that pupils are being provided with that opportunity.

10:55

[James Frith]

I find myself at risk of repeating earlier arguments—like when I was the singer in a band and we were invited to do an encore but had run out of songs. I thank the Minister for his response, and I thank hon. Members for such a warm, engaging and, at times, spirited and witty debate on such an important issue. It is so good to reach consensus across the parties on a subject that we deeply love and are clearly all passionate about.

In years and years of trying to record an album and find the right sound engineer, the right producer and the right moment to capture the sound we were after, I initially took comfort in the phrase, “It’s all right—we’ll fix it in the mix.” Subsequently, however, I realised that re-recording is always the answer. The EBacc is not something that we can fix in the mix; we have to re-record it. The case has been well made that music and the arts are integral and should be part of the core curriculum, protected by core curriculum time, away from the complex lives that so many children leave school to return to.

If we protect music by including it in the EBacc, we can do away with the myth of fixing in the mix. A Government who commit to an EBacc with music education as a formal part of it—that is the hit we are all after.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered music education in England.

10:58

Sitting suspended.

Criminal Cases Review Commission

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Westminster Hall

11:00

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered a review of the decision-making powers of the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

As always, Sir George, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission, which I will refer to as the CCRC, was founded in response to the situation in which a number of high-profile criminal cases had led to people being in prison for crimes that the consensus among those who had considered the evidence suggested they could not possibly have committed. Among those cases was the case of the Birmingham Six. Despite the intervention of lawyers, television and the Home Secretary, and the discovery of new evidence, the Court of Appeal managed to reject the appeals of the Birmingham Six on a number of occasions, before the overwhelming evidence that their convictions were unsafe finally prevailed at their third appeal.

As the Birmingham Six case was one of the major motivating factors for the introduction of the CCRC, we should expect that at the very least the CCRC, as it is now constituted, would have been of help in resolving that case. My fear is that, on the contrary, the CCRC’s very existence now makes it less likely that such grievous miscarriages of justice will be resolved in the future.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for bringing this matter to Westminster Hall for consideration. Bearing in mind that just 0.7% of cases received by the Criminal Cases Review Commission were referred to the Court of Appeal in 2017, which was its lowest ever rate, does he agree that there is a bad impression of the effectiveness of the current protocol, which urgently needs to be reviewed?

[Sandy Martin]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention; he is absolutely right and I will expand on that point later in my speech.

I am raising this issue today because the case of Oliver Campbell, my constituent, is a classic example of a devastating miscarriage of justice, for the resolution of which the CCRC appears to be more of a hindrance than a help.

Oliver was convicted of murder in 1991 and spent 11 years in prison. He is here in Westminster Hall today with a friend, so that he can hear this debate. He knows that I am not being rude when I say that he has a low IQ; he also knows that that is as a result of a brain injury he sustained as a baby. This reduced mental capacity should have been evident to everyone involved in this case from the moment of Oliver’s arrest in 1990, some two months after the murder of an Asian shopkeeper in Hackney.

I have known Oliver for about 10 years. I think that anyone meeting him would come to the same conclusion reached by myself and others, including the BBC’s “Rough Justice” team, Michael Birnbaum QC, Oliver’s long-standing solicitor Glyn Maddocks, and the distinguished broadcaster, Kirsty Wark, namely that Oliver simply was not capable of carrying out such a crime.

Oliver was arrested because witnesses identified one of the two men who carried out the robbery during which the shopkeeper was killed as wearing a distinctive baseball cap. The other man, Eric Samuels, was relatively short and the witnesses also described the two men as being of similar height. Oliver is a large man who is 6 feet 3 inches tall.

Oliver was questioned for several hours in a police station without the presence of an appropriate adult, which he should have had due to his impaired mental capacity, or a lawyer. Eventually, a lawyer was found, but it was only after that lawyer had left the police station, having left clear instructions to be called back if there was to be any further questioning, that the police—in direct contravention of those instructions—pressed Oliver, in the presence of his ex-foster carer but no legal representative, to confess. Within half an hour of persistent suggestion from the police, Oliver had confessed to a murder that I do not believe a reading of the evidence could possibly suggest he had committed. Many of Oliver’s answers to the police were bizarre and made no sense whatever, so it is hard to understand how they could ever have been relied upon.

Oliver’s lawyer was then called back, and Oliver immediately withdrew his so- called confession. However, in December 1991 he was convicted, almost entirely on the basis of this very dubious confession, and he served 11 years in prison. There was no forensic evidence linking him to the baseball cap nor to the scene of the crime. None of the fingerprints or hairs that had been recovered from the scene or from the cap match those of Oliver. His co-accused, Eric Samuels, who admitted taking part in the robbery, said in interview that Oliver had nothing to do with the murder and was not at the scene. However, this information was never put before the jury as evidence. Samuels’ statement was never signed and Samuels refused to take the witness stand.

Samuels was subsequently tracked down and interviewed by the BBC’s “Rough Justice” programme for its 2002 episode, “If the Cap Fits”. He was filmed during the show’s investigation and again described how the cap was taken from Oliver’s head by the man who was actually his accomplice—the man who was actually the murderer—and how it had been dropped near the shop. Samuels again refused to sign a statement, this time on the advice of his key worker.

A ballistics expert was also brought in by the BBC, who established that the murderer must have been right-handed; other experts have shown that Oliver favours his left hand for most tasks. Oliver’s bizarre confession apparently includes details of how he made a holster for the gun out of string and how he had practised shooting in a forest or a field, but he could not tell the police the location or even whether it was a forest or a field. He was pressed to identify how many bullets he had had and how many were fired, but he clearly had no idea what the correct answer to either of those questions was.

After the “Rough Justice” programme was broadcast, detailed and extensive submissions were made to the CCRC by Oliver’s legal team, including by his solicitor, Glyn Maddocks, and his eminent QC, Michael Birnbaum, in the clear hope—indeed, expectation—that the Commission would refer Oliver’s case back to the Court of Appeal.

After two long years, the CCRC concluded that there was nothing new to form the basis of a fresh appeal and that therefore there could be no appeal. That was despite a recent change in the law that would have enabled the Court of Appeal to rely on the statements that Eric Samuels had made, in which he completely exonerated Oliver.

The CCRC also ignored the reports of two very eminent psychologists, who explained that Oliver’s acquiescence to police questioning was due to his limited mental capacity, and his eagerness to please and be accepted. As Kirsty Wark reported at the end of the “Rough Justice” programme, this evidence of Oliver’s mental state, which had never been brought before the original jury, constituted

“fresh new evidence which points to a terrible miscarriage of justice”.

I am bringing this case to the attention of the House for two reasons. First, of course, it is because I believe Oliver to be innocent of the crime of murder. Life is not easy for Oliver; life never would have been easy for him, even without a murder conviction hanging over him. Oliver works five mornings a week at a community café as a cleaner; he spends the rest of his time trying to clear his name. Secondly, however, and crucially, the other reason for us to have this debate here today is because the CCRC was established by this House to make it easier to rectify miscarriages of justice, and I do not believe that it has achieved that aim.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend and I are founder members of the new all-party parliamentary group on miscarriages of justice. As he knows, we now have the Westminster commission on miscarriages of justice, led by Lord Garnier and Baroness Stern. Does he believe that we need a fundamental change to the CCRC, both in terms of its structure and its resources?

[Sandy Martin]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and he is right. I was very pleased to have gone to the first hearing of the Westminster commission on the role of the CCRC just the other day. I think it is making good progress and I hope to see a radical change in the way that we deal with appeals on the grounds of miscarriage of justice.

In my view, the grounds for an appeal in this case are compelling. I am not a lawyer but I have an inquiring mind, and the first three grounds submitted by Oliver’s lawyers seem to me to constitute essential issues that cry out to be reconsidered properly by a court.

Ground A is that the admissions made by Oliver in his so-called confession were inconsistent, inaccurate when compared with the rest of the evidence and, on a number of points, simply absurd. Ground B is the report of Professor Thomas-Peter, a well-respected and highly experienced psychologist. That report states that Oliver’s

“lack of mental capacity for understanding anything other than the simplest of questions indicates to me that he would be vulnerable to self-incrimination.”

He added that Oliver had difficulty understanding double negatives and that, from his reading of the available documents,

“it seems that part of Oliver’s defence was based upon his succumbing to intimidation rather than his inability to understand complex questions.”

Ground C is police misconduct. I would very much like to believe that the treatment Oliver received at the hands of the Metropolitan police would not happen today. Oliver was not treated appropriately and consistently in relation to his obvious needs and inabilities: he was questioned without solicitors, and was misquoted back to himself by the officers in order to confuse him. References were made during the interview to fingerprints on a can of lager held by the murderer being Oliver’s, which was not the case and which the police knew not to be the case. If the prints were Oliver’s, they would certainly have been cited in the prosecution’s case; if they were not Oliver’s, the fact that they belonged to someone else ought to have been enough to acquit him. However, that evidence was never brought to the attention of the court. There is still no forensic evidence to link my constituent to this murder.

[Mr Sheerman]

Does my hon. Friend agree that in some criminal justice systems, access to all the evidence that was presented by either side at the trial makes it much easier to look at the case later and mount an appeal, and does he believe that is something we should have in our country?

[Sandy Martin]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and thank him for his intervention. As far as I can tell, any criminal justice system that does not allow all the existing evidence to be available to both sides of the argument prevents the correct decision from being made in court. I believe the commission needs to look again at Oliver’s case, and that if it carefully re-reads the submission from the QC, it will conclude that there is indeed good cause to send this case to appeal.

The recently established APPG on miscarriages of justice has gained a great deal of support in this House. Oliver’s pro bono solicitor, Glyn Maddocks from Gabb and Co, who has represented Oliver for over 20 years and is a recognised expert in miscarriage of justice cases, is a special advisor to the APPG. He has been working closely with the newly established Westminster commission on miscarriages of justice, which is co-chaired by former Solicitor General Lord Garnier QC and Baroness Stern. Will the Minister confirm whether the Government will give their full support to the Westminster commission as it undertakes its important work?

The purpose of the Westminster commission is to look at the difficulty in overturning wrongful convictions in England and Wales. Such a review, particularly of the CCRC and its relationship with the Court of Appeal, is long overdue. I hope to have an opportunity to submit the failings of the CCRC’s review of Oliver Campbell’s case as evidence to the Westminster commission. We need our justice system to be fit for purpose, to identify and punish the guilty and exonerate the innocent, and when there is clear evidence that that has not happened, we need to know why. However, we also have a fellow human being to consider—a man who is still living under licence, with barely enough income to survive and subject to recall to prison at any time. I strongly believe that Oliver has already had to wait too long to have his name cleared. I urge the Minster to write to the CCRC and ask it to review Oliver’s case once more as soon as practicably possible, and reconsider its decision not to refer his case back to the Court of Appeal.

No one doubts that the job of the CCRC is difficult; it is constantly being asked to do more with fewer resources. I suspect that when it was set up in 1997, it was never expected that it would receive 1,500 applications each year. In its 22 years of existence, it has reviewed nearly 24,000 of the 25,000 applications it has received, many of which have been completely ineligible. The commission has referred 658 cases to the Court of Appeal, of which all but 10 have been heard in the courts. Some 437 convictions have been quashed, and 198 appeals have been dismissed. It is beyond me, and beyond anyone else who knows anything about this case, why Oliver’s case was not one of those referred. However, does the Minister agree that the rate of convictions quashed suggests that a large number of the cases that have not been sent to the Court of Appeal might also have led to convictions being overturned?

There is some concern about the subordinate relationship the CCRC has with the Court of Appeal, and about the difficulty it faces when applying the real possibility test, which it currently uses to decide which cases to refer. I have personally seen from Oliver’s case that the CCRC has acted somewhat more as an arbitrary gatekeeper than as a champion for righting the obvious miscarriage of justice he has suffered.

Oliver will be 50 next year, and has been fighting to clear his name for nearly 30 years. Those within the criminal justice system who have had contact with Oliver professionally, including during his time in prison, have had very serious doubts about his conviction. The governor at Wandsworth described him as

“of very low intelligence and childlike in some ways. Knowing him as we do it is difficult to see how he has ended up in this situation”.

His probation officer said he had serious concerns about Oliver’s conviction for murder. Even the trial judge’s report to the Home Secretary at the end of Oliver’s trial reflected his view regarding the gross artificiality of the result, and the unsatisfactory nature of the trial process that led to it.

It is right that I pay special tribute to Oliver’s legal team, his solicitor Glyn Maddocks and his QC Michael Birnbaum, both of whom have worked tirelessly and resolutely for over 20 years on an entirely pro bono basis to achieve justice for Oliver. Such dedication is rare, but at a time when legal aid is almost non-existent and miscarriages of justice are increasing—surely linked to cost pressures in the criminal justice system—it is an absolutely precious commodity. I hope that many other younger lawyers will be inspired to work on cases such as Oliver Campbell’s.

Several people have said that Oliver Campbell’s case is the clearest example of a miscarriage of justice that they have seen. I am surprised and dismayed that the CCRC, established by this House with the support of all parties following the recommendation of the royal commission on criminal justice under the Major Government, has failed to enable the correction of what is so clearly a wrongful conviction. I call on the Minister to institute a review of the CCRC’s decision-making powers.

11:17

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Edward Argar)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin) on securing this debate on the decision-making powers of the Criminal Cases Review Commission—which, like him, I will refer to in my remarks as the CCRC, for brevity’s sake.

I also thank the hon. Gentleman for setting out Oliver Campbell’s situation. I know that the hon. Gentleman is a forceful champion for his constituent, and indeed for his constituency, and I pay tribute to him for that, just as I do to the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) for his commitment and dedication to the issue. I must be a little bit careful when paying tribute—a reshuffle looms, so I am not sure whether paying such fulsome tribute to Opposition Members will help or hinder my career prospects. However, the work they have done is truly impressive and important. Although I am sure the hon. Member for Ipswich appreciates that it would not be appropriate for me to discuss an individual case on the Floor of the House, I welcome the opportunity to discuss the broader issue. I am of course happy to discuss his constituent’s case with him outside the Chamber, should the hon. Gentleman feel that would be helpful.

As the hon. Member for Ipswich has set out, the independent CCRC plays a vital and valuable role in maintaining confidence in the criminal justice system. In addition to my tributes to Members present in this Chamber, I pay tribute to the commitment of the CCRC commissioners and staff, and to their work in investigating potential miscarriages of justice. I am sure all Members, both in this Chamber and beyond, share my view that miscarriages of justice are a blight on our criminal justice system; have a devastating impact on all those involved; and can cause people to question that justice system, which we must seek to avoid at all costs.

Since the establishment of the CCRC in 1997, my understanding is that 441 referrals from the commission have succeeded in the courts—I raise the hon. Gentleman by four. Those referrals have resulted in overturned convictions or amended sentences.

[Mr Sheerman]

The Minister has always been very supportive and listened carefully to everything we have been campaigning on, which I appreciate. Some of us went to visit the commission in Birmingham, and we got the impression that it was under-resourced; that it cannot get investigators because it is right out on a limb in Birmingham and should be closer to the centre of legal affairs in our country, here in London; and that very often the commissioners are part time and work from home. Does the Minister think there is a bit of a problem there?

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I suspect that some of his colleagues who represent Birmingham seats might slightly take issue with his suggestion that the city is out on a limb. We believe that the approach adopted by commissioners allows for flexibility and the most effective management of case loads, and I will move on to the tailored review shortly. From my discussions with the new chair of the commission, my understanding is that she felt that the resourcing was adequate and appropriate, but that changes are needed to reflect the findings of the tailored review. I will touch on that in a moment, subject to time.

The CCRC is, as the hon. Member for Ipswich alluded to, the world’s first statutory, publicly funded body charged with the task of reviewing alleged miscarriages of justice. The law provides that the commission can refer cases to an appeal court only when it considers that there is a real possibility that the conviction, verdict, finding or sentence would not be upheld were the referral to be made. The hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Huddersfield, have set out concerns about the real possibility test and whether it affects the rate at which the commission refers cases to the appeal courts.

The hon. Member for Ipswich asked whether the rate of convictions quashed suggests that a large number of the cases that have not been sent to the Court of Appeal might also have led to the convictions being overturned. Those concerns have been aired before and were considered by the Justice Committee in its report on the CCRC published in March 2015. The Committee considered whether a declining rate of referrals was due to the real possibility test itself, the CCRC’s application of it or the Court of Appeal’s approach to appeals. It found no conclusive evidence of the CCRC failing to apply the test correctly.

