Durham Free School

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to hold this debate, which, in my opinion, is much needed, given local anxiety about the situation of Durham free school and the strong interest in its future.

I begin by expressing great sympathy for the parents and children facing this most unfortunate set of circumstances, but I called the debate to put in the public domain factual information about why the school is facing an announcement by the Secretary of State of her intention to withdraw its funding. Members will know that I have had concerns about the free school for some time, partly because it has been so difficult to get accurate information about it and its funding. However, even I was surprised by the response from the Secretary of State to my question last Monday. I thank her and the Minister for the honesty and decisiveness of her response.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

This report is probably the worst I have ever seen during my years in education. I have been inundated by e-mails from parents who still think it is a great school, that there have been inappropriate conversations with children and that there is some sort of political agenda, yet a Conservative Secretary of State has taken the decision to close a school that is part of the Government’s flagship policy. Does my hon. Friend think that the inspectors could get it so badly wrong in such circumstances?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. As I will say later, the decision has been made not just on the basis of the Ofsted inspection, but in the light of other information.

To date, 18 parents have written to me about the school, and an additional 25 with no direct knowledge of the school have also written about the proposed closure, requesting that the decision be reversed. Nearly all these letters concentrate on challenging very selective aspects of the Ofsted report. A handful of parents have also written to say that the school should be closed in the light of the Ofsted report and to urge that their voices be heard too.

Information I have obtained from the Education Funding Agency and elsewhere indicates that a thorough analysis and evaluation of the school has taken place. As I suspect most people now know, the Department was alerted to problems at the free school by a whistleblower, which prompted the inspections due to take place early in 2015 to be brought forward to November 2014. The EFA inspection was comprehensive and included representatives from the EFA, the office of the schools commissioner, the Department and the due diligence unit, as well as the free schools section.

The inspection findings underpinned the financial notice to improve that the school received in December, with a time scale for it to reply by 19 December 2014. The notice chronicled failure not only in financial management, but in other aspects of governance, and prompted a request from the schools commissioner to the Secretary of State for an Ofsted inspection. This, too, was carried out in November 2014. The Ofsted report chronicled failure at every level and showed the school to be inadequate in every category, including in leadership and management; behaviour and safety of pupils; and quality of teaching and pupil achievement. It found that students’ achievement was weak; that leaders, including governors, did not have high enough expectations; that governors placed too much emphasis on religious credentials when recruiting staff; that teaching was inadequate over time; that teachers’ assessment of student work was inaccurate; that the behaviour of some students led to unsafe situations; that leaders, including governors, had inaccurate views of the quality of teaching and students’ achievements; and that targets for achievement were set too low. That is in great contrast to what I think the parents believed the school would deliver. In 2012, the head teacher said that it would be a

“unique secondary school providing a high quality of education in a close-knit”

scaring—[Interruption]—or rather, a close-knit “caring school environment.” Indeed, it appears to have gone from being caring to scaring for some of those young people.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) has said, it is unusual for a school to receive such a negative report. To put that in context, as of 31 October 2014, the proportion of all schools judged good or outstanding by Ofsted at the most recent inspection had reached 81%. That compares with 70% for free schools. Even so, it is highly unusual to get a school rated as inadequate across all its categories. The report would be worrying for any school and community, but, coupled with the detailed report from the Education Funding Agency, it is obvious why the Secretary of State would consider issuing a notice to close the school. It appears to be based not on any one aspect of the school’s weakness, but on the combined picture of mismanagement and poor quality education observed and inspected thoroughly by the EFA, the Department and Ofsted. I am aware of no evidence to date that these inspections were not in any way suitably robust or conducted in a way that they should not have been.

[Alex Cunningham]

Tomorrow the chief executive of Ofsted is due to appear before the Select Committee on Education. Parents will want us to hold him to account for the decisions made at Durham and in Sunderland, where just last week Grindon Hall free school was also put into special measures. Does my hon. Friend think there are any particular challenges we should be laying at his door tomorrow?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

It is important that the chief executive of Ofsted establishes very clearly that the inspections were carried out in a suitable way and following the correct guidance, and therefore that there should be public confidence in their outcomes, because I know that a number of colleagues have received letters from a variety of people calling into question the veracity of the Ofsted inspection.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friend will know, Grindon Hall Christian school is in my constituency. Following on from the intervention by our hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), I would like to ask her, on behalf of the hundreds of parents who have written to me, whether she agrees that Ofsted has questions to answer about the inspection, to ensure that the public can have confidence in Ofsted, which is something that the parents who have written to me do not have.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

It is important that we maintain confidence in Ofsted, which I hope will get—as I am sure it will—challenging questions from the Select Committee tomorrow. Again, I hope that Ofsted is able robustly to defend the way in which it carried out these inspections.

Clearly a number of parents are very upset and want the school to stay open. I genuinely sympathise with them, but given the inadequate rating, I am not clear on what grounds it can do so.

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for her courtesy in giving way again. The chairman of the governors has written to a number of us, including me, to say that they feel that the Ofsted report was grossly unfair. One of the things Ofsted said in that report was that

“RE is a narrow study of the Bible,”

when in fact it took up only 5% of the time. The school feels—along with many parents, as she obviously understands—that it has been seriously badly treated by Ofsted, which has asked inappropriate questions of young people. I hope that she and the Committee will be able to hold Ofsted to account tomorrow.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

That is a very interesting intervention given that I started the debate by asking for information about the decision to be in the public domain. I understand that the decision taken by the Secretary of State was based not only on the Ofsted report, but on the detailed assessment carried out late last year by the Education Funding Agency and representatives from the Department for Education and the free school unit. I know that the school is concerned about aspects of the Ofsted inspection, but there are many more aspects of that inspection that need to be taken into consideration. Given the inadequate rating, I am not clear on what grounds the school can challenge, but I understand that it has until next Tuesday to set out its case.

In addition to being clear about the extensive nature of the information on which the decision to remove the school’s funding was based, I want to see what lessons can be learned from this sorry saga, whether or not the school remains open. First, I am totally unclear about why this school was given approval to start up in the first place in a city that has good quality schools and surplus places. Community acceptance of the free school was not helped by the fact that this new school of 30 pupils was expected to be set up on the site of a school that had just closed down because it was not considered to be financially viable with 400 pupils. Numbers at the free school remained low, even though as soon as it was established the local authority was obliged to inform parents in the area that it was their nearest school, and that if they wanted free school transport they would have to send their children to that school—they did not have a choice.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour for giving way. Does she agree that another scandalous aspect is that millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money has been sunk into a school in an area, as she rightly says, of surplus places, where other local schools, such as the excellent St Leonard’s, which serves both her and my constituency, are crying out for resources? Is it not a scandal that just last Saturday this school was spending taxpayers’ money on a half-page advert in The Northern Echo? Is that a good use of public money?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend reiterates a point that I have made many times. I have been greatly concerned about the amount of money the school has received, how it has been spent and the impact of that on other schools in the community.

