Deaf Students (Educational Achievement)

Alison Seabeck Excerpts

Tuesday 13th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

I am very pleased to have been given an opportunity to raise an issue that is of importance not only to my constituents, but to many other families and young people across the country. Deafness is a disability and although that does not mean that children who are deaf are categorised as having learning difficulties, it most definitely means that learning can be difficult. There remains a wide attainment gap between deaf children and their peers. There are a variety of reasons why that is the case, but it need not be that way. It is clear that more could be done across the country to ensure that deaf children receive the support they need to close the gap. It is important to emphasise that while this debate falls under the Department for Education’s brief, it is also clearly a health issue, so unsurprisingly I will touch on health matters in my comments.

Deafness affects more than 45,000 children in the UK, the majority of whom are born to hearing parents with no background in deafness. More than three quarters of them attend mainstream schools with little specialist provision, where they are often the only deaf child in attendance. Most of those deaf children—85%, in fact—do not have a statement of special educational needs, but when they reach working age, just over 50% of them are in employment, compared with 80% of the non-disabled population. We are clearly not assisting them in achieving their full potential.

It is important at this stage to establish who I am talking about when I refer to “deaf children”. When the National Deaf Children’s Society talks about deaf children, it means any child with hearing loss from mild to profound, whether temporary or permanent and whether in one ear or both. Even a mild hearing loss can have a negative impact on deaf children’s achievement. Recent Government figures show that just 43% of deaf children achieve five GCSEs, including English and maths, at grades A* to C, compared with 70% of children with no identified special educational need. It is the Government’s main benchmark for GCSE success, and there is no reason why we should not have the same educational benchmarks for deaf children as for their peers. Clearly more can be done to support these children throughout their school life and to best prepare them for the working world.

I say this as someone with deafness myself. I am, as many in the House are aware, completely deaf in one ear and have been since the age of 16 when I contracted mumps. The damage to my nerve endings meant that nothing could be done to enhance my hearing. It poses problems when there is ambient noise, in a room with poor acoustics and in the Chamber, Mr Deputy Speaker—quite frankly, if you were to speak to me, there is a good chance that I would not hear you unless I was looking at you. I would not be aware that you were talking to me. That happened at one of my early forays at the Dispatch Box. The only way I knew that something was amiss was that I could see the faces of the Members on the Benches opposite, who looked somewhat puzzled that I had not responded to the fact that the Speaker was standing and trying to attract my attention. That can clearly pose problems in a classroom and throughout the education process for many young people, and for teachers who have to consider the physical placement of those students within the class and the eye lines and the background noise during the lesson.

In September I met a young woman called Renée, a lovely and bright 17-year-old girl who is profoundly deaf in both ears and has two cochlear implants. To communicate, Renée uses a combination of speech and British sign language and can lip-read. She told me how hard it could be for her and many of her deaf friends to concentrate and focus on their work in school or college. Especially at the age of 17, when friends are finding their own way in the world, she found it hard to become truly independent like many of her peers, but she has not let any of these obstacles affect her, as they can so many. She sits on the National Deaf Children’s Society’s young people’s advisory board, is a peer buddy at her school, is a member of the National Portrait Gallery youth forum and wants to become an art therapist when she finishes her education. I am sure that she will excel, yet sadly many who experience similar obstacles do not.

Addressing the issue does not simply lie in the classroom. It starts with providing the best possible care and services we can for deaf children. The National Deaf Children’s Society believes that one third of audiology services are failing to provide for deaf children. It has NHS figures that it believes show that those services are failing to see children within Government time frames, failing to use the most up-to-date tests, incorrectly setting up hearing aids, seeing too many children during school hours when they should be learning, and even lacking deaf awareness. The suggestion that the Government are planning to stop assessing the quality of children’s audiology services is therefore very worrying. I realise that this is not a matter for the Minister, but I hope that he will pass my concerns on to his colleagues in the Department of Health. That decision has clearly had a knock-on effect on the educational development of these young people.

Why are audiology services so important? As we know, children learn and socialise through hearing, so it is unsurprising that hearing loss can present considerable challenges to a child’s progress at school and their ability to make friends and develop socially. Good audiology services make a critical contribution to a deaf child’s success in life, as they are responsible for ensuring that a deaf child can use their remaining hearing to the fullest possible extent.

