School Governing Bodies

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Rosindell. I apologise for being a few seconds late for the start of the debate.

I am a member of the Select Committee on Education, which produced the reports that we are discussing, so I hope to be able to offer an insight into the thoughts of the Committee—as did its Chairman, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart)—during the report’s compilation and the various evidence sittings, although I also have some thoughts of my own.

Without doubt, governing bodies within schools play a critical leadership role, but inadequate governance is not addressed frequently enough and has ramifications that reverberate far beyond the governors’ meeting room and reach into the classroom. School governors provide the strategic leadership and accountability that are so important in determining the success of our schools. Governors appoint head teachers and other staff and in some instances, as trustees, own the school grounds. Governors are responsible for school finance, and they work with head teachers to make the tough decisions about balancing resources. In many cases, governors are actually dependent—often over-dependent—on their head teacher to enable them to fulfil their role, particularly in primary schools. That is why one of the key focuses of our report was on training, the need for it to be comprehensive and good enough to ensure that governors know their responsibilities, and how to get the information they need to make decisions and to hold the head teacher and staff robustly to account.

Some 300,000 people serve as school governors across the country, and we can be proud of the majority, who do an excellent job leading our schools and have a true passion for improving education in their communities. We must not forget that these individuals are unpaid and that, as such, governors constitute the largest volunteer group in the UK. We owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude. They do their very best in what I know from nearly 30 years of first-hand experience can be exceptionally challenging circumstances. We cannot, however, overlook the areas of weakness and the room for improvement. We must not lose sight of what the system does well, but attempting to convince ourselves that it is perfect would only make things worse. I was therefore pleased to have the opportunity, as part of the Education Committee, to examine the issues in much more detail.

One of my principal concerns when exploring the evidence to put the report together was the high vacancy rate on governing bodies, and the difficulties that many schools experience in recruiting. That, of course, can contribute to other shortcomings, such as a lack of the necessary skills base to fulfil core functions. Department for Education figures suggest that 11% of roles nationally are vacant. Having been responsible for nominating and appointing school governors for Cleveland county council before it was disbanded, and then for Stockton borough council for several years thereafter, I know the magnitude of the problem and the repercussions for the quality of governance.

I also appreciate that the difficulty in recruiting governors can vary enormously within the boundaries of a single local authority, let alone between different authority areas. The Committee took evidence to that effect from the National Governors Association, which confirmed that a large proportion of governing bodies have considerable difficulty in finding skilled governors. It is common sense that schools in cities and large urban areas are often better able to attract individuals with the specific skills required successfully to carry out the functions of a governor. From my experience, I know that that is not equally the case for smaller towns, let alone more rural areas, and so was able to relate to the observation, submitted to the Committee by the National College for Teaching and Leadership, that there is significant evidence that governors are recruited for their representative role, rather than for a particular skill set.

Some schools struggle to attract governors not only from the community and local business, but also from among parents, who may not have the confidence or do not think they have sufficient experience. I remember well talking with head teachers across the Stockton borough about their struggles to persuade capable parents to agree to put their names forward. The idea that an election would ever be necessary was, in many cases, a fantasy. It is true that a wholly representative structure would not necessarily lead to high-quality governance. It is equally the case, however, that governors recruited on the basis of skills alone may lack the all-important community knowledge that enables our schools to cater to specific local circumstances and challenges. An adequate skills base therefore need not be at odds with representation, but it is important to get the balance right, and training is the key element.

I was therefore pleased that the Committee’s report welcomed the Government’s commitment to raise the profiles of school governors. Governors, like teachers, are pillars of the community, but I often wonder whether they realise how important they are to our education system. Clearly highlighting the importance of governors, who have the potential to shape the future of our young people by ensuring provision of the highest educational standards, is a fundamental first step if we are to attract the most able candidates, and I welcome moves to make specific functions clear in both legislation and the governors’ handbook. I am more cautious in welcoming the removal of rules and regulations, in particular where they exist to safeguard important standards and performance, although I appreciate that it will be necessary in some cases to allow for greater flexibility to take decisions, as that can impact positively on educational standards.

During the final part of my speech, I want to concentrate again on training, and on my concerns about the Government’s failure to give clear direction on the need for both proper training and bodies to deliver it, particularly in the light of more and more schools opting to become academies, and the run-down of local authority services in the face of cuts inflicted due to both the academies programme and general central Government policy.

I remember Ian Short, now retired, who ran the governor support service in Stockton-on-Tees when I was cabinet member for children and young people. His team won awards for the quality of its provision, and governors in the area had better understanding of their roles and responsibilities as a result. Even then, not all governors undertook training, and some did little towards sharing the burden of the governing body’s work load. It is all very well to stand at the school gate and say, “I am a parent governor”, but often such people did not know about anything other than saying, “I am a parent governor”, or how to do anything other than attend the meetings.

