Grammar School Funding

Debate between Edward Leigh and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

What better way to start a parliamentary Tuesday than with a debate on grammar school funding, in the name of Sir Edward Leigh?

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. It is a convention to say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, but in this case it is heartfelt.

This debate is about the funding not only of grammar schools, but of successful, well performing comprehensives with good sixth forms. I am proud to declare that one of my children attends a grammar school, and I am proud to have two excellent grammar schools in my constituency: Caistor grammar school and Queen Elizabeth’s high school. They are centres of excellence, and I salute the Lincolnshire county councillors who have always kept in mind the importance of our grammar schools and saved them.

The phasing out of grammar schools in most of the country was one of the greatest policy disasters of the post-war era. By the 1960s, grammar schools were so successful that we achieved an unqualified and unprecedented level of social mobility—it was greater than anything this country has achieved in its long history, before or since. Many of the nation’s poorest, most deprived people were given their first great chance to move up. Those schools were so successful that the independent sector feared that it would fade and decline into irrelevance, barring the odd Eton or Harrow. Across the country, we need to nurture those centres of excellence and learn lessons from them that we can apply across the state sector as beacons.

The purpose of this debate is not to honour grammar schools, but to ensure that they are not buried by stealth. A growing concern has emerged recently about the disparity of per-pupil funding for grammar schools, which also affects high-performing comprehensives with large sixth forms. Changes in the past three years have adversely affected grammar schools disproportionately in comparison with other state schools. The minimum funding guarantee of minus 1.5% gives the appearance of preserving per-pupil funding. However, as Mr David Allsop, the headmaster of Queen Elizabeth’s high school in Gainsborough, notes:

“Sixth form funding has been dropping much more significantly and we have managed to maintain our funding as flat by increasing the number of students in the sixth form.”

In 2013, Mr Allsop analysed Lincolnshire schools that were not academies, and looked at per-pupil funding. The grammar school that he heads was the least well funded school per pupil in the county. It receives £4,474 per pupil on average, while a similar sized comprehensive school in Lincolnshire receives £6,481 per pupil. Those figures are from the Government’s consistent financial reporting data. If we are to promote educational excellence, it is not a good idea to give the best school in Lincolnshire, which everybody tries to get into, only £4,000 per pupil per year, while giving the worst performing comprehensive in Lincoln, which nobody wants to go to, £7,000 per head per year. That is a daft way to run our education system.

We are asking only for fairness. Back in the 1960s, one of the criticisms of grammar schools was that they were treated unfairly well by county councillors. It is ironic that the reverse is now happening. Grammar schools are in a uniquely bad position, in terms of state funding.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Edward Leigh and Philip Hollobone

Thursday 13th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am satisfied that the NAO has adequate resources, but the Commission has already imposed a 15% cut to its budget in real terms. If further cuts are demanded, the House will have to consider whether the NAO will be able to continue its excellent work to support the Committees of the House, including the Public Accounts Committee.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

What proportion of the National Audit Office’s parliamentary work is taken up in servicing the Public Accounts Committee?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

In 2012-13, the NAO’s support to the Public Accounts Committee cost £3 million and its support to other Select Committees cost £2.1 million. My hon. Friend will see that the majority of the funding supports the PAC, but the NAO does valuable work to help all our Select Committees.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Edward Leigh and Philip Hollobone

Thursday 16th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

3. How many staff the National Audit Office employs; and what information the NAO collects on their previous employment.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough)]

The National Audit Office currently employs the equivalent of 870 full-time staff. It collects detailed information on an individual’s employment and education history when recruiting staff.

[Mr Hollobone]

The National Audit Office undertakes a lot of good work investigating many public bodies. Does my hon. Friend think the make-up of his staff is sufficiently broad, from all sorts of different sectors in the private and public world, for them to do their job effectively?

[Mr Leigh]

Yes, I do. As an audit institution, the NAO’s core accounting skills are obviously provided through qualified accountants, many of whom join as trainees. The NAO currently employs about 330 qualified accountants and 200 trainees, graduate and school-leaver, from all sectors and all types of society. It also recruits staff from public and private sector backgrounds to provide operational expertise and disciplines, including economics, statistics, information and communications technology, banking and finance. In addition, it has an active inward and outward secondment programme to enhance its skills and experience base.

European Communities Act 1972 (Repeal) Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Philip Hollobone

Friday 26th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) on having the courage to introduce a commendably short Bill. It comprises just one piece of paper, although admittedly it does stretch to two sides, and its purpose is very simple, straightforward and understandable: to repeal the European Communities Act 1972 and all related legislation. “Hear, hear” to that—not just from me but, I believe, from a majority of the constituents I have the privilege to represent from the borough of Kettering. It was in this very Chamber, almost exactly to the day, 40 years ago that the European Communities Act 1972 was passed. We are now in a very different world, a different UK and a different Europe, and the answers that seemed to be the solution to the difficulties of the 1970s are dragging this country back. If we are ever again to be the proud, confident and prosperous sovereign nation that we once were, the EU and our membership of it must go.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) was right to say that only people who are now at least 55 years of age had the privilege of taking part in the referendum that Harold Wilson introduced in 1975. I will not ask my hon. Friend which way he voted—I hope it was no—but, sadly, two thirds of the British people voted yes.

