Higher Education Reform
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for advance sight of his statement and I join him in his comments about the events that we see unfolding in Ukraine.
Given that 1,000 days have passed since May 2019, Members might be forgiven for forgetting the recommendations of the Augar review and the context in which it was launched. Concerns about fairness and affordability for students seem to have been lost entirely today. As the then Conservative Prime Minister outlined in launching the report:
“removing maintenance grants from the least well-off students has not worked”.
There has been little sign of any real concern for less well-off students this week. Instead, we have seen the Government’s total lack of urgency about any matter except their own self-preservation; their lack of ambition for our young people; their lack of ambition for our universities; and ultimately, their lack of ambition for our country. This is a Government whose approach to some of the biggest issues facing our universities is simply to kick the can down the road. They are freezing fees, not changing them, and tying interest rates to measures that they intend to phase out, and there is a deafening silence on living costs for students.
Time and again, this Conservative Government reach for the pockets of working people, with council tax put up twice, income tax thresholds frozen, a national insurance hike and now falling repayment thresholds that will see working people paying more for longer. This Government, who are responsible for a growing failure to support young people to achieve at GCSE, now want to shut people out of university rather than raising standards in schools, slamming the door on opportunity and ambition. As for the lifelong learning loan, which, as the Secretary of State noted, was a core recommendation of the review, why are we waiting even longer for yet another consultation when that was first promised as part of the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill?
This is not the approach that we need. It will not fit our country to face the challenges of tomorrow. These announcements hold back our universities, our young people and our country. A generation of children has gone through education under Conservative Governments since 2010. Let us consider what their experience has been: real-terms cuts to funding per pupil; secondary school classes at their largest for a generation; hundreds of thousands more children eligible for free school meals; school building repairs cancelled and postponed; hundreds of days lost to the pandemic; botched exam arrangements; and a historic failure to invest in the children’s recovery plan that the Government’s expert recommended and which our children desperately need. As those children now look ahead to university and the years that follow, they will see higher costs than ever before, stretching almost to retirement. This is a generation of children let down from primary school right the way through to university.
Those decisions are about choices and priorities, but for this Government, our children and young people are an afterthought—an opportunity for a Treasury saving, not the future that we create together. It need not be like that. In Wales, the Labour Government have chosen to focus on supporting students to succeed. They chose to provide extra help on the cost of living and to widen access—two themes missing almost entirely from the statement that we heard.
Today’s response, for which we have waited all this time, represents a failure by the Government and, sadly, by the Secretary of State. I have a great deal of respect for him and I know how seriously he takes his role, but what we have is 1,000 days of complacency ending in a victory for the Chancellor, not a victory for Britain. There was a failure last autumn to persuade the Treasury that higher education should be central to the economy and success of our country. There has been a failure to rise to the challenges that our universities face and to design a solution, and there was a failure, this spring, to navigate the chaos of a Downing Street paralysed by scandal.
The people who will feel the pain of this failure and that defeat are not in the Chamber today. They are teaching and learning in our universities. They are sitting in school dreaming of the better future that they deserve and which Labour believes we can achieve. Labour sees their future and our universities very differently from the Government. We believe in matching the ambition of our young people, in enabling university staff to support young people and our country to succeed, and in creating thriving universities at the heart of our towns and cities.
The tragedy today is that the Secretary of State knows full well that this is not good enough, but he cannot persuade his Treasury colleagues otherwise. Unlike this Government, the next Labour Government will treat universities not as a political battleground, but as a public good, central to the success of our country.
Nadhim Zahawi
I respectfully remind the hon. Lady that someone from a disadvantaged background today is 80% more likely to go to university than they were a decade ago. Let me go further and remind her that, in 2016, the coalition Government introduced the new apprenticeship standards and made sure that businesses were at the heart of setting those standards, because it is not politicians or experts in Whitehall who can decide what sectors of the economy will change and re-emerge.
There is a common theme—a strategy—running through all our reforms, from the apprenticeship standards, with more than 5 million people entering apprenticeships, to the skills White Paper, the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill, which we just voted on and sent to the other place, and now our HE reforms. What if someone had said to me when I was choosing those new standards as the apprenticeships tsar that there would come a Prime Minister and a Chancellor who would back adults at any point in their life to upskill or reskill, or that we would say to someone in Aberdeen oil and gas who wanted to go and work in offshore wind, “We will stand behind you” with funding of £37,000, the equivalent of four years of education? That is what this Government are delivering and I am proud to be the son of a country that gives real opportunity to people from all backgrounds.
The hon. Lady mentioned the issue of excluding those who may not do so well in GCSEs. That is not what the consultation is about. It is about making sure that there are routes for those people, so that if they do not do well in their maths or English GCSEs, but do well in their A-levels, university is still open to them. However, a different route—an apprenticeship degree—is also open to them, as well as other vocational qualifications. Bringing FE and HE together was central to the Augar panel’s recommendations and that is what we are doing.
Finally, I respectfully remind the hon. Lady, who talked about our financial settlement, that my Department has a settlement of £86 billion for 2024, with £4.7 billion going into schools, £3.8 billion going into skills and £900 million—the highest uplift in a decade—going into our universities. That is our plan; she has no plan.