We have a new kind of leader, and even governor, in the brave new world of academies and free schools; some do extremely well, but there are examples of failure, and some recent reports have shown that. If we are to get the best from our governors, however, they must be trained properly and, if they take on extra responsibility, such as being chair of the governors or of the finance and staffing sub-committee, they ought to undergo even more training. Not every school can attract an accountant, a human resources professional and a lawyer to sit on its governing body—though I would argue that they, too, should undergo compulsory training. The Government must therefore ensure that such training is available, but sadly, Ministers do not appear to agree.

I do not want to defeat my own argument by suggesting that Members present might point out that even Ministers do not undergo training for their roles when appointed by the Prime Minister, and they are dealing with matters of state. There should, however, be training for governors, who have day-to-day responsibility for the most important people in our community and ought to know what they are doing. I hope that the Government will rethink the need for high-quality, preferably compulsory, training, and having done so, that they will make the resources available to provide it for maintained schools, academies and free schools alike.

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[Neil Carmichael]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who makes a powerful point. I can point to similar problems in my constituency. Any Member of Parliament interested in schools in their constituency will be able to say the same thing. That is rather a sad fact.

We need to find ways of making sure that governing bodies almost fear the consequences of failure. Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools, has suggested that he should have powers effectively to remove governing bodies that are quite clearly incapable of turning a school around from failure to success. If we see that local authorities are unwilling to act—perhaps because everybody knows everybody and no one is willing to upset someone they knew a long time ago or have worked with successfully in some other department or school—we have to find other ways.

The people we should really be thinking about are children and their parents. They are the real stakeholders. We have to provide a system that guarantees that their school will be promoted, managed and dealt with in the best possible way. So my next request to the Minister is to make sure that we have a way of getting rid of governors who cannot do the job. It is dead easy: that is what we would do in a business, so it is what we should do in a school.

We want to see self-improvement. Our whole education system is about self-improvement. Any organisation should always be motivated to improve. The question we should always ask ourselves each day is, “How can I do this better?” That is a natural thing to do, so we want to see governing bodies doing it. Of course, that must be in conjunction with head teachers. As my hon. Friend the Chair of the Education Committee correctly pointed out, we need clarity as to what the head is supposed to be doing and what the chair of governors is supposed to be doing.

Again, that may well be a matter on which different types of schools would have different opinions—I accept that. But we cannot have a situation in which chairs of governing bodies are sitting around in schools for a couple of days a week trying to do what the head should be doing—that is completely unacceptable—and we cannot have a head basically taking on the role of the chair by steering the governing body through a difficult course to cover up or disguise inappropriate results and the like. We have to have clarity on those roles. That is where the Department for Education comes in: we need an explicit description of what the chair of a governing body is supposed to do. That should be part of the attempt to inspire people that I referred to earlier: we want to inspire the best people to be chairs of governing bodies, so we need to make sure that they know what they are doing when they approach the job.

I have talked a lot on the Education Committee about interim executive boards. As we all know, IEBs are used to replace governing bodies if the big decision to dismiss a governing body is taken. That is quite right. But that raises the question of why, if the solution is an interim executive board—a smaller body than the one it is replacing, made up of skilled people and with a focus on improvement and the capacity to get on with the job—we do not have something similar to that in the first place: a smaller structure, made up of people equipped with the right skills, so that the school can benefit from that kind of flexible, imaginative, innovative, robust governing system. That is where I have a slight variance of opinion with some of my colleagues on the Education Committee.

[Alex Cunningham]

I have experience of working with an interim board that was placed in a school in Stockton-on-Tees. It brought tremendous skills to the school and helped turn it around, so I was all in favour of that approach. But I have also seen tremendous parent governors, who are not going to be the leader of the body or its chair, but are tremendous advocates for parents. Surely there is room for people such as that as well in our governing body system.

[Neil Carmichael]

The key point is that a lot of governors are parents anyway. I have been a governor for a long time and a parent for a long time. I do not know about the hon. Gentleman’s family life, but I assume that most Members of Parliament have children. If they do not, that would not prevent them from being a governor, but if someone does have children that would not prevent them from being a governor either. I do not think that the question concerning parent governors is relevant to what the membership of an interim executive board should be. I have seen a large number of interim executive boards and I know that their members have children.

[Alex Cunningham]

Does the hon. Gentleman mean that he does not think that parents should have the right to elect some of their own to our school governing bodies?

[Neil Carmichael]

What is really important—this was going to be my next point, so I am glad the hon. Gentleman has taken me on to it, as we are probably done and dusted with IEBs—is that if the governing body is not good enough, parents should be able to say so. Accountability rests on that point. The real interface of accountability is between governors and parents. If parents think that the governing body simply is not doing a good enough job, they should be able to dismiss it. It is important to give parents as a group the capacity to make a decision as big as that, in defence of their children’s education and future.