Secondly, on lessons learned, how much money has the school received so far and has any analysis been made of how that money could have been better spent to assist local schools, especially as they had to accommodate the 400 children from the closed school with no additional resources? Why did the Department think it was better to support a free school for the few rather than invest in the planned academy, which would have supported many more children?

One of the first things the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), did on the election of the current Government was to cancel the academy for Durham city that was very much needed locally and that was supposed to raise standards for the school that closed. This is particularly concerning in the light of findings by the National Audit Office that

“the primary factor in decision making has been opening schools at pace, rather than maximising value for money”.

Surely it was wrong to put ideology before evidence-based education policy.

The shadow Secretary of State picked up on that in highlighting the deficiencies now emerging from the Swedish system, which saw a radical expansion of free schools, accounting for a quarter of all pupils by 2013. This seems to have come at a great cost for those pupils, as Sweden saw a massive drop in standards during this period. In 2003, Sweden was ranked 17th in the global league table for mathematics; now it is ranked 38th. I hope that the Department is keeping a good check on what is happening to overall standards for schools such as Durham free school.

I regret the accusation that some of us are turning this into a political issue. That is not the case. I want a rational debate about the school’s future. When parents approached me in 2011-12 for support to set up the free school, I did what I think was the right thing and pointed them to the Department so that they could get the information and support they needed. I do not know whether that happened in practice. What I do know is that when things go wrong, we need decisive action. I know that the local authority is trying to work with the school and with parents by offering alternative places. It is interesting that we always expect local authorities to step in and sort out problems; perhaps we should consider giving them a much bigger role in the management of all schools.

The main thing that I wanted to do this evening was put my concerns on record. I look forward to hearing what the Minister will say about how they will be addressed, but I hope that, before he speaks, I can crave the indulgence of the House and allow my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) a few minutes in which to comment on the issue from the point of view of the Education Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

We want collaboration between schools as part of a school-led autonomous system, but we now have very strong financial controls through the Education Funding Agency, and they are stronger in academies than any maintained school, with annual reports that are audited and very detailed academy financial handbooks that academies have to adhere to.

Durham free school is a mixed 11-19 secondary school with a Christian ethos. It has an overall capacity of 630. It opened in September 2013 with 31 pupils. It currently has 92 year 7 and 8 pupils on roll, out of 120 available places.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

What assessment was made before the school was opened of its ability to meet the numbers that would be required to make it a good and stable school going forward? It has consistently failed to attract the numbers of students that would be necessary, so we have had a situation of, first, 30 children in one year and then the combined two years of 90 children in a school that was built to cater for 700 or 800 students.

[Mr Gibb]

It is a common feature of free schools that they do not often fill their places in the first year, but they generally increase their numbers in their second and third years. That is what we expected to happen with this school, but of course it did not happen because of the problems identified by the Ofsted report.

The vision of Durham free school came from a community who wanted a local secondary school for their children in the Bowburn area, south-east of Durham. Closures of schools in the south and south-east of Durham had left people concerned about the distances that their children were required to travel to school.

Before they are allowed to open, free school proposers receive a significant period of support and challenge from departmental officials. As with all free schools, the initial Durham free school proposal was assessed against rigorous published criteria, including a compelling vision and ethos, a detailed education plan, strong governance arrangements, robust evidence of demand, and clear financial plans. The proposers then enter a pre-opening period where groups such as the proposers of Durham free school are supported by officials and education advisers as they develop their governance and education plans, recruit pupils, consult the local community and work towards signing a funding agreement with the Department.

We make it clear that we expect to see a strong governing body to ensure that the governors have both the skills and the experience to deliver high academic standards. At the point of opening, the Durham free school governing body consisted of an existing head teacher, a retired head teacher and a number of highly qualified professionals. A strong and effective governing body is a crucial element in the success of any educational institution. In this case, we were satisfied that the governance structure had the capability to deliver an outstanding education to its pupils.

The school had 31 pupils for 60 places at opening, as the hon. Lady said. That is undoubtedly below the level we would have wished for, but new schools can take time to establish their reputation and build up their roll. The school opened on a temporary site in Gilesgate—just spitting distance from where I lived during my three years at Durham university—because of the difficulties in finding a permanent site in the trust’s preferred location.

The trust was able to demonstrate that the school could be viable in the first year of opening due to the way in which school funding is allocated in Durham. It is not uncommon for free schools to increase pupil recruitment significantly during the first year of opening and whilst in a temporary site. Our experience of the free schools programme is that schools often recruit far better in year 2, which was the case at both Rimon Jewish school and Harpenden free school, where recruitment in year 2 was almost 30% more than in year 1.

The proposer group also produced a detailed education plan which demonstrated a clear and coherent vision, focusing not only on academic success but on transforming the local area and increasing the aspirations of all its pupils. At the time of opening, Ministers agreed that the educational plan, together with a secured temporary site and the intention of finding a permanent site in Bowburn, made a strong case to proceed to opening the school.

The school opened in September 2013, and early indications from the Department’s education adviser were that it had made a positive start in delivering the education plan and was making good use of other local schools. Disappointingly, that positive start was not sustained. The recent Ofsted report clearly states that pupil aspiration is low and is not challenged by the school leadership. It shows that teaching is inadequate and consequently that pupil achievement is weak. The school has a number of other significant issues, which is why the Secretary of State took the difficult decision to issue the trust with a notice of our intention to terminate the funding agreement. I would like to address some of those issues today.

The school’s temporary location on the site of the former Gilesgate school in Durham was not the preferred location. Extensive site searches have been undertaken in the trust’s area of choice in Bowburn, which, as the hon. Lady will know, is largely made up of agricultural and residential land. We have already seen that many free schools can offer high quality education in sites that were not their original choice, and that that has not affected the quality of education, so we do not accept that as a reason for the poor judgments given in the Ofsted report.