Points of Order
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Have you been given notice that an Education Minister will make a statement to the House on the Government’s response to the Augar review; the future of student and university finance; and the financial arrangements governing student loan repayments? No less than 1,000 days after Augar reported, it seems that the Government are, once more, more interested in briefing journalists than in informing the House on the future of our universities. It is extraordinary that the Government are yet again choosing to announce serious changes to higher education in that way. This morning, students will have seen their hard work belittled by Ministers—
Mr Speaker
Order. You have raised the point of order; you cannot make a speech on it. The Secretary of State may wish to answer you.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Alex Burghart)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his report. I very much share his sentiments about the importance of recognising prior learning. Currently, further education providers can use their own discretion when they assess learners’ experience, but we are examining how we can encourage the greater use of knowledge in respect of prior learning. I shall pass on my hon. Friend’s invitation to the Secretary of State.
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
Today, I send my love to the family of Jack Dromey, who will be deeply missed by us all. Through you, Mr Speaker, I also send to the Secretary of State my best wishes for a swift recovery.
According to the most recent figures, the number of children who are out of school because of covid has risen by 34%. In the light of that, do Ministers not regret all the time and energy they have wasted on defending the Prime Minister rather than prioritising our children’s learning?
The Minister for School Standards (Mr Robin Walker)
The hon. Lady may wish to play party politics, but we are focused on making sure that children can safely learn in schools.
Bridget Phillipson
If only that were true. It is a year this week since the Prime Minister appointed Sir Kevan Collins
“to oversee a comprehensive programme of catch-up”,
only for Sir Kevan later to resign in protest because, in his words, the Government’s plans risked
“failing hundreds of thousands of pupils.”
We can all see covid’s impact on children’s learning and wellbeing. Labour’s “Children’s Recovery Plan” meets the scale of the challenge we face, so when will the Minister finally put children first and match Labour’s ambition for their future?
Education: Return in January
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
Happy new year to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the House.
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. I am glad that children are back at school this term, and I pay tribute to all the staff working right across education, whose commitment, dedication and hard work make that possible. Labour wants children to be in school, learning and playing together. Every day missed from school is a day they do not get back in their lives and in their learning. Last term alone, children in England missed over 10 million school days for covid-related reasons. More than 1 million children have left secondary school since the pandemic began. Almost 2 million of our youngest children have never known a normal school year. That is why Labour has set out a clear, costed and ambitious children’s recovery plan that would support our children where they have missed out, with school activities, breakfast clubs, and small-group tutoring. The Government’s plans are so limited and inadequate that their own recovery chief resigned in protest.
We will get on top of this disease by driving down transmission through vaccinating eligible children, ventilating our classrooms and testing regularly and frequently, but the steps the Government have taken so far, with further details announced at the very last minute and in the House today, simply do not rise to the challenge we face.
The Christmas break was an opportunity for the Government to ensure proper ventilation was in place in our classrooms, to get eligible children vaccinated and to ensure an ample supply of tests for families. On ventilation, 18 months ago, in July 2020, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies considered a paper on the aerosol transmission of covid, and recommended:
“Particular attention should be paid to planning for winter to ensure that spaces can be effectively ventilated without significantly compromising the thermal comfort of occupants.”
In July 2021 we were told that an air purifier trial, a pilot study, was under way in Bradford, but by the time the full report of that study is available, it will be more than 30 months since the Government first ordered schools to close. How can anyone look at that timeline without concluding that for this Government our children are an afterthought?
Meanwhile, at the weekend, we heard that a further 7,000 air cleaning units are to be issued to schools. That trial will tell us either that those units are a waste of money, or that for hundreds of thousands of classrooms 7,000 units is wholly inadequate to meet the challenge they face. Which is it? While Ministers take their time to decide, it is winter. Windows are open in schools across England, and children are having to be wrapped up in their coats to learn. It is incompetent, complacent and inadequate. Our children deserve better.
On vaccination, on 30 December barely half of eligible children aged 12 and over had received even their first vaccination. We have seen in the past month with the booster jab what can be done when the political will is there, but for this Government our children are never a priority. On testing, the Government have encouraged parents to ensure their children take lateral flow tests twice a week. I looked last night for lateral flow tests online. There were none available for home delivery. We cannot test our children twice a week if there are not the tests available to do it.
In closing, I ask the Secretary of State some of the questions not addressed by his statement. What guarantee will he offer parents about the availability of vaccination slots for their children, in schools or elsewhere? What is he doing about those who peddle misinformation on vaccines, and will he bring in exclusion zones around schools? How does he plan to ensure that parents can get lateral flow tests for their children? When does he intend to publish the interim findings of the Bradford air purification trial? What confidence has he that 7,000 devices are enough—and why? Can he confirm that they will not be available until the end of February and that he expects children to sit in classrooms with open windows, in their coats, in winter?
Has the Secretary of State spoken to the Chancellor, who said last summer that he had “maxed out” on supporting our children and refused to fund the recovery plan that Sir Kevan Collins recommended? What advice has the Secretary of State had on whether face coverings would still be necessary if vaccination levels among children were higher and ventilation better? Can he explain why he is unable to tell the House today how many retired teachers and others have come forward to help in classrooms following his last-minute call? What guarantees can he give students with exams this month and later this year about whether they will go ahead? Lastly, but most importantly, when does he plan to return to this House to set out the ambitious recovery plan for our children’s disrupted education that they so richly deserve?
