Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Lord Field of Birkenhead Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that very sensible, measured question. The Schools Minister or I would be delighted to meet him and those representatives. When I go around the country, schools say to me that they understand that the direction of travel is for academisation. We want to work with schools. I suggest that the relevant schools speak to their regional schools commissioner, but also of course to the Department, to make sure that we are able to help them to academise in a way that continues with excellent education and continues to transform the lives of young people, because that is what we all want to see.

Let me turn to the longer school day. We know the difference that positive character traits can make to the life chances of young people, including the resilience to bounce back from life’s setbacks, the determination to apply themselves to challenges, and confidence in their own ability to improve themselves. Such traits also include persistence and grit—the sorts of characteristics that some Labour Back Benchers might need to demonstrate as they face years in the wilderness under their current leadership. With those traits, we know that young people are more likely to achieve their potential and make a positive contribution to British society.

[Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I thank the Education Secretary for giving way and rewarding character and grit. Although most of us agree that the extension of the school day is welcome, there are schoolchildren who are hungry and therefore find it most difficult to benefit from any reforms. One welcomes the Chancellor’s sugar tax, which will give more children the ability to start school with food in their bellies, but will the Education Secretary break convention and lead a cross-party group to meet the Chancellor, who is sitting next to her, so that we can lobby for some of that sugar tax to feed the poorest children during the school holiday?

[Nicky Morgan]

I and the Chancellor would be very happy to meet the right hon. Gentleman to discuss that. One of yesterday’s announcements that has not received attention—I will come on to it—is the significant additional funding for breakfast clubs. Of course, the Government have also committed to continuing the pupil premium, which is another way in which schools are able to support those most disadvantaged children. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the need for holiday funding and feeding, and I am certainly prepared to look at that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Field of Birkenhead Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman is right that those are of course important skills that we would like to see in all our young people. In the work of the Department I need to balance demands for additional subjects and for academic qualifications, but many schools already teach life-saving skills. As a Department, we have recently negotiated a contract so that schools can obtain defibrillators at reasonable rates and they will of course want to train their pupils on how to use them.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

Some time ago, I asked 15-year-olds in Birkenhead what they most wanted from their school. They said that they wanted to know how to be good parents, how to make lifelong friendships and how to get and keep jobs. When we have done some more work in secondary schools in Birkenhead, might I come and present it to the Secretary of State and the shadow Secretary of State?

[Nicky Morgan]

Perhaps the Secretary of State and I should show true character, resilience and grit by sitting in the same room and listening to what I am sure will be a very interesting presentation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Field of Birkenhead Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

There is a legitimate concern about high pay as well as low pay, which is why the Government introduced reforms of executive pay, with a binding vote on executive pay by shareholders, significantly strengthening the Government’s powers to ensure that shareholders exercise proper responsibility over top pay.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State talks about relieving pressures on the living standards of the lowest paid, but is he aware that the all-party parliamentary group on hunger and food poverty in Britain found, to its surprise, that a number of people using food banks were on the minimum wage? Might he not therefore use whatever powers he can to press those sectors of industry that could pay the living wage, such as banking and finance, to do so?

[Vince Cable]

I suspect that relatively few people are on the minimum wage in the banking and finance sectors, but we support the living wage for those companies that can afford it and are not putting people out of work. My responsibilities are more in respect of strengthening the minimum wage and making enforcement tougher. We are doing that and we are signalling to the Low Pay Commission that we respect its independence but are looking forward to real-terms increases in the minimum wage in the future.

National Minimum Wage

Lord Field of Birkenhead Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

I will address precisely all three points the hon. Gentleman makes, which I have read and heard the Minister make in the media, but the issue is how we evolve what we have to tackle the fact that, despite the minimum wage, more than 5 million people are in low pay. When we introduced the minimum wage and when, as I have said, the hon. Gentleman’s Conservative colleagues opposed its introduction, people were earning as little as £1 an hour in some parts of the economy. We helped to do away with extreme low pay—[Interruption.] I will come to tax if the hon. Gentleman is patient. We now want to move things to address the bigger, broader issue of the large body of people in our country who are in low pay.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

When the Opposition are developing policy, we should consider that there are clearly some sectors of industry that could pay substantially above the national minimum wage. When we go into the election, should we not only advocate an increase in the national minimum wage, but encourage those sectors that could pay higher wages without unemployment effects to do so?

[Mr Umunna]

I will come to my right hon. Friend’s point on different sectors if he bears with me for a moment.