We do not feel that it would be appropriate to alter the test simply to demonstrate the independence of the CCRC. Doing so would by definition risk allowing referrals where there was less than a real possibility of a conviction or sentence being overturned. The Committee accepted that the application of the test is a difficult task and is by no means a precise science, but it considered that the CCRC should be willing to err on the side of making a referral where potential miscarriages of justice are concerned. I am assured that is the approach the CCRC adopts, and there must be a realistic chance of success.

Both hon. Gentlemen referred to the work of the recently established commission. I will make two comments on that. First, I fairly regularly meet the hon. Member for Huddersfield, and if the hon. Member for Ipswich would like to join those discussions of the broader issues, as well as meeting to discuss Oliver’s case, he is welcome. I look forward to following the commission’s work. Without making firm commitments, I hope that the hon. Member for Huddersfield will recognise that I have always been willing to engage constructively since I have been in this role, and I look forward to doing so in future.

[Mr Sheerman]

Just to put the record straight, the people we met are really good people. I did not want to denigrate them; they are very good people, but they are under-resourced. I got the feeling, talking to them and talking to people in this area, that senior people in the judiciary do not like the system and are not positive towards it. Is that the real key; that some senior judges do not like the process at all?

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Gentleman is an experienced Member of the House and he is gently tempting me to speculate on areas where I will not tread. I believe the judiciary has full confidence in the process and fully respects the nature of the process. That is reflected in how it engages with the CCRC and the appeals process. He may seek to tempt me, but I fear that on this occasion he has not succeeded.

I note that the CCRC’s analysis has identified other reasons for the recent level of referrals, including the lack of common themes across recent cases and changes in approach by investigators. The CCRC continues to review the reasons for a low referral rate, working with practitioners and academics to ensure that they are aware of any potential new causes of miscarriages of justice.

In February the Ministry of Justice published a tailored review of the commission, as the hon. Member for Ipswich will be aware. The review found that the current delivery model as a non-departmental public body is still the most appropriate. The review did, however, make a number of recommendations relating to improving the commission’s performance. Those recommendations were in part informed by respondents to the call for evidence, who commented that the commission does not provide as timely a service as they would wish. The commission has acknowledged that although internal targets were met, too many cases were taking too long to resolve and more can be done to avoid delay.

The hon. Gentleman has alluded to the amount of time it has taken the CCRC to look at Oliver’s case and the handling of it. The review team found that a single commissioner or a committee of commissioners were making the decisions on the non-referral of cases, despite legislation providing the option for decisions to be made by one or more employees of the commission. The review recommended that responsibility for the final decision on non-referrals in less complex cases should be made by case review managers, rather than commissioners.

[Mr Sheerman]

Before the Minister concludes, will he give way?

[Edward Argar]

I am not concluding just yet.

[Mr Sheerman]

The Minister has four minutes.

[Edward Argar]

Go on, very quickly.

[Mr Sheerman]

Does the Minister understand that many of us got into this issue because of cases in our constituencies? In Huddersfield, I had a tragic case like Oliver’s. Does he realise that even when someone spends 18 years in prison and they come out having been found not ever to have committed a crime, they get nothing?

[Edward Argar]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point, which he has made in our previous conversations. I look forward to picking that specific point up in more detail with him. I think we are due to have one of our regular meetings soon.

As with any case, the CCRC would welcome an application to review Oliver’s case, if new information can be provided. That would be decided by people who have had no previous involvement in the decision making.

[Sandy Martin]

I thank the Minister for that. If the CCRC says that there has been no new evidence and refuses to take any further applications, what is our recourse after that?

[Edward Argar]

My understanding is that beyond that the recourse is via judicial review, which I appreciate is a complex and expensive process. That is why I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman following the debate to discuss the issue in more detail outside of this place.

The review also recommended that the CCRC and my Department should discuss the possibility of changing the law so that the commission does not have to consider cases dealt with summarily and sentence-only cases. The CCRC currently considers applications relating to summary offences, which often originate in magistrates courts, as well as more serious indictable offences, which are dealt with in Crown courts. The CCRC also considers applications that allege a person has been sentenced incorrectly.

The review recommendation reflects the outcome of the Justice Committee inquiry in 2015, which recommended that the CCRC be given discretion to refuse to investigate cases dealt with summarily, if it deems it not to be in the public interest to investigate. The CCRC is considering and reflecting on that recommendation, but it is of the view that it should retain its function with regard to summary cases, given that it is an area where miscarriages of justice can and do occur. The CCRC has established a working group to consider the recommendations of the tailored review, and I look forward to the outcome of its discussions, especially with regard to what can be done to ensure that commissioners can focus on more complex and serious cases.

I very much support the work of the CCRC. In saying that, I put on the record that I was in no way suggesting that the hon. Member for Huddersfield does not; I know he is deeply involved in this area and has a lot of respect for the staff and their work. Although he is courteously challenging of it, I know that the CCRC welcomes his engagement, which shines a light on its work and raises its profile. The staff enjoy and respect his interest and the focus it brings to their work. I know they would want me to say that to him.

With the appointment of six new commissioners in June, the organisation is well placed to deliver its important work investigating where people are wrongly convicted or where convictions are unsafe. I look forward to carefully considering the results of the work of the Westminster commission that has been set up by the all-party parliamentary group. I hope that I will be in this post this time next week and in a fortnight hence, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will recognise that although we may on occasions disagree, as long as I am in this post I will always be happy to engage with him and with Members from all parts of the House.

The hon. Member for Ipswich is absolutely right to use his position in this House as a champion for his constituents to highlight Oliver’s case, bringing it to my attention as a Minister and also to people more broadly. I look forward, should he wish and should I still be in this role in a couple of weeks’ time, to discussing that with him, where he can unpack some of the more detailed points he would want to make on that. It has been a pleasure to respond to this debate, Sir George. The CCRC continues to play a vital role for individuals and also in upholding the integrity of our justice system, which is precious to us all.

Question put and agreed to.

11:30

Sitting suspended.

NHS Workforce: England

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Madeleine Moon in the Chair]

10:54

[Eleanor Smith (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the legal duties of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care for NHS workforce planning and supply.

I am a nurse. My daughter is a nurse. Nursing is in my family and fundamentally informs who I am and what I do. Last November, I triggered a debate about investing in nursing higher education. I am here today to again carry the burning flag for the nursing profession, the wider health and care workforce, and society.

I will start by directly addressing the notion that we should not seek to further clarify the Secretary of State’s legal duties and powers. I have heard that the latest legislation sought to remove political interference in our health system. I have heard people say, “Don’t make health a political football.” Lastly, I have heard that changing the legislation to give the Secretary of State accountability for the workforce would put health and care back under political control—as if our ability to access health and care was ever out of political control.

I am sorry, but those are laughable positions. Which- ever side of the fence we sit on, it is a serious point that health is fundamentally political. It can never not be political, in terms of what we can access and what happens to people. Our great health service was created within a political agenda, and creating it was a fundamentally political act. Supporting our health and care service to thrive will never not be a political decision. Let us be proud of our history, recognise that health is political, and find a solution to the problems we face.

Now that I have addressed those weak positions, let me state that I, and many others across the political spectrum, take no issue with the idea that there should be explicit clarity in the law about the Secretary of State’s responsibilities. I am not alone in my gratitude for all that our health and care staff do. They work constantly to provide quality care by putting patients at the heart of what they do. In the NHS and the independent sector, nursing accounts for one in 10 of the labour market of the whole of England. We are, and ought to be, a fundamental force to be reckoned with.

Thanks to the scale and urgency of the workforce crisis, many people have been looking into these issues—some of us would say for far too long, and to poor result. We have a long-term plan for the NHS and an interim NHS people plan, so we have seen some movement in the way that agencies work together. However, we have no understanding of what the social care sector needs, and no assurance of workforce funding, which is entirely dependent on the forthcoming spending review and subject to the whim of a new Prime Minister. We do not have a workforce strategy that meets health and care service requirements, or that projects the future needs of the people who live in this country.

The vacancy rate has reached alarming levels, with almost 40,000 nursing vacancies in the NHS in England alone. That is not the full picture. The extent of the vacancies within social care and public health is unclear because it is not mandatory to collect workforce data. It is not possible for services designed with staffing built into their planning to run safely and effectively with so many missing staff.

Fewer people are joining the nursing profession and more are leaving. Since the referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU, more than 10,000 EU nurses and midwives have left the UK workforce. I will not be drawn on Brexit in this debate. However, while we are trying to find our way through the referendum result, frontline staff are propping up the health and care system with no credible assurances that the situation will be resolved. Our professionals are holding on as best they can, but we need to be realistic about what we can reasonably ask of them. They are starting to vote with their feet, and there is not yet the accountability to help us navigate the future that is to come.

This crisis has come about because there is no clarity in the existing legal powers and duties that would ensure that enough staff with the right skills are in the right place at the right time to provide safe and effective care. That is true not just of nursing but of every profession working within our commissioned, taxpayer-funded services, including nurses, medics, psychiatrists, physiotherapists, psychologists, paramedics, pharmacists, social workers, support workers, occupational therapists and dietitians. Literally no one—no one person—is accountable for growing and developing our health and care workforce to meet patients’ needs, now and in future.

The Secretary of State’s current legal duty is to provide a comprehensive service. The Government may say that the Secretary of State has oversight of the workforce through those general duties and powers. With all due respect, the Secretary of State’s responsibilities are too broad to understand what aspects of workforce provision they include. There are also no particular workforce duties within the range of national organisations responsible for service design and delivery. In a health and care system as complex as ours, it is easy for everyone to lose sight of ensuring that we have enough people. Clearly, that is exactly what has happened.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Surely two reasons for the number of vacancies are low pay in the public sector generally and the lack of bursary provision to recruit new nurses. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a golden opportunity for many mature women, whose children have grown up, to enter that profession? Recently, even ambulance drivers had to pay extra for their certification—I had a debate on that a couple of months ago.

[Eleanor Smith]

My hon. Friend is right, and I will touch on the removal of bursaries later.

A huge amount of effort has been required to try to fix this mess. There has been progress in the NHS, but it is too little and too slow. It does not include social care and deals only with the immediate context. Many of us in this House are here to challenge the position that the existing so-called responsibilities are clear and robust enough for use by the Government and the health and care system, and for the public to have confidence that the Government can be held to account—now and in future, since the pressures on the system will continue to grow and change.

Yesterday, many of us met nursing staff, having been brought together by members of the Royal College of Nursing, who are all passionate about patient care and public safety. I am moved by their advocacy for the profession, patients and society. I also feel their desperation in the situation they face, trying to keep people safe in challenging environments. Given that professionals have been raising the alarm for decades, hopefully our demands for an end to the boom-and-bust cycle in the workforce will be met.

Even the High Court recognises how vague the current powers and duties are. The legal dispute between the Secretary of State and junior doctors over their contract resulted in a judicial review in 2016. The Court judgment said that, as stated in the National Health Service Act 2006, the objective of “protecting the public”, with a duty on the Secretary of State to take appropriate steps, leaves

“considerable leeway to the Minister as to ways and means”

of running the service.

Anyone who looks at the content of the law can see clear holes and gaps. In addition to the Secretary of State having no explicit responsibility, we have other problems with the duties and power of the national guidance. For example, Health Education England is the organisation responsible for developing our workforce, but its hands are tied because it does not have sufficient legal powers or funding to invest properly in the educational provision needed to grow our workforce. HEE can do planning but not supply, which ought to be the responsibility of the Government. The current legal framework is simply not fit for purpose.

Some people might say that Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, should be accountable for not addressing the workforce needs. The development of the long-term plan provides another clear example of the ambiguity and conflicting expectations playing out in practice. In June 2018, the Prime Minister said:

“Growing demand and increasing complexity have led to a shortfall in staff. So our ten year plan for the NHS must include a comprehensive plan for its workforce to ensure we have the right staff, in the right settings, and with the right skills to deliver world class care.”

That was a clear signal of the Government’s commitment that the long-term plan would address the workforce crisis. On publication, NHS England acknowledged significant workforce issues but said that staffing was additional to service planning and was outside the £20 billion financial package that Simon Stevens was given. Again, NHS England does not have any explicit legal duties that relate to the workforce, so it is not obliged to act.

Just last week, Simon Stevens said there is a need for a

“much bigger upturn in the pipeline of new nurses… There has been a big debate about bursaries and their removal, which as we look at the way the student loan system is working, that is clearly back in play as a big question we’ve got to answer as a nation.”

However, the reasons for these supply problems are not within Simon Stevens’s control. They include the reform of higher education for nursing, which has not grown as we were promised. The ability to boost and fund the workforce sits with the Government, and the ambitions set out in the long-term plan will not be met if we do not have trained and qualified staff to achieve those goals. Although the Government have committed to transforming services, they must also commit to building the workforce we need. To do that, the lack of accountability must be addressed.

A nurse who walks into a shift that is short-staffed has no power to safely and effectively staff services. They have no option but to carry on, yet the buck stops with them when patient care is unsafe. Nurses have no power to recruit more staff, and they rely on Parliament to ensure that the incredible position we find ourselves in is addressed; to fix things not just now, but for the future. I know how heartbreaking it is for a nurse to be unable to give the care they want to. I know the guilt we feel when care is left undone, and the stress of being unable to do our job to the best of our ability. Patients pay the highest price when the number of nursing staff falls too low.

Understanding that the health and social care system is a safety-critical industry should be the starting block for any consideration made by the Government. The Royal College of Nursing and other professional and patient organisations have a clear solution. With cross-party support, they are calling for a legal framework for workforce accountability that sets out who in Government and across the health and social care system are accountable and responsible for workforce supply—recruitment, retention and remuneration.

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care should have explicit powers in law for the growth and development of the health and social care workforce across England. Such accountability would ensure that there are enough staff to care for the number of patients, and that there is an incredible and fully funded workforce strategy. These requirements are not an either/or position; we need both. Alongside the Secretary of State’s accountability, there are other ways in which the responsibilities need to filter down across all layers of the health system. Never again would the system be able to sidestep workforce planning when setting a 10-year vision for the future of our NHS. The ultimate aim in clarifying accountability for the workforce at Government level is to ensure that all health and social care services are of a high quality, and that they are equipped to provide safe and effective care to guarantee patient safety. The current pressure faced by the healthcare workforce puts that guarantee at risk.

Successive Governments have missed opportunities to fix the health and social care workforce crisis. Boom-and-bust approaches to workforce supply have been an afterthought, with the focus on glossy new services and sparkly new plans, rather than on worrying about the staff who are needed to deliver them. That has led to a situation in which the system currently defaults to discussing how to fix the workforce gap. We need to plan strategically for what workforce will be needed to deliver the future healthcare services that have been designed to meet the needs of the population.

An opportunity to rectify the workforce crisis is coming right towards us. NHS England and NHS Improvement have finished engagement work on the legislative changes that they feel are needed to make a success of the long-term plan. Their engagement work sets out proposed changes to the remit of the Secretary of State, but currently these legislative proposals are missing crucial accountabilities. It is down to right hon. and hon. Members to expand the proposals when the law is presented to Parliament. The legislation must include accountabilities for the workforce, because it is too clear an opportunity to miss.

A simple legal change would turn the tide for patients, and support is growing across the political spectrum for a legal fix as part of addressing the workforce crisis. I found myself at a roundtable discussion on this very matter, with a Government Member with whom I share no political allegiance. We found ourselves in full agreement that we must explicitly clarify the responsibility for putting our workforce on a sustainable footing.

As a nurse in Parliament, I commit to seeking the change that is being called for. I hope that others call on Parliament to speak loudly and clearly in adding their voices to ours, and that all right hon. and hon. Members will commit to pursuing change. This is a truly cross-party issue, and rightfully so. There is a crisis and everyone points fingers at others, but ultimately no one is responsible. There are moves to make the system better, but they must be set out in law and strengthened further. There is an opportunity to fix this cleanly and easily. We are not adding burdens, but clarifying mandates. The moment is now—we must commit to ending the workforce crisis once and for all.

14:49

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Eleanor Smith) on securing this debate on an issue that she and I have discussed—her office is near mine in Norman Shaw North—and both care deeply about.

I am glad to see the Minister in his place. He knows my constituency well and understands the challenge of getting to it. In fact, he was the first MP ever to visit me in the heady days before 2010, when I stood as a parliamentary candidate because I thought that coming to Parliament would be a great way of changing the world. I have since learned that that is probably not the case.

