Queen’s Speech

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I also take this opportunity to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, to the Labour Front Bench, and to offer my best wishes to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, who was excellent on the Front Bench: sincere, genuine and hard-working.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, was absolutely right when she said that all the work had been done by others: as people spoke, I crossed out parts of what I was going to say. All noble Lords have made amazing contributions—you just wish that people had more time—but there were some stand-out moments for me which resonated with some of my own thinking.

The noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, kicked off the debate, reminding us about British Sign Language and how important it is. Of course, it was the subject of my good friend Rosie Cooper’s Private Member’s Bill in the Commons.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, said virtually everything that I was going to say, which I found a bit difficult, but she raised the issue of dentists. I can remember when children in school would have a regular—yearly—dental check. What a pity that does not happen any more. Surprisingly, she also said that the Opposition would hold the Government to account with late-night sittings. I hope the votes are more successful at those late-night sittings than they have been in recent months.

My noble friend Lady Brinton rightly reminded us of the difficulty that many families are facing, and again highlighted the need for some sort of emergency Budget or action—particularly, perhaps, on VAT—a windfall tax and other measures to help many families facing very difficult circumstances.

I was quite taken with the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, who talked about AIDS. He commented how wrong it is to say that nobody dies when in fact, in the UK alone, 700,000 people die every year.

My noble friend Lady Walmsley talked about the delay in the obesity strategy and, rather than the Minister writing to her, I hope she might raise it here. I too read the piece by the noble Lord, Lord Hague, in the Times on the U-turn on the obesity strategy: “immoral”, “shallow” and “weak” were his comments.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, who I always have time to listen to, quite bravely raised the issue of academic freedom. There is a problem—she is right—and how we deal with it will be the issue. She mentioned teacher retention; currently, 44% of teachers polled say they will leave the profession in the next five years. I really wanted to take up the point about academies, but I do not have time.

The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, talked about medical students who went to Ukraine to train and the barriers they faced. My goodness, we need them. I do not know whether anybody has tried to phone their GP; I phoned my GP today, it took me 101 recall presses to get through and when I got through to my GP, the receptionist said, “What’s the matter with you?” —whatever happened to doctor-patient confidentiality?—and said they would call me back. The doctor called me back and was excellent; the problem is a lack of GPs and we need to sort that out.

The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, talked about government action on skills. He was encouraged by progress on apprentices and T-levels and quite rightly asked how it all fits together. He talked about the importance of careers education and said we need to develop a programme of work experience. I could go on. I just want to mention the noble Lord, Lord Jones. Every time I listen to him, I get enthused. I loved the comment that Tony Blair’s shortest speech was his best: “Education, education, education”.

I want to start my contribution by repeating the words of my noble friend Lord Shipley, who said in the debate on levelling up last week:

“I say to the Minister that you do not level up places without levelling up people first.”—[Official Report, 11/5/22; col. 36.]


I want to say to the Education Minister that we do not level up schools without levelling up the opportunities for all children. We spend so much time talking and legislating about structures and the type of schools we want. I personally do not care if it is an academy or a maintained, free, state or independent school. What I care about is that all the children, to whatever school they go, get a first-class education; that they all have the same opportunities and support they need to grow and develop. Yet the Government seem obsessed with school types.

The first three pages of the Bill are entirely dedicated to implementing new standards for academies, yet remarkably manage not to specify what these standards will be. And by the way, after years of ruthlessly dismantling the maintained sector schools, we now find that schools that do not convert to academies are more likely to achieve higher ratings from Ofsted.

I care about the quality of teachers and teaching in our schools. I was interested that somebody mentioned Finland. To be a teacher in Finland, you have to have a master’s degree—and, by the way, you are respected and paid a really good salary. We all remember those special teachers, whether in primary or secondary school, who were able to ignite our imagination, so we should be providing our teachers with the best possible training and with first-class continuing professional development.