Nadhim Zahawi
I fear the hon. Lady has very little experience of operationalising anything, given the way she has attempted to misrepresent the efforts we have made to ensure that schools are safe and hygienic. She omitted the fact that we have delivered 350,000 CO2 monitors to our school system. That has allowed us to be confident that, where schools are able to ventilate, they are doing so and therefore do not need the air purifiers. Where schools do need additional help, those 8,000 air purifying devices are going out as of next week, especially to special needs and alternative provision settings, which as she knows are the most vulnerable, and to all other schools that cannot mitigate the problem of ventilation in the classroom.
There has been some corroboration of that modelling by Teacher App, which I am sure the hon. Lady will look at in her own time online. If we take the 350,000 CO2 monitors and look at the data reported back from schools and which schools have had issues, 8,000 air purifiers is a similar number to the one derived there.
The hon. Lady asked about lateral flow tests. She heard from the Prime Minister earlier that we have trebled the number of lateral flow tests going out, from 300,000 a day to 900,000 a day, and supply from 100 million a month to 300 million a month, but in her response to my statement, she unfortunately chose to traduce a testing infrastructure that is probably the best of breed in the world.
On retired teachers, again operationally, it is a bit difficult to say as we have had only one day of school. I need to wait until the end of the week at least before I can talk to the agencies and hear exactly how many teachers and temporary staff have been needed. I will happily share that information with the House, but, alas, the hon. Lady has clearly not had much experience of operationalising.
Some £5 billion is going into catch-up and there will be 6 million tutoring sessions. By any measure, that is a massive scale-up of tutoring. Half a million training opportunities will also be available—we cannot have a great education without having great teachers—and £5 billion will go into that.
The hon. Lady asked about vaccination. I can report to her that the school age vaccination programme will begin vaccinating in schools again as of Monday, as I mentioned in my statement, which she chose to ignore. Parents can also book online, go to GPs or walk-in centres to have their children vaccinated. We already have over 50% vaccinated.
Finally, on exams, vocational exams scheduled to take place in January will go ahead, because those students have worked hard studying for them and they deserve to be able to take those exams. Those who may be down with omicron and need to self-isolate will be able to get in touch with their awarding bodies and have their exam rescheduled. In the summer, we will also go ahead with exams, and rightly so, recognising that there has been much disruption to students’ studying, which is why we are doing it in two steps to go back to the rigorous grading of pre-covid pandemic levels.
Arthur Labinjo-Hughes
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement.
This has been a truly horrendous case. My heart goes out to everyone who knew and loved Arthur and to all those involved in investigating and bringing to justice the depraved and wicked individuals responsible for his death. I join the Secretary of State in paying tribute to the frontline workers right across children’s social care who work so hard to support families day in, day out.
I welcome the announcement by the Attorney General’s Office that the sentences handed down on Friday will be reviewed under the unduly lenient sentence scheme, and I welcome the Secretary of State’s clear determination to get to the bottom of what has happened and his action in ordering a national review and a joint targeted area inspection. It is right to put in place as soon as possible inquiries into not merely how individual agencies acted but how they acted together.
It is vital that whatever lessons can be learned from what happened and did not happen in Solihull are acted on as soon as possible. Searching questions must be asked about the way in which services operated locally, but questions must also be asked nationally—questions about how the services that should be keeping children safe are overseen and about why, tragically, cases such as this keep happening.
I know that the Secretary of State takes these issues just as seriously as I do. I very much hope he will urgently review the way in which services are inspected, challenged and improved. I ask the Secretary of State, who has not been in his post for too long, also to ensure that his own Department gets its house in order.
In 2016, the Department committed to a target, which was that by 2020
“all vulnerable children, no matter where they live, receive the same high quality of care and support, and the best outcome for every child is at the heart of every decision made.”
The then permanent secretary told the Public Accounts Committee that this target was delayed until 2022 because the Department did not have a detailed plan in place to deliver it. The Committee found that the Department had made only limited progress in improving the quality of children’s social care services. In 2019, the permanent secretary accepted that having nearly 60% of local authorities rated lower than “good” by Ofsted for children’s social care was “terrible”. Indeed, he told the Public Accounts Committee:
“I am not able to sit in front of you and say that there will be no councils failing their Ofsted inspections in 2022. Clearly, there will be. Some schools fail, some hospitals fail and some councils fail.”
Failure should never be an acceptable outcome for any public service, and that is especially true when it comes to protecting children. For too long, this Government have tolerated failing children’s services and a failure to protect children. Vulnerable children are being failed, and that cannot go on.
The Secretary of State must now set out how he plans to tackle that culture—that failing services are acceptable in our country, acceptable for our children—in his own Department just as much as in Solihull. That is the challenge that he faces, and that is the standard by which he will be judged.
I have one final point. We have heard a lot in recent days about the unimaginable suffering that this little boy endured at the hands of two evil individuals who brought an end to his short life. I hope that we can remember also how, in better days, Arthur lived his short life. I hope that, while we do not hesitate to learn from these tragic events, we also, as far as we can, remember Arthur for who he was, not for what others did to him or for how he was let down. I hope that when we hear his name, we think first of a gentle, caring, happy child, the little boy who was remembered so movingly by so many across our country this weekend, the little boy with the beaming smile who should still be here with us today.