The credit should really sit with the people who work in the NHS. In particular, I pay tribute and send my thanks to those who work in West Cornwall Hospital in Penzance, Helston Community Hospital—or cottage hospital, for those of us who grew up there—and other places where NHS staff and others do a fantastic job in really difficult situations, as we have heard. They make sure that people who arrive for whatever reason get the best possible care.

I was keen to take part in the debate because I recognise that things need to be done. We must take responsibility for the way things are at the moment, and although I understand what the legal responsibility is and the reason for the debate, I want to understand a bit more about the solutions, too. I have never thought that all the solutions can be created, thought up or delivered here in Westminster or in any Government Department. Although real progress in integration and improving services on the ground needs to be enabled through legislation, support and encouragement, people in health and social care in Cornwall have got together and worked extremely hard for many years to deliver a system in which pathways and integration are much better than when I welcomed the Minister off the train.

One problem of many is the workforce, which is undoubtedly a challenge. There is also no doubt that the NHS 10-year plan is a fantastic document, but it depends heavily on workforce. I know that the Minister will agree and will want to ensure that we have people in place. We may not participate in this Chamber, but across Parliament, the bunfight, debate and arguments about the NHS go on, and have been taken up by people in local campaigns and the media. That has created an environment in which people choose not to nurse or do anything else in the NHS because they are misinformed. I know of lots of people who would have gone into or considered going into nursing or social care, but will not do so because the NHS is a political hot potato.

[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

On the hon. Gentleman’s point about people not joining the NHS to nurse, the lack of bursary is a significant issue. If someone wants to train, the bursary is really important.

[Derek Thomas]

I am addressing the point the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West made about the importance of working cross-party, as we will in this Chamber. I will come to the bursary later.

Actually, I will come to that part of my speech now as the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karen Lee) has mentioned it. I was one of the MPs who signed a cross-party letter requesting a royal commission for the 70th year of the NHS, because I believe that although we do not have all the solutions, we should set the tone. That would help to open the door of opportunity for those who work in the NHS. I will come to the bursary, which I have already raised with the Minister; I asked him to look in particular at the impact on mature students. Podiatry in Plymouth, for example, will not be taught from September onwards. In the south west, where the incidences of diabetes and other vascular problems are significant, we need podiatrists, so that is a major problem. The reason given is that most people who go into podiatry do it later on in their careers, and one of the challenges arising from the removal of the bursary and introduction of student loans—I voted for that and regret doing so—is that those who take out the loan immediately lose all welfare and can no longer get housing benefit.

For someone with a young family who wants to study, the student loan, or the grant available for mature students, is just not enough. The Minister is aware of my view because I have raised it before, and there is work to do on that. It is not about financial incentives; it is about making it affordable for people to go and do a fantastic job. As the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West rightly said, some people bring so much to health and social care and we need to ensure that we take away every possible barrier without creating unintended consequences. I am sure that the Minister will be pleased to address that point later.

I will talk briefly about how Cornwall is responding. I have been very keen to see what we can do in Cornwall to make sure that people can turn up, get training and work and train on the job. For people in Cornwall, most opportunities for training are outside the area, but as we know, people who go into some professions, including in the NHS, tend to stay where they train. That has always been a problem for Cornwall, which has struggled to recruit the people we need. We have set up a health and care academy using the apprenticeship levy. The academy can offer people training and jobs as healthcare assistants. There, they can do 12 hours per week working and studying through the Open University, and will become qualified nurses after four years. As they are already settled in the area and have family there, they are very likely to work for the NHS for the rest of their careers.

That is really positive, but there are some challenges and I have met the Minister to talk about them. One of the challenges is that for hospitals—in this case Royal Cornwall Hospital—to provide that kind of support, they need extra cash. It is not just about the apprenticeship levy, which they want to use and not repay, but about staffing 100 nurses and 100 healthcare assistants at a time, and providing pastoral support and other elements that come with training up staff on a ward or in a hospital. An added pressure is that for a hospital without the staff that it needs, really excellent healthcare assistants are no substitute for fully qualified nurses with a wealth of experience.

There is a problem in this place. I am a skilled craftsman in the building trade but I have put my tools away, despite the desperate need for skilled craftsmen in Cornwall. In this Chamber and across the House, we have lots of GPs and talented nurses. For some reason, we decided to pitch up here instead of continuing in our valuable jobs. I think that we are part of the problem. I am not suggesting that we should all pack up and go home, although we might get more done if we did, so we should consider it.

[Eleanor Smith]

I get what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but I worked for 40 years in the health service and it was because I saw its deterioration that I came to Parliament to say, “This is what’s happening.”

[Derek Thomas]

I said that in humour, which is why I talked about my own skill—or lack of. It is a curious thing, though, to hear people talking about the crisis in staffing when so many of them are in this place.

On a more important note, we are in a tricky situation with the challenges around the apprenticeship levy. In Cornwall, we hope to train 200 nurses using the apprenticeship levy over the next two years—that would address the shortage—but we have to recognise that funding is needed and I know that the Minister is looking at that now.

[Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Derek Thomas]

I will when I have finished this point. Whatever the solution, we must recognise the added pressure on existing staff.

[Paul Girvan]

On that point, it is all very well getting nurses into and through training, but in Northern Ireland the NHS is haemorrhaging nurses who are not leaving the profession, but going into agency work, getting paid two and a half times more than they were and working the hours that they want. Not only is workforce planning impossible when people can just work when they want, but we lose continuity of care in wards.

[Derek Thomas]

I appreciate that valuable intervention. I had a conversation with the former Secretary of State for Health about how, when the student loan was introduced, there might have been a way in which students had all their loan written off if they gave seven years’ service to the NHS. The advantage of that, to be honest, is that people who had done seven years after qualifying would probably have settled down by then, entered into a home purchase and perhaps had family, so they would have been, first, less likely to clear off to another country and, secondly, kind of tied into the NHS where they were.

In part, that addresses the problem the hon. Gentleman raises. Yesterday, I met a newly qualified nurse from the south-west who found that on Christmas day she was the leading NHS nurse, supported only by agency staff. That must stick in the back of NHS staff’s throat, when they know that extra pay is available to agency staff. Efforts have been made to address that, and there must be ways to do so, but that is what we are getting at today—the workforce challenge.

If we have a workforce challenge, other things will happen, such as agencies springing up and the demand for them. We have to get to a place where working for the NHS as a nurse employed by the local trust is the best and most rewarding place to be, and appreciated by all. We simply do not say often enough how great such people are. We can do so many things locally and nationally to rebuild value, trust and appreciation in those people. The challenge for Health Education England is to look at how we fund local innovative ideas, ensuring there is enough money, as well as flexible support, to find solutions. I discussed that with Simon Stevens, and he seemed alert to the challenge.

As I said, I met nurses from the south-west yesterday, and they were concerned about safety on wards and retention of nurses. We have this bizarre circle spiralling downhill: if nurses do not feel safe, they go to do something that might not be nursing. Unfortunately, in places of low unemployment, lots of other work and employment opportunities are available, often paying more.

Solutions are possible. In Cornwall, I have found that people often do not know what is available. The Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust and other trusts in Cornwall, my local college and I got together to work on an event in the college called “Work for the NHS+”, which included 15 or more different parts of the NHS, as well as some from social care. They came along to tell students and the general public what the employment opportunities were, the pay and training that could be expected, and what kind of career paths were available. In Cornwall, as in many other parts of the country, there are some fantastic members of staff and people in the NHS and social care who can inspire others. This might sound ridiculous in a debate on shortages on a ward, but when we have such individuals, we must find opportunities to get them in front of people who are thinking about which career they should choose.

I do not know much about the other challenging problem raised by the nurses yesterday, but it is right to mention it. They said that although more nurses are training, training placement opportunities are fewer. They suggested that part of nurse training now is off the ward—obviously that has happened before, but they were concerned about whether that virtual training or simulators were the same. I know that the Minister will take seriously all opportunities to get nurses trained in the best possible way, so I will not dwell on a subject that I do not know much about.

I mentioned the issue to do with podiatry, which is a real problem in the south-west. We must find ways to help professionals, whatever they do, whether therapy, physio or all the things that people to do to ensure that we stay well and do not end up in hospital. Podiatry is one of those. We must ensure that people get the training, that they can afford to do so, and that they can have a great career in the NHS or with local authorities. We need to talk to universities about exactly why they are not attracting the kind of numbers they need to justify the courses.

I should have declared an interest at the beginning: I chair the vascular and venous disease all-party parliamentary group. One thing I am being told loud and clear—I have done a lot on this—is that because we have taken the nursing bursary away from older students, they find it difficult to go on the courses that I am describing. That will have a real impact on the numbers of nurses available to do those important jobs. If we do not address that issue, in a place such as Cornwall, where diabetes is a significant problem, the pressure on urgent care will be enormous—if it is not already.

Last week, our general district hospital—the only one in Cornwall—closed to the public, because a spate or outbreak of vomiting and diarrhoea put a lot of people from nursing homes and others into hospital. In that situation, the system rallied and did some amazing work to cope, ensuring that no one who needed care was failed, but it was also an example of why we need to work equally hard, if not harder, to ensure that at the best of times and the worst of times people get the best healthcare available.

The NHS in Great Britain is the envy of the world. We need to be careful always to remember how fantastic our system is. Last week, my brother and his wife came back from Cambodia with stories of trying to get healthcare there—they have two young children—and that reminded me of how fantastic our health service is, as are all those who work in it.

15:06

[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Eleanor Smith) for securing this important debate.

I will start by talking about my lived experience of staff shortages in the NHS. I worked as a nurse from 2003 until 2017, when I entered Parliament. For the majority of that time, I worked on an in-patient cardiac unit at Lincoln County Hospital. Today, I want to paint a picture of a nurse’s working day and how difficult that becomes when we have staff shortages. First, however, I pay tribute to all the staff at Lincoln County Hospital—not just the nurses, but all the staff—and to NHS staff who deliver our healthcare right across this country in local communities and in hospitals.

I keep in touch with my former colleagues and still hear at first hand how staff shortages affect them—some stories are quite scary. As an MP over the past two years, I have witnessed an awful lot of patronising pats on the back. I exclude today’s debate from that, but we often hear from Members how wonderful our NHS staff are, and yet that does nothing to address staff shortages or to make their working conditions any better. That is what they want; they do not want patronising pats on the back. The 40,000 nursing vacancies are evidence of that stark truth.

As a nurse, when I went on shift, I would be allocated eight cardiac patients. They would have been treated for heart failure, recently had a heart attack or been waiting for an angiogram, or perhaps they were being treated for endocarditis, which is a serious infection of the heart. The staffing was meant to ensure that a single nurse took either the male or the female team, with an extra nurse working between the two sides to support the multitude of tasks that delivering good patient care means. In reality, we often did not get that third nurse, and had to manage without. Some shifts felt like a marathon combined with a sprint—I kid you not, Mrs Moon, it really was that bad. I did love it though.

The medical management of my group of patients would be varied. Many patients were diabetics, meaning that we had to check blood sugars, four times a day for some and twice for others. If four or five out of eight of a nurse’s patients were diabetics, that was quite a task. We could even get something called “sliding scale”, which meant we had to check them every two hours. Sometimes, honestly, we just chased our tail the whole day.

Many patients needed intravenous antibiotics, which were really time-consuming to prepare, even more so if a patient had a line, a Hickman or a PIC—a peripherally inserted central catheter—because it had to be done aseptically; it just took ages, and the nurse was running around the whole time. As well as that, staffing was routinely topped up with bank or agency staff. I am not knocking them, because we would not have managed without them, but they were not allowed to do IVs, so when we had agency staff on the other side of ward, to be honest we would end up doing quite a proportion of their work as well. That made it really difficult.

Many patients were prescribed controlled drugs, so first thing in the morning, at 8 o’clock, we might have had two or three CDs to do—but trying to get someone else to check the CD was a nightmare. There were just not enough hands on deck, which meant that people were sat waiting in pain for analgesia when they had gone all night and were due that dose. Sometimes a patient needed a blood transfusion, which was a really tricky process. They had to be monitored the whole time, but, again, that was done for one person and there were eight patients, so the nurse was running around all the time. It felt unsafe and the nurse felt really bad because they wanted to deliver good, safe patient care.

A patient might be close to death and need to be monitored, because the nurse could tell visually whether they were in pain, but there were seven others to look after. The relatives wanted someone to sit and talk to them, which of course the nurse wanted to do, but they did not have the time. In addition, there were other tasks such as changing dressings, monitoring pressure areas, and speaking to social workers, physiotherapists and occupational therapists about assessments, as well as discharging patients. The doctor might say to a patient, “You can go home today”, but the nurse had seven others to look after. All the patient wanted was for the nurse to do their paperwork and get their meds from the pharmacy. They sat waiting impatiently and the nurse felt bad because the patient could not go home. When the nurse eventually got them out, another patient was straight into their bed and the admission paperwork had to be done. The tasks were endless, but that was the job. We did it and we loved it, but we have to have enough staff to do it properly.

No nurse can deliver care without the healthcare support workers, so this is not only about nurses. The housekeepers make the tea but because the nurses do not have time to sit and talk to the patients and their families, the nurse goes to the housekeeper at the end of a shift and says, “Has anybody told you anything that I need to know?” It is team work. If there are not enough staff to carry out the different roles, staff simply burn out and cannot deliver the care that patients need. Towards the end of my nursing career, in the two years before I came to Parliament, I worked in out-patient clinics because I thought it might be a little easier, but it was not. It never is, but I was starting to get burn-out and I did not want that to happen because I loved the job too much.

We used to work 12.5 hour shifts. We would start a day shift at seven in the morning. At about half nine, if we were lucky, we got a cup of tea, but we literally had only five minutes. At around two o’clock we got our lunch. We had half an hour and we were meant to have another break at teatime, but we never, ever got it because we were running around trying to finish all our jobs, chasing our tails and trying to get everything done. So we would have a break of about half an hour in twelve and a half hours. Then, just when we thought we were going home, it would turn out that the bank staff, the agency staff, had not turned up and we could not simply say, “I am off home.” We had to wait until somebody had been found somewhere else in the hospital and somebody was moved from a different ward. Then the handover took half an hour. Instead of going home at half seven or eight o’clock, it could be nine o’clock and we would be back again at seven the next morning. People simply burn out.

Working in our NHS is incredibly hard work in whatever role. It is not well paid, and in places such as Lincoln a few years ago when we had the pay freeze, it was suddenly decided that a consultation would be held and we were asked, “Do you think you ought pay for staff parking?” Of course, everyone said no, so what happened? We all had to start paying for staff parking: £15 a month for staff nurses who had not had a rise in years. It absolutely made us feel undervalued, and that is not acceptable. I am not surprised that people are leaving the profession.

I want to talk now about the crisis in our NHS and about some of the steps we must take as parliamentarians to address it. There are more than 100,000 vacancies in our NHS, including 40,000 nursing vacancies. The “Interim NHS People Plan”, released last month, acknowledges that

“shortages in nursing are the single biggest and most urgent we need to address.”

I agree with that, but there are many other things we need to address, too. It is true that 80% of shifts from over 40,000 nursing vacancies are covered by expensive bank and agency staff, which highlights the false economy of austerity. It makes no sense financially. I will say this again and again: the removal of the nursing bursary in effect means that nurses are not training. I know I will get the answer back about how wonderful nursing apprenticeships are and how other wonderful things will happen, but the stark truth is that nurses are not training. So the NHS long-term plan and the talk about all the extra places for nurses is pie in the sky if we have not got the nurses training. It will simply not happen.

I am particularly concerned that applications from mature students have decreased by 39%. People no longer have the support that I had when I trained as a mature student. I was 39 when I started my training. The RCN is calling for the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to be accountable to Parliament for making sure that there are enough health and care staff with the right skills in the right place at the right time to care for patients, based on population needs now and in future. Support for that must be, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West said, cross-party if it is to happen. This or any future Government must ensure a credible, costed workforce strategy. Our healthcare workers must feel confident of delivering the very best care, and our patients must feel happy with the care they receive. A worn-out and demoralised workforce is not what the patients or any of us want to see.

Patients watch nursing staff doing their best to look after them. Some of them used to say to me, “Do you ever stop and take a breath?”, and I would jokingly say, “No, but I still don’t get thin, do I?” They have to wait their turn longer than they should for the care that they need, and that is not what we want to see. So I really hope that the Minister is genuinely listening and does not give me the usual answers: “We have got apprentices and we have got this and we are doing that, and all this money is going in, so we will get lots of nurses and it will all be all right in five years’ time.” I want someone to take notice and listen to me as an ex-nurse and make sure that hardworking NHS staff will be equipped to deliver the care that is both safe and effective for them and for their patients.