How will Labour improve on the current arrangements? When the Labour Government established the national minimum wage, we tasked the Low Pay Commission with the discrete and technical job of setting the minimum wage within existing economic parameters. My right hon. Friend was one of the Ministers involved in its introduction. The Low Pay Commission’s job was to play the hand it was dealt, not to attempt to change the game. Over the years, it has played its hand well, but it has remained relatively hands-off. In that sense, those who say that it is more akin to a minimum wage commission as opposed to a Low Pay Commission are right.

Labour wants to transform the Low Pay Commission into a proper, official low pay watchdog, setting out what it believes we need to do tackle low pay, monitoring progress and making recommendations on how to boost productivity and make a higher minimum wage possible in different sectors. My vision for the Low Pay Commission is for it to be far more active. If we give it a bigger, more active role, it can not only challenge the Government more, but challenge different sectors. I would like it to have a much bigger standing in the national consciousness. Currently, I believe that it has around six to seven staff, who are mainly focused on statistical analysis, but I can see it becoming a big, low pay watchdog, playing a big part in the national conversation.

[Mr Field]

I rise merely to say how much I welcome that statement, because it relates to the work of the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary and other Opposition Front Benchers. If we are to control the welfare bill in a civilised way, making people who could pay higher minimum wages pay their due, rather than relying on taxpayers, is a crucial part of the strategy.

[Mr Umunna]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I could not agree more with him.

My second point is that, up to now, the minimum wage has been set with a view to its short-term impact over the coming year. The Low Pay Commission is asked to describe the labour market as it is when it sets the rate, six months before the rate comes into force. It sets the context and gives the rate, but it does not give any guidance on how a higher level can be reached. Therefore, a Labour Government will set a target to increase the minimum wage from its current level of 54% of median earnings to 58% of median earnings by 2020, to be implemented by the Low Pay Commission during the next Parliament.

Forecasts show that that will take the minimum wage from £6.50 this year to £8.00 in October 2019—I can see the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) looking up at me, but I will come to his point on the forecasts of £8.06. That long-term target will give businesses time to plan and to adapt their business models to boost productivity to support the higher level. The international evidence shows that countries can support minimum wages with such a measure, which could give us a similar level to that in Australia and other EU countries.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Field of Birkenhead Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

My hon. Friend is right that we want to see the money go from local authorities to schools. He will be aware that in his area the proposals that we consulted on involve a significant increase of some 6.4%, which is more than £10 million more for local schools. We want that money to go right through to the front line.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

When will the Minister agree with the wish of the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) to have a much broader review of funding? Children attending reception class in Wandsworth have almost twice the amount of money of children attending in Birkenhead. Neither of those two authorities was in the review. Given that the Government have been in power for four years, that national review is long overdue.

[Mr Laws]

I will not say gently to the right hon. Gentleman that, given that his party was in power for much longer than that, this could have been addressed by him. I will, however, accept the serious point he makes that we need not only to move to a national fair funding formula when we know the long-term spending plans, but that it will make sense for the next Government to consider all the different forms of deprivation funding, including a prior attainment area-based funding, to make sure that there is a coherent whole. I am very proud of what we have done on the pupil premium in this Parliament, but we ought to look in the round in the next Parliament.

Children and Families Bill

Lord Field of Birkenhead Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

One of the reasons we want to encourage local authorities, through this additional funding, to move into a more consortia-type arrangement is that that reduces overheads. At the moment, more than 180 adoption agencies are recruiting, on average, 17 adopters each year. That is not a good economy of scale. There is huge scope within the system to make savings and to get the money to where we want it to help to get children adopted.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Minister on the way in which he is commanding the House in presenting this Bill. He is talking about speeding up the process. Is there any link in the data that he has between the speed of the process and the success of the placement?

[Mr Timpson]

We know from research done by Julie Selwyn at Bristol university that for every year a child is not adopted there is a 20% reduction in their prospect of being adopted. By ensuring that adoption is timely and that the matching process has been done in conjunction with the prospective adopters rather than as an adjunct to that process, we will get children into the right placements in a quicker and more quality-assured way than has happened in the past. The longer children wait to be adopted, the less prospect there is of their being adopted. Adoptive placements are some of the most secure and stable arrangements outside the family. Clearly, adoption breakdowns still take place. We are looking at every stage of the process to make sure that the support that is made available and the information that is given to prospective adopters about the child they are adopting is as transparent as possible so that the prospects of any breakdown are reduced to a bare minimum. The right hon. Gentleman makes a key point that we consistently bear in mind as we make these reforms and push them forward.