[Mr Leigh]

My hon. Friend asks me the question. Like so many other people, including our then leader, Margaret Thatcher, I voted yes, because I was promised a common market.

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Two thirds of the British nation were convinced by the argument that we were joining a common market, and that the way out of our economic travails in the early 1970s was free trade with our European partners. That was a persuasive argument but 40 years on, in 2012, we do not have what we voted for.

Colleagues in the House who are less than 55 years old, and all our constituents who are under 55, have never had the chance to take part in a referendum on Europe. The Common Market morphed into the European Economic Community, the European Community, and the European Union. The United States of Europe is probably just around the corner. I am completely confident that the British people do not want that.

I should tell the Minister for Europe that my constituents do not want the situation we are in. They do not believe in ever-closer union, and nor do I. They want to have their say on whether Britain should carry on with its membership of this 27-member club, not least because our membership fee is simply too high. Ten billion pounds a year would buy a lot of nurses, police officers, doctors and teachers—the economically productive people we could employ to improve our public services. We could reduce the burden of taxation. We could decide to do whatever we want with that £10 billion, but giving it to Europe and Brussels is not the correct way to spend taxpayers’ money from this country.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton said, our fishing industry has basically been destroyed. Tens of thousands of fishermen used to be gainfully employed in all the proud coastal ports in the early 1970s. Where are they now? The business has gone to France, Spain and other countries that have been stealing our fish. Our once prosperous fishing grounds have been destroyed—the European Union’s handling of fishing grounds is a conservationist’s nightmare.

The biggest issue is immigration. Effectively, we no longer have the border controls we once had. Hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of EU citizens live freely in our country. They are just living by the rules and doing their best—who can blame them?—but most of my constituents will say that we simply cannot cope as a nation with the uncontrolled wave of immigration from the EU to our shores. We cannot cope with the numbers of people who have come to this country. With the economic collapse in countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain, hundreds of thousands more EU citizens could well be heading our way. Our economy is struggling out of a double-dip recession. How on earth will we provide jobs for hundreds of thousands of extra immigrants to our shores? I am not saying that we should not have immigrants who offer skills to our economy. Of course we should, but we should have bilateral agreements with those nations, not a border-free Europe in which we have no control over the number of people coming to our shores.

We also have the burden of regulation on struggling small businesses in this country thanks to the legislation factory in Brussels and the European Parliament in its two locations—a scandal that continues 40 years on. Why it needs a Parliament in the first place, let alone one that sits in two places, is beyond the comprehension of my constituents. Those institutions are turning out a stream of red tape and bureaucracy that stifles the economic growth of entrepreneurs in this country. Not only do we have to pay a horrendous membership fee of £10 billion a year, but we strangle economic growth from small enterprises with all the European legislation.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton on having the courage to introduce the Bill 40 years on from our accession to the European club. Let me say on behalf of my constituents that the very least the British people deserve is another say on Europe. If there were such a referendum, I for one would vote to leave. I am confident that the majority of my constituents would do likewise, because Britain’s best future lies with the rest of the world. That is how Britain came to be one of the most dominant powers of the world—by trading with other countries and spreading our message overseas. Limiting ourselves to a future tied to an increasingly sclerotic European economy condemns future generations in this country to a life without the prosperity we would otherwise enjoy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Edward Leigh and Philip Hollobone

Thursday 5th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

8. What assessment the Public Accounts Commission has made of the most effective piece of work undertaken by the National Audit Office in 2011-12.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough)]

The Public Accounts Commission’s role is not to assess individual pieces of work, but each year we ask the National Audit Office’s external auditors to assess the value-for-money aspect of the NAO. The NAO’s annual report shows that in 2010-11 it influenced the Government to improve public services in key areas such as financial management, and saved the UK taxpayer more than £1 billion.

[Mr Hollobone]

What investigation does my hon. Friend think will be the most interesting, exciting and effective in 2012-13?

Sentencing (Green Paper)

Debate between Edward Leigh and Philip Hollobone

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions should be shorter.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am sorry, but that person is a nasty person. Just because someone is not violent does not mean that they are not nasty. I contend that the reason that they are reoffending is that they never serve their sentence in full. Even if someone is sentenced to 18 months for shoplifting, no one in this country will ever serve such a sentence. They might be sentenced to that, but the chances are that they will be out reoffending within six months. My contention is that such people need to be in jail for at least a year to enable proper rehabilitation to take place.