15:15

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I congratulate the hon. Members for Wolverhampton South West (Eleanor Smith), for Lincoln (Karen Lee) and for St Ives (Derek Thomas) on their eloquent speeches.

The crisis in the NHS workforce is deeply concerning. Its effects are felt nationally, locally and personally. Like others here, I want to pay tribute to the people working at every level of my national health service within the south lakes: the hospital in Kendal, Westmoreland General Hospital, and the district generals that we travel to in Barrow and in Lancaster. Of course, there are the GPs, dentists, paramedics and those providing mental health services. They do an outstanding job, but it is particularly challenging in rural areas, where we have specific problems with workforce planning and supply, which are at the heart of the problems that we are challenged by.

There are several key elements to workforce planning, including accessible and high quality training, as well as affordable training, as has just been mentioned so eloquently. Effective recruitment is another. Alongside both of those is the issue of staff retention. The Secretary of State must surely be held to account for each of those. The huge shortages in the NHS workforce are felt heavily in numerous areas of healthcare provision in the local communities in Cumbria, and I briefly want to touch on a few of them.

The provision of ambulances and ambulance crews has been hit particularly hard. It is vital that we recruit and deploy more paramedics and ambulance technicians. Rural communities such as mine suffer because of the sheer distances that ambulances have to travel to reach patients. According to the review of NHS access standards, it is the responsibility of ambulance trusts to respond to category 1 calls within seven minutes on average. That is a tall order when there are half the number of ambulances per head in the north-west of England as there are in London, despite the fact that my constituency alone is bigger than the whole of Greater London. It leaves communities living in fear for their safety and takes a serious toll on the physical and mental health of our outstanding ambulance crews. Our local paramedics and ambulance technicians are being pushed beyond their capacity. As a result, I have had an influx of local people contacting me about having to wait hours for an ambulance to arrive to give them the treatment that they so desperately need. That is why local health campaigners have been calling on the Government to deliver two new fully crewed ambulances to south Lakeland to stem the crisis and ensure the safety of the community. It is not right that people in Grasmere, Dent or Hawkshead might be an hour away from the nearest available ambulance.

We met the Minister to raise the issue a few weeks ago. He was incredibly helpful and I thank him for his time and his response. I very much welcome the commitment to procure additional emergency ambulances. I understand that as a result of our campaigns an additional £8 million has been allocated to the North West Ambulance Service. That could be good news for south Cumbria, but only if the ambulance service allocates it in the way that we have asked. Ministers should be held to account for whether the ambulances materialise.

Mental health is another element of workforce planning that I want to raise—particularly provision for children. Four years ago the Government promised a bespoke one-to-one eating disorder service for young people in Cumbria. For young people in south Cumbria that promise remains nothing more than words. The specialists have not been recruited and the service still does not exist. I should love it if the Minister would tell me exactly when we can expect our young people to have access to the service. When will the promises be kept?

I welcome the Government’s commitment to preventive healthcare, set out in the NHS long-term plan. However, again, promises are not being fulfilled. In our area, cuts to the public health budget mean that the NHS in Cumbria currently spends only £75,000 a year on tier 1 mental health preventive care for children. That works out at just 75p per child per year. Proper investment in public health would ensure enough money for a mental health professional for every school and college, if we could recruit them, keeping young people mentally healthy and making sure that problems did not become so severe further down the line. It would also ease the burden on our massively oversubscribed local child and adolescent mental health services, and relieve the pressure on our brilliant but overworked teachers.

In our area, there is a problem with people moving out of NHS provision to work privately, particularly in the delivery of dental services. More than half of adults in Cumbria have not had access to an NHS dentist in the past two years, while one in three children locally does not even have a place with an NHS dentist. Much as with ambulances, the impact of the lack of a workforce of sufficient size is felt particularly acutely in rural areas. Insufficient NHS dentistry provision has resulted in families having to make ludicrously long journeys to reach the nearest surgery with an available NHS place. Often, people are unable to make those long journeys, or to afford to make them.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue about dentistry. There are frightening figures about my constituency showing a lack of take-up of NHS dental treatment among children in particular. That is a real worry. I wonder whether it is reflected in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and whether he agrees that we need at least to tackle NHS provision for dental treatment for young people. It is important.

[Tim Farron]

Yes, the hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point. I am certain it is felt across the country. If it is made too difficult to get to the nearest NHS dental surgery—if that is 60 or even 100 miles away, as has been the case on occasion for constituents of mine—people go without treatment, and so do their children.

Last November I managed to secure the agreement of the commissioners to increase the value of the contracts to NHS dentists in Kendal so they could see and treat more patients. “Brilliant,” we thought, “that is really good news.” When NHS England contacted our local NHS dentists they found that not one of them was able to take up their offer. I was told that the practices were already working to capacity within the staffing resources they had available, and were reporting difficulties in recruiting additional staff. Those staff exist, by the way. They are working in the private sector. The treadmill of a contract that is unfair to patients and dentists, and not fit for purpose, keeps them out of the NHS. As the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) says, that hits young people particularly.

The reasons for those difficulties include a contract that pays a set amount for a particular type of treatment, regardless of the number of teeth that a dentist treats. A dentist will get paid, on average, £75 for an entire course of treatment including six fillings, three extractions and a root canal. That is not enough to cover overheads. That is a serious disincentive to people entering NHS dentistry. It hits all areas, but particularly deprived areas, and has a massive impact on the size of the workforce. According to the Department’s website, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care is responsible for

“oversight of NHS delivery and performance”

but if he is unable or unwilling to intervene to correct such absurd commissioning we have to ask what real power he has to perform the role. That is the kind of systemic problem that adds up to the workforce crisis we have all talked about and which proper accountability would go some way to solving.

The website states that the other part of the Secretary of State’s role is

“oversight of social care policy”.

Social care policy is key to NHS workforce planning and supply in England. We all recognise that social care provision is in crisis, and that the crisis gets worse the longer we do not address it. As it grows, so does the pressure on the NHS, which is left dealing with the serious health problems of those who did not receive the routine care they needed. The Government cannot go on delaying simply because of the personal embarrassment of having failed so far. To be fair, they are not the only ones responsible. Neither are they the only ones who can come up with a solution. We need to reach across divides and look for a cross-party solution.

I have written to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and to the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), the shadow Secretary of State, to invite them to join me so that between us we can constructively use this deadlocked Parliament to reimagine and then redesign a social care system that could provide us with the care we might want for our parents, ourselves or, indeed, in the future, our children. I hope that we can work together to create a new deal for social care and a chance to turn this logjammed Parliament into one of the most productive in history.

The lack in the workforce has a profound impact in each of the areas I have talked about. Common themes and problems emerge: there is a lack of planning, as well as short-sightedness and a failure to invest in preventive care or to understand that providing healthcare is harder in rural areas, as are recruitment and retention. The Government must plan to overcome those specific challenges as part of their overall strategy. The Government, in not taking responsibility for the workforce crisis, are creating huge problems for generations to come. We need accountability, both for the current workforce crisis and to ensure that we invest in long-term solutions beyond the next Prime Minister, the next Government and even the next generation.

15:19

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Eleanor Smith) for securing the debate. Like everyone who knows the NHS workforce, I want to pay tribute to all the people I served, including in acute services, when I was a Unison official in public sector health. Some of the stories we heard today from colleagues who used to work as nurses or as other healthcare staff took me back to those times. I have talked to many a worker, particularly in mental health, and often they are overstretched. The work is arduous and they cannot go off shift, for the safety of the patients. More importantly, at times the environment is dangerous for staff, and I know many people, particularly in acute mental health, who have been subjected to violence in the workplace purely as a consequence of understaffing and lack of resources, yet they bravely battle on to look after the patients in their care.

There is a word that one would never expect to be associated with NHS services in a commonplace way, yet it is frequently associated with the demise or semi-demise, or shutdown or partial shutdown, of NHS units. That word is “unsafe”. It has been used time and again, especially by acute trusts, to justify the stoppage of particular patient-facing functions, including accident and emergency departments. In 2016 it was reported that in 60 towns, including Hartlepool, A&E units had closed, disappeared or been downgraded. A year later, in 2017, one in six was reported to be at risk, and a further 33 units, in 23 areas in the UK, were affected.

Even today, in the Tory heartlands of Richmond and Northallerton in North Yorkshire, the same is happening at the Friarage Hospital. It is not just A&E provision that is affected but the birthing unit at University Hospital of Hartlepool, and breast screening at nearby James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough. They have been mothballed or put into slow decline, with one common denominator: the services were deemed unsafe due to a lack of consultants.

The recruitment and retention of consultants is vital, of course, but so too is the recruitment and retention of nurses and other staff. I mentioned the birthing unit in Hartlepool because last year the maternity centre, at which there were once hundreds of births, reached an all-time low—just three babies were delivered at the unit, with a further five home births in the town. That so alarmed the local authority that maternity provision in the town came under specific scrutiny, with a view to promoting and boosting the use of the birthing unit and improving maternity services in the locality. In fact, the chair of the council’s audit and scrutiny committee—Conservative Councillor Brenda Loynes—is on record as saying that it was

“important to encourage more people to use the Hartlepool unit to keep the service in the town.”

Yet the will of the people, and the pride that comes from having the right to be born and registered in their own town, is continually being thwarted. Only this week a constituent told me that his partner, who was four days over her due date, had recently opted to have her baby at the University Hospital of North Tees in Stockton because there was not a consultant on hand at Hartlepool, even though they are part of the same NHS foundation trust. At her midwife appointment, his partner stated that it was a shame that there was not a consultant on hand in Hartlepool, as her preferred choice was to give birth there. The reply was, “Nobody can have their babies at the birthing centre, as they haven’t got the staff to cover it—not just consultants but midwifery staff.” To the people of my town, who thought that they had seen the back of cuts to hospital services, that will be a slap in the face.

There are 40,000 nursing vacancies in the NHS in England alone, according to the Royal College of Nursing and the other unions—GMB, Unite and Unison. We stand on the brink of a crisis in our NHS. As my brother Andrew has experienced several times, surgery and appointments are cancelled, and wards and units are closed, more often than not because of staff shortages.

Let me be clear: that is not the fault of the hard-working NHS staff, who cannot and do not drop everything at the end of their shift, in the face of short staffing and in the interests of patient safety. It is not the fault of the midwives in Hartlepool, who want to provide a service out of the local hospital. It is the fault of the Government, who have failed to get a grip of the issue and ensure that there are enough health and care staff with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time to care for patients. Their strategy for the NHS has to include taking responsibility for ensuring adequate workforce planning and funding. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care must have a clear and explicit responsibly for the growth and development of the healthcare workforce across England. Shame on the Government for not doing so and for running the NHS further into the ground.

15:33

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Eleanor Smith) for securing this important debate, and for her excellent and knowledgeable speech. I also thank all other hon. Members who made excellent speeches. They are all very knowledgeable, and some have had long careers in the health service, which really adds to the quality of the debate.

I pay tribute to the approximately 1.4 million members of the dedicated and hard-working NHS workforce, who are responsible for making our health service one of the best in the world. This debate is absolutely not about criticising them or the NHS, as others have said; it is about criticising the Government, who have continued to undervalue the NHS workforce. NHS staff too often find themselves working under unacceptable levels of pressure following nearly a decade of mismanagement and underfunding. They are consistently asked to do more with less. That pressure has led to abhorrent working conditions. Staff shortages in the NHS have spiked consecutively over the past few years. Recent estimates suggest a shortfall of about 100,000 staff, including 40,000 nurses and 10,000 doctors. If the trend continues, it is estimated that the shortfall will more than double by 2030.

We know that staff shortfalls put patients at risk. They prevent treatment and lead to a poorer quality of care. A 2017 study concluded that lower staffing levels can lead to necessary care being missed, patients being more likely to die following common surgery, and lower patient satisfaction, yet hospitals frequently have gaps in rotas and lack medical cover, which prompts significant concern about safety. Does the Minister believe that is appropriate care for patients and their families? If those substantial staff shortages continue, we will face even longer waiting lists and a deteriorating quality of care, and money ring-fenced for NHS frontline staff and services will go unspent due to lack of staff.

The effect of staff shortages is already evident. We have already seen care homes shut, an increase in agency hires, and chemotherapy treatments postponed because of a lack of staff at hospitals across the country. The effect that staffing shortfalls have on patients must not be underestimated, but we must also remember the effect on the staff themselves. NHS staff are consistently asked to take on additional responsibilities, to work harder, to do more intense shifts and to take on an excessive number of patients. Working in an already high-pressure environment without adequate resources or support not only puts patients at risk but damages the mental health of staff, leading to lower morale, poor wellbeing and a poor working life.

Working life is becoming intolerable for some of our NHS staff. It is no wonder that 20,000 nurses have left the NHS since 2010, and that the NHS has seen a 55% increase in voluntary resignations, with staff citing a poor work-life balance as their primary reason for leaving. The number of voluntary resignations due to health problems and stress has increased threefold in the past 10 years. The recent interim NHS people plan states that people are “overstretched” and admits that people no longer want to work in the NHS. What steps will the Minister take to ensure that NHS staff are retained once they are trained and experienced?

The standards of protection and safety that are rightly expected by staff and enshrined in the NHS constitution are being abandoned. On top of the cuts to staff wellbeing services that have consistently been made across England since the introduction of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, the number of understaffed shifts and overworked practitioners is forcing staff to take time off work and has led to increased requests for employed staff to take on extra shifts. That risks their health and can lead to increased locum use to cover staff rota gaps and vacancies. Staff shortages can have a significant impact on patient and professional safety.

It is welcome news that NHS Improvement will monitor trusts’ use of safe staffing guidelines. However, five years after the Francis report, the action taken on safe staffing simply is not good enough. The exodus of dedicated staff over the past 10 years, staff shortages, long waits for treatment, and frequent cancellations of operations demonstrate that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s suspension of work on setting evidence-based staffing rules in 2015 was a mistake.

One way of ensuring the system has the number of staff it needs would be for England to follow the approach that is taken in Wales and is planned in Scotland, which is to legislate for safe staffing levels, yet the Government have continuously refused to bring forward legislation on safe staffing levels. Will the Minister reconsider that?

It remains unclear who is responsible for interventions in the workforce supply, as the Government certainly seem to be abdicating responsibility. The Government must consider seriously the legal proposals put forward by NHS England and NHS Improvement to amend the Health and Social Care Act to ensure that the workforce crisis is meaningfully and explicitly addressed. Can the Minister explain what impact workforce accountability requirements would have on the current legal framework? Surely the fact that Scotland and Wales have explicit accountability for the provision of the workforce across health and social care but England does not will lead to unequal progress and quality of care across the country and, inevitably, to a postcode lottery for patients.

We cannot tackle this problem if the pool of talented medical professionals in Britain continues to shrink. Safe staffing is not just a numerical issue; it is about having enough staff with the right skills, experience and knowledge. The UK trains only 27 nursing graduates per 100,000 of population, compared with the average of 50 across other OECD countries. The Government have continually undermined incentives to join the NHS workforce, which is demonstrated by their treatment of junior doctors, their introduction of salary caps, their cuts to bursaries and funding opportunities for students, and their hostile approach to those who travel from overseas to join the NHS. Does the Minister recognise that restrictive migration policies act only as a further barrier to tackling the NHS workforce crisis?

Does the Minister also recognise that the Health Education England budget has been cut by 17% in real terms since 2013-14? Applications to nursing training have fallen by 30%, particularly since the nursing bursary was removed. The NHS long-term plan set out some ambitious targets, such as diagnosing 75% of cancers at an early stage by 2028, expanding emergency service care and increasing the availability of mental health services. However, without a long-term, fully funded staffing plan for the NHS, those targets are impossible to reach.

The Government’s warm words and commitments to increase the number of NHS staff working and in training “as soon as possible” are appreciated. However, legislative action must be taken to ensure that patients and staff are not exposed to unsafe staffing levels, which can have dire consequences for patient outcomes and workforce retention. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

15:42

[The Minister for Health (Stephen Hammond)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Moon. I look forward to responding to the debate, which has been interesting, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Eleanor Smith) on securing it.

I listened carefully to my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas). He will be pleased to know that I will be happy to write to him about podiatry; there are some interesting issues about new plans that are being put in place. He will recognise that there are more applicants for university nurse training places this year than in the previous year.

