Oral Answers to Questions
Alicia Kearns Excerpts(1 week, 6 days ago)
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Damian Hinds
I would encourage our friends and colleagues in the Scottish Government, whoever they may be at the time, to pay close attention to Hilary Cass’s report. I think her work has injected some much-needed common sense into the debate, and we are very grateful to her. This Government will always put the safety of our children first, and that is why the gender questioning guidance we have produced in draft is underpinned by the important principle of parents always being involved in decisions about their children.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
The Liberal Democrat-run council in Rutland has announced that it will close our specialist—and “outstanding” rated—SEND nursery, the Parks School. This comes with the further news that it is also going to close our only leisure centre. The community is rightly devastated, especially parents who want their children to get the best and most expert support. Does my hon. Friend agree that specialist provision must be protected and is absolutely vital, and that the need for this kind of provision is only going to increase?
David Johnston
I thank my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right. We have been hearing negative things about Lib Dem councils from both sides of the House this afternoon, which, sadly, is not surprising. She is absolutely right to be championing the needs of those parents and children, and I hope the council will listen to her campaign and do the right thing.
School Pupils with Allergies
Alicia Kearns Excerpts(5 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and it is lovely to swap roles, given the other jobs we hold. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this debate. He is truly such a good man, as I think everyone in this place would say. It speaks so much to the kind of man he is that, having received an email from someone far away from his isles—although only 10 minutes from my home—he put this subject forward for debate. I thank him on behalf of the entire House for doing so, because it goes to the heart of the kind of man that he is.
I also, once again, welcome Helen and her husband, who are here from Stamford. I thank them for all their work with the Benedict Blythe Foundation; it works not only to raise awareness of the risks facing children with allergies, but to support children with unique brains and approaches to learning. I will touch on that briefly, because it matters so much that we remember the children for whom we are here fighting.
Helen’s son, Benedict, had an incredible talent for maths, which I wish I had. In fact, I often say: who do I look up to most in the world? People who can do maths. At the age of one, he could complete a 24-piece puzzle independently; by 18 months, he was doing pie charts; and by the age of four, he was reading books with diagrams of the central nervous system with a maths ability equivalent to that of a 10-year-old.
Benedict was clearly blessed with incredible intelligence, but he also had asthma and allergies. His first allergic reactions were identified when he was just four months old, and I cannot imagine how scary that must have been at the time for his parents. However, with careful planning and prevention, they were able to keep him safe. When our children grow up and go to nursery and school, it means that trust has to be put in those around them. That was not easy and, as the hon. Member said, when he was aged just two, Benedict’s nursery worker gave him cow’s milk, which caused him to immediately throw up. They only admitted that they had given him something that he was allergic to after his lips and tongue had swollen so severely that he needed urgent medical treatment.
Two years ago today, on 1 December 2021, Benedict woke up and went to school. There he ate a snack that caused him to collapse shortly afterwards, and he died later that day in hospital, aged just five. That changed the lives of his family and friends forever. I want to place on record the condolences of this entire House. As parents, we all struggle with this, and my child is just five, so I struggle in particular to do this. But I am so pleased that, after a year of fighting, his family finally get their debate—a year later—and also that it comes on the eve, suggesting to me that this is fate and it was meant to be as a tribute to Benedict.
Benedict’s story, however, is not unique. Although we as parents do everything we can to keep our children safe, more support is needed, particularly in the education system, where children spend so much of their time. Worryingly, 18% of food allergy reactions and 25% of first-time anaphylactic reactions occur in school, and that will only rise. Between 1998 and 2018, 66 schoolchildren died from allergic reactions.
A really important point was made about behaviour change and understanding change. I do not remember discussions about allergies when I was growing up. I think they are on the rise—I am not an expert, so I will not pretend to give a medical diagnosis—but I think it is very difficult for those in a position of authority, when they did not grow up having to worry about allergies, to suddenly run an institution where this issue has to be of fundamental importance. As we heard, at least two children in every school classroom have an allergy.
What this means is that, every day, thousands of children walk into schools uncertain whether they will get the support they need that could mean the difference between life and death. I have seen the impact and what it means for a young child to be nervous when they sit down with their peers at lunch, not knowing what will happen if some milk were to be poured on to their skin. For some children, including one in my family, that is how severe their allergies are. The vigilance needed and the pressures that it puts on the shoulders of these children is significant. That is partly why what we are talking about today is so important. If we can lessen the stress and the vigilance that these children are living with, we would be doing them a good turn—not to mention the lives we would save.