The school has since received per-pupil funding at the same rate as all other state-funded schools in the local authority and, as a new school, received an additional £196,000 to defray the additional set-up costs and overheads while pupil numbers were growing. The Department spent £303,000 in capital funding, a large proportion of which was spent on construction, furniture, fittings, other equipment and ICT.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

It has been extraordinarily difficult to get information about the total funding the school has obtained over the two years of its existence. How can I easily get that information?

[Mr Gibb]

I am very happy to supply the hon. Lady with that information. Revenue and capital, in additional to the per-pupil funding, amounts to about £840,000, but I will write to her with the precise figure.

The Department received a number of worrying allegations about Durham free school’s governance in October 2014, 13 months after it opened. We acted swiftly to investigate the claims. The Education Funding Agency undertook an urgent review in November, which identified serious breaches of the academies financial handbook. Those included concerns about the governing body, the completion of Disclosure and Barring Service checks, and the robustness of the school’s financial management. As a consequence, the school was issued with a financial notice to improve on 24 November, and the Secretary of State asked Ofsted to conduct a no-notice section 5 inspection, which took place in November.

We acted swiftly, and the hon. Lady will know that we take action whenever we see underperformance in our schools system.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I very much appreciate colleagues’ good wishes, but there is no need for them to be added to, because I think it will just delay proceedings. However, everybody’s good will is greatly appreciated.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

And mine, too.

As I am sure the Secretary of State is aware, The Durham free school got a notice to improve from the Education Funding Agency before Christmas, and today it was put into special measures. However, it is extremely difficult for me or anyone else to get information from the Education Funding Agency, so will she intervene to ensure that all information about this school, and the reasons why it has failed and is so badly managed, is put into the public domain?

[Nicky Morgan]

As the hon. Lady mentioned, Ofsted published a report this morning on The Durham free school, and I was very concerned to find that the children had been let down by a catalogue of failures, as reported. Because I do not think there is any imminent prospect of improvement, the regional schools commissioner has today written to the school, informing it of the decision to terminate the funding agreement. I am happy, of course, for there to be a further discussion—if not with me, with one of my ministerial colleagues—about the information that can be made available. There may be some issues of confidentiality or sensitivity, but I will of course endeavour to keep Members updated.

Lords Spiritual (Women) Bill

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I very much welcome the Bill in front of us today. Indeed, I think we can all appreciate that it is a direct consequence of the decision by the General Synod of the Church of England on 17 November 2014 to allow women bishops. It is worth paying tribute to it once again for passing that legislation. It is something for which many of us have argued for many years. Indeed, in making the arguments to have women bishops, we often employed the exhortation that we should have women represented in all aspects of public life in this country, and at all levels of decision making, including at very senior levels not only in the Church but in Parliament as well.

This Bill is very much to be welcomed. But it is, none the less, worth taking just a few minutes to explore why we need a measure that will speed up the ability of women bishops to sit as Lords Spiritual in the other place. We know that the existing system of appointment of bishops to sit as Lords Spiritual is prescribed by the Bishoprics Act 1878.

Under the terms of the Act, the number of Lords Spiritual is fixed at 26, five of whom automatically receive writs of summons to attend the House of Lords on the basis of the diocesan see that they occupy. As we heard earlier, these ex officio sees are Canterbury, York, London, Durham and Winchester. I shall come back to them in a moment. When a vacancy arises the remaining 21 are issued with writs of summons on the basis of seniority, which means their length of tenure as a diocesan bishop. The bishops of 40 Church of England diocesan sees are eligible to be Lords Spiritual. That means that at any one time there can be up to 26 diocesan bishops in the Lords and up to 14 outside the Lords awaiting a seat. Places become vacant as bishops leave office, usually through retirement. By law, diocesan bishops have to retire at 70. The waiting time obviously varies according to the rate of turnover and can be anything between four and seven years.

A bishop is unable separately to resign his membership of the House of Lords and therefore cannot create a vacancy in that way. There is also no provision for a bishop to opt to forgo entitlement to a writ of summons on reaching the top of the list. So, were the arrangements under the Bishoprics Act 1878 to be left unchanged, it would take some years before a newly appointed female diocesan bishop became sufficiently senior to take her place in the House of Lords.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Of course, it is important that we introduce this measure so that senior women bishops in the Church of England can take their rightful place in the other place. It was interesting to hear the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) use the example of the Bishop of Lincoln as the next in line to be appointed to the other place. It is now incumbent on the Church of England to appoint women diocesan bishops because otherwise that would still be the case.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and I am sure that people from the Church who are listening today will take it on board. I certainly hope that they will.

I was saying that a newly appointed female diocesan bishop would have had to wait her turn to take up a seat in the House of Lords unless she were appointed to one of the five ex officio sees. I hope that when vacancies arise for bishops in those areas, the Church will consider appointing a woman. That definitely affects my constituency. I should say that we have recently got a new bishop in Durham and I am not trying in any way to push him out of the door, as he is doing an excellent job, but when the time comes for him to retire I hope that a woman bishop will be on our agenda.

There are likely to be some female diocesans, as there are some male diocesans, for whom membership of the Lords becomes a significant part of their ministry. Without the Bill, a woman appointed as a diocesan bishop would effectively join the back of the queue to get into the House of Lords. As I have said, at anticipated rates of retirement it could take up to seven years for the first female diocesan bishops to get into the Lords, a period that could cover the lifetime of the next Parliament. That would create an anomaly whereby women were actively and visibly involved as bishops in all aspects of the Church’s national ministry except as Members of the Bishops’ Bench in the other place.

Whether and how the system should be adjusted was the subject of discussions by the Lords Spiritual and the House of Bishops in consultation with women holding senior office in the Church. There was a widespread acknowledgement that the House of Lords had been denied the contribution of female Lords Spiritual and that this deficit should be tackled as soon as possible. The Archbishop of Canterbury, to his great credit, was involved in these consultations and made a specific request of Ministers. The effect of that is before us today.

The changes being proposed with the backing of the bishops have broad cross-party support and reflect a desire both in and outside the Church to see women represented in those places where the Church exercises its national public ministry. That is in the interests not just of the Church, but of Parliament, and we do not want any part of Parliament not to have adequate gender representation. The Bill makes time-limited provision for vacancies among the 21 Lords Spiritual places, which are normally filled by seniority, to be filled as they arise by eligible female bishops if there are any available at that point. This is to be done for a period of 10 years. It is hoped that the most eligible female bishop at any time would fill a vacancy in preference to the most senior eligible male bishop. Ten years is the length of two Parliaments and it is not far from the average period in office of a diocesan bishop.