I was pleased to hear the contributions from the hon. Members for Lincoln (Karen Lee) and for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). I have responded to the hon. Gentleman about ambulances. He will know that there are eight posted in the Cumbria and Morecambe Bay areas, but I am looking with him at procurement there and will be looking to see where the North West Ambulance Service places those ambulances. He questioned whether promises are being fulfilled. I guide him to the implementation framework. He also talked about planning and investment. That is why there is a long-term plan and a people plan, and why moneys are going in to back them up. I also listened carefully to the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill).

I say to the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), let us start by agreeing with each other. I think both of us, and everybody in the Chamber and across the House, would recognise and praise the work of everybody who works in the NHS—I have been pleased to do that on every occasion I have responded to a debate in Westminster Hall or on the Floor of the House. The hon. Lady rightly mentioned that the interim people plan recognises the pressures that are being put on staff. What she failed to say, of course, is that not only do we recognise that but there is a whole chapter on addressing those issues and making the NHS the best place to work. She talked a little about junior doctors and nurses in training, failing to recognise that we have just done a deal with the junior doctors that includes a four-year pay deal and resolution of the number of issues they had with the contract review. There are now more applicants for nurse training places than there were in the previous year.

Like many other Members, I attended the RCN member-led event yesterday and heard at first hand about the aims of the campaign from many nurses working in the NHS. I met again a number of the people I met at an event for nurses in training back in November. At the heart of the campaign, as everybody recognises, is the RCN’s intention to ensure that the needs and requirements of the NHS workforce are prioritised. I fully support the RCN’s focus on the importance of the NHS workforce—recruitment and retention—but I am not convinced that legislation is always the answer, and I am not convinced that changing legislation will necessarily bring about the changes and focus the RCN seeks.

However, given that the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West secured the debate in recognition of the Secretary of State’s legislative duties in relation to workforce, it is probably right that I set out exactly what the legal position is. Through the Care Act 2014, the Secretary of State delegated to Health Education England powers to support the delivery of excellent healthcare and health improvement for patients and the public in England by ensuring that the current and future NHS workforce has the right number of staff with the right skills, values and behaviours at the right time and in the right place to meet patients’ needs.

The Care Act 2014 sets out in detail Health Education England’s remit and range of responsibilities, including its duty to ensure an effective system of education and training for the NHS and public health. Beyond the detail of the legislation, HEE provides leadership for the education and training system, and ensures that the workforce have the right skills to be able to deliver excellent healthcare in the right numbers. HEE was established to deliver a better healthcare workforce for England and is already accountable for ensuring that there is a secure workforce supply for the future. It has responsibility for promoting high-quality education and training that is responsive to the changing needs of patients and local communities.

The full range of HEE’s responsibilities, deliverables and accountabilities are described in its annual mandate, which the Secretary of State is required to approve. The most recent edition of that mandate and HEE’s latest annual business plan summarise what it is doing and its achievements. I am pleased to say that, as those who have had the chance to read it will have noted, the mandate for 2019-20 was published last week.

The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West made a point about legislation for safe staffing, but there is already a commitment to safe staffing and to ensuring that the NHS aims to be the safest healthcare system in the world, as it should be. Part of that must come from transparency in staffing levels, which is why the care hours per day data were introduced in 2016. The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 require hospitals to have the right staff in the right place at the right time, and appropriate staffing levels are a core element of the Care Quality Commission’s registration regime. As the hon. Lady will know, all providers of regulated activities must be registered with the Care Quality Commission and meet the registration requirements. The safe staffing requirement is therefore already there, and accountability mechanisms are in place.

[Mrs Hodgson]

The Minister says that accountability is already in place. Staffing levels may be required and desirable, but what happens when they cannot be met because the staff are not there? Where is the accountability?

[Stephen Hammond]

The hon. Lady will know that the CQC regime puts directives in place if staffing levels are not there. The local providers are then forced to address those issues. The accountability is there.

Beyond this issue, several hon. Members talked about exactly what we are doing now. There was recognition that the Government have put in place the long-term plan and the people plan. Any reading of those will see that our overarching plan for the health service looking forward recognises explicitly that getting the workforce supply right is key. That is therefore an important part of the long-term plan, which sets out the vital strategic framework to ensure that in the next 10 years the NHS will have the staff it needs. Nurses and doctors will have the time they need to care, work in a supportive culture and allow them to provide the expert, compassionate care to which they are committed.

Hon. Members rightly said that that will not be for this Government; it may well be for the Government beyond. However, the long-term plan rightly recognises by its very nature that what we need to put in place today must continue through the next 10 years to ensure that we have the staffing levels we need.

[Karen Lee]

A number of us mentioned the nursing bursary. The long-term plan talks about extra places for nurses, but if nurses are not being trained—the evidence shows that numbers have dropped by about 25% to 30% —clearly we cannot have them in place. I seek the Minister’s comments on reinstating a nursing bursary so that mature students and other students can afford to train.

[Stephen Hammond]

I will come to the number of nurses in training and related issues in a moment, to address the hon. Lady’s comments.

Associated with the long-term plan is the people plan, which clearly recognises, to reference what I said about Health Education England, the significant role of that organisation in securing the NHS workforce for the future. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care commissioned Baroness Harding, the chair of NHS Improvement, to work alongside and closely with Sir David Behan, the chair of HEE, to develop the workforce implementation plan. The interim people plan published in June set out the actions needed to change positively the culture and leadership of the NHS, making it the best place to work, which addresses the issues rightly raised about recruitment and retention.

The people plan commits to developing a new operating model for the workforce that ensures that activities happen at the optimal level, whether in individual organisations, local healthcare systems, regionally or nationally, with roles and responsibilities being clear.

On NHS workforce supply, hon. Members talked about demand for nursing and midwifery courses. The latest available evidence shows that we are starting to see a substantial rise. Data published only last week showed a 4.5% increase in applicants compared to 2018, with that being the second increase in as many years. To build on that, to ensure that we increase the pipeline of nurses coming into the profession, the Department has worked with NHS England to ensure that funding is available for up to 5,000 additional clinical placements for nursing degrees in England. The chief nursing officer for England has led work to identify and accelerate the availability of such clinical placements. It is vital that universities ensure that they take up offers and provide placements to ensure that places are filled at the end of this year’s recruitment cycle. That can happen.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I acknowledge the 4% increase—it is a small increase—but figures show that the numbers are still down 29% from 51,830 in 2016, when the bursary that covered training was removed. Even with that small increase, we are still 15,000 short of the figure when the bursary was axed.

[Stephen Hammond]

The figures show an increase in applicants this year. The hon. Lady will know that there are 1.4 applications for each place, and she will have heard me say that we are creating additional clinical placements to ensure that more nursing places are available. I recognise that there has been a drop, but I hope that she applauds the 4.5% increase in applicants this year. That is key.

A number of Members rightly talked about additional nursing roles and support. Health Education England is leading a national nursing associates programme with a commitment for 7,500 nursing associate apprentices to enter training this year. That builds on a programme that has already seen thousands start training in 2017 and 2018.

The RCN is leading work focused on the legislative framework for all professional groups. I should set out that work on the people plan also included examining options for growing the medical and allied health work- force, including the possibility of further medical school expansion, increasing part-time study, expanding the number of accelerated degree programmes and greater contestability in allocating the 7,500 medical training places each year to drive improvements in the curriculum.

For allied health professionals, the long-term plan sets out a commitment to completing a programme of actions to develop further the national strategy, focusing on implementation of the plan. There will be a workforce group to support that work and make recommendations, including on professions in short supply, which would address the podiatry point made by my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives. That is essential.

I do not think that anyone should be in any way complacent, and the Government are clearly not complacent. Many hon. Members will have heard me say that, as well as training the workforce for the future, it is important that we support and retain the current workforce. The interim people plan is committed to reviewing how to make increases in a number of factors. One such factor is national and local investment in professional development and workforce development.

There are examples of good practice in this area across the NHS, and I was particularly pleased when I visited Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust to see how a group of band 6 nurses had created their own in-house training programme, boosting management skills and leading to greater collaborative ways of working. That example of best practice makes the case for national investment in such programmes and for national funding for continuing professional development.

Everyone recognises the need to recruit more staff, but it is also fair to put on the record the fact that the number of staff working in the NHS today is at an all-time high—it is the highest it has been in the NHS’s 70-year history. Since 2010 there has been a significant growth in qualified staff. [Interruption.] I hear a sigh from Opposition Members, but it is worth making the point that there are now 51,900 more professionally qualified staff, including 17,000 more nurses working on wards. That is a simple fact; it is a piece of data, and we cannot get away from it. I do not suggest that one should be complacent in any way, but we should recognise that there are more nurses and doctors, and the Government are committed to delivering on our promise to ensure that the NHS has the right staff with the right skills in the right place at the right time to deliver the hugely valuable, excellent care that patients deserve.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the legal duties of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care for NHS workforce planning and supply.

Aquaculture

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sir David Amess in the Chair]

16:00

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the contribution of aquaculture to the UK economy.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I am very grateful to have secured this debate on a subject that is so important in my constituency. Figures from 2017 show that the value of farmed Scottish salmon alone is higher than the value of all species landed in UK ports, principally due to the high value of Scottish farmed salmon, which was worth just over £1 billion to the UK economy in 2017. It is our single highest earning food-type export and ranks second only to whisky in UK exports in the food and drink sector. Aquaculture as a whole is worth £1.1 billion to the UK economy, and 96% of that is based in Scotland.

Let us look at the broader picture for Scottish salmon. It is an industry that employs 2,300 people, who have an average salary of £34,000, and it generates well over 10,000 additional supply chain jobs and £216 million in tax. When it comes to carbon emissions per tonne of edible protein, aquaculture produces up to 9.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide per tonne of edible protein, compared with 46.34 for chicken, 56.4 for pork, and 337.2 for beef. That is understood globally: the global tonnage of captured fish has plateaued at 90-93 million tonnes per year, but aquaculture continues to grow. In 2016, it produced some 170 tonnes.

The sector is fast becoming one of the key ways of producing protein for human consumption. It is a matter of global food security, tackling hunger and sustainability.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. Aquaculture is important not only to the UK economy but to my constituency. Does he agree that the importance of aquaculture in the UK economy will grow once we leave the UK and the common fisheries policy? It is imperative that we support that essential industry. I want the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and Strangford to do well from it, to grow the UK economy, jobs and opportunities.

[Stephen Kerr]

I agree; there is a tremendous future ahead for aquaculture. My constituency has always been at the centre of aquaculture. The historic fishery at Howietoun was created by Sir James Maitland in 1873. Many of the methods used today in fish farming were developed there. It was part of the Institute of Aquaculture at the University of Stirling until recently, when it was taken over by Michelle Pearson, who is a model social entrepreneur. She has hugely impressive plans for the environmental and ecological enhancement of the site.

The Institute of Aquaculture at the University of Stirling has a growing global reputation as a centre of excellence, and the university has a long history in this field. Even as long ago as when I was a student there in the 1980s, Stirling had a formidable reputation in aquaculture and that continues to grow. It is truly global in its scope. The university is a pioneer of aquaculture as a solution to the challenges of feeding a growing global population. Its contribution should be celebrated. It has done significant work on aquatic animal health, focusing on aquatic infectious diseases, studying how diseases spread and how to fight them with vaccines and other systems.

Let us not shy away from that issue. Significant environmental issues need to be addressed, including the destruction of natural ecosystems, the acidification of water environments and riparian ecosystems, the general pollution of water that could be used for human consumption, invasive non-native species and the spread of disease to wild populations. Those are real accusations that have been levelled at the sector, but they are surmountable.

Given the current value of this industry to the Scottish and UK economies, and the vast potential promise and future prosperity connected to the industry, we are rightly investing and must continue to invest in this sector. We must push on with the necessary research and development and give the champions at the University of Stirling the space and the resources they need to develop solutions to those challenges. That is why, as part of the Stirling city region deal, the UK Government are rightly and properly investing in the Institute of Aquaculture on the campus of the University of Stirling. The UK Government have already committed to invest £17 million through the deal, to support research by building brand new, state-of-the-art facilities in Stirling.

The University of Stirling campus is also home to the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre, led by the excellent chief executive Heather Jones. It works to ensure that commercial opportunities from aquaculture research are fully realised. Its first five years of activity are expected to create additional sales of £284 million. It brings industry and academia together, from research and development to retail. It houses the ecosystem of a whole industry, by bringing the whole industry together in one place, acting as an engine, delivering real benefits in the sector, developing markets and partnerships, growing the number of jobs, growing sales, promoting best in class practices, driving up standards and securing the industry for the future.

I strongly urge the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to co-invest in the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre, to bring those benefits to the whole of the UK. The Institute of Aquaculture and the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre are invaluable assets to Scotland and the United Kingdom. They have the potential to become a much bigger global player—a world centre of excellence, putting the UK at the forefront of this important and valuable agenda. I welcome the creation by BEIS of a new seafood innovation fund, announced in last November’s Budget; it is a welcome recognition that new technologies and innovations can drive economic growth and productivity across the sector.

As I said, capture fisheries and aquaculture add disproportionate value to the Scottish economy, notably the latter: Scottish salmon is worth more than all wild fish landed into UK ports put together, and it represents 93% of UK aquaculture. Given those facts, I call on the Minister to commit to ensuring a proportionate distribution of innovation funding to aquaculture, giving it at least 50% of the total, and at least 50% going to Scotland.

[Jim Shannon]

I am aware, and I think the hon. Gentleman is aware, that farmed salmon infect some wild salmon—I have read proven cases in the papers in the last 10 days. Does he fear that the rise of farmed salmon could be detrimental to wild salmon?

[Stephen Kerr]

That is exactly why I request that the Government proportionately invest in Scottish aquaculture, particularly in research at the Institute of Aquaculture at the University of Stirling. There are solutions to the problem that the hon. Gentleman raises, but they require innovative, scientific research breakthroughs, which come about through the funding of world class research, such as that at the University of Stirling. We need to encourage business investment in research and development. The innovation centre that I referred to earlier is important because it brings together the entire sector.

The UK industrial strategy sets out the bold ambition to increase UK investment in research and development to 2.4% of GDP. That is a good objective. The Government have firmly put research and innovation at the heart of their industrial strategy, setting a grand vision for the UK to become the most innovative country in the world. We need to see better co-ordination of innovation in the sector; that is the focus of this debate.

As we have seen already, the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre in Stirling has created a £36 million programme of research and development, with £22.8 million from commercial partners and £1.3 million from university finance. Many companies are investing in this valuable sector, but we need it to work better together.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is speaking with his usual combination of insight and eloquence. He draws attention to a critical matter that I know will be close to the Minister’s heart, and that is the marriage between research and development, skills and macroeconomic strategy. If we are really serious about productivity, we have to invest in the competence of the people who work in aquaculture, agriculture and horticulture, and the necessary innovations that he has described.

[Stephen Kerr]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend; there is a connection between investment, the resulting gain that we make in national productivity and the benefit that will then accrue to the whole UK economy. Innovate UK, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, the Scottish Government and Marine Scotland all need to work together to create a shared strategy of supporting investment in research and development in this area.

At the very least, we need that shared strategy to be agreed in a spirit of co-operation. The industrial strategy calls for innovation across the board to boost our national productivity, as my right hon. Friend suggested, but it also calls for a new technological revolution in agriculture and food production. UK aquaculture is an innovative sector; there is a big opportunity to utilise big data, sensors, imaging or robotics. It is at the forefront of the productivity challenge, but it needs more investment and interest from the UK Government.

I ask the Minister whether DEFRA will consider investing UK funds to help to support the growth of a vital UK industry such as farmed Atlantic salmon? This is far too important a sector to be devolved and forgotten about. We need an explicit acknowledgment that UK aquaculture is a high-tech, high growth, low carbon food source and direct future funding through the industrial strategy challenge fund to support further innovation in the sector. That would also give us an opportunity to address some of the other issues I have spoken about in terms of environmental sustainability, which can and will be solved through the power of science and innovation.

There is no doubt in my mind about the importance of this sector and I hope there is no doubt—I am sure there is not—in the mind of the Minister.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman speaks a lot about the importance of productivity and R&D and about investment. He will be aware that in the event of a no-deal Brexit Scotland’s salmon industry may need four times as many export health certificates as now, which has the potential to cost the industry £15 million. Can he tell us how he thinks that should be addressed?

[Stephen Kerr]

That is a very good intervention; the hon. Lady is absolutely right. Government and business need to be fully prepared for any eventual outcome in relation to Brexit.

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

We are right on top of that. We understand what would need to be done in the event of a no-deal Brexit in terms of the export health certificates. We are well on top of that and understand exactly what other work would need to be done.