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[Alex Cunningham]

The idea of parents being able to sack governing bodies is an interesting concept; perhaps it should be explored in greater detail. Would we apply that idea to academies and free schools as well as to state-maintained schools?

[Neil Carmichael]

The logic of it is that if we want to make sure that governing bodies are properly accountable, we have to decide who they are accountable to. In my view, that should be parents. The problem with stakeholder representation and all that sort of thing is that it actually dilutes accountability: the fact is that once parents get on the body, they start becoming defensive of their own behaviour and conduct, when in fact what they should be doing as parents is testing what the body is doing.

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[Alex Cunningham]

On a point of clarity, I think that I said when I opened my contribution that I wanted to offer some of my own thoughts and I do believe in some form of compulsory training, but should not leaders in our schools accept that they, too, can learn? They should submit to training without being compelled to do so.

[Rushanara Ali]

The exemplars clearly do that. All of us will have seen schools taking on this role actively and ensuring that proper training is provided. I certainly benefited from training as a governor of a further education college. The charitable organisations that provide training to governors, not just of schools and colleges but of charities, charitable organisations and social enterprises, are vital. The question is about those schools that currently are not able or willing to provide training. How do we ensure that they step up and apply the appropriate mix of encouragement and pressure, to extend the training that is needed to get their governors to perform the kind of role that they need to perform?

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) and the Education Committee on this excellent and well thought through report, which casts valuable light on an important issue in our education system that does not always get the attention it deserves. I am pleased to hear that so many members of the Education Committee are dedicated governors, and I congratulate them on that. A great deal of understanding of what goes on in the front line has informed the Committee’s report.

The Government believe that school governance has a vital role to play in driving up school and pupil performance. In an increasingly school-led system, we need governing bodies that create robust local accountability, and the future of schools is truly in governors’ hands. As has been said in the debate, there are more than 300,000 governors across the country, all of whom give of their time with great passion and effort to improve schools, and to improve the lives and outcomes of the children who attend them. Schools need dynamic, confident and skilled governing bodies that understand their responsibilities and are focused on their core functions. Many governors benefit from their role as school governors, which helps them to build up their skills in leadership and management, and improve their understanding of what goes on in schools and the community. We must all highlight the benefits of being a governor when we talk about that extremely important role.

The Government have made several reforms to improve the ease with which governing bodies can operate, and more sharply to focus the work of governing bodies on improving educational standards in schools. As several hon. Members have mentioned, new regulations have set out the strategic role of the governing body and the central role of the chair in setting the vision of the school, holding the head teacher to account for educational performance and ensuring that the school’s money is well spent. Those functions reflect the criteria that Ofsted inspectors use when they consider the effectiveness of governing bodies. Ofsted plays an important role in ensuring that those governing bodies are fit for purpose.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) commented, governing bodies may unfortunately have been diverted on to other issues of less strategic importance. The purpose of our reforms is to ensure that governors can spend more time holding the head teacher to account, ensuring that funds are well spent and that the quality of education in the school is high. One of my roles in the Department is to implement the new national curriculum, which will be ready in September 2014. I see one of the key roles of the governing body as ensuring that that implementation takes place and that schools take advantage of their new freedoms to create new school curricula. The governing body is a helpful conduit of information between the school and the community.

[Alex Cunningham]

On the question of accountability, does the Minister share the view of the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) that parents should be able to sack their governing bodies? Assuming that she does agree, should that apply to academies and free schools as well?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am not sure that that is exactly how my hon. Friend put his point. It is down to Ofsted to identify weak governing-body performance. Ultimately, it is the decision of either the Secretary of State or the local authority to replace that governing body with an interim executive board, should it not be doing what it is meant to be doing.[Official Report, 6 January 2014, Vol. 573, c. 1MC.]

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[Alex Cunningham]

Will the Minister give way?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am sorry. I must complete my remarks, otherwise we will run out of time before I address all the other points raised this afternoon.

In a multi-academy trust, things are more complicated, but there are significant potential benefits. The board of the multi-academy trust is responsible and accountable for all the academies within a trust and can take a strategic perspective. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) asked about maintained schools. The existing regulations contain ways that schools can federate that allow them to share governing expertise across schools, so we do not think there is a need for additional flexibilities in that respect. My hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley asked whether we plan to extend the time off work that people are entitled to if they are governors to governors of academies. We do not think that that is necessary at this point. We do not want further regulation to get in the way of what should be a co-operative arrangement between schools and businesses. Our approach has been to remove regulations and point out the value of the job.