We know that every education professional goes into the profession because they love it and want to support children. Nobody would want to see a child exposed to life-threatening allergens in their school. The problem, however, is that the current system allows risk, which I believe could be tackled. As we have heard, the current Department for Education guidance is voluntary, which results in vastly different standards in schools, and even between different teachers and classrooms.
I think we are all very united in our list of asks today, but I will go through them. We should replace the voluntary advice with mandatory regulations—that is at the basis of ending disparity. We should require every school to implement and maintain an allergy policy. Let us make talking about what allergies are a standard part of the school conversations that children have, from the youngest age. Let us talk to our children about what it is to be a responsible classmate. Let us make it as egregious to mock a child who has an allergy as it is to be racist. When we read the allergy stories in this booklet and hear children talk about having their allergy weaponised against them in the playground, we see we can deal with that by making that abhorrent from the moment children start school—they have those conversations in their classrooms.
In addition, we should require every school to work with pupils’ parents or guardians to create individual risk assessments for pupils with allergies. A child’s allergy and the support they receive has to be reviewed by a GP every single year. It should be a requirement for the school to sit down every year and go through that GP assessment with the family. That would create additional work, but this is about saving lives. The reality is that the type of things that a child will do changes every year—they might start going on foreign trips, for example. I remember that being a real cause for concern for the parent of the child in my family, who said, “Well, I don’t know what will happen when he goes on a school trip. That is not the same as a school canteen, where we know it is dealt with and there is a plan.” We have to make sure that the yearly review happens, because the circumstances and the way in which children are taught changes.
We also need to keep spare adrenaline auto-injector pens available to treat emergency cases. The good news is that the lifetime of those pens is getting longer. We need to make sure that staff are EpiPen-trained—not necessarily every member of staff, but a significant number—just as they are trained in CPR. We need to end the distinction drawn by some within education between minor and severe allergies: according to clinicians, there is no such thing. The factors in place on a day where a child has an allergic reaction determine whether or not that is minor or severe, so we need to overcome that.
Finally, we should ask for all school staff and teachers to be fully trained in allergy awareness and first aid response, because, as we heard, many children do not know that they have allergies. As part of that, in every single staff room—this can be done; I know schools that do it—there should be posters of children’s faces with the allergies that they have, and the three-point plan for what has to be done if they have an allergic reaction, so that teachers get used to knowing that. On an average day, the teacher who identifies a child having an allergic reaction in the playground or the canteen might not be their standard teacher.
As we heard, taken together, those measures would cost less than £5 million a year to implement, and they would mean that more children go to school in safety. For my part, I will write to every school in my constituency and ask them to adopt the schools allergy code. I will ask them to come back to me and we will offer whatever support they need to go through that.
Once again, I want to thank Helen and Pete; I am so proud that it is someone from our communities in and around Stamford who is going to change lives. I am confident that Benedict’s legacy will change and save lives. Some 13,000 people around this country felt strongly enough to sign the petition: 282 were in Stamford and Grantham, and 81 were in Rutland and Melton. Each one of them will be a member of a family who has been touched by this.
Allergic reactions and deaths are avoidable. I urge the Government to take these few simple steps. I know that there are many demands on the Education Minister’s time. Some people want to raise other conditions—asthma, for example, which Benedict also had—but allergies are the most likely to result in death and are therefore far more of a priority. There is an urgent need to support teachers. so that they can feel confident, take the pressure off children and make sure that parents know their children are safe. I urge the Government to take these steps to honour Benedict Blythe’s legacy and take what the House believes is a meaningful step that would save lives and ensure that we do not continue to see the heartbreaking reports of children dying in our schools for what could, with the right measures put in place, be as preventable as possible.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)
I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this debate. It is typical of him to bring to Parliament incredibly important issues that do not get the attention they should. He does so consistently in Westminster Hall and the main Chamber, and we all admire and appreciate that.
I start by offering my deepest condolences to the family of Benedict Blythe, who died two years ago tomorrow. No parent should experience what Helen has gone through. I was deeply saddened to learn of the story before I came here and to hear more detail today; the colourful picture that my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) painted of what Benedict was like moved us all. My heart goes out to any family experiencing that sort of loss. I just wanted to say that at the outset to Helen and her husband. As she knows, the coroner’s inquest into Benedict’s death is ongoing, so I am unable to comment on the details of his case, but officials from the Department met her in May to hear about the excellent work she has been doing through the Benedict Blythe Foundation to raise awareness of how best to protect children.
