Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Walney Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Edward Timpson]

I want first, as a fellow Cheshire Member of Parliament, to add my voice to those who have already expressed their deep shock at the devastating events in Bosley in my hon. Friend’s constituency of Macclesfield on Friday and over the weekend. I am sure that the whole House will want to join me in letting the families know that we are thinking of them.

Our joint working pilots will test single points of contact in child and adolescent mental health services to help schools understand mental health support. To clarify responsibilities, “Future in mind” recommended local transformation plans for every area. To that end, we have worked with NHS England on the guidance—it will go out shortly—which will require clinical commissioning groups to work with health and wellbeing boards, schools, colleges and local authorities to develop a clear and comprehensive offer of mental health support locally.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is good that the Government are putting forward such measures, but has the Minister seen the report out today suggesting that the No. 1 concern of headteachers is mental health? Has he seen how emergency psychiatric admissions have doubled in only four years? Does he accept that there is a mental health crisis in our schools, and will he resolve to do more if the measures that he has put forward are not effective in the coming months and years?

[Edward Timpson]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise the profile of this issue. We have to come to terms with the scale of the problem we are facing. I think that we are starting to wake up to that, but more action is required. For example, for the first time we now have a category of mental health for children with special educational needs and disabilities, and the CAMHS taskforce has done a great job in trying to understand how we can get a better level of identification, prevention and whole-service delivery so that children of all ages who, through no fault of their own, suffer from different levels of mental health problems get support when they need it, because the last thing we want is for that to affect not only their education chances, but their chances of having a successful and fulfilling life.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Walney Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I am delighted to hear that Havant Academy is making progress. That will ensure that many of the young people at the academy will themselves be able to go on to do apprenticeships, which is why I am so delighted to congratulate my hon. Friend.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

Let me—grudgingly, but sincerely—welcome the Minister back to his place.

For all that the Government have said about apprenticeships, the barriers that prevent far too many companies, especially smaller ones, from taking on apprentices remain too high. What more will the Government do for those small businesses? In particular, how will the Government deal with the fear felt by many that they will put all their resources into training a young person, only for that young person to be poached by one of the big boys further up the supply chain once he or she is qualified?

[Nick Boles]

I hope that it will not destroy the hon. Gentleman’s chances in his new position if I say that I cannot imagine anyone with whom I would rather be debating over the next few years, because I rate him highly both personally and professionally. Not surprisingly, he has raised a very important point. It is extremely important for us to make the apprenticeship programme attractive and easily accessible to small as well as large companies. There are specific grants for small employers, but we need to make the system much easier for them to navigate. It is possible for businesses to place some restrictions on people who complete apprenticeships for which those businesses have paid, although not many people know about or take advantage of them. If someone leaves very soon after qualifying, a business can receive back from that person some of the costs of his or her training.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Walney Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

We will certainly remain engaged in that debate, and I am delighted to congratulate my hon. Friend on the leadership that he has given to this campaign over a sustained period. That has led to our recent announcement, which has sought to resolve the issue in those parts of the country that have traditionally been very badly funded.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

10. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of provision of primary school places.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

12. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of provision of primary school places.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

We have more than doubled the allocation of money for basic need to more than £5 billion in this Parliament, and 260,000 additional places were created between May 2010 and May 2013, including 212,000 primary places.

[John Woodcock]

May I declare my interest as a student working towards a level 3 teaching assistant qualification? I am currently undertaking placements in Victoria junior school in Barrow, and Oasis Academy Johanna in Lambeth. Barrow is one of the few areas of the country that has a surplus of places as a result of population decline in recent years, yet too many pupils are still being denied their first choice of school. If the Government were serious about making the education system work for pupils, and not for the convenience of producers, would they not give parents the right to send their child to the school of their choice, and place a duty on that institution to expand?

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Walney Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

The first thing staff and others should do in those circumstances is to raise their concerns with the governing body. If they are not satisfied with that, they should not hesitate to raise concerns with either the EFA or our Department. We always take such matters extremely seriously. If my hon. Friend has any concerns about any cases in his constituency, he should feel free to raise them with me or other Ministers.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

22. Will the Minister assure the House that when a school that is currently under local authority control has more than one option for moving to academy status, that school and the community will have a genuine choice about which option to take?

