Music Education in England

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[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.

English for Speakers of Other Languages

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Ms Dorries. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) not only for securing this debate, but for her incredibly insightful opening speech, in which she very articulately made the case for ESOL funding.

Only a week ago, I had the pleasure of showing a group of ESOL learners from Halifax around Westminster, as part of a trip organised by Halifax Opportunities Trust to complement their studies. They were a wonderful group of people, each with a different story to tell, but all of them enthusiastic about the opportunity to gain a better understanding of their adopted Parliament, how it works and its relationship to their lives. While they are still studying English, it was their ability to ask questions and understand the answers that empowered them to truly experience Parliament as participants, rather than simply as observers along for the ride.

However, although almost everyone understands the value of being able to speak English, ESOL provision is harder to access than ever before. As we have heard, Government funding for ESOL in England fell from £212.3 million in 2008 to £105 million in 2018—a real-terms cut of almost 60%. Unsurprisingly, Calderdale College in my constituency has had to reduce its ESOL provision by 50%, despite an increase in the number of learners seeking it. We expect the publication of the national ESOL strategy in the autumn. With YouGov polling suggesting that 91% of the British public believe it important that refugees and others who come to the UK should learn to speak English, we know that there is overwhelming support for investment in ESOL as a means for that to happen.

Here in Westminster, I vice-chair the all-party parliamentary group on social integration, which the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) mentioned. In 2017, we published our “Integration not Demonisation” report, which argued that the ability to speak English is one of the key principles underpinning healthy and successful integration within communities. As part of the call for evidence for that report, it was a pleasure to welcome the all-party parliamentary group to Halifax, where the chair and I met with those involved in integration work.

Office for National Statistics research published in the report suggests that approximately 800,000 people living in the UK at the time of the 2011 census could not speak English—2% of the population. In some areas with large numbers of immigrants, including Newham, Brent, Tower Hamlets and Leicester, that can be as high as 9% of the population. Further to this, 22% of Muslim women in the UK self-report that they are unable to speak English well.

To address that, the report recommended that the Government should introduce a national strategy for the promotion of English language learning, which would unleash the economic potential of immigrants, enabling newcomers to participate fully in British life and ensuring that everyone in our society can benefit from meeting and mixing with others from different cultures. We went so far as to say that enrolment in English language classes should be compulsory, acknowledging the Casey review findings that, in some communities, regressive cultural and family norms and practices can prevent the most vulnerable from learning English.

We also asserted that the ability to learn English should be a right extended to everyone. We argued that, while the Department for Education should lead that work, it should be delivered with input from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and other relevant Departments to ensure that it was as effective as possible.

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

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and a lot of good points. The Government found £10 million in 2016 for Syrian refugees to undertake ESOL classes. If there is money for Syrian refugees, surely there is money for all the communities that need it.

[Holly Lynch]

My hon. Friend makes the important point that we recognised the importance of Syrian refugees being able to speak English, but we have not delivered the funding to extend that programme to other newcomers to our country. We should reflect on that.

Ahead of the publication of the national ESOL strategy in the autumn, I was glad to see that the Government’s immigration White Paper, published in December last year, commits to

“an ambitious and well-funded English language strategy to ensure that everyone in this country, especially those with newly recognised refugee status, are supported to speak the same language.”

However, these proposals contain no new funding for English language teaching, which the strategy will have to address later this year. The ability to speak English is important for many reasons, not least, as I have mentioned, because it is integral to integration. If someone cannot speak English, their ability to find work, meet and converse with people and access everyday services is severely restricted. For someone to be trapped in a world where they cannot interact with those around them will leave them desperately isolated and vulnerable.

There is strong public support for ESOL, not least because it would be a sensible investment. Research undertaken by Refugee Action—I am pleased to see members of the team in the Gallery—shows that it would cost £42 million a year to ensure two years’ ESOL for each refugee arriving in the UK, which would in effect be fully reimbursed to the taxpayer within the first eight months of that individual’s employment at the national average wage.

