Welsh Affairs

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Albert Owen]

No request was made to me. If it had been, I would have lobbied for such a reduction. I do not know what the hon. Gentleman is talking about. However, I have found—and I am sure that he will agree with me about this—that the hike in VAT to 20% has had a negative effect on spending in many areas. Local businesses tell me that. Hon. Members should not listen to what I am saying; listen to them. There is a good campaign across the United Kingdom for a cut in VAT on tourism.

One leading business person told me that whenever he takes his partner, son-in-law and daughter out for a drink, he has to take the Chancellor of the Exchequer with him, because 20% of the bill goes to the Treasury. That cannot be right. Other European Union member states are enjoying a VAT reduction, and have benefited from hundreds of thousands of extra jobs and from investment in tourism.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Albert Owen]

I will, but this really will be the last intervention, because, as I have said, I am conscious of the time.

[Alun Cairns]

Is the hon. Gentleman telling us that cutting the VAT paid by tourist businesses to 5% is Labour party policy?

[Albert Owen]

I am not going to take a lecture from someone who voted for it to be raised to 20%. [Interruption.] Conservative Members can flap their hands as much as they want—

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[David T. C. Davies]

I do not think that I was using jargon; I was spelling it out in fairly simple English. But okay, I will give the hon. Gentleman a list of things. First, I am told that it is difficult for head teachers to go in and assess teachers. They are allowed to do it only a couple of times a year, and they cannot simply walk into a classroom. I have been told that by two senior educationists in Wales, working in totally separate schools, over the past few weeks. Either they are wrong or the hon. Gentleman is wrong.

I have also been told that schools get a great deal of notice before an inspection takes place, and I think that is wrong. Inspectors ought to be able to go in without any notice whatsoever and find out what is going wrong. I know for a fact that when I was in the Welsh Assembly the unions and everyone else seemed to be totally against testing, but testing is a good thing. If my children are failing in tests, I want to know about it and to get involved. There is also a problem with sickness, whereby too many teachers are taking too many sick days in schools in Wales and that is not being properly investigated afterwards by the personnel departments. It is also far too difficult to get rid of bad teachers who are not up to the job. That situation can occur in any walk of life, but in most others someone who is not up to a job will be got rid of by someone higher up. That does not seem to happen in teaching. I do not think all that is jargon; those are fairly simple matters.

May I make one last point on this, which is the most important one of all? In England, there is a recognition that parents have a right to have some say over their children’s education, and they can exercise that most drastically by taking their children out of the state system and putting them into some kind of an academy. As a parent, I welcome that, because it is my taxpayer’s money that is being spent and I ought to have a say. If the school is not up to the job, I ought to have the right to take my child out and put them somewhere else. I do not have that right in Wales, and that is taking away an incentive for teachers to improve.

[Alun Cairns]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, which is interesting in terms of the direction that the questions are coming from. Does he share my concern that the hands of the Liberal Democrats, and even those of Plaid Cymru, are not necessarily clean in this area, because they will have been part of the coalition during some of the formative years, when some of the education policies were put in place?

[David T. C. Davies]

My hon. Friend is, of course, absolutely right. The Labour party has generally been the lead party in the Assembly since it was set up, but at other times Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats have been involved.

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[Chris Evans]

Thank you very much.

Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy), who is not in his place, I bemoan the lack of the St David’s day debate, which has been held since 1944. When Aneurin Bevan spoke in this place in 1944, he said that there were no Welsh problems, only problems. The wonderful thing about the Welsh day debate that we are missing is that it allows us to bring up issues that usually go unnoticed in this House. Today, I will bring up the issue of truancy in schools.

Truancy is not simply a matter for schools; increasingly, it affects the whole of society. It is a complex issue. It is not simply about pupils skipping school to go to the park with their friends, but is often a sign of deeper problems at home and, in some cases, of abuse. If a pupil truants from school often enough, they will be excluded. They will thereby miss out not only on a worthwhile education, but on the support network that schools provide. That can result in people falling in with the wrong crowd and getting into trouble with the police, making them less desirable to potential employers.

When I visit schools in my constituency, I am always impressed by the level of pastoral care that students receive. Head teachers have told me that for some students, that care is arguably more important than traditional classes. For many students, the support that they receive in school is invaluable. That is why exclusions and truancy are serious issues.