If there were no eligible female bishops at the time a vacancy arose, male bishops would continue to enter the Lords in accordance with the arrangements under the Bishoprics Act 1878 for determining seniority of precedence. After the end of the period, the provision made by the Bill would come to an end and the current arrangements under the 1878 Act would be restored.

The Bill, as a number of speakers have commented, has the merit of simplicity. The issue has been taken up by WATCH. A recent e-mail to me from WATCH suggested that this was a straightforward measure. It does not aim to set a quota or even to change the seniority principle permanently. It is not proposed that we should introduce a permanent rule prioritising the admission of women bishops over men. The measure is introduced temporarily for the length of two Parliaments to allow women to reach a critical mass on the Benches of the Lords Spiritual. By the time the provision expires, the hope is that sufficient numbers of women will have reached sufficient levels of seniority and that an extension of the provision will be unnecessary. However, I suggest to the Minister that we should seek a review of the measure and of the sunset clause if, a couple of Parliaments down the line, there is not adequate representation of women on the Benches of the Lords Spiritual. In that case the measure might need to be extended or another measure put in place.

My constituent, Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, the vicar of Belmont and Pittington in Durham, is the vice-chair of WATCH. The role of that organisation was very effectively outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman). My constituent has written to me stressing that the measure was proposed by the bishops themselves, in consultation with women in the Church. It was based on consensus about how to take the matter forward. She points out that this is a constitutional rather than a religious matter, and that the House of Lords and the House of Bishops both wished to see women represented as soon as possible among their number on the Bench of Bishops. That was the impetus behind the Bill.

My constituent says that it is

“very clear, in the public outcry that followed the disastrous ‘no’ vote in General Synod in November 2012, that the vast majority of the British public wish to see women fully represented at all levels of our decision making as soon as possible”,

and she goes on to say:

“The convention that bishops are appointed to the bench of bishops in the Lords is simply that—a convention—and is of course inherently discriminatory in the changed situation that we now have where women can now be appointed as diocesan bishops. Any arrangements that rely on time served discriminate against those who were not permitted, until now, to gain the necessary years of service. This legislation is therefore a short-term remedy for a long-term injustice: it is not ‘positive discrimination’ but a partial redress of the results of historic discrimination.”

She urges all Members to support the Bill, and I hope they do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I actually remain as our economics spokesman, but that is a minor internal matter.

I think that most Conservative Members fully support British membership of the EU; they might wish to see it reformed, as I think we all do, but membership is fundamental. It is difficult to imagine that Britain could independently negotiate trade agreements with the US, India and other countries with the same authority as the EU.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

T8. In the Government’s opinion, at what level of RAB—resource accounting and budgeting—charge does the student loan system become unsustainable?

[Greg Clark]

As the hon. Lady knows, probably the most respected expert in the world on this subject, the OECD, has been clear that “the UK higher education system is excellent for individuals and for the Government” and offers the “most sustainable” system in the world. The system is in robust good health and works well. It offers good value for the taxpayer and students.

Inequality

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) on securing the debate. It is extremely important that the House should consider the growing inequality in this country and specific measures that might be taken to reduce it.

I start by painting a picture of where we are with inequality, both nationally and in my constituency. We know that about 20% of working households rely on some form of tax credit, which shows that a great many people are in work but are relying on benefits because they are earning very low wages. That is compounded by gender. We know that since 2011, the gender gap in wages has been getting worse, not better. The gap between all women working and all men working is about 18.6%; for those who work full time, it is 14.9%. That means that women earn about 85p for every £1 that a man earns. That is important because although inequality affects large numbers of people across our work force, we must be clear that it affects women more than men.

We also know that 3.5 million children nationally are in poor households. That means that they are unable to afford adequate food or transport or to join in activities with their friends. That demonstrates the huge gap emerging between people at one end of the income spectrum and those who are increasing their wages at the other end. I experience that in my Durham constituency a great deal. Take-home pay in the north-east is less than it is in the rest of the country, so although we can give national figures about people relying on benefits, the problem is much greater in the north-east.

Changes to benefits have had an impact on areas like County Durham, where people are losing about £565 per working-age adult—money is going from people who are working and relying on top-up benefits—but the situation is also worsening for those who are out of work and relying on benefits. This is evidenced daily by the increasing number of people using food banks in my constituency. Indeed, some of the people who run the food bank in Durham talked to me recently about setting up a clothing bank and doing so locally, because they recognise that people sometimes cannot even afford to get to the charity shops in the city centre.

My contention is that a raft of measures need to be taken to reduce inequality. Before we look at them, however, perhaps we could stop for a moment and consider what has happened at the other end of the spectrum. The top 100 executives in the FTSE 100 companies took home as much as 131 times the amount their average employee did, yet only 15 of those companies have committed to pay their employees a living wage. Across the country, increasing numbers of companies pay the living wage, and we should stop and recognise that. There are some really good examples—a number of our universities pay the living wage, as does John Lewis—but trying to dig around and find them is difficult. We should have a list readily available. We need to consider what measures could be taken to reduce the income gap, and why we should do so.

Early in the lifetime of this Government, the Prime Minister was keen on looking at measures of happiness. He wanted us to be able to assess what leads to happiness; perhaps he thought that if we had information on that, it would cheer us all up and we would not spend so much time worrying about austerity. I do not know what has happened to all that work, but we do know that people who live in countries where there is more equality are happier. I want to give some advice to the Prime Minister and his colleagues this afternoon: if he wants to make people more content with their life, he and his Government need to address the growing inequality by insisting that companies adopt the living wage and that we get away from a low-pay, low-quality job economy.

Of course, in any economy we need people to work in the service sector. These are important jobs, but we want a much greater variety of jobs, especially high-value ones requiring higher skills. We need to see a real Government programme to support job creation of that type. That is in great contrast to what is available. In preparing for today’s debate, I looked at the jobs available today on my local Jobcentre website in Durham and the levels of income that they offer. The figures are truly shocking. So many of the jobs available do not even pay the living wage. Indeed, about three quarters pay less than the living wage, with about half paying the minimum wage. The jobs available cover everything from care co-ordinators to receptionists and night care assistants. I think we would all regard a senior night care assistant as an important role with significant responsibilities. The job advertised paid £7.35 an hour. These are simply wages that people are not able to live on, which is why so many people rely on in-work benefits.