--- Later in debate ---

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

At a time when there is overwhelming evidence about the value of physical activity to improving health outcomes and learning in classrooms, why on earth is the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), defending the right of teachers to use running around the playground as a punishment, rather than using the bully pulpit of the Dispatch Box to condemn such outmoded practices?

[Michael Gove]

As a great admirer of Teddy Roosevelt, I am happy to use whatever bully pulpits are available. Let me take this opportunity to congratulate the Prime Minister and the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), on securing a sports premium in our primary schools, which ensures that more physical activity is available than ever before. I also thank the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) for the work he has undertaken with me to bring an independent school into the state sector—using the free school programme—in order to give more children opportunities I am afraid his Front-Bench colleagues would, for ideological reasons, deny them. He is a good Blairite; they are the bad ones.

Child Care

Lord Walney Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow that at times very personal speech from the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), but I want to pick up on one thing she said, which I think caused a little concern on the Opposition Benches. She talked about regulation of childminders in a way that gave us—and people watching on television, I suspect—the impression that all such regulation is a bad thing. Surely she is not suggesting that, for example, CRB checks should not be done. I caution Members on the Government Benches about the language they sometimes use in talking about regulation, as it can give a wholly misleading impression.

[Fiona Bruce]

Speaking as someone who has started and who runs a small business, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that it is often extremely difficult to know what the regulations are. The fear of non-compliance can deter many people from starting a business in the first place. The agencies will give childminders reassurance that they are complying with the regulations. That is the big difference.

[John Woodcock]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. I am sure that everyone on both sides of the House agrees on the need to cut unnecessary regulation, but I stand by the point I made.

It is a pleasure for me to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), who marked his return to the House with an impassioned speech. The increased relaxation that being in the House of Commons can provide to someone who is the father of two very young children has immediately given him a boost, and he brought that into his speech today.

When the cost of child care rockets, something has to give. For some, it is the opportunity to work, but those mums and dads who choose to stay in work try hard to ensure that they are the ones who bear the brunt of the cuts. They often stop going out, and they hold off from buying things for themselves that, in happier times, they would not think twice about buying. I should like Members to listen to one of the testimonies given to the Furness Poverty Commission, a body that I set up to look into the increasing deprivation in Barrow-in-Furness. A 34-year-old mother from my constituency told the commissioners that she was

“constantly worrying if the bills are all going to be paid, sometimes not having money for food, not ever being able to afford to get away anywhere, not being able to afford to secure your home, broken locks, no insurance…having to sell things to afford Christmas and not to be able to afford heating.”

Stories such as hers are all too common in Furness and right across the country.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. The evidence is not only anecdotal; it is very real when we look at the figures. Is he aware that the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that, at the current rate, there will be more than 1 million additional children in poverty by 2020? Does it not appear that the country is going in the wrong direction for our children and our future?

[John Woodcock]

It does; my hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is a striking, damning figure that sits alongside the human stories of difficulty and suffering that we all experience in our constituencies almost daily.

[Harriett Baldwin]

The hon. Gentleman is making some powerful points about poverty. Does he accept that work is one of the best ways out of poverty? Does he also welcome the fact that, when universal credit is rolled out in his constituency, child care will be supported for the first hour of work for the individual whom he so eloquently described?

[John Woodcock]

Work is important in many ways, not simply as a means of getting an income. There are some real questions about universal credit, but if the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will not go into that now.

Privately, my constituents sometimes share with me their sense of guilt and frustration when the strain is so great that they just cannot shield their children from the cuts they are having to make. Swimming lessons go, trips to the zoo are put off, and when nothing beyond the bare nutritional minimum goes into their child’s lunchbox, they worry that their child is not going to eat enough because they are not giving them what they really like or want. These are working people. They have made the choice to go out and hold down a job, and to juggle work and family life. They do not expect handouts. They know that life will not be easy when they choose to bring up kids, but they just ask for a bit of help with what can seem like the suffocating burden of rising living costs. Child care should be one of the things that lift the strain on families and give them a way out of poverty; it should not add to the burden.