The Casey review looked at opportunity and integration. Published in December 2016, it made it clear that good English skills are fundamental to integrated communities and particularly important as a means of empowering marginalised women and other socially isolated groups. However, when it comes to working with those groups in particular, as much as I welcome learning in the community, I am sympathetic to some of the points already made about how effective learning in the community needs to be. I have seen good examples of that and I have seen bad examples.

The Women’s Activity Centre in Halifax, which does a great deal to support older, isolated women, predominantly from the Kashmiri community, for whom the inability to speak English is a significant contributor to loneliness and isolation, was approached by an organisation that offered to come in and deliver ESOL. The organisation came in, signed everyone up, took some photos and then brought in an eastern European interpreter who unfortunately could not communicate with that specific group of learners at all. After two lessons, on realising that this approach was futile, they failed to return, letting all those women down. When funding for ESOL is so precious, knowing that dedicated funds can be wasted in that way, delivering no social benefit to those who most need it, is painful for everyone involved.

I have been working closely with Sisters United in Halifax—truly inspirational women who are working alongside Refugee Action to support its “Let Refugees Learn” campaign. Refugee Action has called for refugees to have a minimum of eight hours formal, accredited tuition a week for their first two years in the UK, which, as I have mentioned, would cost £42 million a year, although that would be repaid within the first eight months of a refugee’s being in work. Alongside this, I lend my support to Refugee Action’s “Lift the Ban” campaign, which seeks to promote integration and facilitate opportunities to improve language skills by allowing refugees to work while awaiting a decision on their status.

ESOL provision represents value for money. We know that the demand is there, but at the moment the provision is not. If we are looking for ways of ensuring, now more than ever, that we foster healthy, integrated communities, investing in ESOL would be a really constructive way of supporting those aims.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine West]

Absolutely: it provides a crucial line into a more purposeful existence as a member of the community. There is a real opportunity here, particularly for older women who might not necessarily have had education through to 18 or 21 in the way that many of our younger women do now. I often think about my own grandmother. She left school at 14 and had some quite unusual views, many of which we had clashes over. I often think that if she had had the opportunity to go to school to the age of 21, she would have made a fuller contribution in her different roles.

A lot of women, including those who escaped violence and conflict and who therefore stopped school very young, have this amazing lifeline through our colleges and places such as the JAN Trust, and with the support provided by Citizens UK. Further education colleges have been cut by 50% since 2010 and they are really struggling, but in my constituency, the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London is doing a fantastic job to provide a lifeline, not just for women but for all adults, to escape that terrible prison that people find themselves in when they do not speak the language of their host country.

I want briefly to mention the issue of teachers’ pay. Six months ago, a fantastic teacher of English as an additional language came in to lobby me. She is a constituent, but teaches at City and Islington College, which has now merged with Westminster Kingsway and the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London. She said that if she taught in a school, she would be paid way more than for teaching ESL. I hope that the Minister will look carefully at the wage level, because in these difficult times it is important that we assist people to stay in these important roles in the public sector. Those on a relatively low wage also have lower pension contributions, and sick leave and annual leave entitlements can also be different. In general, that two-tier approach to teaching must be stopped.

I reiterate the suggestion made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) that funding to support ESL be continued, or that the Government at least pledge to continue that important work. It would be terrible to lose that. There are important campaigns, such as “Lift the Ban”, which my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax mentioned, which aims to assist asylum seekers, once they have made their application, in being able to work more flexibly, and to start as quickly as possible. It would be a shame for English language classes not to go alongside that.

I moved a private Member’s Bill a couple of months back and was extremely impressed by the range of people I met who would love to be in work. As we are all aware, many refugees come from well-trained backgrounds, perhaps with a medicine degree, or have backgrounds in pharmacy, teaching or engineering, and they arrive in the UK without any English. If they could learn English as quickly as possible, they would be able to work. The “Lift the Ban” campaign calls for the Home Office’s occupation shortage list to be much more flexible and open.