We need to challenge our employers in a way that we have not done to date. Why do they think they can take home thousands of pounds a month while not paying the majority of their employees the living wage? I do not know about other hon. Members, but I do not want to live in a country that has such growing inequality. I do not want to live in a country where more and more people cannot afford basic rent. Shelter recently published research that showed that 1 million people took out payday loans just to cover their rent. This is clearly ridiculous in a country such as ours that can do so much better.

This afternoon we are challenging the Government to do more to get employers to pay not only the minimum wage—which they have to do, although some still seem to try to get out of their responsibilities—but a living wage. What do the Government intend to do to encourage the creation of jobs with higher-level skills that pay more and can take us forward to a knowledge-based economy? I also want the Government to challenge the companies that pay huge bonuses and whose directors take home obscene amounts of money to plough more resources into their businesses so that they can be successful and pay a living wage.

Free Schools (Funding)

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend has made a very good point. Last week I had an opportunity to talk to a group of parents in Ealing, thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray). Those parents were dedicated individuals from every social background and ethnicity who wanted to improve their children’s education. They were not “yummy mummies”; they were parents who cared, and we on this side of the House stand up for them.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

The free school in Durham will be lucky if it achieves a total roll of 80 students next year at a cost of £30,000 per pupil. Does the Secretary of State think this is good value for money in an area of surplus places, and where local successful schools like St Leonard’s that are crying out for investment from his Department, have been told by his Schools Minister, strangely absent today, that no money is available?

[Michael Gove]

The first thing to acknowledge is that the amount of money we are giving to Durham local authority for basic need is increasing under this Government, and the second is that the Durham free school will add to the quality of education that children in Durham enjoy. In the city of Durham there are some outstanding schools, like Durham Johnston school which has succeeded over generations, but across the north-east the level of educational ambition has been too low for too long, and we need new providers to help augment the quality of education, not just in County Durham but elsewhere.

Oral Answers to Questions

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Thursday 10th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)]

We now live in a world in which an increasing amount of trade is carried out online at times that are convenient to consumers and others. We relaxed the rules during the Olympics, and said at the time that we would assess the impact of that relaxation. A debate about the issue is undoubtedly taking place.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

T6. The latest report from the Higher Education Funding Council for England shows for the first time in 29 years a decline in the number of overseas students studying in the United Kingdom. Let me now give the Secretary of State another opportunity to admit that the inclusion of students in the net migration target is hindering the growth and international competitiveness of our British universities.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

There is no cap on the number of legitimate overseas students coming to Britain, and we will not introduce any such cap. The Secretary of State and I work with the Prime Minister and others on trade missions around the world to encourage young people with the necessary aptitude and qualifications to benefit from study in Britain to apply to come here. We can be proud of our universities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that we will seriously consider the local authority’s view, but we will ensure that the best possible sponsor is in place, and that is not always the sponsor identified by the local authority, especially if the authority itself has failed over a long period to raise standards in that school.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

Does the Minister think that spending £1 million on a free school for 30 children in my constituency is good value for money when we have surplus places and really good local schools that are crying out for investment?

[Mr Laws]

Free schools are being targeted at areas of basic need and where standards are low. We are trying to ensure that the free schools programme complements the Government’s work to provide school places and raise standards throughout the country.

Economic Growth and Employment

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

The audacity and complacency of Government Members is truly extraordinary, given the present state of the economy. The headline figures for UK economic growth are deeply worrying. Growth is flatlining, and it is becoming increasingly obvious to anyone with any sense that the Government’s decision to cut too far and too fast is choking it off. We also know that growth began to stall before the effect of the eurozone crisis kicked in, and that even now the full impact of that crisis has not yet been felt.

[Bill Esterson]

The figures show that consumer and business confidence began to decline when the coalition Government were formed, at the time when the Prime Minister started talking about Britain being bankrupt. Was not the Prime Minister very unwise to make such comments?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

Indeed. We also know that as a consequence of Government policies—and according to independent forecasts—it is very likely that borrowing will have to increase. That is having devastating consequences. Unemployment is rising, particularly among the young, although women are also being disproportionately affected.

The headline figures should concern us, but what should also trouble us greatly is the uneven way in which the consequences of the Government’s disastrous economic policies are being felt across the country. Once again the north-east seems to be bearing the brunt of the Conservatives’ economic policies, but this time—and I hope that this point is not lost on the voters of the north-east—they have the collusion of the Liberal Democrats.

The current unemployment rate is 11.6% in the north-east, but only 6.3% in the south-east. Similarly, the claimant count is highest in the north-east and lowest in the south-east. As I have said, the situation is even worse for young people. In the north-east, unemployment among young people increased by 106.3% between January and October 2011, prompting real fears that the region would return to the economic dark times of the 1980s. Yet this dire situation is so unnecessary.

Contrary to what the Secretary of State said—it is unfortunate that he is not present, because I wanted him to hear this—in the north-east gross value added actually grew between 1989 and 2008, as did GVA per head of population. That was primarily because money channelled through the regional development agency One North East levered in £9 for every pound spent—much more than the national average—and skills levels also improved year on year.

[Angela Smith]

The first technology innovation centre, Sheffield’s advanced manufacturing park, was established by a Labour Government through a regional development agency working with the private sector. Such arrangements have been criticised by Government Members, particularly Liberal Democrats.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend has made an excellent point. It is interesting to note that before the general election, in my region at least, the Liberal Democrats were apparently in favour of regional development agencies.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I am sorry; I am running out of time.

We know that the RDA helped to invest in a new generation of advanced technologies with expanding markets around the world, which greatly helped growth in the north-east. Through industry, Government and university collaborations, a number of sectors were identified in which growth should be prioritised, including the processing and chemical industries, automotive and advanced manufacturing, and printable electronics. Those sectors, critically, were underpinned by centres of excellence supported by the regional development agency.

Did the incoming Government seek to build on that? No. What they did instead was get rid of One North East, although it had extensive support from businesses and the community in the north-east, and what we have in its place is the regional growth fund, about which I shall say more in a moment. The loss of the regional development agency led to a loss of expertise in regard to the sectors that needed to be developed in the north-east, and a loss of what was necessary to support that development. In great contrast, the regional growth fund not only has less money but is not strategic at all. I am very pleased that a number of north-east companies have benefited from the RGF, although the Secretary of State must address the fact that getting the money through to the companies is taking a long time.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

No; I am sorry, but I am running out of time.