Our schools and school pupils have, through Covid, had the biggest shock to the system probably since the Second World War. We must do absolutely everything to help pupils catch up—a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox. Yet we have heard time and again as we emerge from the pandemic that schools, parents and pupils are struggling with a lack of catch-up funding. The Sutton Trust found that the vast majority of school leaders are struggling to help children due to this lack of catch-up funding. The Queen’s Speech missed an opportunity to invest in our children’s future. We are calling on the Government, as was proposed by their very own “Catch-up Tsar”, Kevan Collins, to urgently provide the full £15 billion for the catch-up programmes that schools so desperately need.

Let us remind ourselves that virtually every child has been affected during the pandemic, with almost 1.8 million children missing at least 10% of the last autumn term and 122,000 children missing at least half of school time altogether. The pandemic had a huge effect on the well-being and mental health of our children and, indeed, some teachers, yet the Queen’s Speech failed to mention the mental health crisis in our schools. The legacy of the pandemic cannot be a severe mental health crisis that goes unchecked across vast swathes of the country. According to our own NHS, one in six children is currently experiencing a mental health issue—one in six—yet, despite this, there was no more help provided in this year’s Queen’s Speech than in last year’s. We need urgent investment to provide a dedicated and qualified mental health professional in every school or group of schools. No parent should be struggling, as is now the case, to get meaningful and immediate access to mental health care for their child.

The Minister knows that I have highlighted time and again the problems of children missing from our school system, which the pandemic has exacerbated. I do not really understand the issue about daily registration because a register was always marked in the morning and the afternoon. As my noble friend Lady Brinton pointed out, if a child was absent for health reasons you put an “H” with a circle around it in the register and pupils had a particular number. That might be by the by, but the solution is certainly not to punish parents for their sons or daughters not attending. It is to understand and identify the reasons why a child is not in school, including addressing inclusion, mental health and special educational needs challenges. We welcome the fact that councils will be encouraged to adopt a case-by-case approach to absenteeism, rather than a blanket policy of fines. The Government’s zero-tolerance approach to school attendance perhaps makes for a good tabloid headline but risks antagonising parents of children with a medical condition-based anxiety, for whom getting their children out of the front door to school is often a major achievement in itself.

The environment that our children and young people work in is important. In 2010 Michael Gove, as Secretary of State for Education, axed the school-building programme, saying that Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme was not as efficient as it could have been. We urgently need now to increase the number of school rebuilding programmes from 50 a year to more than 300. As part of their weekly update to the ministerial team, senior officials have cited the problem of deteriorating school buildings. They say that

“the deteriorating condition of the school estate continues to be a risk, with … funding flat for … 2022-23, some sites a risk-to-life, too many costly and energy-inefficient repairs rather than rebuilds”.

Can the Minister urgently advise the House what action the Government intend to take?

Finally, this year the BBC celebrates 100 years of broadcasting. During those 100 years, its contribution to education has been enormous. As a young primary schoolteacher, I well remember Harry Armstrong’s TV science lessons, as well as “Movement and Drama” on the radio. Bitesize increased by 40% across 2021-22, with three out of four secondary schools using it. Tiny Happy People is supporting parents and carers post pandemic in developing the communication skills so desperately needed. The BBC provides outreach and training to schools and FE colleges—not forgetting the 1,000 apprentices, of whom nearly 30% come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The Bill was the opportunity to broaden the offer of the academic achievement and broader life skills that parents and employers want. It was an opportunity to address widespread well-being problems for children and young people, as well as to give them the support they need to recover lost learning. The Bill has addressed none of these issues, choosing instead to tinker around the edges of the management of schools. Children need catch-up funding, not more upheaval. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, we will certainly be holding the Government to account on many of these issues. We will be supportive at times but very robust as well.

Businesses: Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Cope for securing this important debate. His chairmanship of the Select Committee on Small and Medium Sized Enterprises, of which I have the pleasure of being a member, was exemplary.

When my noble friend secured the debate in June last year on the Select Committee’s report, we had high hopes of an export-led recovery. Sadly, those prospects seem far less certain at the moment. The trade deficit has remained high, and the value of exports fell by 2.5% between August and November. I am glad to see that the trade deficit has been gradually reducing since imports have reduced. However, that demonstrates how precarious the situation can be, exacerbated by the fiscal situation of the eurozone. I suggest that we need to ensure that we look to the future and are thoroughly prepared for what it holds.