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her words, and especially for her final few sentences about the way that we should remember Arthur, and the fact that there are family members grieving for him today.
The hon. Lady makes a powerful point about making sure that we continue on the path to improvement. Having spent a good amount of time as Children and Families Minister in the Department, I think that the team has really focused on those improvements in children’s social care. The hon. Lady said that we have a long way to go. I recognise that there are challenges, but it is also worth praising the teams both in the Department and in local government up and down the country. Not that long ago, only about 37% of local authorities had a good Ofsted inspection. The one thing I would correct her on is that it is not so binary as pass and fail, because, actually, it is very much about areas of improvement in children’s social care. That 37% has now risen to 57% of local authorities that have a good inspection.[Official Report, 16 December 2021, Vol. 705, c. 5MC.] Of course, we will have to continue on that path and keep going further. None the less, I am very pleased to see her supporting the course of action that we are taking today.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
We now come to Bridget Phillipson and welcome her as the new shadow Secretary of State.
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Secretary of State for his warm welcome, and welcome his intention to make a statement later today on the tragic death of Arthur.
The Secretary of State will be aware that in the north-west and the west midlands, just 40% of children aged 12 to 15 have been vaccinated. Will he use the Christmas holidays to vaccinate our children, support schools in planning for next term and get ahead of the virus?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s kind words. We will do everything to make sure that we continue to vaccinate 12 to 15-year-olds. Of course, those who had their vaccine early on will be due to have their second jab by mid-December—the middle of this month—now that the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has recommended that they have second jabs. We will continue to deliver those jabs using not only school settings but vaccination centres to make sure that we really drive the uptake of vaccines for 12 to 15-year-olds.
Bridget Phillipson
It is now more than six months since the education recovery chief Sir Kevan Collins resigned in protest at the Government’s abject failure. Their total failure to support our children risks letting down a generation. Why will the Secretary of State not bring forward proper proposals, like Labour’s clear, costed and achievable plans, which match the scale of the challenge that our children face?
Budget Resolutions
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
It is a privilege to respond for the Opposition as we conclude our debate on last week’s Budget.
Politics is about priorities, and that has been made crystal clear in not only today’s debate but the Chancellor’s Budget. The economic recovery is far from secure; the cost of living is soaring; supply-chain chaos is putting businesses under strain; and the big challenges that face our country and, indeed, our planet need leadership.
I thank all my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Opposition Benches, who have spoken with such passion on behalf of their communities and their constituents in challenging this inadequate Budget. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Bootle (Peter Dowd), for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova), for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) and for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue). I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome), for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), for Ilford South (Sam Tarry), for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne), for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin), for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), for Newport West (Ruth Jones), for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) and for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins). Sadly, it was a little bit quieter on the Government Benches today and they ran out of Members who were willing to defend their out-of-touch, high-tax, low-growth Budget.
Let me start with the verdict of Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies on the outlook for living standards. He said:
“This is actually awful… High inflation, rising taxes, poor growth keeping living standards virtually stagnant for another half a decade”.
As we have come to expect from this Government, Ministers fail to accept any responsibility, working harder on their excuses than on solutions. It now costs £15 more than it did last year to fill an average car with a full tank of petrol; heating bills have already gone up by £140, with more rises to come; and the cost of a typical family food shop is set to increase by more than £180 next year—assuming that people can find everything they want on the shelves. Almost everything is more expensive, yet the Budget has only made matters worse.
The Resolution Foundation has highlighted how, by 2026, taxes will reach an additional £3,000 per household compared with when the Prime Minister took office. The Chancellor could have cut instead VAT on domestic heating bills to zero for the next six months, as we urged. Labour’s retrofitting plan would have helped to bring 19 million homes up to standard, cutting heating bills by an average of £400 a year. These are practical ideas to support pensioners and families through the long winter months ahead.
We all know that Ministers are making the cost-of-living crisis even worse for 6 million people with their cut to universal credit. It is appalling to remove £20 a week from people who already have so little, yet it is also so revealing. We welcome the change to the taper rate, but let us be clear: while the Government give with one hand, they take far more with the other. Six million households were hit by the cut, yet fewer than a third of them will get anything from the change. The Budget does nothing to help millions of hard-pressed families who are working hard on modest incomes and face a cost-of-living crisis this winter, and there is nothing for pensioners who are worried about skyrocketing gas and electricity bills.
The reason why the Conservatives are increasingly a high-tax party is that they have been a low-growth Government, and that will continue. The Budget confirmed anaemic medium-term growth forecasts, with growth falling to an average of 1.5% in the final three years of the forecast. There is no plan for growth—not now, not next year and not for the past 11 years.
The Government have again missed another target on research and development spending, which is central to boosting our economy. As the OBR reported, the measures announced at the Budget make no material difference to the path of business investment. Real wages are on course to be lower in 2026 than they were even before the global financial crisis.