The RGF along with local enterprise partnerships and enterprise zones do not by any stretch of the imagination add up to an economic policy for growth for the north-east, or for anywhere else for that matter, because they are fragmented initiatives with no local coherence. The RGF will not help to narrow the north-south divide, either. As I have acknowledged, a number of companies in the north-east have benefited from the RGF, and according to the Government’s own figures that will secure about 8,500 jobs, but in the same RGF round money went to the south-east to secure 30,000 jobs.

The north-east’s problems are compounded by the fact that the RGF money is not a sufficient injection to the private sector to enable it to make up for the jobs that are being lost in the public sector. To put the figure of 8,500 jobs in context, last month alone unemployment in the north-east rose by 19,000. The Government must do more, therefore. In the past couple of weeks a number of independent commentators, including the North East chamber of commerce and PricewaterhouseCoopers, have said that the Government need to do more to support private sector development in the north-east, and our five-point plan for growth sets out a clear way for them to start supporting the economy.

School Food

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) for securing this debate, and for making a stunningly good speech. I want to concentrate on one aspect of school food: universal free school meals, particularly for primary school children. It is important, as my hon. Friend said, to keep the debate alive in the face of an uncaring Government, which is evidenced this morning by the complete absence of hon. Members on the Government Benches to engage in this debate. That is unfortunate, because the road that the Government are taking is likely to have an adverse impact on children’s health, particularly those from the poorest communities.

The Children’s Food Campaign notes that healthy school meals are vital to help to tackle the UK’s alarmingly high and rising levels of obesity and diet-related illness, and states clearly that good food habits are established in childhood. That is not rocket science. We know how to do that, and I draw the Minister’s attention to the experience of the universal free school meals pilot in Durham. During the two years of the pilot, 235 schools participated and, typically, around 30,000 free school meals were served daily. The average take-up against the roll was about 86%, but because of pupil absences on some days, it was actually much higher. Most schools reported 100% take-up at some stage in the process. The pilot was absolutely and hugely successful in terms of take-up.

It is interesting to consider how the pilot worked, and I want to say at the outset that Durham county council was fantastic in putting the scheme together. It committed £4 million of capital funding to upgrade the kitchens in every school so that meals were produced locally in the school. It also looked at its procurement practices so that it could source food locally, and achieved really high standards of healthy school meals because it could buy in bulk. Such aspects of universality in the provision of free school meals often do not receive much consideration. The county council did an excellent job, but so did the schools, which embraced the scheme wholeheartedly.

When my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) was a Minister, she visited Durham, and saw with me the incredible effect that universal free school meals had on schools. It changed the whole culture of the school, not just how they felt about food. The really good schools managed to integrate what was happening with free school meals into the curriculum, and ran that alongside an active sports policy.

[Diana Johnson]

I remember fondly my visit with my hon. Friend. One thing that struck me was that to engage with parents and to encourage them to embrace free school meals, there were taster evenings and taster sessions when parents could come in and see what their children would be eating. There was a real sense of the whole community being involved and seeing that the idea was a good one. Will my hon. Friend comment on how things are going now, and whether those taster sessions are continuing?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

Indeed. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. I will say something about how parents have been involved with the process, because obviously it was important initially to get parents signed up, which is why schools had taster sessions. As the pilot progressed, what schools felt was really important. When they sorted out with children how to have a balanced and healthy diet by choosing different things on different days, and ensured that salad or vegetables and a balanced meal were always available, they decided to get the parents to sign up to whatever meals the children were choosing. That was important, because parents across the board—given that the take-up was 100%, that meant all parents—had to engage with what their children were going to eat in school, and to talk to them about the importance of a balanced meal. That required the schools to undertake work with parents.

That is what we mean about changing the culture. We know how to do it, and the evidence exists. My hon. Friend and I were able to see that before our eyes, and indeed the schools managed to develop, probably inadvertently, evangelism in the children, who were able to explain carefully to us how the food system worked in their school.

[Jim Shannon]

The United Kingdom is a multicultural society where ethnic groups introduce their own food ideas. In the pilot schemes, was the hon. Lady able to introduce some of the benefits of other foods to make food exciting?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

That is an important point. Schools in Durham managed to do that, but perhaps not as effectively as schools in Newham, and it was an important aspect of the pilots, as the evidence suggests. That is what I mean when I say that schools that embraced the scheme were able to add the subject to the curriculum and use it to talk about other cultures, and so on.

I hope that I have made the point that the pilot was really successful. It had started to change the way in which schools, parents and young people think about food and exercise. I saw with very great sadness that the Government’s priorities meant that the first thing they did on taking office was cancel that pilot programme. The Minister has some questions to answer about that. We know that the Liberal Democrats have form on such matters because when they took over Hull city council, the first thing they did was to cancel the free school meals programme. That showed an extraordinary set of priorities, which I simply do not understand.

If the Minister wishes to find allies in the coalition Government, she might like to ask her fellow Ministers why it is that private schools ensure that their children have a healthy, usually hot, school meal at lunchtime. The coalition Government are good at emulating the private sector across the public sector, so how come that aspect of the private sector, which could easily be transplanted to public sector schools, is not on their list of priorities? Instead of concentrating on the needs of children and families, the Government—really quite staggeringly—lifted the ring fence on the school lunch grant from April this year. That money now has to compete with all the other priorities currently facing hard-pressed schools.

Such concerns lead me to ponder the fact that the Labour party has to make a tough call; we have got to win the argument about the importance not only of healthy school meals, but of universal free school meals at primary school level. There is no point in having healthy school meals if no one takes them up or if they are too expensive for most parents to afford, but unfortunately, that is the route down which the Government are taking us.

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

My hon. Friend makes a strong argument. In Newcastle upon Tyne North, which is to the north-east of her constituency, figures have shown that the take-up of school meals has fallen over the past 12 months. That bucks the national trend and causes me anxiety about the educational attainment of those children in my constituency who require and depend on a decent hot meal during the day. Does my hon. Friend think that the Government’s policies will help or hinder that concern?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point; it is clear that the Government’s policies will hinder any progress that has been made. When contributing to the evaluation, many head teachers in Durham schools made the point that a hot meal at lunch time meant that they saw improved levels of concentration in the afternoon. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) pointed out, that is essential for helping to narrow the attainment gap.