Britain may be the sixth-largest exporter in the world and number one for e-commerce in Europe, but we have a massive trade deficit and therefore need to double our exports to £1 trillion by 2020. Only 17% of mid-sized businesses generate revenues outside the European Union, compared with 25% in Germany and 30%—I stress—in Italy. While we have thousands of great exporters, others balk at doing business in countries embraced by our competitors. The CBI has reported that if mid-sized companies maximised their potential they would deliver an extra £20 billion to £50 billion to the economy. The House of Lords Select Committee’s report clearly and cogently identified what needs to be done and we can clearly see a number of very important initiatives coming forward. The International Festival for Business in my home city of Liverpool should be a must for every businessman and businesswoman, and I am sure that our Minister will be there as well.

I will give an example. The expansion of UK Trade & Investment has been vitally important. I will give noble Lords a local example of its sterling work, because it is on many occasions an unsung hero. It held an export week in the north-west that reached 400 businesses, with free events that explored opportunities that ranged from Africa and Europe to southern Asia and Japan. The challenge was for existing exporters to make this the year that they expand into at least one new market. In the weeks before it achieved its target of creating 1,000 new exporters in the north-west, the north-west UKTI director, Clive Drinkwater, said that if every current exporter in the region rose to the challenge,

“we could increase the GDP in the north west by an estimated £2 billion, significantly aiding economic recovery and giving a boost”,

to the competitiveness of the north-west itself.

On support, large companies have a knack for prospering, with their intangible assets and intellectual capital—Pfizer’s recent bid for AstraZeneca is a prime example. Meanwhile, budding SMEs struggle to gain any funding. Figures suggest that 57% of those innovative firms struggled to find funding in 2012, which represents a steady increase from 38% in 2007. Why am I voicing such concern? SMEs are particularly vulnerable: should unlucky circumstances befall them, they may have to sell their shares quickly at knock-down prices and lose the prospect of scaling up. What is worse, if they find themselves having to sell off their enterprises to foreign companies, the UK economy will face losses. If we solve this problem, the returns could be huge.

Take the following example from my city of Liverpool. Focus Commercial is a commercial finance house situated in the heart of Liverpool which aims to provide SMEs with funding without depending on high street banks. However, its support for SMEs does not stop there, as it also attempts to provide a plethora of financial options, with its remit extending to the property and construction sectors. Such co-operation is important, and the flexibility and tailored support that growing SMEs require depend on them not being boxed into a financial corner. Who knows—such support might just fulfil the premonition of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, which says that the UK could be the largest economy in Europe by 2030 if we continue to create businesses and jobs at our current rate.

SMEs are in disagreement about the precariousness of the exports market at the moment. Some feel that niche products are needed to tap into markets that have never been targeted before. It would be less difficult for more SMEs to make the most of those markets with a raised awareness of what UKTI can offer them. If 100,000 new exporters are required to double the value of exports by 2020, this support will be required. I am very glad that the report has raised the issue of awareness from both UKTI and SMEs. Enterprise is, after all, the driving force for economic growth.

I turn to education, an area of great interest to myself. It has been said for years that SMEs need to, and indeed should, invest in apprenticeships. In fact, ICM figures suggest that 20% of SMEs plan to take on at least one apprentice in the next year, with forecasts suggesting this figure will grow the year after. The Prime Minister has already made the step of subsidising workplace training and giving £1,500 grants to SMEs to take on their first apprentices, but this needs to be developed further. In Germany, apprenticeships generally last for three years; they consist of eventually assessed classroom learning for one day a week. While big companies can afford to do this, most enterprises cannot. As sanguine as it may sound, we need to make sure that the Government put in place a means of making sure that the terms, conditions and schedules of apprenticeships are clear from the outset. This is important for both the apprentices and the SMEs that hire them.