[Stephen Kerr]

One of the encouraging things about interacting with Ministers from DEFRA is the state of readiness in that Department, which is led by an excellent Secretary of State and ministerial team, in relation to the potentiality of any Brexit outcome.

[Deidre Brock]

I am delighted to hear that from the Minister and to receive those reassurances. I do not know how much influence the Minister has in terms of local authorities. I know about one department that examines export health certificates in a local authority in Scotland that has been cut considerably. I do not see how it is possible for the Minister to give us complete assurances about export health certificates.

[Stephen Kerr]

It is illuminating and apposite that the hon. Lady draws the attention of the Chamber to the cuts that the SNP Scottish Government have inflicted on Scottish local authorities. In fact, the UK Government gave a parcel of money that was intended to be passed to local authorities to help them be ready for any eventual outcome in relation to Brexit. The Scottish Government thought better than to pass that money on to Scotland’s local authorities and decided they had other spending priorities.

That is not surprising given the fact that this is a Scottish Government that borrows to the hilt on the nation’s credit card on the one hand, then has dramatic underspends from year to year on the other. They are frankly incompetent when it comes to managing Scotland’s economy and Scotland’s public finances. I am afraid that they are incompetent in just about every field we look at in Scotland; the sooner we can shine a bright light on the performance of the Scottish Government in this matter, and every other matter, the better, because then we can talk about real substance in terms of political issues that impact on the quality of the lives of constituents.

To conclude, I have specific asks for the Minister. Given the fact that Scottish farmed salmon alone is worth over £1 billion to the UK economy, we have got to give aquaculture its proper place. I look forward to the Minister’s reply on the issues I have raised. I would like to hear how the Government will ensure Scotland and the aquaculture sector benefit from the seafood innovation fund; that is key. The UK Government is working with the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre in Stirling, but what more can be done to support that valuable work and promote a UK-wide approach, harnessing our global reputation in this sector? What more can be done to ensure closer working across and between Governments to develop a shared vision and strategy for innovation in the aquaculture sector? Putting aquaculture at the heart of our food security policy and acknowledging what a tremendous innovative and high-tech sector it is, how much more would be possible with the right level of investment and partnering?

In short, the whole point of my speech is to ask the Minister to support the idea of creating a UK-wide sector deal for aquaculture. Can we have one?

16:09

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) for securing this debate on such an important subject. I am excited to have so many Conservative colleagues from north of the border shining a bright light on the failures of the SNP Government there.

Aquaculture is a critical part of the UK’s food industry. As we have heard, the value of the UK’s aquaculture produce is over £1 billion and the industry employs over 3,000 people. Before I respond in full to the debate, I note that policy on the aquaculture sector is, and will remain, devolved to the four UK fisheries administrations. I use the word sector with a proviso: just as with fishing, I take the view that when we talk about the sector, we actually mean sectors. Aquaculture is rich and diverse, comprising a range of activities. In the UK as a whole, this ranges from farmed salmon—Scotland’s largest non-liquid export—through rainbow and brown trout to the cultivation of marine shellfish such as oysters and mussels, and more exotic species such as king prawns, with which I know there are exciting developments in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Stirling is clearly already at the cutting edge of technology in this area.

I am acutely aware of the key contribution that aquaculture specifically makes to the Scottish economy; it had a sales value of £765 million in 2016 and employs more than 2,000 people. Of course, it is not just those people directly employed in aquaculture who depend on it. The wider impacts across the supply chain are estimated to be around £620 million in gross value added and 12,000 jobs. The value of aquaculture produce also extends beyond Scotland. According to Seafish figures, its value in the rest of the UK is likely to be around £100 million in revenue and 1,700 jobs.

Aquaculture is a sector with a bright future. Global production, as we have heard, has been growing by nearly 7% per year and it is making an increasingly important contribution to global food security. Overall UK production has risen more rapidly. The biggest percentage growth is in Northern Ireland, as I am sure the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) will be pleased to know, but the largest growth by volume is in Scotland. We recognise that the Scotland is currently leading the way in UK aquaculture, and I hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling says about sharing out the budget proportionally. He makes a good case. England has set out its the aquaculture growth opportunities in “Seafood 2040”. I encourage the Seafood 2040 Aquaculture Leadership Group to engage with Scottish counterparts to seek opportunities for learning and working together.

[Sir John Hayes]

On food security in particular, my right hon. Friend will know that the best guarantee of food security is to shorten the distance between production and consumption. A significant contributor to that is public sector procurement. Will he give a commitment in this Chamber, as a result of this excellent debate secured by our hon. Friend the Member for Stirling, to look again at how we can maximise consumption of British produce in aquaculture, agriculture and horticulture through changes to public sector procurement?

[Mr Goodwill]

Certainly, leaving the European Union gives us more flexibility on procurement, but I would like British suppliers and British public services—prisons, schools and so on—to buy British food not because they have to, even though it is more expensive, but because it is the best quality and the most cost-effective source. The way to get more British food on to British plates is to ensure that it is the best and that it is delivered at a cost-effective price.

Henry Dimbleby is leading the first major review of the UK food system in nearly 75 years. He will investigate across the entire food chain, carrying out an integrated analysis of our food system, resulting in a new national food strategy to be published in 2020. Only a couple of weeks ago, Henry attended an aquaculture workshop for the public sector, academia and officials hosted by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I strongly encourage more engagement from the sector and devolved Administrations in this important undertaking.

It is only right to acknowledge the environmental and sustainability challenges that the aquaculture sector faces. They have been brought to the fore by two recent parliamentary inquiries in Scotland, which culminated in a debate in the Scottish Parliament that demonstrated broad cross-Chamber support for the sector, but emphasised that progress must be made on known issues such as sea lice.

At the end of March 2019, 111 aquaculture projects had been approved for funding under the European maritime and fisheries fund, with a value of approximately £14.5 million.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

There are huge economic opportunities in aquaculture—indeed, Scottish salmon is one of our biggest food exports—but, as my right hon. Friend says, there are some environmental consequences. One of those is the plight of the wrasse, a species of fish found in Cornish waters. Is he aware that Scottish vessels go to Cornwall, kidnap live wrasse from Cornish waters and take them to the North sea to eat sea lice on their farms, which has a big impact on wrasse? Will he ask his officials to look at the impact on and the plight of the Cornish wrasse?

[Mr Goodwill]

I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend did, as my predecessor, in getting to grips with these issues. He is a hard act to follow. I was aware of the wrasse being kidnapped and taken to harvest the lice, and of the impact that has on the ecology in the south-west of England.

[Deidre Brock]

I am a little surprised to hear the Minister talking about the industry leadership group here, because there is one set up in Scotland, the Aquaculture Industry Leadership Group, which seeks to double the economic contribution of the sector and double the number of jobs to 18,000 by 2030, as opposed to 2040, which I think is the ambition of the group down here in England.

[Mr Goodwill]

I give the Scottish Government credit for its achievement where credit is due. I hope the groups will work across the four Administrations to ensure that we do not duplicate effort, but work together. At this point, I must pay tribute to the huge investment in the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre through the Stirling and Clackmannanshire city region deal, which is a clear demonstration of the Government’s commitment to aquaculture.

[Stephen Kerr]

Does the exchange we have just witnessed not underpin the importance of having a UK-wide approach? Is not the answer a UK sector deal for aquaculture?

[Mr Goodwill]

We need to be careful that we do not intrude on the devolution agreements, but where we can work together, we should. The best way to work together would be to have Ruth Davidson in Holyrood; I think she would be much easier to work with than some people currently inhabiting that place.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend makes the point about working together, which is very important, and mentions the Stirling and Clackmannanshire city region deal, where the UK Government are also investing in the International Environment Centre. The centre will work with the University of Stirling on these kinds of UK-wide impacts and will not only help Scotland and the whole of the United Kingdom, but lead the world.

[Mr Goodwill]

It is clear that the UK is at the cutting edge globally of progress in this area, and I am pleased to recognise that.

I reassure those in the industry that EMFF funding will continue to be available until 2021. In December, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced an additional £37.2 million for fisheries and aquaculture over the next two years. He also made a commitment that the Government will put in place domestic long-term arrangements to support the industry from 2021, through the creation of four new schemes comparable to the EMFF to deliver funding for each part of the UK. In addition to the EMFF funding, the UK Government’s seafood innovation fund is a three-year, £10 million research and development fund, which I can confirm applies to the whole of the UK. The fund will focus on investing in innovative research and development, helping to improve both the environmental sustainability and the productivity of the fishing and aquaculture industries, and will be launched imminently.

The Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre at Stirling University, which connects industry with academia, facilitates knowledge exchanges and funds projects, plays a key role in addressing the sustainability challenges through innovative solutions. Further investment of £17 million through the Stirling and Clackmannanshire city region deal to develop the new National Aquaculture Technology and Innovation Hub is welcomed.

Important points have been raised in today’s debate, which I hope I have covered. I am optimistic about the future of aquaculture. I want to see a sustainable, profitable fishing and aquaculture industry, to have the greatest possible tariff-free and barrier-free trade with our European neighbours, and to negotiate our own trade arrangements around the world. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State met representatives of the Scottish aquaculture and salmon industry just last week to discuss this issue. We look forward to continuing our engagement with the sector to achieve our common goal: that exports of top quality UK aquaculture products should be able to continue in all scenarios.

Delivering a negotiated deal with the EU remains the Government’s top priority, but like any responsible Government we are planning for all scenarios, which must include leaving without a deal. We acknowledge industry concerns about the impacts of a no-deal EU exit, particularly on the continued ability to rapidly transport a premium product to the EU. We and the devolved Administrations have published guidance on the revised export requirements and will ramp up engagement with businesses to ensure that they are clear on those requirements.

Hon. Members have raised many important topics today, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to close this debate. I have heard voiced today the passion for further developing this dynamic and innovative industry. We have heard about the valuable contribution that aquaculture is making to the UK economy, boosted by Government investment in research and innovation in Stirlingshire. We have heard about the innovative recirculation aquaculture system farm that has recently opened in the region. I will be interested to see what role that technology plays in the expansion of the UK aquaculture industry, and look forward to having an opportunity in future to visit the facility to see the research that is going on and how we can not only reduce food miles in domestic production, but have low-carbon protein delivered to our plates. We have acknowledged the sustainability and export challenges that the industry faces and how the Government are working to support it through those challenges. Overall, it is an exciting time for UK aquaculture and I look forward to seeing the industry continuing to grow and thrive.

Question put and agreed to.

Small and Village School Funding

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Sir David Amess (in the Chair)]

Just before we start the next debate, there are a lot of colleagues here, and it would be very helpful if, through a note, those who have not already written expressing a wish to speak could let me or the Clerk know, so that I can make sure that no colleagues are disappointed.

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered funding for small schools and village schools.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. This debate is about two things that overlap but are not the same: small schools and village schools. My focus will be firmly on primary schools. About a fifth of schools are in villages, and on average they have just over 100 pupils, compared with an average of about 400 for schools in large cities. These village schools are good schools; only about 8% are not “good” or “outstanding”, compared with 11% nationally and about 15% in towns and small cities. They are also much-loved institutions, at the heart of their community, and they are where the community gathers for special occasions. Just the other day I was at the Church Langton Primary School fête watching the children do some intense Japanese drumming. I could equally have been at the Foxton family fun day or any number of other wonderful occasions in my constituency.

Village schools are also where people meet each other and the community organises. For example, the campaign for a road crossing in Lubenham in my constituency is being spearheaded by the children of Lubenham Primary School, and I am being bombarded by their very neatly handwritten letters. It is no wonder that people feel that a village loses its heart if it loses its school.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Like his constituency, Cornwall has many village schools. They make sure that our villages survive, because by having the school there, a younger generation of people come into the village, renewing its life. Without those schools, there is a real risk that those villages could become dormitory towns for second homes or for people who have retired.

[Neil O'Brien]

My hon. Friend is completely correct. However, rural schools, partly because they are small schools, have been much more likely to close in recent years. I thank the Department for Education for the historical data it provided to me on this, and Pippa Allen-Kinross at Schools Week for helping me to analyse it. Since 2010, 61% of schools that have closed and not reopened in another form have been rural schools, meaning that rural schools have been twice as likely to shut as urban ones. Since 2000, 150 rural primaries have closed.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing the debate. What he outlines in his constituency and other parts of the United Kingdom mainland is replicated in Northern Ireland. I know that the Minister does not have responsibility for this, but for the record, is the hon. Gentleman aware that since September 2010, 98 of the 230 schools that closed in Northern Ireland—42%—were rural, according to Schools Week analysis? Does he recognise the difficulties that creates for rural dwellers and socially isolated children?

[Neil O'Brien]

The hon. Gentleman is completely correct. This challenge affects all of the United Kingdom. For rural schools that closed, the average walk to the next nearest school is 52 minutes, which in practice means driving or getting a bus. There is a cost to the taxpayer for this transport, and a cost to parents and children for driving a long way, so there are all kinds of reasons why we should want to preserve our village schools.

I will turn to small schools more generally, including those in urban areas. I am grateful to the House of Commons Library for digitising older data for me that revealed a dramatic transformation in the scale of our schools over recent decades, and a decline in the number of small schools. The number of pupils at state primary schools in England is roughly the same as in 1980, but the schools that they attend are completely different. In 1980 there were 11,464 small primary schools with fewer than 200 pupils, but in 2018 there were just 5,406. The number of such schools has halved over the decades.

In contrast, in 1980 there were 949 large primary schools with more than 400 pupils, but in 2018 there were more than 4,000, so the number of large schools has quadrupled. The number of really big primaries with more than 600 pupils increased from 49 to 780, while there are now more than 100 what I call “super jumbo” primary schools with more than 800 pupils, which often have playtimes in shifts and hundreds of staff. This is a huge change in the nature of our primary schools, and it is visible in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland too. In fact, since 2002 Wales has seen the most dramatic decline in the number of small schools, followed by the north-west and Yorkshire.

This huge change in our primary schools has come about without any real discussion or political choice. It seems to me a move away from the natural small scale for small children, and there is no obvious policy rationale for it. Small schools are not bad schools. Schools with 200 pupils or fewer are just as likely to be “good” or “outstanding” as other schools. In fact, schools with fewer than 100 pupils, which account for about one in eight schools, are more likely than average to be “good” or “outstanding”, so this is not about academic standards.

I think two different things are driving it. The first is planning, which is outside the DFE’s remit. We do not build new small schools, and we do not make developers pay enough for the infrastructure needed for new housing. Instead, our bitty, piecemeal development allows developers to get out of paying for new schools, and we cram more pupils into existing schools, building classrooms on playing fields. Secondly, wider catchment areas mean more car journeys to those schools, and because builders often put schools in residential areas, there are a lot of cars driving into streets that were never intended for them, leading to a lot of congestion. People tell me that makes their village no longer feel so much like a village.

However, the DFE could do some things about the declining number of small schools. We should increase the lump sum element of the national funding formula. Do not get me wrong: the national funding formula is extremely good and has meant that the funding rate per pupil in my constituency has gone up twice as fast as the national average. It helps underfunded areas such as mine to catch up with the national average, although there is still a long way to go. It would be very helpful to increase the lump sum—the part of the national funding formula intended to help small schools.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

Is another problem with the national funding formula that the system of gains, caps and floors—in place for transitional reasons, which we all understand—compounds historical unfairness? While 3% of a very small budget is still quite limited, 1% of a very large budget is still quite a lot for those schools to enjoy.

[Neil O'Brien]

I think my hon. Friend is correct, and I think we both want to see a faster transition to a fairer overall settlement. However, I want to focus on the point about the lump sum.

Leicestershire County Council was historically a strong supporter of small schools and had a lump sum of £150,000 per primary school. In the national funding formula, that is only £110,000. When consulting on the national funding formula, the DFE acknowledged that that number was lower than the average for most local authorities. As local authorities converge on the national funding formula, as they should, the pressure on small schools may intensify. The proportion of the core schools budget going through the lump sum declined in the last year, and the gap between income and expenditure is much smaller for small schools, indicating a financial pressure. In fact, larger schools have about twice as much headroom per pupil. Small schools are definitely feeling the pinch.