[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about the value of a hot meal for all primary school children and how that impacts on their attainment and success, and she draws attention to practices in the independent sector. The Government are fond of making international comparisons, particularly with countries in Scandinavia where there is a long-held tradition of free school meals in the primary sector. Does my hon. Friend believe that that adds further power to her argument?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Indeed, my hon. Friends the Members for Kingston upon Hull North and for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) decided to embark again on a crusade for free school meals once they had visited Sweden and seen how the system worked. Teachers in Sweden scratched their heads in complete incredulity when we said that children at schools in the UK do not receive a free hot meal in the middle of the day. Those teachers also talked to us about the social skills that their children develop by having a meal in the middle of the day, and by sitting down with their teachers and having a chat about what is going on in their lives. It is an excellent source of information for students and teaches them important social skills. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North will know, we saw children in Durham learning in that way and the start of such a process, but alas, because of the policies of the coalition Government, that may not continue.

I will conclude by saying that it is a matter of some anxiety that the issue of school food is not higher up the political agenda. When I open magazines and see the rubbish and tittle-tattle about celebrities on which female journalists—and other journalists—seem to spend their time, I am staggered that they do not understand how important it is for the development of our children and their future to have good quality school meals that are available in primary schools at no cost. In addition to challenging the Minister, I wish to challenge those journalists to start writing about things that are important for families in our communities, and not spend their time on tittle-tattle.

--- Later in debate ---

[Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend has made an important point. There was a proud history over the past 13 years of what was achieved in relation to food in schools and encouraging our young people to eat well.

I pay tribute to the trade unions. Unison and the GMB worked very hard to ensure that the pilot scheme that we ran in Hull worked well. Their members were involved as dinner ladies and cooks, and they were passionate about what the scheme was doing for children in Hull. The unions really embraced the scheme.

As my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham has said, when, unfortunately, the Liberal Democrats took control of the council in Hull in 2006, the first thing they did was to say, “Right. We’re not going to wait for the evaluation of the scheme; we’re just going to scrap it. We’re telling you that in 12 months’ time, it will just end.” That was very disappointing, and it was an act of political vandalism that will come back to haunt them. Having read today’s newspapers, I say to the Minister that that was a foretaste of the way in which the Liberal Democrats were to act in government, because we see today that the policy that they introduced on the education maintenance allowance—suddenly saying that they were scrapping EMA without looking properly at evidence and considering their options—is, unfortunately, the way in which the present Government seem to make policy.

That happened in Hull in 2006. It was very disappointing, but what came out of it, which was heartening, was the recognition by the Labour Government that what had happened in Hull was special and that further evidence was needed to see whether it would provide a basis for rolling out free school meals around the country. As a result, we had the pilots.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point about how decisions are being made by the Liberal Democrats in councils and in government without evidence being taken on board. Does that not show that what is happening is ideologically driven? They did not wait for the evidence in Hull or from the two pilots in Newham and Durham before deciding to scrap the whole scheme.

[Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend has made an important point. The situation is very disappointing. I remember appearing before a Select Committee in the previous Parliament as a Minister and being heavily criticised for decisions having been made on policy development without evidence to back them up. I am passionate about getting the evidence and seeing where it leads us in making our policy. We are talking about what happened in Hull and in Durham and Newham. I was lucky enough to visit both those pilots as well to see what happened in those primary schools and to look at the evidence and the evaluation. It would be criminal not to consider that fully and to take a view about how the Government can best use that information and evidence for the future.

My hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham talked about Durham, and I take my hat off to the people of Durham for the way in which they fully embraced the scheme. The same applies to the people of Newham, the mayor of Newham and my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), who was a keen advocate of free school meals in her constituency. Also relevant is Wolverhampton, where we were trying something different. As my hon. Friends have said, that was about raising the eligibility level so that more young people were eligible for free school meals.

I want to finish on what is happening in Hull now, because this is a little more positive. Unfortunately, there was the decision by the Lib-Dem council just to scrap the scheme. The Labour council that took control in May this year knew very well that the policy that it had from 2004 to 2006 was working and was delivering for local children. It came in on a manifesto promise that it wanted to reduce the school meal price to 50p. The aim is to get rid of any charge at all, but obviously we are in difficult financial circumstances and Hull has taken a major cut in the money coming from central Government. We have seen the ring-fencing come off the school lunch grant, and we see the coalition’s obsession with schools operating independently and not having a wider connection with the community and the local education authority. The previous Lib-Dem council administration decided to increase the price of school meals to £1.60 from the autumn; the price was £1.30. Labour came in and said that it wanted to reduce the price to 50p, but because of the funding issue that the coalition has introduced, it has not been possible. The council has been able to prioritise and make choices, and it has found some money to enable schools to stick at £1.30 for now, with the aim of reducing the price to £1 by Christmas.

We are, therefore, still taking a positive approach in Hull, because we recognise the scheme’s importance. We also recognise that the long-term aim is to have free school meals not only in Hull, but in other parts of the country where our youngsters could benefit from the offer of universal free school meals. Such an offer would ensure that they achieve as much as they should in school and that the nation’s health improves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Hodgson]

Exactly. A school or a local authority spending money on a path to a fast-food joint, rather than on instigating a stay-on-site policy, is almost as baffling as bringing in a fast-food giant to write public health policy, although, as we know, that, too, has happened. However, there is a serious point: despite all the evidence of the benefits, it is clear that not all school leaders or local authorities place the value that the majority of us in this room would like on children eating healthy lunches.

Everything that the Government have done so far means that standards will start to slide. Why? What possible benefit can there be for our children in giving certain schools the power to throw the rulebook out the window? Perhaps the Minister can at least explain that today. Of course, it is not only in new academies and free schools that standards could slide, because Ofsted no longer has to assess a school’s compliance with the regulations, so how do Ministers expect them to be honoured?

According to the Minister’s letter to caterers, which I mentioned earlier, mums and dads will now have to keep an eye on things, although she does not explain quite how they are expected to do that. However, she promises that, if they tell the Secretary of State about a school, he will use one of his ever-increasing number of powers to direct the school to jolly well buck up its ideas. Unless schools literally go back to the bad old days of turkey twizzlers and chips, however, I cannot imagine that many parents would notice any changes—for example, if the spaghetti bolognese, which might have met the standards before, suddenly had more fat or less vegetable content. That is a meaningless thing for the Minister to say. All that I would ask her is what possible benefit there is to schools or pupils in removing that element of an Ofsted inspection—none that I can think of.

It will be little surprise if nutritional standards slip; after all, the cash that subsidises them has effectively gone. Ministers say that it is within the direct schools grant, but again that is meaningless, because many schools are struggling with their budgets. For many of them, subsidising school meals will be far down the list of priorities, behind staff, materials and many services for which they would previously not have had to pay, such as the broadband bill, to take one example. One more service that they will now have to buy on a commercial basis will be advice from the School Food Trust on how to meet the nutritional standards—not really an attractive option if they do not now have to meet those standards anyway.