This Budget needed to support British businesses, as they will power our economic recovery, and this Government were elected on a manifesto committed to fundamental reform of business rates. In fact, the last four Tory manifestos have promised action on business rates, and every time they have failed to deliver. The Treasury started the review last summer and it has failed even on its own terms. Businesses were promised real change, not tinkering at the margins. The challenge facing our high streets is real and it will not disappear. In fact, it was the new Chief Secretary to the Treasury who once wrote in 2018 that he was also very frustrated by the then Conservative Chancellor’s failure to abolish business rates. He wrote:
“We need to do better, and this means the Chancellor has to up his game. Too often since his appointment, he has shown a tin ear to the concerns of precisely the sorts of people the Conservative Party ought to be championing.”
He said that the Chancellor had a duty to listen and to act. That is absolutely right. We have a new Chancellor, but the same old problem. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman should have a word with his boss to try to sort this out. Labour will do what this Chancellor and his predecessors have failed to do: we will replace business rates with a fairer alternative fit for the 21st century, levelling the playing field with the online competitors.
Also buried in the Budget documents is a stealth raid on self-employed people, meaning that they will have to pay an extra £1.7 billion over the next five years. Let us never again hear the Tories claim to be the party of business. When the Prime Minister said, “Eff business,” I thought that it was a quip; now I know that it is Government policy. Today’s Labour party will work with businesses. This Government want to blame them. This Government are falling well short of what is needed to address the key challenges facing the country. The Chancellor spent more of his Budget talking about cider than the climate. As the OBR has revealed, stalling action in this crucial decade could double the overall cost to our economy. The insufficient action from the Government is unfathomable.
Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)
I have heard some of the contributions from the Opposition this afternoon. I just wonder what planet they are on. We were told that we would have a recession that was deeper than that of the second world war. Instead we have an economy that is rebounding the fastest in the G20. Can the hon. Lady explain how the economy is actually giving us a recovery better than any economist ever predicted?
Bridget Phillipson
Let me say to the hon. Gentleman that sometimes when the Whips come calling and they have a piece of paper that they would like you to read out in the Chamber, just say no. We have had far, far further to climb because of the massive hit to our economy—the worst of any advanced nation. Much of that, sad to say, comes down to the Chancellor’s resistance to adopting the measures that were necessary back last autumn to control the virus.
Labour has set out our climate investment pledge not only to get us on track with our commitment, but to avoid greater costs in the future and to ensure that we can seize opportunities, too. That means developing our domestic hydrogen sector, greening our steel industry, building the cycle lanes and infrastructure, creating new jobs to retrofit homes, ensuring that electric vehicles and their batteries are manufactured here, and that all our families can enjoy the local environment, clean air and open space. We are ambitious for Britain to lead the world with the jobs and technologies of the future, creating prosperity and opportunity in every corner of our country. Under Labour, we will work with business and trade unions to make this a reality.
Jacob Young
Just before the hon. Lady concludes her remarks, I just wanted to give her the opportunity to welcome Sunderland’s levelling-up fund bid, which was granted by this Government.
Bridget Phillipson
Absolutely. I supported the bid, so of course I welcome it; that is hardly a revelation. I will always welcome additional investment coming to my constituency, although I notice that the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) is also in his place, and I am sure that, like me, he was disappointed that our restoring your railway fund bid to look at reopening the Leamside line, which would create benefits for the wider north-east, was sadly knocked back by his Government. I am afraid that it is not entirely good news for Sunderland and the north-east.
Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)
I absolutely agree that we need to take another look at the Leamside line, but I would like to come back on your comments about Labour being interested in business. [Hon. Members: “Not ‘you’.”] My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. If Labour Members are so interested in business, why is their attendance at the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee so woeful?
Bridget Phillipson
My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), the Labour Chair of the Business Committee, is doing a fantastic job. I see him out there all the time, championing the cause of business and seeking to ensure that we are backing innovative British firms.
Bridget Phillipson
I will happily give way again, but when I do, will the hon. Gentleman tell me whether he will work with me to get the Government to look again at our restoring your railway fund bid? I am sure that he was as disappointed as I was that we were knocked back once again.
Paul Howell
I absolutely will work with the hon. Member. I have already made appointments to talk to Transport Ministers about the matter. My point is that the Chair of the Business Committee is a very regular attender, but he is the only one.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I am not sure that this discussion is entirely appropriate.
Bridget Phillipson
I will make a little progress, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will happily work with the hon. Gentleman. I know that he tries to work hard for his constituents.
Emma Hardy
While we are on the subject of railways, is my hon. Friend as frustrated as I am that we have yet to see the integrated rail plan and that there have been no announcements regarding Northern Powerhouse Rail? It was not meant to go from Manchester to Leeds; we were originally promised that it would be from Hull all the way over to Liverpool? I hope that she will put as much pressure on the Government as I will to get that delivered.
Bridget Phillipson
Absolutely; 60 times we have had announcements on the plan, but not a single spade in the ground. I will now make a little more progress.
The theme today is public services. I put on record again our immense gratitude to all those who have been keeping our public services going during the most challenging times over the last 18 months. There are really too many public sector workers to mention, but their contribution should be noted. The Government claim that they will give public sector workers belated pay rises, but cannot confirm whether they will be real- terms pay rises. Only under the Tories could a so-called pay rise mean that people are actually less well off.