I have raised that issue with the Home Secretary on two occasions in the House, and he said that it was under review. I also raised it with the Immigration Minister, who said that the Government were looking at it. In the way that our wonderful civil servants are used to passing on little notes to other Departments, I hope that the Home Office will look at this again with some urgency, particularly as we have people who are often very well qualified, but find it difficult to find work quickly.

[Alex Sobel]

Prior to entering Parliament, I helped the Cardigan Centre in my constituency to gain lottery funding for an ESOL café. Because they were asylum seekers, many of those people could not access ESOL elsewhere. They were learning English to try to enter work, but they could not, because of the ban. A lot of them had backgrounds from the occupation shortage list. There is a demand and there is this waiting. They cannot get statutory ESOL and have to use charitable ESOL. Those people face both those issues.

[Catherine West]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. There is also a terrible issue with transport to colleges. For destitute asylum seekers, it is very difficult to manage on the current rate of £5.37 an hour. It is doubly difficult when they need to pay for expensive buses, particularly outside London. I understand from recent debates in the House that buses outside London are more expensive even than in our high-value city. There are costs associated with getting to lessons, and this all needs to be looked at in the round.

I thank you again, Ms Dorries, for allowing me to speak with very little notice. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston again, and all other colleagues who have made such fantastic contributions to the debate. I look forward to hearing the shadow spokespersons and the Minister’s response.

Special Educational Needs

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and I congratulate the hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) on securing this important debate. Today we have here both the hon. Member for York Outer and my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), or inner York—their constituency names reflect their Brexit politics, in a way. Who says nominative determinism is dead?

York has lost £9.9 million of education funding since 2015-16. Such losses are one reason MPs across the country are seeing their Friday surgeries full of parents who are stressed and worried about their children not getting adequate SEND—special educational needs and disabilities—provision. We have heard some great speeches today, from my hon. Friends the Members for Stroud (Dr Drew), for York Central, for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) and for Bury North (James Frith).

Interestingly, the Minister has already talked about this subject in the House, in answer to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) in an Opposition day debate. This is what the Minister said at the time, in relation to evidence on children getting SEN provision in our schools: “In some special schools 100% of the children attending are there only because their parents were able to fight through tribunal. She said”—she continued—“that is actually a class issue, because it is white, middle-class parents who are able to go to a tribunal and know how to work the system and where to get support.” She herself said: “What about all those children whose parents do not have the same cultural capital and do not know how to go out there and fight for them? They are not in these residential special schools, so where are they and what is happening to them?” That is the state of this Government and of our SEN provision, with the Minister herself admitting that the system is absolutely broken.

Children with special educational needs or disabilities are bearing the brunt of the Government’s continued cuts to our schools and our local government budgets. This Tory Government have cut more than £1.7 billion from school budgets since 2015. We recently had a three-hour Westminster Hall debate on a petition—I think you were in the Chair, Mr Davies—during which dozens of Members highlighted the cuts to their local schools. Local government is warning of a shortfall in SEND support of over half a billion pounds this year. These punishing cuts have consequences.

In 2017, over 4,000 children with SEND were left without a school place. In 2016, for the first time in 25 years, more children with SEND were educated outside the mainstream, some because they were subject to informal exclusions and some because they were being home-schooled. The stark fact is that this Government have not bothered to keep track of these children, so we do not know where they are or what support they are getting. Over 9,000 children were off-rolled from our school system last year, many of whom had disabilities and special educational needs.

We have a Prime Minister—this makes me angry—who has said that there is no link between police cuts and the rise in knife crime on our streets, and that there is no link between off-rolling in our schools, so not knowing where our children are, and the rise of knife crime in our society. Most people with common sense will think that is ridiculous. Our police forces are talking to MPs not about child sexual exploitation, but about child criminal exploitation. When we do not know where these children are, that provides a fertile breeding ground. The Government will not match Labour’s commitment to make sure that children have to stay on the school roll, so that we know where those children are. No wonder we have the problem of county lines, drug mules and all the other things that go with that.