Ultimately, performing a role on a governing body is of benefit not only to the employee in building up their skills, but to the employer in having well qualified staff who are getting extra training provided by the school and can go back to contribute in the business. We would rather sell the role as a positive than say to employers, “This is something else you need to do.” The NCTL is developing a resource on multi-academy trusts to be published early next year. It will offer useful guidance on establishing a multi-academy trust and case studies on how academies have implemented the structure.

As I mentioned, the Government recognise the value and benefits of governance structures spanning more than one school or academy. It can bring opportunities for a far more strategic perspective and the ability to contrast between schools in the grouping. That can bring more robust accountability for head teachers, because the governors have more points of comparison when looking at different schools. In the next version of the model funding agreement, we will offer multi-academy trusts even greater flexibility by allowing local governing bodies to govern more than one school.

The Government recognise and celebrate the role of governors. We are working in a changing landscape that is moving towards a school-led system. The role of governor has never been more important. We are doing a lot of work, including working with the CBI to promote the role of governor, ensuring that we get new governors into the profession, as well as increasing the flexibility of schools.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. It is a bit unsatisfactory if one Minister is heckling another. You yourself, Mr Hancock, are undergoing an apprenticeship to become a statesman, but I think there are some years to run.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

20. Hundreds of workers across north-east England joined the millions across the country in fearing for their future when npower decided last week to export hundreds of jobs to India and force Thornaby-based workers to travel to a new location nearly an hour away. Does the Minister now understand why half the working population fear for their jobs and feel insecure? What is she going to do about it?

[Jo Swinson]

The hon. Gentleman understandably raises a constituency case, and I am sure the whole House feels for people in that position. Insecurity in that kind of circumstance, where jobs are lost or people fear for their jobs, is something we all understand. The best way to deliver the security that everybody wants to see for their constituents in work is to continue the recovery that the Government have started, ensure that we keep interest rates low, have a thriving economy and support the small businesses up and down the country that are the engine of growth. That is what the Government’s plan for recovery is delivering.

PISA Results

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It was a pleasure to meet the teacher from his constituency, who is wholly committed to implementing the reforms we have introduced, utterly committed to raising standards for every child and, to my mind, representative and emblematic of the idealistic and supremely talented young people now entering teaching.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State think that the Singapore authorities would employ untrained teachers, and does he back their system, which sees children put under immense pressure to work from dawn to dusk and beyond to compete with their peers and with us?

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point. Matters of school uniform are rightly questions that head teachers should decide on, or college principals should be responsible for. I hope it is clear that the wearing of any item that impedes effective teaching or effective learning is something that we should all ensure does not happen in the classroom. I am working with both the chief inspector of schools and officials within the Department for Education in order to ensure that schools and individuals receive an unambiguous message about the vital importance of ensuring that cultural or other barriers do not impede the capacity to learn of children from whatever community.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State agree with his most trusted adviser that “real talent” is rare among the nation’s teachers. If not, was it an error of judgment to give him free rein over education policy?

[Michael Gove]

I agree with all my advisers that real talent is rare on the Labour Benches, which is why it is so important that we ensure that this Government are re-elected in a few years’ time.

Pupil Premium

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is reassuring to be able to visit schools with very large numbers of disadvantaged youngsters, such as the one I mentioned earlier, and to see that the attainment gaps have now been extinguished. This shows schools across the country that it is possible to close that gap, and that that is not just the perspective of some DFE Minister but the experience of schools across the land that are achieving that. The huge amounts of money that we are now putting into the pupil premium and other disadvantage funding for schools with disadvantaged youngsters will remove what were legitimate excuses 10 or 20 years ago about the absence of the resources necessary to achieve these big changes. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who did so much in his time in the Department to champion higher standards and to pave the way for much of what is in today’s statement.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Early intervention is certainly the key to the future for the hundreds of children in my constituency who have a much tougher start in life than most people. How will the Minister ensure that the pupil premium is targeted specifically on individuals rather than being swallowed up by the wider school budgets, and how will he hold head teachers to account for looking after those individuals?

[Mr Laws]

That is an absolutely crucial point. The Department is not going to go back to the fashion under some previous Secretaries of State of micro-managing individual schools and telling them what interventions they need to deliver. Schools have a better understanding of the interventions that will work for the school and the individuals than we will ever do, sitting in a Department in London. However, we are going to hold schools to account for ensuring that whatever interventions they use are successful. We have worked closely with Ofsted to ensure that this is a key part of the accountability process for schools, and that there is a much greater focus by Ofsted on narrowing the gap. The chief inspector has made it clear that schools will no longer be ranked outstanding if they are failing in this key area, and there will be a requirement on schools that are not delivering a good standard to commission support from key leaders in education, such as national leaders of education, to bring advice into the school when it is failing to narrow the gaps. We have also recently appointed the widely respected John Dunford, who has great experience in education, to serve as a champion of the pupil premium and to spread the message about best practice to schools across the country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