My noble friends will be aware that Madeleine Atkins, chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England, recently expressed her desire for universities to improve their interaction with SMEs. The money that universities obtain could be put to good use by boosting knowledge exchange with SMEs. This proactive attitude is already evident. For a number of months now, Cambridge Regional College has been offering completely funded training to SMEs as part of a £2 million European Social Fund programme to improve professional skills at work. This initiative has been hailed as a good stepping-stone to formal qualifications such as apprenticeships, and these developments can be amplified only with a can-do attitude from Ministers in Parliament, SME owners and youngsters.

It is easy to see how young people can benefit from an apprenticeship; it is an alternative to further or higher education and is tailored to their vocational needs. It can also help SMEs, which reap benefits from apprentices; it is important that they make sure their business is sustainable and that they train those apprentices to understand the idiosyncrasies of that particular field of work.

I want to mention another opportunity, which I believe that we have not really thought through. I happen to be a member of the advisory committee of the Regional Growth Fund, which has given almost a £1 billion in grants and growth fund money to encourage business growth, particularly in the least prosperous regions outside the south-east. Businesses are encouraged and helped through the process, and the straightforward criteria are used of leverage ratio and job creation in areas too dependent on the public sector for jobs. It has been very adept at supporting business growth, but would it not be wise to consider whether we should look at targeting those businesses that have the capacity and will to export or those that want to expand their exports? Perhaps the Minister might consider taking up this issue with the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine.

I can only hope that the support objectives outlined in the report are fully achieved—and the sooner the better. We must never ignore the fact that SMEs are the driving force behind the sustainable growth that this country sorely needs.

Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Lord Storey Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, first, I convey the apologies of my colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, who served on the committee and was intending to speak this evening, but she has been invited by Barclays Bank, no less, to have dinner with some senior directors. She thought that it would be a good opportunity perhaps to influence or change their views.

After the Second World War, the then Government urged businesses to either export or die. I suggest that this motto is as important today as it was 60 years ago. Indeed, the accelerating effects of globalisation, combined with increasing competition from the world’s emerging economies, have, if anything, increased this maxim’s resonance.

Here in the UK, we do not have as large a percentage of businesses exporting as do our neighbouring competitors such as Germany, France or Italy. If we could increase the number of exporting firms to the EU average, we would go a long way to reducing Britain’s trade deficit, a shortfall that we have shouldered almost every year since the end of the Second World War. Why is it that the French, the Italians and the Germans are able to export more than us?

It is imperative we ensure that we are doing all we can to encourage an export-led recovery. We therefore established this Select Committee on Small and Medium Sized Enterprises to see which steps could be taken. It was my first Select Committee and it was a privilege to sit on it. I pay tribute to the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Cope, and the committee staff’s professionalism. It should also be mentioned that it was the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Popat, that this topic be looked at in depth.

After months of collecting oral and written evidence and visiting exporter “success stories”, our Roads to Success: SME Exports report was published this spring. If its recommendations are taken seriously, and if government agencies take action to ensure that SMEs know where to go for help, I suggest that we will see major improvements.

The committee rightly concentrated on the wider benefits of increasing SME exports, but of course exports are also invaluable to each individual company. It is crucial we get more firms exporting; it is essential that we encourage those that already do so to look to new and higher-growth markets.

I was taken with some work carried out by the University of Glasgow which looked at the benefits to their own business of those individual companies that exported. The most striking statistic they found is that businesses setting out on their export journey achieve on average a 34% boost to their company’s productivity; that is, a rise of over a third in their first export year. The university’s research also found that these exporting businesses were 12% more resilient to weather tough economic times and, finally, that such firms are also better at innovation.

When you export to a range of countries, you need to be aware of the different tastes, needs, fashions, cultures and, indeed, foibles of each market. The lessons learnt are so powerful that almost every firm that begins to export also witnesses an increase in its domestic sales. The result of these learning processes is that firms, having been exposed to the competitive world of international trade, spread best practice here in the UK.

Countries have four engines of growth: government spending, consumer spending, investment and trade. Government and consumer spending is not likely to rise significantly, so the importance of getting more firms both to export and to invest in their technologies, plants and equipment is the only way in which the UK can pursue the growth we so desperately need.