The crisis in our education system, in recruitment and retention, and in funding cuts across the board has led to a situation in which the number of SEND children facing fixed, permanent or even illegal exclusions remains totally disproportionate compared with their peers, with three quarters of the pupils in pupil referral units having special educational needs, and children with SEND accounting for around half of all permanent exclusions in 2016.

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

I have a number of pupils in my constituency with SEN who have EHCPs. The schools are not sticking to those plans, making it dangerous for those pupils to be in school and making parents feel that they have to withdraw them. The schools do not have the resources and cannot follow the plans.

[Mike Kane]

I taught in a school and I know that the plans cost money, but that money is not there. Schools are worried about employing cleaners and, according to The Times last weekend, we have headteachers cleaning the loos. I had a delegation from a special school for children with autism in Sheffield yesterday, and they are having to reduce the number of assistants and the ratios of children to people providing support are getting bigger. There is very little they can do.

At one point in their lives, more than 2 million children in England will have some kind of SEND, but shockingly only 3% of children in England have SEND statements or education and health care plans.

School Funding

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher.

Over the past few months, I have conducted two surveys in my constituency about the adequacy of school funding and the impact of funding cuts to schools. The first was of the schools concerned, which described the impact of funding cuts on their ability to deliver the educational outcomes that their pupils deserve. The second was of parents, who are all too aware of the impact of the school cuts on their children’s education. I want to channel their voices and tell hon. Members more about schools and parents in Leeds North West. and by extension the whole country.

For schools the problem is clear: every school surveyed had experienced the need to make some form of cut since 2015. More than 57% have been forced to make staffing cuts due to funding pressures, and 86% have had to reduce the number of books and the educational equipment available to students. More than half the schools surveyed had to let teaching assistants go, and the same number had to make cuts to cleaning and maintenance services, potentially putting our children at risk.

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

Teachers and students in my constituency told me just the other day that A-level students have only just been able to get textbooks at this point in their second year of their studies, when they are taking their A-levels in the summer.

[Alex Sobel]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point, which I will reinforce later in my speech.

All the respondents expected further cuts to be made in the future. Some 43% of schools had experienced a rise in pupil numbers, and 100% of respondents were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. It is uncertain how schools will take on the extra family support obligations created by the cuts to council services elsewhere. One school said:

“We cannot continue to hit the DfE’s expectations for pupil achievement and take more pupils, with less staff and resources. We are at breaking point in this profession. As the council continues to make cuts in other areas, more is put onto schools. We cannot provide the support that is needed for families without the funding to do so.”

The fact that schools are willing to use the term “breaking point” is shocking to me, and should be shocking to the Government.

We heard the same refrain in the parents’ survey. One parent said:

“schools are doing an amazing job and are often the only source of support for children in crisis. Schools should not be trying to provide mental health support and there is no alternative provision for kids with heart-breaking mental health and behavioural issues.”

Another said that

“there is a complete lack of adequate mental health provision for children in primary schools due to funding cuts elsewhere in the system. This is very marked, and I have spoken to a number of parents who are at their wits’ end about where and how to get the right support for their children.”

I had a huge response to my survey. More than 90% of respondents felt that schools had been negatively affected by cuts, and that the cuts were making their children’s education worse.

With those cuts being layered on top of cuts to council services, schools are now clearly at breaking point. That has an effect right across school activities. School trips, for example, are the canary in the coalmine—the first sign that is something going wrong with the school budget. One parent of a year 6 pupil said:

“The head sent out a letter last week explaining that they can no longer subsidise school trips and events in school due to cuts in the school budget. This is very concerning to me … as I know this will prevent a number of children from attending trips … and missing out on the important experiences these trips bring. Also, a lot of class work is focused on the trips children go on”—

so some children cannot go on trips, and that means they are behind on school work. It is not an optional extra, but part of the curriculum of that school.