The Government recommend that newborn babies should receive an audiology appointment within four weeks of referral. Older children should be seen within six weeks, and rightly so, as hearing is critical to a child’s development of language and learning, and early diagnosis is vital as it will reduce the risk of delays in language, educational and social development.

The problem is that when asked by NDCS about the length of time it took to get their child an audiology appointment, 44% of parents said that they had to wait five weeks or longer, and 20% said they had to wait for more than eight weeks. At such a young age, that length of time without diagnosis can be seriously detrimental and will certainly put those children behind others of their age when it comes to starting school.

Obviously, effective hearing aids are an integral way of mitigating the effect of deafness, and making sure that they are correctly set up and fit for purpose is essential. Children grow out of the ear moulds for their hearing aids as often as they grow out of their shoes, and any parent will be well aware that that can happen every few months. If a child experiences a delay every time they need an ear mould replaced or if a new one does not fit correctly, they lose out on significant listening and therefore learning time. Sadly, almost 80% of the parents who spoke to NDCS said that they had waited longer than the target time for their ear mould impression appointment. Those are all health issues, but they obviously have an educational impact in the classroom. Almost three quarters of deaf children fail to achieve a good level of development in the early years foundation stage assessment. If deaf children are struggling to attain the same educational outcomes as their non-disabled peers, consider how challenging it must be for deafblind children.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

In 2011 a school was built in Belfast specifically to cater for deaf and blind children who needed the level of educational standard it delivered. The school gave those people an academic standard and achievement that prepared them for jobs in future life, but it was done through private finance. Does the hon. Lady agree that the Government could follow that example from Northern Ireland, and that the Education and Health Departments could work with the private sector to look after those who are deaf and blind?

[Alison Seabeck]

The hon. Gentleman has always brought interesting examples and ideas to my previous debates on health-related issues. I am sure the Minister has listened to him. We should seek to learn from any example of good practice, whether it be in the public or the private sector, but whether we would support rolling out the private element more widely is a different issue. That said, if the practice is good and the children are achieving, clearly we should look at it.

Although there are fewer deafblind children than deaf children in the UK, they face a unique set of challenges —of which the hon. Gentleman is clearly aware—when accessing education, and they therefore require specialist support. To be able to get that support, they first need to be identified as deafblind, which is their local authority’s responsibility. Every two years, the charity Sense conducts a survey of local authorities and their identification rates. It estimates that local authorities should be identifying 31 deafblind children per 100,000 of the population. In 2014, they were identifying on average just 14 per 100,000, which is a 7% drop from the figures reported in 2012. The low identification rates are attributed by Sense to poor professional awareness of deafblindness and to inadequate information sharing between agencies. Although this is a crossover issue for health and education, I am concerned that identification of deafblindness is proving to be more difficult and that fewer young people are being identified early enough in the process.

In Plymouth, as in the rest of the country, the number of deaf children has risen. In 2012 there were 171 deaf children in Plymouth and by 2013 there were 175. In the south-west as a whole, 49% of deaf children managed to achieve five GCSEs at grades A* to C in 2011, which is more than the current national average, but way below the average for children without a special educational need. In 2013, however, the attainment levels dropped, with just 40% of deaf children achieving the target of five GCSEs.

Clearly there is an issue. I welcome statements by local authorities that specialist education services are increasing, despite the cuts in the system, and that a review of the specialist educational service for deaf children will go ahead in 2014-15. However, there is a shortfall in specialist teachers nationally and that is having an impact on Plymouth. In England, the national average ratio for visiting teachers of the deaf to children is 1:44. In Plymouth, with just two visiting teachers of the deaf, the ratio is 1:72. I am told that those two specialist teachers are being stretched by unrealistic and unmanageable caseloads. What is being done to recruit, train and, importantly, retain teachers across England with that level of expertise?

The impact on education of being deaf is not only felt at a young age. Many young people continue to experience problems when in higher education. When I met NDCS at the Labour party conference in September, I was told about a young man who relied on note-taking support at university, but when he started his first term he found that no support had been organised, despite the fact that the university had been given plenty of notice of his needs. Unsurprisingly, that made his first couple of months very stressful and unproductive. The issue affects the whole of the education spectrum—from nursery right the way to young people seeking to move from secondary education to university—and it needs to be addressed.

Deaf students will certainly be impacted by the changes to disabled students allowance, in relation to which there has been no mention of non-medical help, such as using British sign language interpreters. I wonder whether the Minister has discussed that issue with his colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. As I have said, young people coming out of mainstream education and seeking to progress to university may find that that journey is not possible because of the new barriers that are being erected. Randstad student and worker support has told me that 27.7% of the students it surveyed said they would not have attended university without DSA. I am sure the Minister is as anxious as I am not to close off any option to pupils who wish to progress their education.