I hope and expect that, under the next Prime Minister, we will see a big increase in school funding. A good way of delivering that would be to increase the lump sum within the national funding formula. About a fifth of primary schools get more than 20% of their income from the lump sum, and for them an increase could make the difference between staying afloat and closing. There has been some discussion about increasing sparsity funding as an alternative, but I am a bit sceptical. Fewer than 6% of primaries get sparsity funding, and only 1% get the full amount; a number of small schools in my constituency that are under pressure would not be eligible. That is one reason why only a third of local authorities have included a sparsity element in their local formulas. Increasing the lump sum, if I could beg the Minister to do that, would be simpler and better. For a little more than £800 million, we could take the lump sum back up to £150,000 and get my village schools back to where they were.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I support his last point. One of my local authorities, North Lincolnshire Council, made a policy decision not to close any small schools, so the schools in my constituency with 45 or 50 children will remain open. However, the key issue that my local authority has asked me to raise with the Minister is the core funding costs. Admin costs, in particular, for a small school of 46 or 50 children are not dissimilar to those for a school of 100 to 150 children, because the same admin function is still needed. I therefore think that the point my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) is making is really important, and I want to offer him my full support and say that it is exactly the same point that my local authority is concerned about.

[Neil O’Brien]

I thank my hon. Friend. He is right and has brilliantly teed up something that I intended to say: the future for small schools and rural schools can be very bright. There are two reasons for that. One is that more and more people want to live in villages, and technology allows people to do that and work from home, rather than having to live in a major city. The other reason is the growth of multi-academy trusts—rather an ugly phrase for families of schools. The growth of those families of schools is enabling small schools in effect to combine the advantages of being a small school—the human scale and the connection to the community—with the advantages of being part of something bigger, which are being able to share resources, people and back-office functions and to learn from one another. Therefore, if we get behind them, village schools can have a really bright future.

I was in one such school just the other day in South Kilworth in my constituency. In many ways, it was a very traditional scene. I was watching the new school hall being built, thanks to school condition improvement funding, and the children were practising their maypole dancing. The fields were ripening around us and the sun was shining. It was a beautiful scene. We could have been time travelling, but that school is a modern school. It is part of a family of schools, which are helping one another to improve. It is a really good school and exactly the sort of thing that we want to keep in our communities. There are these very exciting opportunities opening up for small schools, but we need the Minister’s help to relieve the financial pressure on them if we are to fully achieve the potential of small and village schools.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sir David Amess (in the Chair)]

Order. The winding-up speeches will start at 5.15 pm, so there is about five or six minutes per person.

16:41

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) on securing this important debate. My constituency has two secondary schools with fewer than 200 pupils, 10 primary schools with fewer than 50 and, by my reckoning, three primary schools with fewer than 30 pupils. They are all really good schools. They are small because the area that they serve is sparsely populated and we live huge distances away from one another. However, small schools are enormously vulnerable.

If a school with a decent-sized population to serve has a bad Ofsted report or a difficult period of leadership, or if there is a dip in the birth rate, that does not kill it, but if a small village school that is absolutely vital experiences any one of those things, that could be the end of it, and the damage to the community is immense. Just two summers ago, we lost Heversham Primary School, which had once had 60 kids. It had a period of difficulty, went down to 11 or 12 kids and was closed. The ongoing damage to that village and its community is huge. Small schools are vulnerable, yet utterly vital.

In my time in Parliament, and in my time as a parent, a local school governor and what have you, and as somebody who worked in education, in teacher education, for many years, I have never known schools’ budgets to be as tight as they are today, particularly for small schools, because they do not have the wherewithal to get through difficult periods. I think that what happens is that because headteachers keep quiet, the Government take advantage. Headteachers keep quiet for two reasons. First, teachers do not like to get overly political by talking about the level or lack of funding that their school has to cope with.

Also, headteachers do not want to risk any competitive advantage that they have. If I, as a headteacher, say that I have had to sack three teaching assistants this year, pupils or parents looking at my school will think, “Well, I’ll go somewhere else instead.” I think that all of us, but particularly the Government, take advantage of headteachers’ perfectly understandable reticence about talking about the state of play at the schools they serve so admirably.

I therefore want to pick out what was said by the 16 schools in the Kendal area that wrote a collective letter to all of us. They said that Westmorland and Lonsdale had seen school funding cuts of £2.4 million, which was equal to a cut of £190 per pupil per year, and that that had led them collectively to reduce the numbers of teaching and non-teaching staff and support for the most vulnerable pupils; to make reductions in small group work for children who need additional support, reductions in teaching resources and equipment, reductions in subject choices in secondary schools and reductions in the range of activities at primary schools; and to cut back on repairs to school buildings and so on.

One head of a small school told me that his school income had gone down by £204,000 since 2014. Staffing costs had gone up by £232,000 in the same period. He had got rid of teaching assistants and reduced administrative support time and had had to increase charges for school meals, the breakfast club, music tuition and so on. There were reductions in catering hours and in midday hours. Anecdotally, another head brings her husband in at the weekend, outside his own job, to do all the maintenance and janitor work for the school, because it cannot afford anybody to do that full time.

Underpinning all the problems is the ongoing issue of special educational needs funding, which hits schools of all sizes, but particularly the smaller schools, because proportionally it is a bigger blow. The Government make schools provide and pay for the first 11 hours of special educational needs support. That means that they hit and they hurt and they punish those schools that do the right thing and they reward those schools that do not take children with special educational needs. That is wrong and it needs to be changed.

The quality of experience of a young person at a small school is so obviously so wonderful and so treasured and something that parents will travel out of area to take advantage of. The quality of teaching and leadership and the diversity of skills that are needed to teach in and to run a small school are that much greater, but the failure to fund schools properly across the board hits smaller schools the worst, even though smaller schools, especially in Westmorland and Lonsdale, are the best.

16:46

[Gillian Keegan (Chichester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) on securing this important debate. Access to a high-quality, fulfilling education should not be based on geography. Children do not choose where they live and grow up, so it should never be a barrier to their fulfilling all their ambitions.

The Government have taken important steps to level the playing field through the national funding formula. I recognise that. It moves us towards rebalancing some of the disparities in the old system. We are moving away from more than 100 different funding models across the country, which meant that there was little fairness and no transparency whatsoever. The national funding formula allocates an increase in funding for every pupil in 2018-19; and for the historically underfunded schools, such as those in West Sussex, increases could not have come sooner.

The changes to the funding model will ensure that funding is provided in a more balanced way across the country, not least because for the first time the money that schools receive is comparable across counties and local authorities. However, a key challenge for rural schools, both in West Sussex and across the country, is pupil numbers. This is a more precarious funding model for rural small schools, as there can be significant annual variation in the number of children coming into each year. Some schools have become very worried when just one family are moving out of the area, as they rely on every single child for income.

[Sarah Newton]

In areas where there are armed forces personnel, such as my constituency, it can be a real problem if, when they are deployed overseas or sent to different parts of the country, the family moves from a small school. It seems very unfair, when people are serving their country and doing the right thing, that the primary schools are adversely affected in that way.

[Gillian Keegan]

That is a very good point. I had not thought of it, but of course in that kind of area there will be a massive impact as children move from place to place.

I am aware that, for the most isolated schools, the new funding formula has a sparsity factor that aims to provide some funding certainty for rural schools, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough said, very few schools actually qualify for that. It does not cover the financial needs of these schools.

The fixed sum for primary schools in West Sussex has dropped from £150,000 to £110,000, so each rural primary school needs to find more than 12 new pupils to keep the same level of funding as they had. That is incredibly difficult, because it is not possible to get 12 new pupils from these areas. The challenge is on top of the fact that the Chichester district is the fifth lowest funded local authority for primary and the sixth lowest funded for secondary. In the Chichester district, many of our schools fall within the South Downs national park, where new homes are not being built; they are few and far between. That only exacerbates the pressures on our precious rural schools. At Harting Church of England Primary School, the headteacher now predicts the future intake based on families living in the village and surrounding areas, and it will continue to decrease. That is a problem.

I understand that many rural small schools are now taking on a greater quantity of children with special educational needs and complex behavioural issues who have often been excluded from other schools. They do that to bolster numbers, because each child brings with them a pocket of funding. Although that funding allows schools to keep their doors open, it does not cover the subsequent additional support that these schools need from teaching assistants.

I recognise that funding for special educational needs has risen from £5 billion in 2013 to £6.3 billion this year. However, schools still face challenges in addressing the rising levels of special educational need, not least in West Sussex, where 13.5% of all pupils require SEN support, which is well above the national average of 11.6%.

Having looked at the school budgets, to me the challenge is clear. Most schools spend more than 80% of their budget on teachers and staff. That is a real challenge, because little is left for essentials, pencils, books and digital equipment. My local schools are using other funding streams to survive. Loxwood Primary School has a weekly cake raffle to raise money for iPads and a wish-list website where local businesses, friends of the school and parents donate items. I checked that website the other day and I saw everything from a paper guillotine to paint brushes and books. The school has just crowdfunded 15 laptops thanks to the generosity of a local charity, the parent teacher association and the parish council. That work is inspiring, but it should not be necessary. Schools such as Loxwood are the beating heart of their communities. The teachers should spend their time educating the next generation, not fundraising.

My constituency is packed with fantastic schools and dedicated teachers and parents who go above and beyond for their schools and students. They maintain exceptional standards despite facing pressure. In advance of the upcoming spending review, I encourage the Department for Education to continue to engage closely with the schools and local authorities, to develop a deeper understanding of the pressure these schools face, and to consider the level of income required to maintain such excellent standards.

These schools are the beating heart of communities up and down the country. They offer the best education to young children and they are the centre of all kinds of community activities. They ensure that our precious village life is maintained.

16:51

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) on securing this important debate on small and rural schools. I thank the Minister for everything he has done and will continue to do. He has listened to many MPs on this side of the Chamber lobbying for more to be done for our schools, but we also recognise that almost 2 million more pupils are in “good” or “outstanding” schools under this Government and during his many years as Schools Minister. I want to put on record my appreciation of him.

I have frequently spoken of my schools’ need for more funding. I have a 200-square-mile constituency—which you have visited, Sir David—75% of which is an area of outstanding natural beauty, so we have many small village schools. I am concerned not only about funding for all of those schools, but particularly about Broad Oak Primary School, which is under threat of closure. That is a new experience for me in my four years as MP for Bexhill and Battle. The villagers, pupils, parents, governors and staff are hugely concerned about what will happen. It is a classic case of there not being enough pupils. As was mentioned, the reduction in the block grant makes it harder for smaller schools to continue. Broad Oak Primary School has a capacity of 140, but approximately 80 pupils. That is a problem for my area: we have many schools but not enough pupils.

However, those small schools play a vital role in the community. Broad Oak is a good example. Because it is a small and nurturing school, more pupils with special educational needs can find the right environment for their needs there, but that adds to the cost. While schools receive £6,000 per student with SEN, they often spend an extra £6,000 from their own budget, to provide the proper required education. That compounds the challenge for Broad Oak.

I would appreciate some guidance from the Minister. What can I do to mount a case? I understand that where there are not enough pupils and a school is no longer viable, difficult decisions must be made to support the other schools. At the same time, however, small is good and small needs nurturing.

[Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)]

It is vitally important to note the contribution that small schools make to rural communities. They can be the heart of a village, holding it together. If the school closes, the village effectively dies. People do not want to move there, because there is no school. They are vital to keeping communities alive. We might save money in the short term, but in the long term it will cost more.

[Huw Merriman]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. A village school is the heart of that community. As villages have lost other services, the school is often the only bedrock in a village; without it, we lose the heart and soul of the community. That is why I am concerned about the village of Broad Oak.

Part of the rationale in the consultation by East Sussex County Council is that a number of pupils travel from outside to attend the school. I am a Conservative; I believe in choice. We have championed the ability of pupils and parents to choose the school that is best for them, so that should not be used as an argument for closing the school.

If we require pupils to travel further—pupils from some villages will have to travel to other schools—we have to increase the school’s budget for transport. One cost often knocks out another. Further, if pupils rely on the bus service, they miss out on the rich, after-school learning and sporting activities, and the social part of school. Private schools are able to deliver that, but in rural areas we are hampered by the bus service: students have to leave at a certain time otherwise they will not get home. That is a big concern.

I look to the Minister for assistance, to help me make the case that small schools are good schools, so that the villagers in Broad Oak will continue to be able to educate their children in their local school, with pride in their community.

16:56

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak, Sir David, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) on securing the debate.

I have 56 schools in my constituency, and 40 of them certainly have fewer than 100 pupils—unfortunately, some as low as 30, or perhaps just over. That is a real challenge. The problem, as has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) and others, is that taking that school away means that the community suddenly ceases to function, and that is exactly what has happened in my constituency.

About 18 months ago, the St Martin-in-Meneage Primary School was closed. That was not as a result of what we might call natural wastage—pupils were not leaving the school in year 6, but were taken out by parents because of problems in the school. Everyone concerned was slow to react and it therefore became unsustainable. We lost a perfectly good school and an excellent facility for the local community. As soon as that happened, families moved out and people considering moving in changed their minds.

Other schools in the area are now full, and we have an empty school building that still has to be maintained for that purpose. However, it is much more difficult to reopen a school than to save it. I did all I could, as did the commissioners, but unfortunately we could not win the argument.

I agree with many things that have been said, and I do not want to repeat all of them, but I will make some quick points. The first is on capital funding for small schools. I go to a school every Friday whenever possible. The main issue that I see, and which I hear about from staff and children, is the quality of the estate, and that needs concentrated work.

The Minister’s commitment to the subject has already been mentioned, and he has been fantastic. He has been to my constituency considerably more times than any other Minister—to be fair, I except my immediate constituency neighbours, as they live right next door. Early on he visited St Erth Community Primary School, which is in need of a hall, as he might remember. The school has grown, and done everything it can to try to make its existing building work, but it does not have a place in which the school can meet. That reduces the opportunity for assemblies and all the other things we had in our school halls when we were small. Other schools in my constituency are in the same situation, and we cannot find a solution that will allow them to build a school hall. I am keen to hear from the Minister about any capital that might be available for making schools fit for purpose with a clean, dry and warm environment, good toilets and facilities such as a school hall.

It has already been mentioned that although a small school, with 30 pupils or slightly more, may not be able to afford the teaching assistants that it requires, it will tend to attract more children with special educational needs because of its size, the real commitment of its teachers, and their wonderful work. That puts enormous pressure on the schools; I do not like to say it, but they are victims of their own success. They do a great job—I visit them, and they are great fun to be at—but the funding to properly support each child to get the very best start in life is just not there. As Conservatives, we want our children to have all the opportunities available. I know that the Minister understands that, but we need to win the argument with the Treasury and the Chancellor, whoever that may be in a week or two.

Also mentioned earlier were the armed forces covenant and the impact on schools of having armed forces children. If a child’s parent is in the armed forces, a veteran, in the regular forces or a reservist, the school benefits from a premium. However, it does not benefit if—as is often the case in Helston in my constituency—the child’s parent is in the merchant navy, because they are not described as being in the armed forces community. As I argued yesterday in our debate on defence spending, the experience of modern-day merchant navy personnel means mums and dads can miss the whole summer holidays because they are away at sea, and they are exposed to threats from pirates and rogue nations. The premium is there to help schools to support children in distressing situations. I would argue that one way of supporting schools and funding them for the work that they do so well would be extending the armed forces covenant to include the merchant navy. I would be very interested to see what the Minister can do to make that case to the Ministry of Defence, and possibly the Treasury.

Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) made a very important point about funding. We expect new money for education, certainly by next April, and we will be grievously disappointed if it is not there. It is really important for money to go where it is most needed. My hon. Friend made the important point that if the growth in funding follows the national funding formula, some schools will benefit far more than others. A very small school that has been underfunded, as happens in Cornwall, can expect far less growth. I would like the Minister to consider that point, as I am sure he has already, because there is a case to be made that funding needs to be targeted at the schools that most need it.

In Cornwall, we have quite a perverse situation. Cornwall Council defends its actions, probably rightly, but to ensure that children with special educational needs are supported, it has had to take funding away from our schools—not only the high needs block funding, but some of the baseline funding. That has left every single school—the 56 schools in my constituency and all the others around the county—with less funding per pupil for a sustained period. That means that when the national funding formula comes into place, our schools will continually and consistently be underfunded until we get the fair and happy funding that we all desperately look forward to.

I need not say any more; I think I have made my point. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to speak.

17:03

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) on securing this critical debate, and I join all hon. Members in their praise for small schools, village schools and rural schools. My constituency has a great many: about 70% of Witney’s schools are village schools or rural schools, and 90% of them are rated “good” or “outstanding”. That is a tribute to the outstanding work to all the teachers who have worked so hard to make the quality of education so high. I declare an interest: my wife is a governor at one of those schools—Bladon Church of England Primary School, the village primary school where I live.