I can, of course, address the more general points that hon. Members made about allergies and our policies. I understand how worrying allergies can be for parents. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton said in her moving speech, when parents send their children to school, it is only right and natural that they expect them to be kept safe. If their child has an allergy, that adds a particular level of concern about what is happening in the school day.
Allergies are complex conditions that can range enormously in severity. Not all allergens are foods either, as hon. Members know, which makes it more complicated to manage them. I welcome the schools allergy code that the foundation launched this week, which will provide helpful guidance to schools on how to implement allergies policies; we would be keen to encourage schools to look at that code.
Alicia Kearns
I know that the Minister cannot commit to anything at this moment, but I would very much appreciate it if I could pick up that point about the code with him, maybe in a few weeks’ time; we could see whether that resource could be put on the Department for Education’s website or look at the best way to ensure that all schools around the country are aware of it, not just through the foundation but through the Department. That would be a meaningful way to spread that code across the country. I know that he cannot commit to that now, but would he be happy to pick that up with me in a few weeks?
David Johnston
I am very happy to have that conversation with my hon. Friend.
Turning to the statutory duties on schools, hon. Members have called for voluntary guidance to be replaced with a funded mandatory requirement. We have heard from each Member who has spoken in this debate about the four things that they would like to see: an allergy policy in place; the co-creation of an individual healthcare plan with all pupils with allergies and anaphylaxis; spare adrenaline auto-injector pens in schools; and the training of school staff and teachers in allergy awareness and allergy first aid.
Let me start with the first of those points. Section 100 of the Children and Families Act 2014 places a legal duty on schools to make arrangements to support pupils at their school with medical conditions. The accompanying statutory guidance from 2015—“Supporting pupils at school with medical conditions”—is not voluntary; governing bodies must have regard to that guidance when carrying out their section 100 duty. The guidance makes it clear that schools should ensure that they are aware of any pupils with medical conditions and have policies and processes in place to ensure that those conditions, including allergies, can be well managed. The guidance is clear that policy should also include how the processes will be implemented, what should happen in an emergency situation and the role of individual healthcare plans in supporting pupils. It says that
“The school, healthcare professional and parent should agree, based on evidence, when a healthcare plan would be inappropriate or disproportionate”
and that the policy should also set out
“how staff will be supported in carrying out their role to support pupils”
including
“how training needs are assessed, and how…training will be commissioned and provided.”
It states that
“any member of school staff providing support to a pupil with medical needs should have received suitable training.”
Members also raised the important issue of adrenaline auto-injectors. The regulations already allow schools to obtain and hold injectors and, in an emergency, they can be administered to pupils the school knows have a risk of anaphylaxis but whose own devices are not available or not working, perhaps because they are broken or out of date. To support schools to meet the needs of pupils with allergies, the Department of Health and Social Care has produced guidance on the use of adrenaline auto-injectors and emergency inhalers in schools, including the purchase of spare adrenaline auto-injectors.
Alicia Kearns
We have a little more time. On that point, would the Minister accept that there is a real problem that, while the auto-injectors are stored in schools, not many staff go through any form of training on how to use them? We have to be honest, in this day and age when we see Americanism being imported to our country, teachers are scared that they will end up in law courts. The Department has a responsibility to support staff so that they are confident enough to provide that life-saving aid. Does the Minister agree, therefore, that there should be funding or a process in place? Does he agree that training should be provided in some way, even if it is just a YouTube video that every single teacher must watch, so that teachers have the confidence to administer auto-injectors? That is a concern that we hear repeatedly, and there is currently no provision.
David Johnston
Staff should have training in it—that is absolutely right. That is part of what we are requiring. We continually review the policies in this area, and if we feel that there are deficiencies, or indeed inconsistencies, which I suspect is the biggest problem, we will do whatever we can to ensure that they no longer occur.
David Johnston
Yes. The question with these things is always whether the laws are already there. Do you need new laws, or are the laws already there but not being enforced? I have heard from Members today that we are clearly not seeing in every case the practice that we want to see. I will discuss with officials what more we can do on that, including in promoting the code.
