Education and Local Services

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George). She is the most forceful, eloquent and committed school run mum I have ever heard in this House, and she will clearly be a great asset not just to our party but to the whole House. I congratulate her on an outstanding maiden speech.

I also associate myself with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), who mentioned the plight of local authorities as they try to do the right thing about their tower blocks and other housing assets in the light of the terrible tragedy that has engulfed the nation and has led to such heart searching on what we do about our tower blocks and on who funds them.

Southampton has been tremendously responsible in its approach to its tower blocks. A number of programmes for installing sprinklers are already under way, and it wishes to progress them to the rest of the tower blocks, but, given the desperate cuts to local government over a considerable period, it simply will not have the resources—or if it does have the resources, it will be at the expense of many other basic services in the city. It is imperative that we get clarity as soon as possible on what funding will be forthcoming from central Government and the Department for Communities and Local Government to support authorities such as Southampton that are trying to act responsibly and carefully on the safety of their tower block residents. Hopefully those authorities will have Government support in making that happen in a way that allows local government to continue while providing the best safety for residents.

I find it odd that, in this Queen’s Speech, the Government of the day, who were allegedly the victors in the general election, have fled from their manifesto faster than any Government I have heard in this House. The Conservative manifesto’s chapter on education is headed, without any trace of irony, “The world’s great meritocracy”. That chapter does not seem substantially to exist as far as the Queen’s Speech is concerned. That gives me some pleasure, as grammar schools are not to be imposed upon us in the future and school lunches will not be cut. However, that world’s worst manifesto, which was

“a long list of punishments for the public,”

to use not my words, but those of the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), who is not in his place—I am sure inquiries will be made by his own side about that description shortly—still puts in place a number of changes that are inadequate for school funding. That is what I wish to emphasise in the seven seconds I have left available. It needs more than the distribution of the cake; it needs a larger cake. That is the fundamental point about school funding for the future.