What needs to be done? Obviously, budgets are tight, and everyone is being asked to do more for less. Charities such as the Plymouth Deaf Children’s Society are working with partners, including the Plymouth YMCA, which has provided admin space in its premises and is incredibly supportive. I have some wonderful people working with various organisations, such as something called CHSWG—the Plymouth Children’s Hearing Services Working Group—and the Plymouth Deaf Children’s Society, including its chair, Yvette Beer, who is fabulous. They are doing a lot of good work, but they were very anxious for me to come to the House to raise some of the concerns that they had raised directly with me.

From my remarks, the Minister will understand not only that we risk making the educational pathway of many young people more difficult, but that there are still gaps in the existing provision. I look forward to hearing his comments.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison Seabeck Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I will certainly look further at this issue and at the particular schools my hon. Friend mentions. He will know that we have recently allocated a further £25 million for school kitchen and dining room improvement to allow us to tackle the neglect of school kitchens and dining halls, which has gone on for too long. I will look very closely at the bids he mentions.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

Will the Minister, for the benefit of the House, enlighten us as to which independent statistics he prayed in aid in his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern)? My hon. Friend was using statistics from November this year produced by the Office for National Statistics’ annual earnings survey.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

I will be happy to write to the hon. Lady with the answer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison Seabeck Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the key challenge now faced by the car industry, which is a great success story, is to progress the success of OEMs—original equipment manufacturers—which are expanding, down through their supply chains, which were hollowed out in earlier years. We are addressing that issue through the Automotive Council and the industry strategy. That is progressing well, but it does need a great deal of support for the training base and the training of engineers, which is what we are doing through our apprenticeship programme.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

Young people across Plymouth are telling me that they feel as though they are little more than walking pots of money when it comes to careers advice and that schools are almost harassing them at times to keep them in school. That obviously militates against some of them going to do engineering apprenticeships, as my neighbour the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) has pointed out. What more can the Secretary of State do to set up an independent careers advice arrangement, so that these young people can get broader advice, not specific and closed advice from their schools?

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison Seabeck Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said to that Select Committee, we will shortly publish new guidance on careers education. As we have set out many times, a far more important—if not the most important—thing for young people’s inspiration and motivation is people who themselves are successful in their careers, so that is what our careers advice policy focuses on.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his replies to these questions, but how does he propose to deal with the real dearth of engineering apprenticeships—female ones—when frankly there will not be enough role models to go around? We need good careers advice in classrooms, but it needs to be targeted so that we get young women, especially, into engineering and STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—subjects.

[Matthew Hancock]

Of course role models can be of either gender, and I am sure that many men can think of women who would be role models for themselves. Under this Government, the number and proportion of applications for apprenticeships in engineering are up, and the number of applications to study engineering at university is up. There is much more to do, but we are moving in the right direction.

Co-operatives in Education

Alison Seabeck Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I have been called to speak earlier than I anticipated, and it is great to have this opportunity. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) on securing the debate and on his speech, which came across as genuine and sincere. He captured the values of the co-operative movement very well, and I welcomed his remarks, on which hon. Members can build in debate. He was very polite and thanked the Minister for turning up. I said that it was his duty, and I know that he would agree, but the hon. Gentleman should never apologise for making Ministers come to the House of Commons. When I was a Minister, that was a priority, and I know that the Minister who is present today thinks so too. The debate is important, and the hon. Member for Wycombe kicked it off extremely well.

I congratulate, too, someone whom I was going to call my old friend—but she might take that the wrong way, so I will call her my long-standing friend: that is my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn). We cut our teeth together, when we first came into Parliament, on the Adoption and Children Act 2002 and she has a long—not that long, but longish—history of involvement in the co-operative movement. She spoke with passion, sincerity and knowledge on that subject.

I also want to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker), who made the important point about the co-operative movement and co-operative schools that although structures are important it is the values underpinning the movement that make it a suitable model for the education system.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

I apologise for missing part of the proceedings. Lipson community college in Plymouth is a co-operative academy. It was set up in 2009 and is outstanding. It encourages pupils to follow up and become co-operators. In fact, they are very involved in the young co-operative movement, and the Ruptors street dance co-op is an example of that. Does my hon. Friend agree that there are many offshoots from the education of young people in co-operative schools? I do not think that anyone puts a value on that, and we need a better understanding of what co-op schools can offer. I think many colleagues in this place do not really understand that.