Children are being left not with the bare minimum of an education, but with an inadequate one, which promises to have knock-on effects for their future and for wider society. Even the most ardent Conservative must be aware that the cost to the public purse of the loss of revenue generated by reduced educational attainment in this country will be far from inconsequential, as will be the social cost of failing in the historical promise that has long linked the old to the young—that things will continue to get better, that the future will be brighter and that we pass on the promise of more than we had ourselves. One constituent put it this way:

“As parent and teacher, I firmly believe the quality of education we are providing this generation is dire. Between funding cuts, inaccessible exams, no support for SEN or EAL, no trips and extracurricular activities being squeezed, I see a generation being told they are failures because we are not providing the funding or resources to help anyone except the most well adapted and able pupils to achieve. We are a laughing stock at best. Shame on this Government for letting it get to this.”

Those are not my words, but those of a parent and teacher in my constituency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Gibb]

Not right now, if my hon. Friend will forgive me. I want to make sure that I respond to the points from as many hon. Members as I can.

Figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that real-terms per-pupil funding for five to 16-year-olds in 2020 will be more than 50% higher than in 2000. We compare favourably with other countries. The UK spends as much per pupil on primary and secondary state education as any country in the G7 apart from America—a point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert).

While more money is going into our schools than ever before, we recognise the budgeting challenges that schools face as we ask them to achieve more for children and to absorb cost increases, such as employer’s national insurance and higher pension contributions to teachers’ pension funds, that have arisen as a result of our determination to bear down on the unsustainable deficit. That means that it is essential to do all we can to help schools make the most of every pound.

In addition to providing additional funding for schools, we changed the way funding is distributed, to make the system fairer. Last April, we started to distribute funding through the national funding formula, with each area’s allocation taking into account the individual needs and characteristics of its schools. That replaced the unfair and outdated previous system, under which schools with similar characteristics received very different levels of funding, with little or no justification. These disparities existed for far too long, as my right hon. and hon. Friends from West Sussex pointed out, leaving some schools trying to achieve with fewer resources the same as other, better-funded schools in similar situations. That is why we committed to reform the system, and I am proud to say that our introduction of the national funding formula delivers that commitment.

Schools are already benefiting from the gains delivered by the national funding formula. Since 2017, we have given every local authority more money for every pupil in every school, while allocating the biggest increases to the schools that have been most underfunded. By 2019-20, all schools will attract an increase of at least 1% per pupil, compared with their 2017-18 baselines. The most underfunded schools will attract up to 6% more per pupil by 2019-20, compared with 2017-18.

The hon. Member for Blaydon will be aware that funding for schools in her constituency has risen from £52.6 million in 2017-18 to £54.9 million in 2019-20—a 4.5% increase in cash terms. In Blaydon, per-pupil funding has risen from £4,468 per pupil in 2017-18 to £4,635 in 2019-20, which is a 3.7% increase over that period.

The hon. Lady cited a figure from the School Cuts website, which incidentally has been criticised by the UK Statistics Authority. It said:

“We believe the headline statement”,

which the hon. Lady cited in this debate,

“that ‘91% of schools face funding cuts’ risks giving a misleading impression of future changes in school budgets. The method of calculation may also give a misleading impression of the scale of change for some particular schools.”

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) made important points about the over-politicisation of this issue. I understand the points that he made about the historical inequities in school funding in West Sussex.

[Alex Sobel]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Gibb]

I will not give way for the moment. The inequities are precisely why we introduced the national funding formula. A similar point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith). My hon. Friends will be aware that funding in West Sussex will increase from £425.8 million in 2017-18 to £459.3 million by 2019-20. That is an increase of £33.5 million or 7.9%. It is an increase of 4.9% per pupil. The argument is made that there are more pupils, but we are also increasing funding on a per-pupil basis.