As ever, may I thank the hon. Lady for the tone she strikes with her question? We are at one in wanting to improve the support young carers receive. As she knows, I have met the Minister for care and support to agree some key principles for work in this area and to look at how we can use both the Care Bill and the Children and Families Bill to bring about a closer connection between adult and young carers, so there is a whole-family approach to the support they receive. We will use the stages through the other place to try to make that approach much clearer.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

11. What assessment he has made of the effect of the pupil premium on attainment of children from socially deprived backgrounds.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

Results for 2012, the first year to reflect the impact of a full year of the pupil premium, showed a larger than expected narrowing of attainment gaps nationally for both key stage 2 and key stage 4. Further improvement is expected as the funding levels increase and schools focus more on evidence-based interventions to help disadvantaged children.

[Alex Cunningham]

That is very positive news, but schools are given a free hand to spend the pupil premium as they choose, rather than being required to target it on the most disadvantaged children who need the most support, and this comes at a time when the chief inspector is planning to get tough with schools that let poor children down. Will the Secretary of State get tough, too, and tell schools to concentrate these resources on the neediest children, instead of simply absorbing them into their budgets, as happens in some cases?

[Mr Laws]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we are not going to allow schools to use this money for purposes other than that for which it is intended. Schools will have to use this money for the assistance of the most disadvantaged pupils. We are not prescribing the way in which they do that, because, unlike the last Government, we believe head teachers and professionals should be respected to choose their own interventions, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that Ofsted will hold schools to account for using this money in the best way and narrowing the disadvantage gaps. If schools do not do that, they will face the consequences.

GCSEs

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The CBI has pointed out that the number of employers who are dissatisfied with school and college leavers’ basic skills remains stuck at around a third; the Institute of Directors has said that the value of GCSEs has declined; and the Federation of Small Businesses has said that eight in 10 small businesses do not believe that school leavers are ready for work. Business recognises that we need rigour, and that is why business supports the coalition Government.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Teachers—even head teachers—who are responsible for delivering the Secretary of State’s curriculum have expressed little confidence in him on the nature and timing of his changes. When will he really listen to the professionals in schools who actually teach and plan and know what they are talking about?

[Michael Gove]

It is an unfortunate myth that the profession is united. There is a range of views within the teaching profession and among head teachers. What is striking is that an overwhelming number of those who lead outstanding schools and are developing outstanding practice support the drive for higher aspirations that this coalition Government are leading.

Children and Families Bill

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Hodgson]

No. I will tell the hon. Gentleman what more of the professionals have said, however, and then perhaps he will think on the strangeness of his intervention.

Purnima Tanuku of the National Day Nurseries Association said:

“At the moment there is an option that nurseries can operate a 1:13 ratio for over threes, if a person with a Level Six (degree level) qualification is working directly with the children. However, few nurseries take up this option, largely because it is not practical for one person to meet the needs of 13 children doing the type of activities most nurseries offer.”

That was echoed by private nurseries and managers I have met across the country. They suggested that it can often be a struggle providing quality care when operating at the current ratios. Finally, I will quote June O’Sullivan, chief executive of the London Early Years Foundation, which runs the nursery in the House of Commons:

“It beggars belief that a junior Minister can wreak havoc on a sector that has explained the negative consequences of her actions.”

Obviously the junior Minister has at last come to the House and ditched her plans, which I am sure all the people I have quoted will be pleased to hear. Most important, though, parents will be most pleased to hear today’s announcement.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I too welcome this U-turn by the Government today, but I welcome all the more my hon. Friend’s new clauses. Parents in my constituency are actually worried about the safety of their children under the Government’s proposals and are taking that anxiety to work. Some were even considering giving up work, if it had been introduced, which would not have done our economy any good. Would support for the new clauses in fact do our economy good and remove that anxiety from parents?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I agree, which is why we are proceeding with the new clauses: we need to ensure that parents will never again face such a threat from a Minister who just brings forward a mad idea out of the blue, against all the evidence and without any support from anyone—whether professional, parent or expert—in the country.

Both Mumsnet and Netmums have officially backed the Rewind on Ratios campaign, following widespread anger among parents—anger that the Minister felt the full force of when she did a web chat on Mumsnet in February. A recent survey of parents by Bounty found that 80% would not back the changes, even if they led to significantly cheaper child care bills. Of course, that is a big if.

The Department has argued—the Minister did so again in her opening remarks—that the measure could cut costs. The modelling information that the Department was forced to reveal said that it could cut costs by up to 28%, but the modelling done to arrive at that figure was branded by providers as a “work of fiction”. The modelling made wildly unrealistic assumptions of 100% occupancy for 52 weeks of the year, which no nursery ever has—speak to the nurseries and they will say that. It did not account for any breaks, training sickness or holidays for any of the staff. In one model—the one that said that it would save parents up to 28%—staff would not even have been paid any more money, which was supposed to be the whole point of these reforms, as the Minister again said in her opening remarks.