[Kevin Brennan]

I strongly agree. I should like to talk more later about knowledge and understanding of co-operative schools. I should say at the outset that the Labour Front Bench is strongly supportive of the movement and of the rapid development and spread of co-operative schools that has happened in recent years, since legislation was amended to make it a little easier to form them. There is still work to be done, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley pointed out. There is a good quotation on the Schools Co-operative Society website:

“Essentially they are just what schools should be and what people thought they really were about already!”

That is a good way to put it. There is nothing about co-operative schools that would not be familiar to people, as far as values or ideas of what a good school should be are concerned. Yet, as we know, there is sometimes misunderstanding about co-operatives and co-operative schools.

Values in education are one reason why Labour supports the movement. It is time that we had more of a debate about those. There is much debate about structures and the idea that opening a free school or an academy will solve everyone’s problems. However, we all know that what really counts is good teaching, great leadership and the values underpinning a school and education system. It is interesting that the process that has been going on, which is a quiet revolution in the system—and people talked about a revolution in the debate—has received hardly any media coverage. Yes, the Government have a flagship policy for free schools, but there are far more co-operative schools than free schools. No one would think that from reading the papers and following the news. Certainly, a lot more Department for Education staff are devoted to free schools than to co-operatives. There are more than 100, are there not? I did not realise there were that many left in the Department. It is an awful lot of staff, but very little in the way of resources is devoted to helping co-operative schools to develop.

I welcome the remarks of the Secretary of State about the co-operative movement and co-operative schools in general, which the hon. Member for Wycombe quoted. No one would ever accuse him of not talking a good game, but in relation to actual delivery and policy, it would be good to see more resources within the Department being devoted to co-operative schools, since the Secretary of State has made it so clear that he is powerfully in favour of their development. That is important because it provides a bulwark against what some people fear—that the current upheaval in the structure of the schools system could lead to the idea that the Secretary of State has entertained from time to time: a system of taxpayer-funded, profit-making schools. That idea was tried in Sweden under its free school system, but it has not worked out too well.

The Swedish system was a model. The Secretary of State was infatuated with Swedish models, but he does not talk about them much any more. Sweden had profit-making free schools, but what happened was perhaps predictable. There are two ways to make a profit: increase revenue or cut costs. Of course, there are limited opportunities for taxpayer-funded schools to increase revenue. In Sweden, once hedge funds and the like invested in the schools, it led to the cutting of costs.

Since there is no requirement for qualified teachers, an obvious way to cut costs is to employ people who do not have to be paid qualified teacher rates. As a result, some of the schools went bust, with consequences for the education of the children, and also with the consequence ultimately that the legislation was overturned and a requirement was reintroduced for qualified teachers in the schools. There were no real educational or co-operative values underpinning the schools, which left them as the prey of hedge fund managers and the like. [Interruption.] If there are co-operative schools—would the hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) like to intervene?

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[Kevin Brennan]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s remarks and the opportunity to make it clear that I am not against profit, either. We live in a mixed economy and the market is a wonderful thing. In the case of education, occasionally it can be a good servant, but it is a very, very poor master. Opposition Members will never support profit-making schools. Yes, there is a role for a profit-making business in education—publishers, for instance—but Opposition Members will not support profit making in taxpayer-funded schools.

[Alison Seabeck]

The Plymouth Learning Trust is made up of 16 schools that have come together in a not-for-profit company. They are doing a lot of joint working, which is very effective, so pure profit does not always have to be the driver.

[Kevin Brennan]

Indeed. My hon. Friend makes that point very well and she is absolutely right to do so.

Some people in teachers’ associations and trade unions have been suspicious of co-operative schools, but the partnership that is developing between teachers’ associations and trade unions and some co-operative schools around the country is to be welcomed. The agreement between the NASUWT and the co-operative schools movement is a welcome development. I hope other teachers’ associations and unions will also engage in a positive manner with the co-operative schools movement. As was pointed out earlier in the debate, teachers should very much welcome such a development and the opportunity to be a part of running their schools and playing their role within co-operative schools and co-operative trusts.