As hon. Members have said, we cannot overestimate the importance of a village school. It is the centre of the community—the beating heart, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) said. It might have been where our parents, our grandparents or we ourselves went to school, and it may be where our children go. It is a crucial way to build links with the local community. What makes such schools so special? As has been said many times, their nurturing and caring nature and the amount of attention that individual schools can give results from their relatively small size. However, that is also one of their great challenges.

I have been to the majority of schools in my constituency and spoken to teachers, parents and governors. I have visited assemblies, seen the projects that pupils take part in and attended the school fêtes that often happen during the summer. I have had conversations and really tried to understand the issues in detail. As I am sure the Minister and many hon. Friends will understand, school funding is a complicated issue that repays detailed study—I have certainly tried to study it. Having had all those conversations with teachers, because I very much value that close relationship, I think I can make some suggestions.

West Oxfordshire is an f40 area—a rural area that historically has been underfunded. I do not think that it is terribly helpful to make any cheap political points about cuts; the Minister will tell us that there have not been cuts, because core per-pupil school funding has been protected for the duration of the spending review. However, I make it absolutely clear that my primary schools—my small schools, rural schools and village schools—face significant cost pressures.

There are a number of reasons for those pressures, which I hope the Minister can help with. Some of them may be a result of funding very well-deserved teacher pay rises. Pension costs were another major concern, although I understand that they are now covered. Several hon. Members have mentioned special educational needs provision, which is critical and of increasing concern for our small schools. There has also been a reduction in the spending powers of local authorities; many things that were once covered are no longer free, and schools are expected to pick up the cost. It may not be direct, but the net effect is the same: our excellent schools are trying to do much more, to less effect. In some cases, that may be due to pupil numbers, which are critical because all these schools are functioning on the tightest of budgets. From speaking to the teachers, I am clear that they are making every penny count, certainly in my constituency in west Oxfordshire, but the funding is on a per-pupil basis. That can be a problem, because if the catchment area is relatively small—if it is a village, a rural area or perhaps even a small town—a fluctuation in pupil numbers can cause real concern.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas), who mentioned military forces. A quarter of the entire Royal Air Force is in west Oxfordshire, based in Carterton and the whole area around RAF Brize Norton. It is certainly a concern, not just for village schools but for Carterton primary schools, that those personnel are posted, so the schools do not necessarily know from one year to another how many pupils they are likely to have at a particular stage. That causes significant budgeting challenges. Even for the best-run school in the world, not knowing how many pupils it will have makes things harder. In some areas in my villages, there may be a low birth rate, an ageing population, or families moving in and out because they are in the armed forces or for other reasons. That has had a major effect in several villages in my area.

The effect of multi-academy trusts has been very helpful in many cases. The Oxford Diocesan Schools Trust is shared by my constituency and the Prime Minister’s, as she was kind enough to recognise at Prime Minister’s questions last week. The trust has 12 schools in my constituency—small schools such as Bampton Primary, Leafield Primary and Wootton-by-Woodstock Primary. They are doing a fantastic job of providing outstanding education, but all such organisations, whether they are small schools on their own, local authority-run or part of a multi-academy trust, face uncertainty about pupil numbers.

If we are looking for ways to support small schools, one idea that has not yet been suggested is a dedicated funding stream for small schools—let us call it a small schools grant or a small schools loan—whereby schools can bid for funding if they have low pupil numbers or other temporary budget pressures. If a school usually has stable numbers but it has a year in which there is a dip, that will cause it great problems, but if it could apply for assistance from the Government or the local authority by way of a dedicated funding stream, that would be of great assistance, because it would give that school the certainty it needs for that year, which may help it to deal with factors such as a low local birth rate. Of course, it will also deal with money in the long run, because the local authority will not have to worry about things such as schools closing and having to relocate children or support them in that time. The cost to the community of school closures is, as other hon. Members have said, absolutely devastating and must be avoided at all costs.

I am very grateful to the Minister for coming to Westminster Hall to respond to this debate. We are all passionate about our local schools and my suggestion about a dedicated fund is just one that might assist them. I also echo the call made by my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives when he said that we must ensure the funding is in place. Of course I make the plea for more school spending in the spending review, although I appreciate and understand that that is a plea that I should direct at the Treasury and not at the Minister, but we must ensure that it goes to the right place. Our small schools—rural and village schools—provide outstanding education and we must provide the funding they need; I look forward to seeing that funding in due course.

17:10

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

As ever, Sir David, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien) on securing this important debate; it is very important that we talk about the funding of small and rural schools. I also congratulate him on the really powerful speech he made in the main Chamber last year about one of his favourite teachers, who had passed away. For many of us, speeches in the main Chamber do not often stand out, but that was a really memorable one. For him personally, education and standing up for his constituents is very important, and it was great to be in the main Chamber for that speech.

The Minister for School Standards and I have had this debate before. In fact, I said to him today that we should go for a drink some time, because at the moment I see more of him than I do of my wife. That is because we spend so much time either in the main Chamber or here in Westminster Hall discussing school funding cuts and budget pressures. If we are not discussing West Sussex, Cornwall, Stoke-on-Trent, Chichester, or Westmorland and Lonsdale, then it is Liverpool, Merseyside or Manchester—week after week after week.

I want to put this debate in context for Members from rural constituencies who are passionate about their schools, so I say to the hon. Member for Harborough that Leicestershire has had to take £51.9 million out of its budget since 2015. That is probably the root cause of most of the reasons why primary schools in rural or urban areas are facing problems at the moment. Many of the concerns about this issue have been really well articulated today, so well done to all Members who are standing up for schools in their constituencies. However, all the challenges for schools are amplified for small schools, as we have heard this afternoon.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) on his speech, in which he said that small schools struggle because they do not have the economies of scale that some multi-academy trusts or local education authority schools can achieve in urban areas. I think he said that small schools lacked the “wherewithal”.

The hon. Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), whose constituency is in West Sussex, shares a local authority with the Minister. I have to say with some passion that that authority has had to take £61.3 million out of its school budget since 2015. The Minister will come back and say what the Government have done since 2017, but this is the stark reality. As the hon. Lady said, too few schools seem to receive money from the hailed sparsity formula, which was supposed to be the silver bullet to help schools in rural areas. Maybe the Minister can tell us, through his officials or in writing, how many schools in rural areas are receiving money via this fabled sparsity formula.

It was interesting that the hon. Lady spoke really passionately, as she often does, about a school—I think it was Loxwood school—that had to set up a donations web page to fund a guillotine. That is the state of school funding in our day and age on the Minister’s watch. There are parent teacher associations. Who was it who said that schools are the “beating heart” of communities? I think it was the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas). They are, particularly in rural areas. Unlike many schools in urban areas, schools in many rural areas have PTAs, or they have parishes that help out, but that is the state of school funding; it has had to come to rely upon PTAs, donation web pages and companies helping out to buy basic products. Of course, one of the other problems that rural schools have is that, being in rural areas, they do not often have huge companies around them, as schools in cities often do.

The Minister has a huge problem. I forget the exact statistic, but somewhere around 100 schools—I will check out the exact number; it has been put on the record before—containing about 70,000 pupils are not brokered. That is another problem that schools in rural areas face. The Government are struggling, through these multi-academy trusts, to get enough brokers to broker those academies. So we literally have to thank the Lord for the Church of England, because if the Church of England did not have its thousands of schools in our rural areas—I also thank the Church for its schools in our cities—this Government’s policy would be in real difficulty.

The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), which is on the other side of Sussex, also contributed to the debate; his constituency is in an area where £37 million has been lost. It is always an honour to play football with him, and recently, we played at Stamford Bridge—I think it was in a game to “Show Racism the Red Card”. It was the only football game that I have ever played in where my boots were cleaner coming off the pitch than they were when I went on. He is an excellent footballer and I congratulate him on standing up for his schools.

The hon. Member for St Ives spoke about Cornwall, where £51 million has been taken out of the schools budget since 2015. He made a hugely valid point about special educational needs practice, which is often overlooked in these debates, even though it is an issue in urban areas, too. Where there is a school with really good SEN practice, parents want to get into that school, but the school has to put the money up front and is disadvantaged because of it.

Sorry—it was the hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts), in his excellent speech, who talked about rural schools being the “beating heart” of the community. He is right, but I have to say to him that Oxfordshire schools have lost £37 million. He did not want to hear about the cuts, but I am afraid that he has to hear about them from me, because no amount of national funding formula, no amount of sparsity funding and no amount of special funding for rural schools—even though such funding may be a good idea that the Department might wish to look at; I will let the Minister respond to that suggestion—will get away from the fact of the cuts that have happened across the whole of Oxfordshire, in addition to what he said about the pension rises and pay rises, which we still do not have certainty about, and the SEN provision.

The Minister knows that I sound like a broken record on schools funding, but it appears that no matter how many times it is raised or whoever raises it—including his colleagues on the Government Benches—this Government are not listening to the grave concerns of hon. Members, leaders and teachers about the impact of school funding cuts.

It is really interesting. I do not want to proselytise on a party political point, but the leadership candidates of the Conservative party—sorry, what is the Health Secretary’s seat?

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

West Suffolk.

[Mike Kane]

I thank the Minister. The right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) pledged £15 billion of new schools money in that leadership debate. All the candidates know, from courting Conservative Members over the last few weeks, what the No.1 concern is for Conservative Members, and they have responded to those concerns in the leadership debates.

Across the country, our schools are experiencing £2.7 billion of cuts. There are concerns from teachers, including thousands of headteachers, many of whom protested right here in Parliament, and there are cuts to special educational needs and disability provision, which is an even more acute challenge for small schools, as they cannot amass economies of scale when they are buying additional support and resources.

Statistics from the Department itself show that the number of children and young people in England with SEN, or with education, health and care plans, rose by 34,200, an increase of 11% from 2018. However, research by the National Education Union has found that special needs school provision in England is down by £1.2 billion because of the shortfall in funding increases from the Government since 2015. No doubt the Minister will come back in his speech with what has happened since 2017.

The Government’s own data shows that as of January 2018, 4,050 children and young people with EHC plans or statements were awaiting provision; in other words, they were still waiting for a place in education. Over 500,000 children are now in a super-sized class, and there is an unquestionable recruitment and retention crisis in our schools, with the Government having missed their own targets five years in a row. For the second year running, more teachers are leaving the profession than joining it. That has a huge impact on rural areas, especially if we take into account the price that teachers have to pay to afford a house in those areas, not having had an effective pay rise in 10 years. That has really affected the ability to get the quality and calibre of teachers required in rural areas.

Rural areas also suffer—[Interruption.] Do I need to wind up, Sir David?

[Nick Gibb]

You do.

[Mike Kane]

I am terribly sorry, Sir David; I was just hitting my stride.

Career progression is more difficult in rural areas and for rural teachers, as cities often offer an agglomeration of impacts so that teachers can develop professionally.

Under Labour’s national education service, we will invest properly in our schools. Investment will be delivered under Labour’s fully funded and universal vision for a national education service that will cover all our schools, both rural and national, that need funding put into them—not just at the spending review, but today.

17:21

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to reply to this debate under your beady eye, Sir David. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien) on having secured this debate, and on his excellent opening speech. The Government recognise the importance of rural schools and the need to maintain access to good local schools in rural areas, which, as hon. Members have said, are so often at the heart of their communities.

I also echo my hon. Friend’s recognition of the strong educational standards in many rural schools. Although we know those schools face special challenges, we also know that they rise to those challenges and perform well. In terms of attainment, both primary and secondary, rural schools have on average outperformed urban schools over the past three years, and 89% of rural primary schools have been rated either “good” or “outstanding”.

We want to ensure that school funding levels support an education system that offers opportunity to every child in this country. To continue to support all schools, including those in rural areas, the Government have prioritised education funding while having to take difficult decisions in other areas of public spending, as we seek to reduce the unsustainable annual budget deficit from 10% of GDP in 2010—some £150 billion a year—to under 2% now. As a result, core funding for schools and high needs has risen to £43.5 billion this year, and high needs funding has risen to £6.3 billion. However, we recognise the financial pressures that schools face, as described so well by my hon. Friends the Members for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) and for Witney (Robert Courts).

My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) reminded me of our visit to St Erth Community Primary School, which I enjoyed. I remember being lobbied by its school council, which was almost as compelling as my hon. Friend in making the case for capital for the school hall. Although I cannot pre-empt decisions that will be made as part of the forthcoming spending review process, we are of course looking to secure the best deal possible for our schools, both revenue funding and capital funding. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough recognises the decisive and historic move towards fair funding that this Government have made by introducing the national funding formula. The NFF is now directing money where it is most needed, based on schools’ and pupils’ needs and characteristics rather than accidents of geography or history.

Schools are already benefiting from the gains delivered by the national funding formula. It has allocated an increase for every pupil in every school, with significant per-pupil increases for the more underfunded schools, including those in rural areas. For example, as my hon. Friend mentioned, funding for schools in his local area of Leicestershire has increased by 5.5% per pupil compared to 2017-18. That is equivalent to an extra £31 million when rising pupil numbers are taken into account. As he stated, we do direct funding to provide additional support for small and remote schools, especially those in geographically challenging areas that do not have the same opportunities to find efficiencies as schools elsewhere.

The national funding formula provides a lump sum for every school as a contribution to the costs that do not vary with pupil numbers. That gives small schools certainty that they will attract a fixed amount each year, in addition to pupil-led funding. Although there is general agreement that schools face fixed costs, the evidence available suggests that there is no agreement on the scale of those costs, or that they are the same for all schools. In the previous system, local authorities awarded their schools very different lump sums, ranging from £48,480 to £175,000, and there was no obvious reason why local authorities chose those different amounts. It is important to maximise the funding available for the factors that are directly related to pupils’ characteristics, so following our extensive consultations with schools, we set the lump sum at £110,000 for each school within the national funding formula. However, the beauty of a national funding formula is that we can tweak it from year to year.

The formula also includes a sparsity factor, which allocates an additional £25 million specifically to small and remote schools. When the lump sum is coupled with that sparsity factor, it provides significant support for the small and remote schools that play such an essential role in rural communities. A small rural primary school eligible for sparsity funding can attract up to a total of £135,000 through the lump sum and the sparsity factor. Of course, we continue to look for ways in which the national funding formula can be improved; in particular, we are considering how to improve the methodology for calculating sparsity eligibility in future, and we will consider the suggestion my hon. Friend the Member for Witney made of a dedicated rural school funding stream.

Local authorities have a duty to provide sufficient school places for all pupils in their area, including reviewing provision where populations have grown or declined. Consequently, local authorities have the power to close maintained schools; that is a local decision, and neither Ministers nor the Department play a role in the process. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) will be pleased to know that given their importance, we have a presumption against the closure of rural schools. Although that cannot mean that no rural school will ever close, the case for closure must be strong and in the best interests of educational provision for pupils in the area. When a local authority proposes the closure of a rural school, it must follow a well-established statutory process that takes full account of that presumption against closure. That includes a representation period, during which all those affected by the proposals can submit their views and suggestions.

To enable my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough to respond to the debate, I will conclude. Our rural communities are part of the historic fabric of this country, and the schools that serve them are fulfilling a vital and valued service both locally and nationally. I believe that by working closely together, we can make sure we deliver on our ambition to give every child a world-class education, wherever they live.

17:28

[Neil O'Brien]

I thank all Members who have taken part in today’s debate. I know that many Members are not in the building this afternoon, so I am particularly grateful for the eloquent and thoughtful speeches we have heard. I join my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) in strongly praising our brilliant Schools Minister, who is a relentless and hard-working champion for higher educational standards. If the next Prime Minister has any sense, he will be promoted; if he has very good sense, the Minister will be kept in place, because he is doing a good job.

I thank the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) for his praise for my previous speech in the Chamber. I thought his own speech would have been stronger if he had acknowledged that there has been a real-terms increase in spending per pupil since 2010—an amazing achievement given that we inherited the biggest budget deficit since the second world war. Perhaps if he finds himself in a position of power in future, he can avoid dropping one of those again.

I thank all the Members who have taken part. We heard important points about capital and buildings from my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas), and important ideas about smoothing out budgets from my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Robert Courts). My hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle spoke about the importance of not relying on a bus, because children miss out on after-school activities. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) about some of the things small schools are doing to cope in an authority where there has been an even bigger drop in the lump sum.

Small schools and village schools are an important part of the fabric that makes up this country. I do not want to wax too lyrical, but I genuinely think that if we continue to lose those schools at the rate we have seen in recent decades, in my lifetime, we will be losing an important part of this country.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered funding for small schools and village schools.

17:30

Sitting adjourned.