One of key recommendations of the Furness Poverty Commission on dealing with social and economic exclusion in Barrow and Furness was to close the gap that local people had identified in affordable and flexible child care. It is great that the number of children under the age of four in England is increasing, and I am pleased to have been able to do my bit on that front in recent years. So I am delighted by Labour’s plans, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) has set out, to increase the availability of affordable child care. I am especially pleased that the extra entitlement will come in the form of wraparound care from 8 am to 6 pm.

Increasing child care from 15 to 25 hours a week could make a real difference to many families in my constituency. For many parents, it would make the difference between being able to work and not being able to do so. The provision of 12.5 or 15 hours has been a help but it has often not provided a trigger given the way in which the need for child care is spread out if parents rearrange their lives to go back to work. I believe that this wraparound care, aligning child care with the standard working day, will be revolutionary in helping parents to get back to work.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South, I have a great deal of respect for the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss). I was therefore disappointed to hear her dismiss the wraparound child care guarantee in the way she did. She did not want to take my intervention earlier, but I have to tell her that one of the main problems is that there is often no provision at all for families—

[Elizabeth Truss]

indicated dissent.

[John Woodcock]

The Minister shakes her head and says that that is not true, but I invite her to come to my constituency and see the problems that many people face when trying to arrange that kind of wraparound child care.

Working parents in my constituency—and in those of many of my hon. Friends—know how hard it can be to find affordable child care, or indeed any form of child care, to cover the period before the beginning of the formal school day and the hour or so at the end of it. Effectively, they are trying to find someone to care for their children and walk them to and from school. That might comprise only an hour of care, but an inability to find it can present an impenetrable barrier to getting back to work. This is why our plans could make a real difference. If we are serious about a sustained recovery that is shared by everyone across the country, we need to tackle the child care crisis head on. If this Government will not do that effectively, the next Labour Government will.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Walney Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)]

3. What assessment he has made of the findings of the report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies on Trends in Education and Schools Spending.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

13. What assessment he has made of the findings of the report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies on Trends in Education and Schools Spending.

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

17. What assessment he has made of the findings of the report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies on Trends in Education and School Spending.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for praising head teachers in Rochdale. Head teachers everywhere are doing a fantastic job with limited resources. The one thing that I hope I shall be able to work with the hon. Gentleman to ensure is that head teachers can make those resources go even further by allowing their schools to convert to academy status.

[John Woodcock]

The report shows that capital spending on schools was the fastest-growing component under Labour, but that we shall see the biggest cut under the Secretary of State’s plans. In Barrow, a vital development is currently being upheld at the planning stage by Conservative councillors. Will the Secretary of State guarantee full funding for the project if those planning objections are dismissed?

Education Maintenance Allowance

Lord Walney Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

No, not yet. The fault for that debt and deficit lies with the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues. The OECD said that in 2000, thanks to Conservative policies, the UK had one of the best structural fiscal positions in the world, but by 2007 we had one of the worst in the G7. Why were we in such a weak position? It was because Labour had doubled our debt. In 1997 our national debt was £351 billion, whereas in 2010, by the time the Labour Government had left office, it was £893 billion. You cannot spend money that you do not have. The truth was revealed in a statement secreted in a Treasury desk by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne). In a note to the succeeding Chief Secretary to the Treasury, he said “There’s no money.” Not a single member of the Labour party has yet had the courage to accept that truth, and to atone and apologise for it.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Michael Gove]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman will.

[John Woodcock]

The Secretary of State is talking about things that have been written down. Does he also accept that this is also about values? Will he therefore clarify for the House whether he wishes to apologise for the remarks, to which my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State referred, that he made in his article in The Times about the attitude to debt and the consequences for people going to university?