On the ten-minute rule Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley earlier this year, I hope the Minister will encourage the Department—it might have been another Department—to answer the letter that she sent earlier in the year. If it has been lost, perhaps she can provide a further copy. The Minister’s hon. Friends welcomed her remarks on the Bill, and I would welcome an opportunity for us to co-operate in a parliamentary way on the provisions of her Bill, albeit after they have been appropriately stress-tested by the civil service and Parliament and properly scrutinised before we do so. May I make that offer to him?

If the Government feel that that is something they would like to do to make it possible for my hon. Friend’s Bill, or the spirit of her Bill, to become law, the Minister would have our co-operation. I completely understand that he cannot commit to that today in a debate of this kind, but perhaps he will take away that offer and consider my hon. Friend’s remarks. Will he ensure that it is possible for co-operative structures to be incorporated into the legislation, as in clause 1 of her Bill, and also make it possible for nurseries to become co-operatives? Will it be possible for them to form part of a co-operative trust that, as she rightly pointed out, might form an all-through education service for an area, which is an ambition of many co-operative trusts around the country? I hope he will be able to say something positive and take that away and consider it, even if he cannot make a commitment now.

I welcome this debate and the way it was kicked off by the hon. Member for Wycombe. I welcome the Government’s professed support for co-operative schools, and I hope the Minister will talk about that. What counts is what works, and we can see that co-operative schools do work. They work because they can generate the kind of leadership and teaching that we want, where everybody understands the values under which they are working—the values of sharing and of working together in the interests of children and young people. Finally, I once again thank and congratulate the hon. Gentleman on this debate.

Children and Families Bill

Alison Seabeck Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

Yes, I have had a number of meetings with the Local Government Association, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services and other bodies that will be responsible for delivering education, health and care plans and, more widely, SEN provision within their local area. This has been a huge consultative exercise, and one that continues through the pathfinders. One of the messages we have been clear about throughout the process is that legislation, although a key component of long-term, sustainable reform, is not the whole solution. We also need to see—this is happening through the pathfinders and starting to spread outside them as we develop the changes in the system more widely—a recognition that those bodies must play their part at grass-roots level and recalibrate the sorts of relationships that in the past have not been good enough to help deliver the required provision.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

I would like to build on the comments my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke) made about the role of local authorities. The Royal National Institute of Blind People has raised specific concerns about the registration of visually impaired children—it is worried that some local authorities will do it but some will not. Has the Minister had an opportunity since that was discussed in Committee to have any further conversations with either the RNIB directly or local authorities on that issue?

[Mr Timpson]

I will be corrected if I am wrong, but my understanding is that there have been ongoing discussions. We are aware of the issue. As with all organisations that have expressed an interest in the Bill, we have been keen to keep an open dialogue with the RNIB to see what solutions we can find. Many of the solutions will be found at local level. We must accept that some conditions have a high incidence and some have a low incidence, and that can affect the sort of provision available right across the country. The beauty of trying to develop the local offer is that it will make it far more transparent not only in a local area, but across a regional area, so parents and young people will have a greater understanding of what is available to them, how they can access it and, if they are unable to do so, how they can make a complaint, which in the past has been quite a convoluted and impenetrable process. We must ensure that they have the power to make those decisions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Seabeck]

It has been interesting to listen to the hon. Gentleman and his expert comments. Does he accept that young people with disabilities often drift into having mental health problems at different levels, and that that group faces enormous problems? We know that there is often a lot of difficulty in the education and health services when deciding who should manage those young people.

[Mr Buckland]

That is absolutely correct, and I am grateful to the hon. Lady. Sadly, mental health issues are a co-morbidity that becomes prevalent if, for example, a condition such as autism is not identified at an early age. It is a tragedy that so many young people who have autism or Asperger’s-related conditions end up with a mental health problem because their condition is not diagnosed or has been misunderstood or in some cases mistreated. I pay tribute, however, to child and adolescent mental health services that do the job well, understand the needs of people with pre-existing conditions, and adapt their services accordingly. A visit to a CAMHS unit can be quite a regressive experience for a young person with autism, which is why adapting services around the child or young person is so important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Seabeck]

My hon. Friend is highlighting all the reasons the proposal should not have gone forward, but it seems that it ended up as an internal argument on the Government Benches, rather than being based on the opinion of experts.

[Mrs Hodgson]

We would rather the Minister had come to the House sooner with a proper statement. In the time available this afternoon, that will not be possible, and obviously the House is not as well attended as it would have been for a statement. It is disappointing, then, that the announcement was not made in a statement to a full House in the usual way.