Alicia Kearns
Can I ask the Minister one very last question? It will be the last one, I promise—that is not something I have ever said before in this room. [Laughter.]
Alicia Kearns
If the point is around the Department believing that this is being done rightly, does the Minister know whether Ofsted, when it reviews schools, takes into account whether or not the allergy guidance and section 100 is being upheld adequately? I am aware that this falls between two briefs; it is not just the Minister’s brief. If that is not the case, could he write to me? That may actually be the solution: we say that when Ofsted inspects schools, because the loss of life is so high—66 children—this should be part of its reviews. That way, it can say it is meeting its requirements and commitments to children—to keep them safe and ensure it is doing everything to look after them in every single way it can, as we would all wish it to be doing. That may be the solution that fixes this gap that, between us, we seem to be coming to.
Graham Stringer (in the Chair)
Order. This has been a good and important debate, but I must remind hon. Members that interventions should be short. I did not want to intervene previously, but I also remind Members that I am not involved in the debate—you should not refer to other Members as “you”.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alicia Kearns Excerpts(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)
I pay tribute to the life of the noble Baroness Boothroyd, who has sadly passed away. As the first and only woman Speaker, she blazed a trail for women, showing us that a woman’s place is not only in the House of Commons but at the top. Her legacy will live on and long be remembered in this place.
I know my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) is passionate about ensuring that people with special educational needs and disabilities get the support they need. I completely understand the complexities of a rural constituency, as I represent one myself, and it is why this Government introduced additional payments for small and remote mainstream schools, which are currently benefiting 23 schools in Rutland and Melton. More recently, in the autumn statement, we announced an extra £2 billion pounds for schools next year and the year after, meaning we will be spending more on schools than ever before, including £400 million to support high needs budgets from next April.
Alicia Kearns
I thank the Government for that investment in 23 schools in my constituency. However, the families my team and I support are sometimes waiting 40 weeks for a special educational needs assessment, which is a far beyond the six-week statutory period. So may I invite the Secretary of State to meet my local councils and schools in order to understand why we have so many difficulties in rural and small councils?
Gillian Keegan
I thank my hon. Friend for that. All of us will be aware of the huge impacts that long waiting times for diagnosis for autism and for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder can have on children in our communities; many of us will see such cases in our surgeries. To address this, last year we invested £13 million, with a further £2.5 million this year, to improve autism assessment pathways. NHS England is developing national guidance to improve access to autism assessments and we are also committed to looking at improving data on ADHD assessment waiting times to help improve access. I am sure that she will join me in welcoming my Department’s SEND—special educational needs and disabilities—and alternative provision improvement plan, which we will be publishing within the next week.
Crisis in Iran
Alicia Kearns Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on securing this important UQ. What we are seeing in Iran is state industrialised femicide. We are also seeing Iran being increasingly aggressive abroad in support of terrorist states and terrorist organisations. Will we finally act to sanction the IRGC, which is sending surface-to-surface missiles to Russia, supporting proxies across the region and spreading harmful radicalising narratives online? Will the Minister also broaden our classification of terrorist content beyond Salafi-Takfiri extremist ideology to include Shi’a Islamist extremist materials? That is the only way in which we will protect our communities at home from their reach.
Gillian Keegan
Yes. We have an assessment, which we have shared with my hon. Friend, of Iran and its support for regimes including Russia. We will continue to work with others to call out what is happening, and of course we condemn its support of anything to do with Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alicia Kearns Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Kit Malthouse
Mr Speaker, as I am sure you will have heard from other Ministers, we recognise that science and technology is critical to our future economy, and much of that originates from research within universities and other research bodies. We have made a huge commitment financially to research across the whole of the UK, and that will persist. We are dead keen to join the Horizon programme, but the hon. Member’s question is better directed at our European friends.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
Kit Malthouse
As a rural Member myself, I am very alarmed to hear my hon. Friend’s stories. She is right that we should be encouraging schools to educate children about where food comes from, and indeed about the very high standards that UK farmers have produced, not least in animal husbandry, but I have to say that there is a way to intrigue children and make them curious about some of the challenges to climate change brought about by farming. I read recently about an additive made from seaweed that we can add to dairy cows’ feed that reduces the amount of methane they produce. I gather it is in operation very effectively in Australia and being looked at in this country.
Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill
Alicia Kearns ExcerptsMonday 13th June 2022
(1 year, 11 months ago)
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Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
Will the Minister confirm that the Secretary of State will maintain the ability to direct the director to further inquiry, should he have concerns that the OfS is not investigating an issue suitably?
Michelle Donelan
Of course, we work hand in hand with the OfS and if there were concerns, we would be able to direct.
We are introducing a new complaint scheme, operated by the OfS, for students, staff and visiting speakers who have suffered loss as a result of a breach of those duties. On top of that, we are introducing a new statutory tort as a legal backstop. The Government tabled amendments in Committee to ensure that new strengthened freedom of speech duties apply directly to constituent colleges of registered higher education providers. That will ensure that appropriate institutions must comply with the new duties in universities such as Oxford, Cambridge and Durham.
Michelle Donelan
My hon. Friend is right. We need a cultural change, and legislation of this nature can spur such change. In our schools, we also need an environment of openness and frankness, and to grow that throughout the education system. I know that my colleagues in the Department are looking at this and will provide further guidance to support teachers shortly.
I know and understand the concerns raised by hon. Members, including my right hon. Friends the Members for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) and for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), and my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), which is why the Government are acting on new clause 3. I can confirm explicitly that the Government amendment will include educational partnerships, including Confucius institutes, and that the OfS will be able to impose a wide range of proportionate remedies as specific conditions of registration. That could include requiring a provider to make available alternative provision, or even to terminate a partnership if necessary to protect free speech. We will ask the OfS and its new director to make it clear that those are possible remedies in the guidance that will be published.
We of course continue to welcome foreign investment and donations to higher education as a key part of supporting innovation and development, but the amendments will increase the transparency of overseas income by requiring granular data to be reported to the OfS. Our intention is to proscribe countries for the purpose of the amendment by mirroring the countries listed in the academic technology approval scheme, which will exclude countries such as our NATO and EU allies, as well as countries such as Japan. We also intend to set a threshold of £75,000 in regulations. Hon. Members should be assured that in each case the ability to make provision by way of regulations will allow us the flexibility to amend as appropriate.
Alicia Kearns
I thank my right hon. Friend for the significant time that she has invested in speaking to my colleagues and me about this. Can she confirm clearly that Confucius institutes will fall within the remit of the organisation she is discussing because of the grave concerns about their strangulation of freedom of speech and thought on British campuses?
Michelle Donelan
I can confirm that Confucius institutes fall within the scope of these proposals, as I have outlined, and I urge all universities to increase the choice that they provide to students in this regard.
Jess Phillips
It does not seem very feminist, but I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman.
Alicia Kearns
I rise to urge the hon. Lady to name the institutions, because this Bill is about freedom of choice and of speech. I know that if I were a 17 or 18-year-old girl choosing university again, I would actively choose not to attend colleges or universities where I knew they might force an NDA on me if I was raped.
Jess Phillips
I will absolutely come on to naming some of those institutions. As I said, this was found by Elle magazine, which is collecting this data, unlike the Government at the moment. The article said the student claimed this arrangement felt
“worse than the assault—Dealing with this abuse of power was far more traumatic. It was emotionally exhausting and humiliating.”
Earlier this year, the Express took a day off from talking about Princess Diana and its investigation revealed that more than 3,500 cases of assault were reported in 78 institutions in the UK in the last five years. The figure consists of confirmed cases of sexual violence and disclosures made by both staff and students pending investigation. The 135 freedom of information requests sent to every university in the UK also revealed that many do not record figures of sexual assaults, so the overall number is likely to be much higher. So it is, “Just don’t record it and then it doesn’t happen.”
In 2020, a BBC investigation found that over 300 NDAs were used by universities in student complaints between 2016 and 2020, and that almost a third of all universities in England had used such deals in these circumstances. The probe discovered that universities had paid out £1.3 million on these deals, although the true scale is thought to be much larger. The campaign Can’t Buy My Silence was started by the brilliant and formidable Zelda Perkins, once an assistant to Harvey Weinstein and someone who had an NDA imposed on her related to his crimes, and Professor Julie Macfarlane. Their campaign has survivors’ testimony reporting that NDAs had gagged them from speaking of their experiences with family or loved ones, or even their therapists. I pay tribute to them and the work they are doing alongside the Minister, whom I know speaks to them. However, like me, they agree that legislation is necessary to tackle this.