As we have heard—it was highlighted in the media last week—school meal take-up is on the rise. I congratulate the Minister on using that for some positive media coverage. I cannot really blame her, I suppose, but there is evidence that that spike could be due to pupil premium-chasing, as reported in The Independent on Sunday. The test of her policies will lie in whether we can see the same rise in three years’ time, and unless there is a radical rethink, I do not think we will. If it should become clear that we are spiralling in the wrong direction, I hope that the Minister will rethink her approach.

My colleagues have spoken at length on the merits of free school meals as a way of closing the gaps in health and educational attainment between children living in poverty and those from better-off backgrounds. It was, as has been said, a cruel blow to hundreds of thousands of young children in working poverty when the Minister and her colleagues scrapped the extended eligibility.

In the Westminster Hall debate on free school meals that I led last June, I noted what my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham has pointed out—that the Liberal Democrats were conspicuous by their absence, as were the Conservatives. That was hardly surprising given their part in one of the most regressive decisions that we have seen from the Government. It is noted that the Minister is here today representing her Lib Dem colleagues as well as her Conservative friends and that she is alone in that task. As my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish said in his excellent speech, the universal credit throws the whole system of free school meals into confusion, which will not be cleared up for some time.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend is making a truly excellent speech. Does not the absence of coalition Members demonstrate that they do not understand the link between a healthy school meal in the middle of the day and narrowing the attainment gap? It demonstrates their narrow and blinkered thinking about education.

[Mrs Hodgson]

My hon. Friend will not be surprised that I agree.

The one thing that I ask the Minister is to ensure at least that least no one loses out because of universal credit. We never know; perhaps under the universal credit system the Government may be able to give a little something back to the half a million or so kids who lost out when the extended eligibility was scrapped last year. However, given the Government’s record so far, I do not think that many of us will be holding our breath.

We have a Government who pay lip service to the importance of school meals—both free and paid for—but whose actions are completely incongruous with that rhetoric. If that were not bad enough, they also do not think that cooking healthy meals is sufficient of a life skill to be taught to young teens. Just as a free school meal may be the only proper meal that some children get, there is a similar cohort for whom the only food skills that they get will be the ones that they learn at school. In fact, they are more than likely to be the same children. Given that fact, the Labour Government put together plans to ensure that all children get mandatory cookery lessons, in the hope that those skills would stay with the young people who received them for the rest of their lives and even transfer to their parents, too. There was evidence of that in the excellent work of Jamie Oliver, of which the Minister is no doubt aware. He has shown that children given knowledge of healthy food and how to cook it go home and influence the food choices made by their parents. In a letter to me, the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb) justifies the decision to scrap the commitment by saying that the Labour Government did not take any legislative steps to make it compulsory—a pathetic excuse if ever I heard one. However, that is not surprising: after all, it might be difficult for those setting up free schools in an old pub or office to accommodate first-rate food technology classrooms. The simple fact is that the Tory-led Government’s half-baked policies are a recipe for disaster for our children.

I want in closing to ask the Minister two quick questions. Will she fight her corner for free school meals when decisions are taken following the report of the Social Security Advisory Committee and try to extend at least some help to the families who were short-changed by her Government last year? If it becomes clear that the policies that we have been discussing today are resulting in a fall in nutritional standards and/or the take-up of school meals—whether in free schools, academies or other schools—will she step in and do something, or does the “hope and pray” or, as she calls it, localism approach to government prevent her from doing so?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

The hon. Lady would be the first to blow the trumpet if the Labour Government had done so, given the extent to which schools already offer healthy balanced meals. Is she honestly saying that we should always ring-fence everything for ever? I am sure that that is not her view.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sarah Teather]

I will give way to the hon. Lady, as I have not done so yet, but I shall then need to make some progress or I will not be able to answer any of the Opposition’s questions.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

The Minister speaks of removing ring-fencing, but we are in the process of changing the culture of school food and of the way in which schools consider healthy living. That is why it is vital that the Government give out the message that this tranche of money needs to be spent on school food. That is the point being made by Opposition Members; we are not saying that everything should be ring-fenced.

[Sarah Teather]

Culture has changed significantly, and I join with the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish in paying tribute to Jamie Oliver for the work that he has done in changing attitudes.

I now turn to what Opposition Members said about free school meals. The rise in the number of pupils eating school meals inevitably means that there has been a rise in the number taking up their entitlement to free school meals. The latest figures show that 19.1% of pupils in maintained nursery and state-funded primary schools and 15.9% of pupils in state-funded secondary schools are registered for free school meals. However, for all sorts of reasons, not all children entitled to free school meals currently take up the offer—for instance, because of stigma or because they are unaware that they are entitled, a point made by a number of Opposition Members. Cash-free systems can help in driving down the stigma attached to free school meals. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish mentioned Tameside’s system for online checking. That is part of the Department’s award-winning free school meal eligibility checking system, which has had a huge impact on encouraging parents to apply for free school meals by helping to remove that stigma. It is also significantly cheaper for local authorities to administer.

A number of Members spoke about the universal credit, with its automatic passporting of benefits. If we were to use that system, our way of dealing with free school meals would have to change. I understand that hon. Members want answers now, but I am sure they recognise that it is important that we get the detail right. That is why we are taking our time; we are examining how best to ensure that all those children eligible for free school meals can benefit. We are working through that now, and I shall update hon. Members as soon as I can.

I wish to correct a few misunderstandings on the pilot scheme. We did not cancel the pilots in Durham, Newham or Wolverhampton, but we had to cancel them elsewhere because, unfortunately, the programme was underfunded by £295 million. Being able to offer free school meals to every primary school child is certainly on my wish list; if money were to grow on the trees in the atrium at the Department for Education, that wish would be high up there.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

The problem is that Opposition Members have given no indication of what they would cut in order to fund free school meals. I suspect that the two former Ministers did not see the detailed budgets of their Department, but evidence makes it extremely clear that the previous Government underfunded their pledge by £295 million. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish said that the Labour party had a plan to halve the deficit, but they should make clear where those cuts would fall. It is simply not good enough to say that they have a plan to halve the deficit but not make it clear where the cuts would fall. If we were to have honoured all of those pilots, we would have had to cut the best part of £300 million—

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

rose—