Over the past few years, the Welsh Government have done an incredible amount of work to prevent schoolchildren from being permanently excluded. Just 102 pupils were permanently removed from Welsh schools last year, which is almost 100 fewer than in 2009-10, when there were 200 exclusions. That is a step in the right direction. However, I will focus today on what is known as “soft exclusion”.

The number of temporary exclusions is still too high. There were 17,508 temporary exclusions in 2011-12 in Wales alone. More research and data are needed to explain why that is occurring. In October 2009, my predecessor, Lord Touhig, asked a parliamentary question about what research the previous Government had done on the effects of exclusion on pupils. He was told that no research had been commissioned. Sadly, that is still the case. What do young people do when they are excluded temporarily? Do they miss out on work? In reality, we just do not know.

In preparation for this debate, I read a report by the charity, Barnardo’s, which did some research on the use of unlawful exclusions. That is when schools ask parents to keep their children away from school without providing a formal notification of exclusion. Local authorities know nothing about such exclusions. There is obviously not a huge amount of data in this area, which is unfortunate, but the Barnardo’s study is based on anecdotal evidence.

I shall quote from the report. One parent said:

“From year 7 the head of year would phone me to say he’d been excluded, but no time scale would be mentioned. A letter would arrive two days later telling me how many days it was. There was no work set or given.”

The report heard evidence from parents of a lack of dialogue between schools and families, which leaves the pupils falling behind. One parent said:

“The head of year would ring me and say they were thinking of excluding him. Sometimes there would be a letter. It takes two days or more to arrive and it would say work would be set two days after that, but by then the exclusion time would have passed.”

The police in Blackwood say that the problems in the market area are caused mainly by young people who have been excluded, whether temporarily or permanently. That demonstrates the drain on police resources and the wider effect that this issue has on society. I was even alarmed to find, shockingly and tragically, that pupils with special needs accounted for a little over 60% of all exclusions in Wales in 2012-13, and those with school action and school action plus special educational needs had the highest rate of permanent exclusions at 0.6% per 1,000 pupils. A report by the charity Ambitious about Autism found that four in 10 children with autism had been informally excluded temporarily.

[Alun Cairns]

The hon. Gentleman raises extremely important points. Does he share my concern that some local authorities in Wales have a policy not to statement children? The statementing of children can be extremely important in some cases, to provide the right level of support that will ultimately prevent exclusion in special needs cases.

[Chris Evans]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and that is the point I was trying to make. There is a lack of research and data, and if more children were statemented and we knew what was going on, we would be able to address the issue.

If such things are happening on a large scale, the Government need to look into it and investigate further. Why is it happening? Is it because schools are not equipped to deal with autistic young people? The Barnardo’s report I mentioned earlier contained a statement from a parent with an autistic child:

“There are teachers who manage him fine, and those who don’t sympathise with his situation. Sending him home for 3 days is not the best option and there’s no discussion of strategies for managing his behaviour. Reasons vary, but generally he’s sent home once every 3 weeks.”

In my constituency we are extremely fortunate to have an excellent autism unit at Risca community comprehensive, and the support students receive is fantastic. The same is also true of Coleg Gwent at Crosskeys, where pupils go on to become independent live-in students. Perhaps there are areas across the country not so fortunate, but excluding children from schools on the basis that staff cannot cater to their needs is to me completely unacceptable. What concerns me is that no data on these informal exclusions are held centrally. I would like some form of Government investigation into how prevalent the issue is in schools, not only in Wales, but across the UK.

How vast is the problem? It seems to me that we simply do not know, although we do know that more than 10% of 16 to 18-year-olds are not in employment, education or training, compared with 23% of 19 to 24-year-olds. To me, those figures are unacceptable. It is all very well trying to score political points, as some of us have tried to do today, but we must understand why the figures are so high.

Charities and organisations understand this problem much better than I do. Catch22 is a social business that does an excellent job of getting young people into the habit of attending school and following a schedule. Speak to Catch22 and it will say that when young people play truant and eventually drop out of the mainstream education system, it is important that their aspirations are rebuilt and that character and resilience are developed. Those are interesting ideas, and the Government need to work closely with those fantastic organisations to find a long-term solution to the problem.

With so many young people leaving school with no future plans, we must think about how we can create opportunities for people who may have fallen out of mainstream education. No Member of this House wants young people to be excluded from school and never to reintegrate into society, and there are apprenticeship schemes that focus not on academic achievement but on learning a genuine worthwhile skill that will help a participant stay in work for years.