So far, 66 universities have signed the Government’s pledge. I made this speech on Second Reading and since then the Government added “looking at non-disclosure agreements” into the violence against women and girls strategy, which was published late at the end of last year. I stand here in complete respect for the Minister. She has sought to do what she can to improve the situation. She has worked with the campaigns that I have talked about to get universities signing pledges. She is working with the Office for Students to look at regulation and at what needs to happen if these things are breached. Every Member of Parliament will have had to try to get a regulator to do something about their bad cases, and we are here with universities signing “pledges”. I do not know how we are going to know whether they are breaking their pledge if people have been gagged.
So far, 66 universities have signed the Government’s pledge. That is great, but why haven’t the others? I encourage every university to do this. There are over 130 universities in the UK. What about those students? What about their right to speak out? As the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) pointed out, she would want to hear about this. I am not going to list all the universities that have not signed it, but here are some: the University of Cambridge, King’s College London, the London School of Economics, the University of Wolverhampton and the University of Sunderland. That is just to name a few. Perhaps it is taking time and perhaps they are getting around to it. I very much encourage them to do it.
Just to show the House what I am talking about, I have an example here of one of these NDAs. This is the kind of thing that students are asked to do. It is not necessarily called a non-disclosure agreement, and that is a way out of this; the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) and I often challenge organisations when they say they do not have NDAs, because we have them in our inboxes and they call them something else. They will call them a “confidentiality agreement”. In lots of cases in universities we have seen the growth of “no contact arrangements”.
I will read this agreement out—this is from the university. It says, “We recognise the sensitive nature of the allegation involved. In consideration of our duty of care to both parties, we have therefore concluded that in the interest of both parties a non-contact arrangement is required.” This young woman who had been raped was told, exactly as the person accused of raping her was told, that she had to stay out of certain places; she could not go to certain things at certain times. She was told that she, “Is not to enter the building”, that her, “Fob access will be disabled” and that she is, “Not to enter the building unless for tutorials and classes notified in advance.” She is told, “Fob access will be disabled unless we have had advance notification”—this is a rape victim being told that she has to report to a guard so that she can go to her classes. She is also told, “You are asked not to make any information about these allegations, the police investigation or the safeguarding arrangements that we have made available on any form of public media”—so she should not talk about this document. Finally, she is told, “Evidence of repeated breaches of this arrangement and/or a serious breach of conditions—entering an embargoed building or publishing material in the press—will result in your expulsion.” That is from one of the finest universities in the world.
This is about people’s silence, but not just their silence; it is about their movement, their freedom and every element of their freedom of expression being stopped. Yet there is nothing in the Bill about freedom of speech, freedom of expression or freedom to study. There is nothing that the Government are proposing to do or to put in legislation. I simply do not understand why they would not have taken this opportunity to do something.
I met the Minister last week and, as I said, I do not doubt her total and utter commitment. Incidentally, she said earlier that “legislation of this nature can spur culture change.” Yet she told me last week that legislation is not always the answer—[Interruption.] I will take the intervention, by all means. No? Okay. She also explained to me that the Office for Students is looking at regulation to, for example, take away the status of a university if it is guilty of a breach. I responded—and I say again—that the idea that a rape victim who has signed a non-disclosure agreement will take down Cambridge University is the stuff of cinematic hopeful glory. I will believe that when I see it, which everybody in this building knows will be never. Why would we want to push universities and victims into that position? Why would we not legislate to stop the use of non-disclosure agreements?
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
I rise to speak to new clause 1, which stands in my name and in the names of my colleagues, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) and my right hon. Friends the Members for Harlow (Robert Halfon) and for Ashford (Damian Green). I thank Professor John Heathershaw and his colleagues at the University of Exeter for their input.
This Bill is a very serious one, and the issue I raise of transparency in our universities is a very serious one. It has been much publicised of late in the newspapers in relation to some very distinguished and famous universities that have been alluded to already in this House, and rightly so. It is often misunderstood or underappreciated in the higher education sector how important the issue of undue influence and non-transparency is to the reputation of that sector, which is one of the crown jewels of our country both economically and culturally.
Universities exercise a wider influence not only over the young people whom they educate, but more widely in our public life, yet no standard approach has existed to date for handling foreign donations. No single standard has been created to allow donations to be made transparent, to be made public and to be properly tracked, and, therefore, for students and other donors and the public at large to understand whether there are pressures of a financial nature, and if so what pressures there may be, on the institutions with which they may have to deal.