Working people are being expected to pay so much more, but what for exactly? There are 5.7 million people on waiting lists for operations, GP appointments are harder than ever to come by and there are 100,000 vacancies in our NHS. We see falling apprenticeship starts, supersized classrooms for our children, antisocial behaviour at its highest level for years, rape convictions at record low levels, violent criminals walking free, fewer police officers and less safe communities. However, there was a vanity yacht for the Prime Minister, when he could have tackled antisocial behaviour instead. Tory Ministers have finally discovered, 11 years late, that the early years matter—who knew? But there is no apology from the Chancellor for closing more than 1,000 children’s centres since 2010. What price the unrealised potential and limited life opportunities over that lost decade?
This is a Budget with no plan for the cost-of-living crisis, no plan for fairer taxes and no plan for growth. The clocks went back an hour at the weekend, but in tax terms this Budget wound the clock back all the way to the 1950s, when taxes were last this high. It is the Conservatives’ record of low growth that has driven them to higher taxes, just as their failure to plan ahead has led to higher inflation and higher bills.
Labour would tax fairly, spend wisely and get the economy firing on all cylinders. We would cut VAT on heating bills and help to insulate homes. We would back our world-leading industries, and buy, make and sell more here in Britain. We would scrap business rates and replace them with a much fairer system that is fit for the modern world. We would secure our transition to net zero with well paid, highly skilled jobs in every corner of our country. We would not clobber working people and British businesses while online giants get away without paying their fair share. We need a Budget to ease the urgent pressure on families and businesses—a Budget to seize new opportunities and to unleash our country’s potential. We have a proud history but I believe that our best days are ahead of us. The Chancellor has made the wrong choices throughout this Budget; the Conservatives have made the wrong choices throughout the past decade. Our country deserves better.
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Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That the following papers be provided by HM Treasury to the Public Accounts Committee: all papers, correspondence and advice including emails and text messages, from 3 February 2021 up to and including 2 June 2021, to and between Treasury Ministers, senior officials and Special Advisers relating to consideration of the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of the proposals made by the then Education Recovery Commissioner, Sir Kevan Collins, in particular such correspondence relating to the evaluation of the draft report which he produced and submitted to Government on the investment and services needed to ensure children’s education recovers from the impact of the covid-19 outbreak on their learning and development, a copy of that report, and all copies of minutes and papers relating to decisions taken by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and other Treasury Ministers, in respect of that report.
The last 15 months has been a period unlike any other in our recent history, but for our children it has been more than that. Before I go any further, however, I want to place on record the thanks of all Labour Members to all school staff, who have themselves had a harrowing, difficult and stressful year. As well as their resilience, I have admired again and again their continuing focus on the children with whom they work.
Those children have seen not merely a disruption and interruption to their lives, but a disruption of their education and development that risks setting back a generation, damaging their lives and life chances and our economy as a whole. No child should be left behind as a result of the pandemic; I hope every Member of the House agrees on that—in fact, the Prime Minister himself has said as much.
The creation of the post of education recovery commissioner in February was therefore welcome, as was the appointment of Sir Kevan Collins. Sir Kevan is a prominent figure in education and widely respected across this House. He is someone whose expertise and recommendations deserve to be taken immensely seriously, yet less than a fortnight ago Sir Kevan resigned. Why? Because the Government cut the scale of his proposed plan by 90%. In Sir Kevan’s own words:
“A half-hearted approach risks failing hundreds of thousands of pupils. The support announced so far does not come close to meeting the scale of the challenge and is why I have no option but to resign.”
By any standards, that is an extraordinary turn of events. How did it happen? How did we get here? How could the Government handle this so extraordinarily badly? The answer, as so often, is that it would appear to lie with the real decision maker in the Government. It is a pleasure to see the Minister in his place today, but it is the Cabinet’s answer to Macavity—the Chancellor of the Exchequer—who has questions to answer in the Chamber. It is the Treasury that took the shameful decision to block a proper plan for our children’s future. The Minister knows it; we all know it. Comprehensive plans for the recovery of our children’s education were developed and circulated in government, but they were stopped in their tracks by the Treasury.
Perhaps that is not right; perhaps the Government will feel able to disclose the correspondence that we are seeking today to have published, but the sheer gravity of the issue—the lives of a generation and the strength of our future economy—means that it is crucial that we understand the Treasury’s position. That is what today’s motion seeks to enable all Members of the House to do.
Labour fully recognises that it is the responsibility of the Treasury to cast an eye— sometimes a sceptical eye—over all spending plans, securing value for money for public spending, ensuring that money is spent both effectively and efficiently. It will be at the heart of spending decisions under a Labour Government. Reasoned decisions about how to spend money must, however, mean, as schoolchildren are often told, that the Chancellor shows us his working-out. An unthinking aversion to using public money to achieve public good is not a virtue—it is a misguided dogma from which this country has spent a decade suffering the consequences and which today puts at risk the education of a generation.
Sometimes only Government can achieve the change that we need and fix the problems that we face. Failure to invest in those circumstances is a false economy on a national scale. The House does not need take my word for it. Earlier this year, the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggested that pupils who have lost six months of normal schooling could lose approximately £40,000 in income over their lifetime. That adds up to £350 billion in lost lifetime earnings across the 8.7 million schoolchildren in the UK. Lost earnings of £350 billion means about £100 billion less tax revenue to invest in building a strong and resilient economy and society of the future; £100 billion simply dwarves the costings that Sir Kevan prepared for his full programme.