College Funding

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend is right and sadly there is a familiar story of not only redundancies, but insecure contracts. The level of morale is really challenging for so many staff. Unison’s head of education, Ruth Levin, pointed out that colleges have faced underfunding, leading to job cuts, course closures and larger class sizes “for many years”. She went on to say:

“Pay in further education has fallen by more than 21% in real terms over the past nine years”.

It is clear that further education colleges have been hit the hardest in recent years, and it is simply not possible to continue down this road of less funding and more demand.

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

Further education colleges are being asked to implement T-levels, but the T-level system, even though it has not started yet, is already in crisis. The exam boards are taking the Government to court. The colleges are saying that they are unable to cope with the level of funding. Employers are unaware of them. Will that not add to colleges’ burden?

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend raises some important points. I guess it will be for the Minister to respond. In a sector that has seen constant change and churn over many years, there is sometimes a yearning for stability.

On that note, the Prime Minister’s review into post-18 education and funding, chaired by Philip Augar, was announced last year and is eagerly awaited—although I guess the Prime Minister might have other things on her mind at the moment.

Forced Adoption in the UK

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2018 Commons Chamber

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

Today is the first anniversary of my maiden speech and this is my 100th contribution in this place. Giving a voice to the voiceless is a central cause that my Labour colleagues and I seek to deliver. Speaking in this debate is a most apt way for me to pursue my purpose in Parliament. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) and for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) for their touching contributions and for securing this important debate. As a member of the Backbench Business Committee, I was delighted to support the allocation of the debate.

I would like to share directly the story of a woman from my home city of Leeds, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby. Helen Jeffreys was 17 when she gave birth to her baby son, with no support available, no access to advice and certainly no access to any housing or social benefits. Her son was forcibly taken from Helen and placed for adoption. She said:

“We weren’t given a choice—no offer of support at all, I held out until the last possible moment and it was obvious to everyone that I wanted to keep him but he was quite literally dragged out of my arms.”

Helen’s son was born in Leeds, but placed by the Church of England adoption society in York. He was allowed no contact with his birth mother or father. In a world without fertility treatment, there were many would-be parents desperate to adopt children. As Helen puts it, the culture was

“to get the mothers out of the way as quickly as possible.”

Her son was given no information about his birth mother and father. When Helen requested his adoption file years later, she found a one-page document with many factual inaccuracies. The paper, for example, noted the occupation of the birth mother and father as “art students”, when they were not art students.

Since then, Helen has been reunited with the son she lost many years ago, but we must remember that this is not the end of the story. Television programmes can lead us to believe that a reunion is equivalent to the happy endings that exist in fairy tales. It is, of course, nothing of the sort, and it can bring up all sorts of new issues and challenges that must be dealt with by the families—both adopted and biological.

What happened to Helen and many, many other mothers like her is a national disgrace. It is not history. It is real life pain, grief and suffering that lives on today in the lives of those who have to carry those memories and those histories. I thank Helen for sharing her story with us, but it is time that we gave something back to her and all the other mothers in that situation. We must learn the lessons and understand properly the pain that still exists today. I am sure that this House would agree that Helen deserves an apology, at the very least. Now is surely the time for the Prime Minister to step up to the plate and give Helen and all the other mothers the apology that they deserve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

Obviously I cannot comment on a particular bid, but we are spending £10 billion on ensuring that we have sufficient capital to replace schools and improve the maintenance of schools. I hope that that answer was as superb as the previous answers that my hon. Friend has had.

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

18. The executive member for children on Leeds City Council wrote to me today after writing to the Secretary of State on 28 September about health and safety issues in local education authority schools, including schools that are trying to become academies. The response from the Department was about the condition improvement fund for academies, so I am going to ask again: what funding and support are available for LEA schools with serious health and safety concerns, including concerns about asbestos and fire safety? What funding is the Secretary of State going to provide for those schools?

[Nick Gibb]

We have allocated £4.2 billion since 2015 to maintain and improve school buildings. Some of that is allocated to local authorities, because they are best placed to know the priorities of the schools in their local authority area.