Instead of this panoply of different approaches and different thresholds, and this lack of transparency and culture of non-disclosure, it is important that the Bill addresses those matters and brings some order to the situation. That is what my new clause and the other new clauses, which I am delighted to see have been tabled in a similar spirit, are designed to address. In my case, the measure is aimed not at any specific country or individuals, but generally so that there should be a wide understanding of the lack of transparency and a wider solution to it. I take my hat off, metaphorically, to the Minister, her Secretary of State and her officials, because the Government have substantially accepted my new clause, and indeed—dare I say?—arguably even improved it in relation, for example, to politically exposed persons. I thank her and other Ministers for the very constructive attitude that she and they have taken in relation to this important issue.
I will make a couple of small points in passing because this is still a live matter and officials will wish to think about the implementing regulations. The first is about the enlarged role for the Office for Students and the need for it to be given a role that it can dispatch rapidly and effectively as well as impartially. More widely, I note the essential importance of the higher education sector and of our universities being zealous in themselves, as institutions, in preserving freedom of speech and the culture of a deeper freedom of speech that, as so many Members have said, they have sought to defend in their treatment of students and colleagues. That remains vital.
I am delighted to support the Government amendment and withdraw my new clause 1 as a result.
Alicia Kearns
I rise to speak to new clause 3, but I wish first to welcome the significant work done by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), which has had an implication for that which I sought to achieve, and to touch briefly on new clause 19, tabled by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), with which I have enormous sympathy. When you are an alumnus of a university, you have a great ability, you would hope, to influence it, so I place on record that if Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge is using NDAs, it can expect this not to be the last it will hear of it. I will work with the hon. Lady to call it out if it is doing it, but I am sure that there is absolutely no way that the place that gave me an incredible three years would be doing that.
New clause 3 was tabled to solve a series of problems that we face in our education system. We exist in a state of hybrid warfare where we do not necessarily know that we are at war. Indeed, more often than not our enemies do not tell us that we are at war—the most effective manner to attack us. In this war they use every possible lever of influence to attack us. It is naive, sadly, but our universities are failing to accept that they are being weaponised and used against us in a state of hybrid warfare. The Chinese Communist party is at war with us, because between now and 2050 it expects there to be a war between two world orders—theirs and ours, ours being the one that believes in the rule of democracy and standing up for freedom of speech, which this Bill so focuses on. We might not realise that we are at war, but we are, and for decades now we have failed to recognise that. It is not enough to say, “Bad Chinese Communist party—stop doing what you are doing in trying to achieve your goals and the continuance of your power.” We have to take the fight to it in terms of standing up for what we believe in, standing up for our world order, and, most importantly, building resilience within our system.
That is what my new clause focuses on doing—tackling the unintentional ignorance, or potentially wilful deceit, of those who do not recognise the seriousness with which our education system is under attack. Everyone plays a role in protecting freedom of speech. That is why I am so grateful to the very many colleagues who over the past few days have spoken in support of the new clause and given support on the issue across the House. I also thank the Department for Education, and particularly the Minister, who has been in constant dialogue with me and has adopted the ambitions of the new clause completely. I know that in coming months we will work together to make sure that we build the resilience that is needed in the education system.
My new clause particularly seeks to focus on Confucius institutes, which play an enormous role in the teaching of Mandarin and all that comes with learning that language—cultural understanding, historical understanding, debates about the present day, and debates about the entire concept of the country and how it feels, breathes, lives and sees itself. We have 30 Confucius institutes in this country. Nowhere else in the world has anywhere near 30. One might ask why Scotland has the highest number of Confucius institutes in the entire world. There is a reason why the Chinese Communist party has chosen to infiltrate Scottish education and to try to force its own narrative within those areas. More concerningly, almost all UK Government spending on Mandarin language teaching in schools, which is £27 million from 2015 to 2024, goes through Confucius institutes.
Our students and our kids—our under-18s—are being taught Mandarin by Confucius institutes, which are an arm of the Chinese state. Confucius institutes are supervised by the Chinese Communist party through the Ministry of Education. They are not allowed to hire teachers unless they have been vetted by the Chinese Communist party. I have recently discovered that Edinburgh University’s Confucius institute has representatives of the Chinese Government’s embassy on its board. This is absolutely outright political intervention. Teachers are not allowed to cover issues such as Taiwan or Tibet, which are apparently sensitive. This is deeply concerning. Lancaster University and Edge Hill University rely on CIs to provide teaching for undergraduates. We cannot allow a hostile power to capture our education provision. That is why we need transparency.