--- Later in debate ---

Busy Bees, which had initially supported the plans before saying it would not be changing its ratios, calculated that it could actually cost parents more if these changes were brought in.

[Alison Seabeck]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again but this issue is really important. No consideration seems to have been given to the need to change premises, for example. My granddaughter was in a three-storey property, with babies, largely, at the top. The number of children in care on that floor could not be increased without something significant being done to the building. I do not think that any of those additional costs were considered.

[Mrs Hodgson]

My hon. Friend makes a very valid point that has been raised with me many times. I know that the Secretary of State is getting a reputation for sloppy research, and I feel that this is another case of policy-based evidence from his Department.

Then, last week, we thought that common sense had prevailed and the plans had been ditched. In fact, the Deputy Prime Minister said as much. In his briefing note to journalists, he set out in black and white the complete lack of support and credible evidence that the Department for Education had for these reforms. This was a cause of great relief for the tens of thousands of parents and childcare professionals who were rightly appalled by the lack of consideration of the needs of young children in these plans. Indeed, given how out of touch with childcare practice in England the Minister appears to be, it is little wonder that, according to her own Department, she has visited just five English nurseries in an official capacity since getting the job, compared with seven settings in France.

I am not sure what those French nurseries were like, but the Minister regularly cites them as exemplars. I am sure she will have seen that the chief executive of the Pre-school Learning Alliance, Neil Leitch, commented last week on his visit to France. He highlighted staff not having the time to identify and support children with special educational needs, nursery age children having scheduled toilet breaks and long afternoon naps, and children being made to sit still at desks for so long that tennis balls had to be fixed to their chair legs so that they did not make a noise when they fidgeted. This is not what anyone with an understanding of child development—[Interruption] He has photographs. They are available on the internet. The Minister is disputing what I am saying. She can look up the pictures, and I am sure that Neil Leitch would be more than happy to meet her to discuss what he saw in France.

This is not what anyone with an understanding of child development would describe as high-quality early education. When we consider how stubbornly the Minister has refused to listen to those experts and child care bodies who repeatedly told her that that is what her plans would mean, it is unsurprising that she has met with the tiny number of organisations who support her many more times than the major sector representatives who disagree.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison Seabeck Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The only target for our education policy is to ensure that all children have a chance to succeed. Of course it is the case that teaching assistants and others can play a part, but the single most important person is the teacher. We need to make sure that the changes we have made to attract more talented people into teaching, building on the work done under the last Labour Government, continues.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

If the Secretary of State is to ensure that children attain basic levels in mathematics and since he is clearly in need of enough well-trained teachers to do the job, will he explain to my constituent, Stephanie, why she is unable to train as a maths teacher either through School Direct or the postgraduate certificate in education? With initial teacher training having moved out of higher education into schools, there is no capacity in Plymouth, so she has the choice of one school, which can take only one student. Will the right hon. Gentleman explain that?

[Michael Gove]

I will be happy to do everything possible to help the hon. Lady’s constituent to be a maths teacher. We should encourage that aspiration among all people, but it is the case that School Direct, the new programme that allows graduates to train in schools, has been hugely popular. It is also the case that a higher proportion of people with great degrees in STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and maths—are choosing to enter teaching.

Life-saving Skills in Schools

Alison Seabeck Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

I cannot tell you how important I think this debate is, Mr Deputy Speaker. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) on securing it. I also congratulate the hon. Members who have spoken—with a great deal of knowledge and personal experience—about how important this issue is. The hon. Lady made an excellent speech, touching on all the key issues, and asked most of the key questions.

I will speak from personal experience. I qualified as a lifeguard in the mid-1990s. I did it to support my daughters, who were in a swimming club that needed voluntary lifeguards. I trained every two years and did the exam. During that process my children trained with me—we used to practise the various required skills on the front room floor. I was fortunate that there were no major incidents in the pool during the almost 10 years in which I turned up five nights a week to lifeguard—as parents do from time to time. However, on dry land it was altogether different. Let me cite some examples.

I remember stepping off a London bus one day to see a woman lying on the pavement, literally in front of me, and five people standing around, before doing the basic checks and asking people, “Has anybody done anything? Has anybody moved her?” Everybody stood there, shook their heads and said no, either because they were too scared or because they did not know what to do. The lady was unconscious, and was still unconscious when the ambulance arrived. Again, it was people’s lack of knowledge that prevented them from doing even the basic checks—that her pulse was there and she was breathing.