Not all children in the care system will or should be adopted. But for all children, the difference it makes when someone cares whether they do well at school is crucial. When someone has high aspirations for them, they are more likely to have high aspirations for themselves. Yet in 2012 only 15% of children who had been looked after continuously for 12 months achieved five or more GCSE grades at A* to C, including English and maths. There have been slight improvements in recent years, but these results are simply not good enough. We have a duty to these children as corporate parents—a duty to care for them as we would our own children.

Of course, we should not forget that, thanks in large part to the fantastic foster carers we have across the country, the large majority of looked-after children benefit from their time in care. However, we want to drive up the focus, commitment and effort within our schools, councils and, yes, foster and residential care homes to make sure that the education of children in care is a real priority. The Bill introduces a duty on every local authority to have an officer—the “virtual school head”—to promote the educational achievement of its looked-after children, because these children are our children and they deserve the very best chance in life.

I want to turn to family justice reform. There is no debate about the need for reform of the family justice system. It is simply not acceptable that children wait, on average, over 47 weeks—until recently, over 56 weeks—for their care or supervision case to be resolved. In 2011-12, 21,553 children were involved in care proceedings and subject to this delay.

David Norgrove’s widely welcomed family justice review made the case for setting a clear time limit for the length of care cases, ensuring that decisions are child-focused and aimed at reducing duplication in the system. We know how important family courts are in making sure that vulnerable children end up in appropriate placements safely, but we need to do more to speed up the process to make sure that children can find stability as quickly as possible. To this end, the Bill includes measures to tackle delay through the introduction of a maximum 26-week time limit for completing care and supervision proceedings.

We also want to see a reduction in the number of additional expert reports commissioned, by ensuring that expert evidence is used in children’s cases only when it is necessary and not as a matter of routine. We will make it explicit that when the court considers a care plan, it should focus primarily on those issues that are essential to its decision about whether to make a care order. We will also help to reduce bureaucracy in the system by removing the need for frequent renewals of interim care and supervision orders.

Our private law reforms are also based on the family justice review’s detailed analysis and recommendations. Simply too many children are involved in private proceedings. Just over 56,000 children were subject to new contact and residence cases in 2011-12. For many families involved, the process can be drawn out and emotionally draining. As someone who spent the best part of 10 years practising as a family law barrister, I can testify that this is rarely the best way to resolve family disputes. Taken together, the Bill’s private law provisions keep the needs of children firmly at the centre of the system, while explicitly acknowledging the important role that both parents should play in a child’s life post-separation.

Our starting principle is that separated parents should resolve their disputes out of court whenever possible. The Bill makes attendance at a mediation, information and assessment meeting—known as MIAM—a prerequisite for applying to court for certain types of family proceedings. This support to help parents reach their own agreements will be underpinned by better online support, access to information programmes and encouragement to develop parenting agreements. The material will also emphasise the importance to children of relationships with wider family members, particularly grandparents.

The principle that most children benefit from the involvement of both parents in their lives after family separation is also pivotal to our private law reforms. Too many children lose contact with a parent following family breakdown. One survey suggests that between a quarter and a third of children who do not live with both parents rarely, if ever, see their non-resident parent. We will emphasise in the out-of-court support we offer to parents the importance to the child of both parents playing a role, but we also believe it must be explicit in the court environment.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Field of Birkenhead Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her kind words and am delighted to hear of the success of the pupil premium in her local school. I can confirm that we are not going back to the days under the previous Government, who sought to micro-manage each piece of education expenditure.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

Given that the skills that young people have before they go to school will determine how effective they are at school, might the Minister consider extending the pupil premium to cover from birth to five?

[Mr Laws]

The right hon. Gentleman has a long tradition of passion for and commitment to the early years in education. We are constantly keeping schools and early years funding under review, and of course we will do what we can over time to ensure that youngsters, at whatever stage of their education, have an opportunity to fulfil their maximum potential.

Exam Reform

Lord Field of Birkenhead Excerpts

Monday 17th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I was talking this morning to the head teacher of Burlington Danes academy, Sally Coates—[Interruption.] She is embracing these reforms, as most enlightened head teachers are, and I suggest that the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) have a word with her before it is too late and his position leaves him even more exposed in the educational world. The point she made to me is that, contrary to my hon. Friend’s suggestion, coursework and controlled assessment often work to the benefit of middle-class students, whose parents can better support them, and actually the form of examinations we are putting forward is better designed to support students from poorer backgrounds to show what they can do, rather than simply to show what their parents have achieved.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

Would parents be correct in drawing from the Secretary of State’s statement that he will ensure that the weakest students are helped so that they enter a single exam and that he will not tolerate a second-tier exam for those weaker students? Although parents will be relieved that students are not asked any more to complete coursework, does he not accept that some coursework does enable students to manage their time better and to improve their skills? Should that not be reflected in his new system?