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire because his new clause has allowed us to bring in the requirement to report when universities take in foreign funding. These safeguards bring us into line with the US, Germany and the Netherlands, all of which discourage their universities from using Confucius institutes or introduce mandatory financial disclosures, because British students deserve a choice. They should not be forced to learn a language through the prism and narrative of a genocidal regime. That is all we are trying to do. We are not anti-China; we are trying to create resilience within our system. I am pleased that the Government are taking action and that under their amendments universities and student unions will be required to register funding arrangements. The Office for Students will have the power to force universities to provide alternative Mandarin education or to terminate Confucius institutes’ contracts.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith
I congratulate my hon. Friend on her new clause. I understand that the Government have moved on the matter, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Minister. However, does my hon. Friend agree that there is one other element to this, which is that if the Government are in possession of clear evidence that there is a threat to the security of the state through interventions by things such as the Confucius institutes, they should retain the power for the Secretary of State to deal with that directly without necessarily going to the Office for Students?
Alicia Kearns
I thank my right hon. Friend, who has been enormously supportive of the new clause. I agree. I would have preferred to see these powers sit with the Secretary of State, but the Government are not willing to give on that. However, they have made it clear—I challenged the Minister in her opening remarks and she confirmed this—that the Secretary of State for Education will have the ability to direct the Office for Students if required.
I would argue that it is impossible for Confucius institutes to operate in this country without undermining our national security. They are an instrument of the Chinese Government and their propaganda wing with one sole goal. It is therefore critical that the Secretary of State directs the OfS where needed, and I urge him to regularly review its progress. I believe that the message going out from this House today is clear—that we have the power to terminate hostile states’ programmes and we must protect academic freedom.
On next steps, this is about not just building resilience but offering alternatives. As China’s role on the world stage grows, we have an amazing emerging pool of talent of Chinese speakers and China experts. We must provide alternative opportunities for the learning of Mandarin. I can think of no better way to do that than through our friends in Taiwan, whose track record in providing language courses is exemplary. They already work with our Foreign Office and intelligence services in providing these language lessons. We must also fund Mandarin education.
I thank the Minister for working with me to adopt these measures and for safeguarding academic freedom. My new clause provides a duty on financial disclosures, and it offers an alternative in the ability to terminate Confucius institutes and the power of the Secretary of State to direct, but I will not press it to a vote. We should be proud of British universities and proud to stand up for liberty and academic freedom. Without academic freedom, there is no open dialogue; without dialogue, there can only be division. It is important we use this Bill as the first step in sending a clear message to the entire education sector and the Chinese Communist party that we will not give them a back door to undermine our country and our national security through our universities.
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Review
Alicia Kearns Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
I am so grateful to my right hon. Friend for his work on this, and also to the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), who is unable to be here in the Chamber today. Too many parents in my constituency come to me broken by the system. They are tired of fighting and particularly tired of going to court. How will the system help with those issues? Will my right hon. Friend also take into account the difficulties of provision in rural areas and in small unitary councils, for which this can be a heavy and difficult cross to bear?
Nadhim Zahawi
My hon. Friend speaks with passion and probably pain from having to consult those parents who have fought and feel that they are sometimes let down by the system. We have to ensure that the system works equally well in rural areas. Lincolnshire, for example, co-created the local system. It brought families and stakeholders in and said, “Look, we have got £50 million. How should we spend that to make sure the provision is the best we can make it?”
Oral Answers to Questions
Alicia Kearns Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Gavin Williamson
The hon. Lady raises an important point about the importance of wraparound care. We are working with all schools to ensure it is provided to parents. We have issued guidance setting out how this can be done safely and cautiously and in a way that works for those who work in schools and, importantly, for the children who benefit from this wraparound care as well as the parents who depend on it.
Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con) [V]
Gavin Williamson
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important case in her constituency. Uppingham Community College is actually covered by risk protection arrangements, and I know that officials in my Department are working closely with it to see what is needed in order to ensure that there is provision. I know that Baroness Berridge would be delighted to meet with my hon. Friend to discuss in more detail some of the particular issues that she faces in Rutland and how we can best support her and, most importantly, the provision of education in her constituency.