On another occasion I was on a train, travelling into London, sitting opposite a very large gentleman who was clearly in difficulty. My assessment was that he was having a cardiac episode of some kind. We cleared the area around him. I asked whether there were any doctors or nurses on the train; there were not. People were coming up to me as I was in the middle of it all, asking, “Shouldn’t you ring his wife?” I got someone to stay with the man and keep him calm, went down the carriage with the woman and said, “Well, what do we tell her—that her husband is having an episode on a train in the middle of nowhere and we don’t know which hospital he is going to?” “Oh,” she said. Common sense, I am afraid, rather goes out of the window when these things happen. He was a very large gentleman and I was worried that if he actually went on me, he would not fit in the gap between the seats so that I could do CPR. So I was struggling about how I was going to do it, but fortunately we got to a station and the ambulance got there and took him away for expert treatment. Again, at the end of that, people came up and said, “Thank God you were there. We didn’t know what to do. We were scared”—exactly the same comments.

The final example was in Brighton, at the Grand hotel, when I was having a dinner during conference. One of the guests started choking, slumped and started to go blue. So it was a Heimlich manoeuvre. I have to say it was my boss, so it was probably just as well I did it, not least because he is alive and I have now just married him; but that is another story.

[Valerie Vaz]

Too much information.

[Alison Seabeck]

Yes. But again, the comments came back, “Thank heavens. We didn’t know what to do.” The basic skills are so simple and so easy to teach, and once you have them you almost automatically go into support mode, as I did in the hotel in Brighton. I admit that afterwards I was shaking a bit, but none the less you just do it, because that is what you have been trained to do.

Children are like sponges. They soak up information, and if they can see a practical use for it, they will learn even more quickly. This week, I am going to talk to pupils at Manadon Vale primary school about this very issue, as part of the discussion. Knowing basic techniques, such as being able to administer support when someone is having a cardiac arrest, is absolutely vital. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) said, being in a situation where a loved one is having a cardiac arrest or perhaps where the baby is choking and not knowing what to do is unimaginable. I really cannot imagine how someone must feel in those circumstances. Teaching the basics is so important.

Of course there are people who say, “I don’t want to do the mouth-to-mouth bit.” They could do hands-only, as a number of Members have said. I still walk around carrying a British Red Cross Resusci-Shield for mouth-to-mouth, because I do think it is important to have one, but it is possible to do it hands-only, and one certainly should try.

The hon. Member for Newton Abbot spoke about the lesson in which these skills should be taught being flexible. I think that is a really good proposal. We need to move towards ensuring these skills are taught as a matter of course in our schools. Pregnant mothers should have a basic training as well, because there are lives to be saved. The idea that such training is too onerous is a perennial excuse. I ask the Minister not to hide behind that.

Importantly, I would ask the Minister to go away and talk with colleagues in other Departments—in Health and in Communities and Local Government—because there are benefits across other Departments and there are possibly even some cost savings, ultimately, which the Government are obviously very interested in. Most important of all, lives will be saved. Children and young people are very capable of using these skills, and that is the time to teach them.

Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Alison Seabeck Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wright]

On perception, there is a feeling in the country—it is often fuelled by the media—that the so-called health and safety culture is inevitably a drag on economic growth and recovery. We must, however, set the context, and I want to make an important point to the Minister. The TUC estimates that every year at least 20,000 people die prematurely as a result of injuries, illnesses, or accidents caused by or in their place of work. That is far too many. The shocking figure from the Health and Safety Executive of 173 workers who were fatally injured at work often excludes a large number of other work-related deaths, but that figure alone means that 173 people went to work and did not come back, and that should not happen in a modern, compassionate society.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that improvements to the health and safety regime were out there for all to see during the construction of the Olympic site? There were no deaths and few injuries, which was because the health and safety regime had been properly applied.

[Mr Wright]

I agree with my hon. Friend. In the great and almost universal celebration of the London Olympics this summer, we should never forget that we saw the first Olympic stadium and village in the history of the games to be built without a single fatality. That is something to be proud of and was a result of the good partnership between Government—of all political persuasions—management and trade unions, together with workers, working to ensure that nobody was injured or killed while doing such important work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Wright]

The Labour party has always been on the side of small businesses, and Labour Members will continue to be so. In the 13 years of Labour government from 1997 to 2010, 1.2 million businesses were created, whereas 50 businesses each and every day are folding as a result of the current Government’s macro-economic polices and the double-dip recession. I shall therefore take no lessons from the hon. Gentleman.

