Oral Answers to Questions

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

The Secretary of State ought to be able to detect the hon. Gentleman’s status and his intellectual distinction from a radius of approximately 1,000 miles.

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

The extra money for post-16 providers is extremely welcome. It has been warmly welcomed by Havering Sixth Form College in my constituency. However, it appears to be a one-year funding deal, rather than the three-year settlement that five to 16 education providers received. Will the Secretary of State look at giving colleges more long-term certainty by delivering future increases in line with inflation and raising the overall rate for 16 to 18-year-olds?

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend raises a very valuable point about the importance of long-term certainty for all parts of the education sector. That was very clearly explained in the report from the Select Committee chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). We will continue to look at it. It was a one-year settlement for 16 to 19-year-olds. We made sure we gave as much certainty in the schools sector as possible. We continue to look at what more we can do to give confidence to the further education sector on how to invest in the future of our young people.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his supplementary. We do keep a close eye in monitoring the provider, the market and of course the cost base. Under the early years national funding formula, our average rates to local authorities are higher than the average hourly costs of providing childcare to three and four-year-olds, but he makes an important contribution, in the sense that we have to keep an eye on the costs. Ofsted has essentially done the work; the number of childcare places has remained broadly stable since the introduction of the 30 hours’ programme.

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

The cost of childcare is prohibitive for many families and can dissuade women from returning to the workplace, but those financial pressures are doubled and sometimes tripled for parents of multiples. What work is the Minister doing to assist those families to deal with the especial financial challenges of childcare provision for twins and triplets, particularly those families on middle incomes, who may not qualify for the child allowance or other benefits?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Clearly, the programme aims to make sure that parents who are working are able to receive the entitlements. Of course, we deliver entitlements for two-year-olds for the most disadvantaged families in this country, but I will happily look at the question of parents with twins or triplets as well.

Further Education Funding

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham]

The short answer is that I agree. Qualifications for workers in key sectors have dropped. Qualifications for construction workers have dropped from 98,000 to 62,000. For engineers, the sector from which the hon. Lady comes, including plumbers and electricians, the figure has dropped from 145,000 to 46,000. That is a huge drop in a relatively short space of time, precisely at the moment when we need more engineers in this country, to take forward our technology revolution.

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

My hon. Friend highlights precisely the relevant point, namely that at the very moment when we should be looking at vocational skills in our economy, we are squeezing funding in that area. This is critical to where our country is heading in the next 10 to 20 years.

[Richard Graham]

I agree with that, as I think all hon. Members would.

--- Later in debate ---

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

Further education is the crucial but sometimes forgotten link between secondary schools and universities; it is very much the Cinderella service. It can pave the way for an excellent university career or provide the opportunity to learn the vocational skills required to enter a competitive professional field, and is just as important as secondary or higher education. We cannot afford to neglect further education and we must correct the disparity in funding.

As many colleagues have said, the national funding rate for 16 and 17-year-olds has remained frozen since 2013-14, yet we know that, as with our schools, the cost pressures on our colleges are considerable. If we do not address that, there will be a huge issue—it has already been growing year on year.

Despite that, our schools and colleges have been doing an excellent job with the resources they have. Two colleges in my constituency, Colchester Sixth Form College and Colchester Institute, are both bucking the trend. In my constituency, A-level attainment is far above the national average, which is remarkable. Huge credit deserves to go to the teachers, staff and leaders who work within our schools and colleges. However, we cannot expect this success to continue if we do not take action to address the rising costs faced by schools and colleges, and their underfunding.

Those rising costs are having an impact: 51% of colleges and schools have dropped courses in modern foreign languages; 38% have dropped STEM courses, which we know we so desperately need; and 78% have reduced student support services or extracurricular activities, with significant cuts to mental health services.

[Julia Lopez]

A problem that I find in my constituency is that there is a disconnect between the jobs being generated by the economy and the ability of our education sector to provide the right skills for those jobs. Havering Sixth Form College, which is in my constituency, plays a key role in that process. For instance, going down the nursing associate route will be critical for our public sector. Trying to get that match between the public sector, the economy and our education sector is critical, which is why this debate is so important.

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Funding

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I thank the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable) for securing this crucial debate. I very much echo what the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) has said, particularly about trying to navigate through such complexity when it comes to special educational needs. I appreciate that time is short, so I shall simply echo many of the points raised by other hon. Members about the pressures on mainstream schools in terms of financing and classroom support, the time it takes to obtain education, health and care plans, and the tensions that can be created between schools and councils in meeting statutory obligations to SEND children.

Since my election I have made it a priority to visit each of the 42 schools in my constituency to get to know the school community and its needs. The pressures on special educational needs services have been one of the most consistent themes in my conversations with parents and teachers, and I have highlighted those concerns to the Education Secretary and to the borough’s lead for children’s services. In Havering we have had the fastest-growing number of children of any London borough for the past few years, and funding has simply not kept up with that changing demography. Redden Court School in Harold Wood, for instance, has three times the national average of students with special educational needs and disabilities. That is more than 50 children with an education, health and care plan. The schools in my constituency are doing a fantastic job at ensuring that SEND children can be educated in the mainstream, but we must take into account the pressure that that can place on classroom staff and resources.