[Michael Gove]

That article in The Times was actually in favour of the previous Government’s efforts to improve access to university. Unlike many Labour Members, I supported what Tony Blair was doing on university tuition fees; I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman did. But never mind that, because the truth is that no Labour Member has atoned or apologised for the huge economic mess in which we have been landed. This is appropriate, because the motion stands in the name of the right hon. Member for Leigh, and he was the Chief Secretary to the Treasury when the ship was steered towards the rocks, so he cannot point the finger at anyone else—

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Walney Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

Yes, my hon. Friend is quite right; there has to be choice and there will be some competition among universities, which is welcome. That is very far short of a laissez-faire free market. We do not want that. There has to be protection for low-income students when they graduate. We will build in those protections and will ensure that there is a proper progressive scheme.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

4. What steps he plans to take to ensure that businesses in deprived areas receive support through local enterprise partnerships.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Mark Prisk)]

First, I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his promotion to the Opposition Front Bench as a shadow Transport Minister.

Local enterprise partnerships will be a vital element in our new framework for economic development. At the same time, we are planning to modernise business support to improve both access to information and the quality of advice. That will be especially important to firms in remote or deprived areas.

[John Woodcock]

I thank the Minister for that answer and for his kind words. Does he accept that the recovery is currently very fragile? What interim measures will he put in place while the regional growth fund is being established and will he commit to funding the vital marina project in my constituency?

[Mr Prisk]

The hon. Gentleman has astutely got on to the record his local project and I commend him for that, but he will understand that a week before the comprehensive spending review I am not going to pre-empt such matters. I will say, however, that the combination of making sure that we have genuine economic development partnerships that are rooted in the communities and ensuring that they are a genuine partnership between business and civic leaders will enable local areas such as Barrow and Furness to set their own priorities and not have Whitehall telling them what they should do.

Education Funding

Lord Walney Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s kind words at the beginning. I have stressed that academy projects are those that, as we both appreciate, were designed to help children in the most difficult circumstances. If he would like to write to me, we will make sure that we do everything possible to help to support that academy project.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

In the light of the shambolic way in which information has had to be eked out of the Secretary of State today, he will forgive me for pressing him a little further. Can he say that he will honour every penny of the previous Government’s promise on the primary capital programme, including the £12.6 million to benefit three primary schools in my constituency, and the secondary enlargement programme, which, although outwith the Building Schools for the Future project, is vital to the future of education in my constituency?

Industry (Government Support)

Lord Walney Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

Indeed. It is part of a conglomeration, but he spoke up for Stoke-on-Trent in particular. I met the chamber of commerce from that area; it came up with some excellent ideas, and I would be happy to meet it and the hon. Lady again. Clearly, this part of the country is deprived and needs special attention, and I am happy to give it.

I return to the question of how the imbalances arose. Of course, there is a trend, but it was aggravated by bad policy. I shall remind Labour Members, not all of whom were here during the period, of some of the big developments that occurred and which produced this excessive decline in manufacturing and the excessive dependence on the banking sector. Five or six years ago, I and other colleagues were warning from the Opposition Benches about the bubble that was developing in the property market, the reckless bank lending that was fuelling it and the instability that it was going to create. We were dismissed at the time as scaremongers, but of course the bubble did burst, with the disastrous consequences that we are now paying for.

Going further back in time—probably to before the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East was a Member of the House—a very important report was commissioned by the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). The Cruickshank report set out graphically how the British banking industry simultaneously was pursuing short-term profits while being dependent on a Government guarantee, and was also severely damaging British small-scale business because of the lending practices being adopted. At the time, we urged the Government to act on that report, but nothing was ever done.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about the past, but does he agree with the chief executive of the Cumbria chamber of commerce who said it would take the region back to the economic dark ages if we were to scrap the Northwest Regional Development Agency?

[Vince Cable]

I am happy to come to RDAs shortly. We have a view on them, and I have been asked specific questions by the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East about them. The hon. Gentleman will also have heard me speak specifically about the north-west at Business, Innovation and Skills questions a couple of weeks ago—but I shall return to that.