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[Alex Cunningham]

I rise to speak to new clause 17, in my name and those of other hon. Members, which would provide for a ban on smoking in private vehicles when children are present. It is a child protection issue.

I could devote much of my time to the strong influence of the tobacco lobby in this place and knocking down the idea that the new clause is my way of expanding the nanny state, but I will not. Instead, I shall address the simple decision that the new clause invites Members to make: do we act to protect children and ban smoking in cars, or do we leave them to suffer not just the discomfort but the tremendous health problems they will otherwise encounter? In Committee, there was considerable sympathy for the intention, with some reservation about the introduction of an education programme for offenders, but the new clause is much simpler: if a person smokes in a car when a child is present, they would face a £60 fine—no awareness course, no complications, no compromise.

The principle of such a ban has gained much support from fellow Members on both sides of the House. A majority of people understand that smoking is harmful to our health, particularly the health of children, and most would not expose children to smoke in a vehicle. In a survey of 10,000 adults carried out by Action on Smoking and Health that included more than 2,000 smokers, which asked about the car people travelled in most frequently, only 6% said that people should smoke whenever they liked. Some 71% said that smoking was not allowed full stop and 9% said that smoking was not allowed if there were non-smokers or children travelling. Despite that, however, research from the British Lung Foundation found that more than 51% of eight to 15-year-olds reported exposure to cigarette smoke when confined in a car in the UK.

Public opinion is firmly on the side of change. A survey by YouGov found that 85% of adults in north-east England, where my constituency is situated, said that they would support laws to ban smoking in cars carrying under-18s. One factor that sets children apart from other groups is that they are less likely to have a say on whether they are exposed to second-hand smoke in a vehicle in which they are travelling. Given that passive smoking is particularly harmful to children, we have a recipe for a public health time bomb. With their quicker respiration rates, smaller airways, less mature immune systems and greater absorption of pollutants, children are at an increased risk from passive smoking in an enclosed space. Passive smoking increases the risk of a number of health problems, ranging from wheezing and asthma to respiratory infections and bacterial meningitis, and doubles the risk of sudden infant death.

These attitudes are backed up by survey data from the British Lung Foundation that shows that many children are uncomfortable with adults smoking around them, but feel unable to influence smoking behaviours. Some 31% of children aged eight to 15 exposed to second-hand smoke in a car reported having asked the smoker to stop. Alarmingly, however, a greater share—34%—had refrained from asking because they were either too frightened or embarrassed. As Members of Parliament, it is our duty to act in the interests of the public we serve and represent, including children and young people, and it is high time that we heeded what our young people are telling us. In the interests of preserving public health, the only way to protect completely against second-hand smoke is to make homes and cars entirely smoke free. A good starting point would be to ban smoking in cars when children are present.

The Government’s response to this developing crisis, in the form of an informative educational campaign that has just been launched, is certainly welcome, but the message about the dangers of passive smoking must be spread even wider. We must stop this sort of behaviour, so this campaign is of course welcome. Private vehicles are considered private spaces—people argue that it is their private space—but it is the young person’s private space as well, so I hope that the House will support my proposal and that the Government will accept it. Opposing a ban on smoking in private vehicles when children are present assumes that the right to smoke trumps the right of the child to be free from harmful smoke. It does not. I have stressed in the past, and do so again, that this is not just a health issue, but an issue of child protection. I hope the Government will now accept it.

[Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

I want briefly to draw attention to new clause 5, which addresses the issue of young carers and the fact that the good intentions of the Government in the Care Bill to extend new rights to adult carers have inadvertently created a gap that leaves young carers in a position where they would be less well favoured than adult carers in the future.

As a result of the new clause, tabled by a cross-party group of Members, the Government can ensure that young carers are treated in a way that is fair and appropriate for them and are not placed in a position where they are undertaking inappropriate and burdensome caring responsibilities. I hope that the Government will be able to give us a good sign of intent to deliver on this agenda. They are doing a great job for adults in the Care Bill and, in carers week, we need to do the same for young carers.

Careers Guidance

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Mr Benton, it is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship in this important debate. I, too, welcome our Chair, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), back to his role in the House.

I have no doubt about the importance to our country of a well-functioning and fit-for-purpose careers service for young people, although the transfer of responsibility to individual schools has resulted in mixed provision. I intend to concentrate on resources, quality and the need for a professional service.

During the evidence sessions on the Government’s reforms to the service, the Education Committee heard from many expert witnesses that the service was going downhill. There seemed to be little disagreement among them that the service has suffered since the changes took effect; things are going in the wrong direction and youngsters are the ones losing out. The subsequent report outlined compelling evidence that the service has begun to, and is likely to, continue degrading.