The recovery of learning after the pandemic is a vast challenge, but it is undoubtedly in the interests of both our children and our country. We all know that the value and importance of education are not simply about lessons. School is not merely where we learn about Henry VIII and the solutions to quadratic equations; it is where, in every year, we learn the skills that set us up for life: questioning, leading, communicating; the value of friendship and discussion, and of criticism and disagreement without rancour. When children first go to school they are learning how to play, how to make friends, how to make their way in the world, and how to develop as independent individuals. Missing that opportunity has repercussions throughout their rest of their lives.
Nursery closures mean that children are falling behind. Their transition to primary school will be harder and their long-term success lesser. During the pandemic, children of primary age should have been learning the building blocks of maths, reading and writing that will set them up for life, yet by the end of the pandemic tens of thousands of primary-school children were estimated by the Government to be behind on basic literacy and unable to read or write when starting secondary school. By the end of the second national lockdown, pupils were estimated to have lost two to five months of learning, with particularly severe effects on maths skills. Secondary-school children are young people choosing the course of their lives: the college they will attend; the apprenticeship they will begin; the skills they will develop; the university they might go to.
I want to mention briefly the impact that the necessary restrictions of the pandemic and school closures have had on children in my city of Sunderland. Children have paid a price: a price on their health, with exercise and activity less common and obesity a greater threat; a price on their development of speech and language, as they have been less able to learn from each other and are slipping behind; a price on their reading, with the ability to learn through phonics understandably impaired by the constraints of distance learning; a price on their family relationships, with the confinement of families exacerbating tensions and leading to rising referrals to children’s social care; and a price on the hope and optimism about their future that should fill young people, with exams cancelled and uncertainty about their qualifications and job prospects.
The price that children have paid is not unique to my city. Each one of us has seen the damage—social, emotional and academic—to children in every one of our constituencies. But we know that the disruption has hit some children much harder, particularly those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds and those living in areas with the longest lockdowns. Unless we address that issue, those effects will ripple through the lives of individuals and through wider society. They will exacerbate inequalities among families and generations, weakening us as individuals and as a society.
A generation who missed out on their education and who were not given the support they needed to catch up would be a generation betrayed. That would have consequences—not just for them, but for us all. It would mean fewer people with skills entering our workforce over that next generation. It would mean the workforce as a whole deskilling over time, and that would mean a drop in the output and productivity of our economy.
Skills and education are at the heart of Labour’s vision for the economy and society of the future. The society that we want to see is one where people never stop learning and developing their skills, talents and abilities, and where reskilling for working-age people is as natural as sending our children to school. For us, ensuring the recovery of children’s learning from the pandemic today is crucial to assuring Britain’s success tomorrow—success for individuals, but also success for every community and every corner of our country.
The argument that we make to the Treasury and to the Minister is that Government action at scale can—and must—be effective. If we get it right, we will pay a smaller price now than a much greater price over the many decades ahead, and that price could be huge. Estimates of the total cost of the disruption to education based on individual impacts have ranged from £80 billion to £160 billion. Estimates based on the systemic effect on our economy, looking at the relationship between schooling and growth, suggest figures of more than £1 trillion.
What we do know from the limited past examples of disastrous interruptions to children’s education is that the damage can be real, but it can be fixed. We know it is real, because chronic industrial unrest in Argentina’s education system over many years caused repeated school closures. Women affected by those closures who were at school at the time have seen their lifetime earnings fall by 1.7% as a result. For men, the amount is nearly double that.
We also know that the damage can be fixed—that the price our children have paid is not one they need to pay all their lives long. In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans. Most children were out of school for one to three months, yet subsequent intervention was not merely swift and sustained; it was effective. Four years after that disaster, affected children had caught up on lost learning by about two months. Not only that, but the gains were concentrated in the children whose initial performance after the disaster was worst. The lesson we draw from that example is that intervention is not only an option, it is the right option.
The motion before us seeks to understand why the Treasury has been so opposed to the sort of intervention we need and the sort of future our children deserve. What we need, and what Sir Kevan’s work rightly lays out, is a long-term, funded plan that is evidence-based, scalable and practical, making best use of the tremendous human and physical resources that we have in this country. It must have at its heart increasing opportunities in school, increasing the value of that time, and targeted tutoring for those who need it most. Tutoring means better engagement. Improving teaching helps us to get more out of every extra hour. More time together helps children to catch up on the social and emotional aspects of their development.
I want to pick up two aspects of the plan that Sir Kevan developed for our nation’s children, which the Treasury blocked. They are about the urgency and the duration of the plan we need. The Government, and the Treasury in particular, seem to be caught on the hop again and again. To Treasury Ministers, urgency in dealing with the challenges of public policy is too often for other people—for self-employed workers and small businesses who need to submit claims on time or get nothing, or for businesses which need to remodel their operations overnight as restrictions change with just hours to go.
The Chancellor must never be allowed to forget that his refusal last autumn to set out clear and workable plans until businesses had only hours before deadlines meant thousands of workers either losing their jobs or living in fear of doing so. He has shown again and again that he will not get ahead of the problem—that he prefers to wait and hope it goes away. Our children’s future is not an issue that is going away, and it is high time that the Government faced up to that.