[Michael Gove]

The right hon. Gentleman makes two very important points. On the first, we are perfectly clear that we are moving towards a single-tier system and away from a split, two-tier system. One of the points that the Opposition Front-Bench team have refused to engage with or acknowledge is that we have a two-tier system now, with foundation and higher-tier examinations at GCSE which force students who enter the foundation tier to accept a cap on aspiration. It is a disgraceful situation, which was never addressed when they were in office.

On the second point, which the right hon. Gentleman rightly makes, about the importance of coursework and controlled assessment, I would say, as I said in response to the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson), that there are specific subjects outside the existing English baccalaureate, such as art and design or design and technology, in which students can demonstrate practical skills effectively through work that is not examined during a time-limited examination period. However, there are real problems with coursework and controlled assessment in core academic subjects.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Field of Birkenhead Excerpts

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

This is a first—I do not think that until now I have ever disagreed with any word that the hon. Gentleman has said in Education questions. Thanks to the fantastic work of the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan), and his team, and the UK Reserve Forces Association, great steps forward are being taken to ensure that more schools have cadet forces. I was overjoyed a couple of months ago to read an op-ed article penned by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and the right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy), which said that there should be more, not less, military involvement in all our schools. I am pleased to see that there is a pact of steel across the Front Benches on this issue.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

The regulator has said that if the marking for this summer’s English exams had been the same as the marking in January, it would have made a 10% difference to results. Given that fact, might not the Secretary of State have a word with the regulator to encourage the re-marking of borderline cases in grade D, with that 10% being added to the score?

[Michael Gove]

I am sure the regulator will have heard the right hon. Gentleman’s case, but it is vital that we maintain its independence. If we were to subject it to ministerial inference, that would undermine the point of having an independent regulator in the first place.

Secondary Education (GCSEs)

Lord Field of Birkenhead Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is absolutely correct that we need to have higher aspirations for all students. That is why, in our forthcoming consultation on how we can improve GCSEs and get world-class qualifications, we will suggest that we end the tiering of papers and ensure that this barrier—this cap on aspiration—is removed. That is genuine radicalism that embodies greater aspiration for all students. After 13 years of Labour when there was a cap on aspiration, under this coalition Government social mobility is at last advanced.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

Given that practically all the studies show that the differences between children when they are first sent to school at the age of five are not changed by schools of any nature or under any exam system, why does the Secretary of State think that the introduction of his proposed reforms will change the life chances of the poorest children?

[Michael Gove]

I think that their life chances can change. I usually agree with the right hon. Gentleman on almost every issue, but in this area I differ with him. I do not believe that birth or even the early years determine a child’s fate. I have seen children from very similar backgrounds, often from troubled and chaotic homes, go into primary schools and then on to secondary schools with very different qualities of teaching and, as a result, have their outcomes transformed. The right hon. Gentleman has been a fantastic advocate for the growth of the academies programme, including in his own constituency. His actions suggest to me that while he is, of course, as determined as I am to improve the early years, he recognises that we can intervene at every stage to help children and young people to succeed.

[Mr Field]

Of course we need to intervene at every stage as effectively as possible. While all of us, thank goodness, have seen examples of children escaping their circumstances such as those the right hon. Gentleman cites, the truth is that if we look at students as classes we do not free whole groups of pupils.

[Michael Gove]

It is absolutely right that we make sure that we recognise that children are individuals and that teaching should, as far as possible, be personalised towards them. Children will not only have different abilities in different subjects but will mature at different stages.

That is one of the reasons why we wanted to ensure that we developed qualifications that are not only without the tiers that set a cap on aspiration but can be taken at different points in a child’s career. At the moment, far too many children fail to secure a GCSE pass in English and maths at the age of 16 and never manage to secure a meaningful qualification in maths or English thereafter. We want to learn from Singapore, where students at the age of 16, then 17, and then 18, secure those passes. We must not give up on children simply because they have not reached an appropriate level at the age of 16. That is why we are reforming post-16 education and why we are placing a requirement on students who have not secured those qualifications at the age of 16 to secure them at 17 or 18. The generation that had been written off under Labour is at last, under the coalition Government, receiving support.