In written and oral evidence, we found ongoing concerns about the quality, independence, impartiality and availability of careers guidance. We also heard numerous concerns about an emerging postcode lottery of provision, with some schools and local authorities making a success of the reforms and others sometimes lacking the resources, expertise and perhaps even the will to do the same. One thing that stood out was the observation that effective guidance services will only support the complexity of needs if they are appropriately resourced and structured to do so. Although the Committee raised concerns, the Government have so far failed to address major funding issues in the careers service or the crisis facing the provision of careers advice in schools.

The funding provided for the careers guidance element of the former Connexions service totalled some £196 million, as the Committee Chair and other hon. Members outlined. Responsibility for providing careers guidance was transferred to schools as part of the Education Act 2011, but as has already been said, none of that funding was transferred with it. In consolation, if it is any consolation at all, the Department for Education funds the National Careers Service, for services for young people, to the tune of a paltry £7 million for a helpline, which we found that many young people do not even appear to know exists. I should like to know where all the cash has gone.

The staff need to be in possession of the requisite skills and knowledge to meet the needs of our young people. I remember my careers chat with Mr Harding, the deputy head teacher of Branksome School in Darlington, when I was 15. I thought I should like to be an engineer or maybe something else. “Okay”, he said. “Five O-levels, including maths and English for you”, and I was out the door. There was no real discussion, no exploration of my skills and no help. Perhaps if he had considered how incompetent I was with a piece of wood or metal, he might have been able to say, “Engineering is not for you, but you’re not so bad at English, you know. Maybe you should think about something along those lines.” The fact that I ended up as a journalist and politician probably speaks for itself.

Sadly, many young people today face the same level of support that I had, and it is simply not good enough. Some may be doing all right, but the evidence suggests that most certainly are not. My trade union, Unison, which has seen the number of members working in the careers service collapse, is worried for our young people and reminds us:

“The absence of regulatory rigour and safeguards within the new legislation and the cuts the service has faced have led to a postcode lottery on the type and level of careers advice available.”

I ask the Minister to consider doing more to promote consistency in the offer to young people, through a greater degree of central guidance to assist schools to adopt a consistent approach. That might arrest the slide into a full-blown postcode lottery that we are witnessing. I hope that the Minister will at least agree that our children deserve better than a postcode lottery.

As the quality of service slips, so too does the range of knowledge about potential career paths available to children. As the director of the Education and Employers Taskforce says,

“far too many young people are having to make vital and incredibly important decisions about their futures without enough access to good information.”

That is a worrying observation. The Government seem to have taken what is widely considered to have been an imperfect system and put an inferior one in its place. I am pleased that our Education Committee did not hold back in its criticism. In view of that, I find the Government’s response to our report puzzling. It is one thing for an Opposition party’s criticism to elicit a complacent response, but quite another for a Committee chaired by a Conservative MP, with a majority of Government MPs, to provoke such a tepid, lethargic reaction.

As a former chair of the Connexions service in the Tees valley, I know that Connexions was not perfect and that performance was better in some areas than others, with provision often concentrated on those with the greatest needs at the expense of the general school population, but at least we had professionals with knowledge engaged with our young people. Their numbers have been devastated and now they are simply not available in most schools. The Government’s response to our report seems to contain little appreciation of the negative impact the reforms have had on young people seeking to enter the labour market. Some of those who took part in our inquiry must wonder why they bothered, when it appears to have made so little difference as far as the Government are concerned.

We are told that we should offer an opportunity for the changes based on school-based provision to “bed in and evolve”, but the changes have been in place for long enough to see which way the wind is blowing. If the early signs are ominous, instead of allowing a pattern of failure and service degradation to set in, the Education Secretary and the Minister should see what steps they can take easily to arrest the decline. For example, the Select Committee report suggested that all schools should publish and review their careers plan each year, but we are told that this would represent

“the kind of bureaucracy that we have tried so hard to remove.”

Quite aside from the staggering amount of bureaucracy that the Education Secretary’s top-down reorganisation of English schools has brought to bear across the system, I do not think that asking schools to report on the kind of service they are providing represents bureaucracy that is worth removing.

Although I have a different vision of education and schools policy from the Secretary of State, I share with him a desire to see the reforms work, now that they are in place. The Education Committee provided a simple way of improving the system. It is mystifying why the Government would try to remove any ability for parents, representatives and the public to know what kind of provision is in place. I urge the Minister to reconsider that decision or, at the very least, to lay out in far greater detail why it was taken.

Not everybody agrees with me, but I urge a greater role for local authorities in the new system. It is logical that those institutions play a co-ordinating role to facilitate a flow of information about best practice, new ideas and resources. Bradford is one of the better examples. The Government should actively promote the schools and local authorities that do well, although I acknowledge, as have other hon. Members, that local authority resources are much squeezed these days, particularly in the north.