The Select Committee found that there is plenty of help out there for firms. UK Trade and Investment, as we have heard, is worthy of considerable note. As we also know, many businesses are members of trade associations, chambers of commerce and support organisations such as the Institute of Directors, the Confederation of British Industry and the Federation of Small Businesses, to name a few. All these organisations must pledge—and have pledged, I hope—to increase exporting. I very much hope to see UKTI and UK Export Finance blowing their trumpets even louder to promote the services that they can offer.

The UK currently exports half its goods and services to the other 26—soon to be 27—European Union states. This is good news, although it is largely to be expected in our quota-tariff and free-trade economic area. However, that 50% goes to a group of nations that together represent only 7% of the world's population and only 18% of the world's GDP. Furthermore, this group of nations is potentially shrinking, not growing. We need to seek out new markets wherever they are. We have to take advantage of wherever growth is emanating from. I was pleased to learn that, for the first time, UK exports to China averaged more than £1 billion a month between February and April. We must remain optimistic about our SME exporters, and those who can must help SMEs on their journey to further growth. The Roads to Success report will undoubtedly assist us in this important enterprise.

Christians in the Middle East

Lord Storey Excerpts

Friday 9th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, in the Arab village of Ibillin in northern Israel, students of all religions gather daily in the classrooms of Mar Elias Educational Institutions. They receive a well rounded education, but importantly, they also work together to promote peace, justice and reconciliation. MEEI was the inspiration of Father Elias Chacour who realised that the future of all God's children in the Middle East would depend on the education of the young in the ways of peace, reconciliation, respect and justice. His life's work was devoted to building schools to educate children of all religious and ethnic backgrounds based on these principles.

Dialogue is essential for religious leaders in the Middle East—a land that is sacred to the traditions of all these religions. As Pope Benedict told religious leaders in Israel, the movement towards reconciliation requires courage and vision as well as trust that it is God Himself who will show us the way.

As we have heard, the Christian population is declining in the Middle East. That decline has two main reasons: emigration and declining birth rates. Emigration represents the end of a long process of exclusion and persecution. On the West Bank, a nearly permanent boycott of Christian businesses is the problem. In Egypt, fundamentalist Muslims constantly target Christians and the worst situation is in Sudan where civil war has raged since 1956 and led to wholesale atrocities. Declining birth rates can be seen throughout the whole of the region. At present, the Middle East has 14 million Christians but that is likely to drop in 2020 plus to 6 million. With time, Christians will effectively disappear in the region as a cultural and political force. There are more Christians living in Sydney, Australia, than in Jerusalem itself.

For many years, the plight of Middle East Christians attracted little or no attention in the outside world. Many Governments turned away from the current problems. Christians in the Middle East face continuous persecution and are often isolated. Suspicion of the West so prevalent in much of the Middle East shows itself as outright hatred because of perceptions of western colonialism and imperialism. Derogatory words and insults are often used against Christians and they face many difficulties in terms of housing and jobs.

As I said, for many years the plight of Middle East Christians attracted little interest in the outside world. Their interests seem to be ignored by the British, French, Russian and Greek Governments as well at the Vatican itself. But Christians are an important part of the fabric of the Middle East and a crucial part of the social, religious and moral well-being of the region. We must not only be aware of the problems facing Christians but work and pray for their continued important presence. Solutions must not be imposed from outside. We must ensure that the problems facing Christians are constantly in our thoughts, constantly in our minds and constantly in our deliberations. Like Father Chacour, we must realise that the way forward is to understand each other and respect each other and to work alongside each other.

I am always reminded of my own city where, on Remembrance Sunday, the leaders of the six faiths not only take part in that act of remembrance but together say a common prayer. I am also reminded that my own city was once riven by sectarianism that was driven out by Christian leaders of different traditions such as the Archbishop Worlock and Bishop David Sheppard working together. The bigotry and hatred disappeared. Now we have Europe's only ecumenical university where not only Christians of different faiths work together but Muslims, Hindus and Jews. It is by working and learning together that we can change things, and it could be the same in the Middle East. Respect and understanding drive out fear and hatred.