It has been apparent since the day that schools were first closed to most children that they would not reopen for many weeks at least and that one day action would be needed to address the consequences. Each week without action is another step towards lasting damage to the opportunities of hundreds of thousands of children. Waiting until the spending review means that more than 300,000 more children and young adults will have left the school system altogether before a proper plan and proper steps are in place.
The second major point is that schools need to start making decisions now about resources and staffing to deliver over not just a few months, but many years. Long-term outcomes are better delivered when they can be planned on a longer-term basis—more than one financial year at a time. That is, after all, the reason the Government have multi-year spending reviews in the first place. Sharply increased spend should come with proper accountability, which is why Labour has set out clear proposals for increased and improved mechanisms to get the best value out of every pound of public money spent.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), the shadow Secretary of State for Education, has set out Labour’s comprehensive alternative to what the Government have proposed, because, like Sir Kevan, Labour grasps the scale of the problem and the need for the Government to rise to the challenge. Our plan would see breakfast clubs, new activities for every child and a fully funded expanded range of extracurricular clubs and activities. Our plan would see quality mental health support in every school, giving every child the support they need. Our plan would see small group tutoring for all who need it, not just 1%, by reforming the Government’s failing tutoring programme to ensure that no child falls behind because of pandemic disruption.
Our plan would see continued development for teachers, who have had one of the toughest years of their careers. Our plan would see an education recovery premium supporting every child by investing in children who have faced the greatest disruption during the pandemic, from early years to further education, delivering vital additional support for children who need it the most. Our plan would ensure that no child goes hungry by extending free school meals over the holidays.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. Given that she has been talking about the plans of Kevan Collins, and given that a core part of his proposal was to have a formal longer school day, which the shadow Education Secretary said in the media last week was not something she agreed with, does the hon. Lady agree that there should be a longer school day as part of Sir Kevan Collins’ plans?
Bridget Phillipson
I am always keen to hear from the Chair of the Select Committee, who I know cares very deeply and passionately about these issues. What I would say in response is that, rather than disagreeing over the nature of that additional time, why do we not focus on trying to get the right outcome for all our children in this country? The block to that rests with the Treasury. It feels at times that we are arguing at cross-purposes. That was not the position that my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) set out. I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman’s assessment of the situation.
We all want to make sure that children have the time they need in school to catch up on that lost time, but in addition to that, we want to make sure there are fully funded extracurricular activities as part of an extended day within the school premises, so that all children—not just those who can afford extra clubs, music, activities or book clubs; whatever it would happen to be—have access to that kind of provision. The block right now and the reason we have not got to that point, I am afraid, lies on the right hon. Gentleman’s Benches.
Last week, the Government could bring themselves neither to support nor to oppose our alternative. Perhaps today they will tell the House why the Treasury blocked the plans that the Prime Minister’s chosen adviser sought to develop, comparable in scope and scale to those of the Opposition.
Children do not vote, and their voices are rarely heard in this place, but we have a moral duty to them none the less: a duty to their future, both theirs and ours. Labour has set out, at length and in detail, the sort of plan that we believe our country needs. The Government’s own education recovery commissioner set out, at length and in detail, the sort of plan that he believes our country needs. Today, our request is simple: that the Treasury explain to parents and families why it believes that our country does not need its own commissioner’s plan.
It is not too late for the Government to change course. What we want, what Sir Kevan wanted, what the people of this country want and what the children of our country need is a properly funded long-term plan for educational recovery. We have set one out. There is still time for the Government, even now, to rise to the challenge and deliver that brighter future that we all want to see.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
As Members can see, the screens say that there is a three-minute limit, but for Alison McGovern and Robert Halfon the limit will be four minutes. It will then revert to three for the duration of the debate.
Educational Settings
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Gavin Williamson
Obviously, my greatest hope is that we could get schools opened very rapidly, but I am going to be guided by the best scientific and medical advice in terms of when we do that. My right hon. Friend also referred to the fact that the term key workers should not just be seen to refer only to NHS professionals—that it is much broader. That is very clearly understood by the Cabinet Office, and what we do will reflect that fact.
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has called on nurseries and early years providers to be part of a national effort to combat this. When will the Government set out what steps they will take to provide additional financial support to nurseries, going beyond the funding he set out for the continuation of funded places? My worry is that if we do not provide additional support very quickly, staff will be laid off and some of these nurseries might never reopen.
Gavin Williamson
As I alluded to earlier, we have already guaranteed the Government funding regardless of what their pupil numbers are in terms of continued funding for all those nursery settings. We have already done it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
Mr Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Education (Gavin Williamson)
We are investing more in schools and high needs over the next three years, starting with an additional £2.6 billion, including £780 million for high needs in 2020-21 and £1.5 billion for the cost of the teacher pension scheme.
Bridget Phillipson
While the north-east is home to some of the best performing primary schools in the country, sadly, at secondary level, there are issues with poor outcomes for young people. Rather than reannouncing an initiative from two years ago using existing departmental funding, when will the Secretary of State properly tackle the fact that far too many children in our region are not receiving the education they deserve?
Gavin Williamson
I recently had the great pleasure of visiting schools across the north-east, as well as Opportunity North East, a new programme aimed at raising attainment in the key area of secondary schools. This already seems to be having an impact on schools—that was certainly my impression from conversations I had with school leaders—and we want to continue to build on that across the north-east.