Research published in July 2011 revealed that of 144 local authorities only 15 would maintain what the researchers termed a “substantial service”. In six London boroughs, all the Connexions careers service offices have been closed. In Hull, the number of careers advisers has been reduced from 81 to 18. In other authorities careers staff have been merged into generic youth work. The Government’s attempts to simplify the system have led to confusion about the correct roles for members of staff, and resultant confusion about who is responsible for what. That is why the Government’s response is so disappointing. It is said that the Government want to wait and see what Ofsted says in the summer, once its review of careers guidance surfaces, but the Committee consulted Ofsted and found that the current inspection framework was

“not a credible accountability check on the provision of careers guidance by individual schools.”

A good quality, well-resourced careers service is one of the few levers that the Government have at their disposal to do something about youth unemployment. In my Stockton North constituency, youth unemployment stands at more than 1,000, and nationally it is around 1 million. If the Education Department is serious about ensuring that young people have a chance when they leave school, it needs to ensure that the careers system is up to scratch. The Committee realised that, the Labour party realises it, and campaign groups recognise it, but it appears to have passed the Government by. As my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) said, the response to our report may be disappointing, but we now have a new Minister who will, I hope, chuck the earlier response in the bin and respond by taking the actions that employers, educationalists and, most important, our young people need him to take for their future.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Skills (Matthew Hancock)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Benton, to serve under your chairmanship. I will try to respond to all the points that have been raised, but if there is not enough time to respond to specific points, I will be happy to do so in detail in correspondence, as with the Committee’s deputy Chair.

I value the cross-party approach to the debate and the Opposition Front-Bench Member’s largely non-partisan approach. I invite him to the Department to give him a teach-in on some of the things we are doing on work experience because I agree that it is vital, and we are doing a huge amount to strengthen it. What matters is real work experience, not pretend work experience. The change is important and I am sure he will agree when he understands what is happening. I welcome him to his first Westminster Hall debate on the Front Bench.

During the debate, I noted a huge number of areas of agreement, not least on the value and importance of information, advice and guidance, but also motivation, inspiration and education in a world that young people can reach through their education and their choices of qualification. Several times, the motivating fact in my job was brought up. Youth unemployment is falling and this week, thankfully, the figures showed a further fall, but it is far, far too high. At the same time we have a skills shortage. To fill that skills shortage, we must make sure that the young people of this country have not only the training and qualifications, but the skills to get a job and hold it down. That is the motivation behind the massive increase in apprenticeships and the introduction of traineeships, which will start in the summer. There is agreement about the value and importance of that.

There is also agreement that Connexions failed badly, and that was mentioned throughout the Chamber, but that must be matched with recognition that if the activity that occurred under Connexions, which was poor value for money, has reduced, it is not the same as the amount of careers advice falling. The two are separate, and the reason for the cross-party, cross-sector agreement that Connexions failed is that it was poor value for money.

[Alex Cunningham]

I am interested in professional help. We have seen the number of professionals in the careers service collapse throughout the country. Does that not worry the Minister when he talks about the agenda for informing young people properly?

[Matthew Hancock]

I will come to that. The question is what we can do to provide information, advice, guidance and, much more broadly, motivation and inspiration. Times have changed since the Connexions service was opened up. Information is widely available, but it is obvious that information on the web is not enough; it is about the individual connection between human beings, with young people being inspired, usually by a practitioner who is doing something with their life. Young people look at them and say, “That’s the sort of thing I want to do.” Then the question is how to ensure that they are steered into the path of being able to do it.

Aspiration must be encouraged, but realistically. There was a time when I wanted to be an astronaut, and I am glad I was told that for someone who is British the chances of becoming an astronaut are close to zero, so I ended up in my second choice.

Child-care Ratios

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I completely agree. As with so many of their policies, the previous Government focused on inputs and targets, not outcomes. A third of children now entering primary school do not have the requisite communications and language skills, despite the fact that we have 96% uptake in our early-years places. It is about quality, outcomes and allowing autonomy and professional judgment.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Has the Minister had any other advice from the Deputy Prime Minister about child care? Which part of the schools or social care budget will be cut to fill the huge void in resources to deliver the provision that the Minister has promised, while maintaining the adult-child ratios required by parents and the Deputy Prime Minister?

[Elizabeth Truss]

As I outlined earlier, we as a Government are spending more than £5 billion on early-years education and child care, which is equivalent to countries such as France and Germany, where parents pay a lot less. The reason that it is so expensive is that we have a hugely cumbersome system with many different funding streams. I am very pleased that my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary is here today. He announced tax-free child care, which will be a much simpler scheme than the voucher scheme under the previous Government. We are reforming the system to get better value for money and better quality and affordability for parents.