Professor Löfstedt suggested that the UK needs a greater understanding of risk. We need to reject tabloid claims and the perception at the centre of the debate so far that health and safety legislation has somehow gone too far. He also recommends that education is provided to employers, workers and students on the dangers they face. However, the short section on strict liability in Professor Löfstedt’s report offers no argument or evidence for changing the current legislative arrangements, but rather an assumption that strict liability is unfair on employers. In fact, Löfstedt refers to three cases, but two were not strict liability cases, so would not be affected by the new clause. The assumption that the Government are guilty of making—they have been guilty of making many such assumptions on employment rights—is that the removal of that type of liability in some cases will boost the economy. That is economically illiterate, however, and not the solution that businesses, including small businesses, want to get us out of the double-dip recession that has been made in Downing street.

I mentioned the accusation of there being no evidence—we have heard that phrase time and again during the consideration of the Bill. There has been no consultation on the measure, which means that there could well be unintended consequences, because the Government have not sought the expertise of those who deal intimately with such issues. There has been no impact assessment on the measure, but can the Minister say why not? What are the expected costs and benefits of implementing the measure, which is supposed to liberate businesses to concentrate on economic growth? Does he have tangible, quantifiable, empirical evidence to support such claims?

Health and safety regulation has always contained a balance between different types of obligation—the majority are qualified by the phrase “reasonable practicability”, but some are strict. Although Professor Löfstedt had the insight that “reasonable practicability” has underpinned health and safety regulation, it has never been the key concept. A central point of the Opposition’s argument is that the balance has existed since the Factories Act 1937, which has been mentioned. In that three quarters of a century, the balance has been generally considered fair. Removing it risks taking us back to a 19th-century mill owner’s view of health and safety, which the Opposition could never support.

If someone is injured because of a defect in a piece of equipment provided by their employer, the law is that it is no defence for the employer to say that they had a proper system of maintenance and inspection. Most people would think that right and fair, so it is unfortunate that the Government do not. They believe it is unfair for an employer to be the subject of civil action and pay compensation when they are not at fault, but what about fairness and justice for the injured worker? They are not at fault and did not ask to be injured. The new clause would remove the right to compensation for workers in those circumstances unless they can prove fault. The Government seek to place the burden on vulnerable employees, but the employer, and not the employee, selects and provides the work equipment. Regardless of fault, it is therefore the employer and not the employee who creates the risk. That is important.

[Alison Seabeck]

Prior to my previous question, I should have declared an indirect interest, which is already on record.

Given the emphasis placed on business concerns by Conservative Members, does my hon. Friend agree that it is slightly surprising that the Federation of Small Businesses briefing to MPs does not mention them? Perhaps that suggests that the line he is taking is the correct one.

[Mr Wright]

The FSB has been incredibly important throughout the consideration of the Bill, including on the green investment bank and ensuring that the supply chain can derive benefit from the potential in the new green economy, but it did not mention such concerns. The measure is not a priority for business and its absence is not a hindrance to economic growth. The balance, which has been well established for three quarters of a century, works well and will not hinder growth or recovery.

Exam Reform

Alison Seabeck Excerpts

Monday 17th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. In every nation, a small percentage of students—perhaps 5% or 6%—live with such severe special educational needs that it is difficult for them to secure access to an academic curriculum by the age of 16. We must ensure that those young people have a full and rounded statement of what they have achieved at age 16, so that they, their parents, and potential employers know that they have talent and real ability. Although that talent may not be recognised through an academic curriculum, it can be recognised in the world of work and deserves to be applauded. We want to work with specialists in the field of special educational needs to ensure that that achievement is recognised and, where appropriate, for those students to secure EBacc certificates in English and mathematics at a later stage.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

Children in homes that are not connected to the internet—largely those in disadvantaged areas—are likely to fall one grade behind other children, so tackling rather than increasing poverty must be a priority. Does the Secretary of State agree that working with families in those children’s early years is more important than waiting until they fail at 16 and hoping to sort things out in the two years that follow?

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely agree and would say two things. First, the efforts being made to improve access to broadband across the country will help to ensure better internet access for every family. Secondly, improving education in a child’s early years is critical. That is why we are extending the number of hours of pre-school learning available for disadvantaged two-year-olds, and why we are ensuring that the early years foundation stage is more rigorous.