I was pleased by the announcement, before Christmas, of an additional £250 million of high needs funding, of which my borough will get more than £600,000. It is also welcome that the Secretary of State has allocated a £100 million top-up fund for new high needs school places and improved facilities, as well as removing the cap on the number of bids for free schools with special and alternative provisions. However, we must also look at the strain on third sector organisations at pre-school level, which often rely on diminishing local authority funds. Pre-school can be a critical time for getting the right support, and the right diagnosis of any condition, for SEND children before primary education begins. First Step, in Hornchurch, provides many fantastic services to local families affected by autism and other special educational needs. The Prime Minister has indeed promoted that charity’s work on my behalf on her own Twitter account. However, pre-school support for autistic children can be patchy, and new difficulties can arise, within the school environment and beyond, as those children grow older. I should be most grateful if the Minister would advise on what she is doing at pre-school level to ensure that parents and schools are equipped with the right support to help children to make the transition into primary education.

Skills Devolution (England)

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I commend the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) on securing what is a welcome and increasingly urgent debate.

As we leave the European Union, we will need our domestic workforce to be ever more dynamic, innovative and flexible, not just to maximise the new opportunities to our economy from trade and technology, but to reduce our reliance on a vast overseas workforce. Access to a pool of half a billion EU workers has for too long allowed businesses to obtain cheap, skilled and hard-working employees without having to properly invest in the domestic skills base. It has similarly allowed the Government to duck some of the shortcomings of our own education and skills systems by effectively piggy-backing on the investments of other nations in their people.

Economic migration to the UK will not and should not stop once we have left the EU. London, where I am an MP, is an economic powerhouse that needs to have access to the global talent pool, but if we are to fulfil our own industrial strategy and maximise opportunities for home-grown workers, we need to turbo-charge our approach to skills and get businesses, schools, colleges and Government to work together in a far more interconnected way. The current framework for improving skills is far too centralised and inflexible, unable to deliver workers to fill London’s vacancies as quickly as those vacancies are created, and failing to provide lifelong learning to keep existing workers sufficiently up to date.

Two weeks ago, I visited my local jobcentre, where the team is doing a quite remarkable job in getting people into work. However, one of the groups they find hardest to place is the over-50s, who need to be given time and confidence to adapt to the changing workplace. Meanwhile, one in five London families are stuck in in-work poverty, so attention also needs to be paid to providing clear progression pathways into higher paid work. We require a new spirit of collaboration that leads to increased interaction between our schools, businesses and public services.

I am very excited by what I see in my own constituency. Hon. Members have referred to the critical importance of investment in STEM subjects. On Friday, I visited the Coopers’ Company and Coborn School, which has a dedicated STEM coordinator, Nick, who is doing some amazing work in increasing uptake in science, maths and tech subjects by connecting the school to the academic community and to businesses. Too often such work is reliant on dynamic individuals and organisations, without whom the workstream would not be able to progress.

I am also particularly excited by a five-week, focused course being run by Havering College in my constituency, working with Transport for London. Committed students in the boot-camp style course at this railway academy are guaranteed a job interview with the prospect of employment as railway engineers. Half a million pounds-worth of rail equipment donated by TfL has been installed at the college and students are getting hands-on experience to learn about the rail industry. That is the kind of joined-up skills approach we shall need to see much more of, not least as it helps to provide workers for critical infrastructure projects such as Crossrail. The programme has also helped long-term unemployed and ex-offenders with few or no qualifications to access full-time employment.

It is probably now time to give London the powers that will enable it to prioritise those kinds of skills investments: getting people into work and delivering critical infrastructure in the capital. Devolution of skills provision would also support the capital to develop Londoners’ employability and skillset, targeting and scaling up skills efforts to ensure that everyone who grows up in London can access employment in a changing and increasingly competitive labour market. Compared with international peers and other parts of the UK, London has much lower fiscal and political autonomy, and it is highly dependent on national policies and funding—74% of Greater London Authority and borough expenditure is based on intergovernmental transfers. That makes it very difficult to plan for the long term.

There are two areas where the Government could now look at devolving additional power, since City Hall will soon take control of London’s adult education budget: unspent apprenticeship levy funds and the 16-to-18 further education skills budget. Those issues will be key to meeting the demands of London’s changing labour market. With a wider range of powers, London would be in a strong position to create a system that meets employer need, not just learner demand, and capitalise on local labour market intelligence. It would enable stronger employment engagement to identify skill needs and sector priorities, which can only be done effectively at local level. The provision of higher level professional and technical education could be driven up and clear progression pathways created for learners. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s perspective on those and the other technical and skills issues raised today.