In my constituency, I speak all the time to businesses with excellent apprenticeship schemes. Last week I met Hafod Quarry in Abercarn, which told me about a five-year scheme that essentially guarantees employment in the industry for many years. Pensord Press in Pontllanfraith and Joyner PA in Risca offer similar apprenticeships that develop skills and lead to full-time work. There are, however, businesses that have told me that they cannot recruit young people locally because they do not have the so-called “soft skills” of communication, turning up on time and completing tasks. Those who played truant and left the education system at an early age are most likely to struggle with those essential skills. If someone without those skills is put in front of an interviewer, they simply will not get the job. That is why it is so important we get the issue right now.

Our education system needs to set up Welsh youngsters for the future, and I do not think unlawful exclusions are part of that. I would like something that my predecessor asked the previous Labour Government for almost five years ago—concrete data and a definitive study into levels of exclusion in schools and the reasons for truancy. Without that we are doing our young people a disservice. In light of the evidence available, expulsion should be the last resort while all avenues are investigated to address unacceptable behaviour in our schools.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. I rise to speak as a passionate Welshman who enjoys Welsh history, our proud culture and the contribution that many Welshmen have made to the history of Wales, the UK and beyond. I will try to be positive, and I will ask my questions in a positive spirit.

Whatever people’s opinions of devolution in 1997 after the referendum, there was a genuine hope across all political parties that devolution would work and make a difference. It provided a great chance to make a difference and develop a Government who could respond to changing needs, react to problems as they emerged, and take decisions much closer to the electorate.

My main subject today will be the reputation of Wales, my worry that its governance is damaging that reputation and the consequences of such damage. It is easy to say, after one four-year term of governance, that reforms were established but there has not been enough opportunity to see the outcomes and benefits. After a second term, that argument gets somewhat weaker and we would expect to see some benefits. But after nearly 15 years, we should really be seeing some positive outcome from devolution, such as the “devolution dividend” as it was called at one time.

Sadly, in so many areas, if not almost all areas—I am trying to think of one where I am wrong—the relative position of Wales has fallen back, compared with the rest of the United Kingdom. I do not want to be party political in making that point, but I seek an acceptance that Wales is now the poorest part of the UK. That was not the case before 1997. As a result, the challenge of attracting investment and creating entrepreneurship is so much greater. It is so much more difficult to attract investment to the poorest part of the UK, because the gross domestic product and the value of the spend is not as high. The reputation of Wales is therefore key.

[Roger Williams]

I am following my hon. Friend’s argument closely. Does he agree that part of the problem is that Wales has a legacy of ill health from heavy industry and a legacy of economic inactivity because of the loss of those industries? That has never been reflected in the Barnett formula so those needs are still unmet in Wales.

[Alun Cairns]

I accept part of that, but I would also look to areas that have a similar legacy but are not the poorest parts of the United Kingdom. Those are the very same points that, it was argued, would be corrected by Adminstrations that would take decisions much closer to the people. I speak as a pro-devolutionist—I am not against the institution, I am against the governance, the way in which the institution has worked and how policy has been set.

[David T. C. Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that parts of the United Kingdom, such as Northern Ireland, are poorer than Wales, but achieve better outcomes in areas such as education? It must be partly, if not wholly, the responsibility of the Government of the Welsh Assembly that things are so bad there.

[Alun Cairns]

My hon. Friend is right, because a culture developed in which everything was judged by the amount of money that was put into it, rather than the outcomes that were derived from the investment.

When we talk about reputation, we need to accept that the way in which Wales is currently reported is not positive. I am very saddened by that, but it is largely because the column inches in the press tend to focus on health and education. They are essential to attracting inward investment, because middle and senior management would have to use the national health service and send their children to the schools. That must be added to the way in which Wales is perceived and the challenge that we have in attracting investment thereafter.

Let us focus on education, because without doubt a nation’s future is built on the quality of its education. In the past few years alone, there has been a determination to develop different qualifications, sometimes for the sake of being different, as my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) mentioned earlier. When there was a drive to introduce greater rigour in GCSE outcomes, in Wales we saw political intervention. In England, politics was kept out of it completely, and the policy direction was set for greater rigour and stronger assessments of standards. In Wales, there was a determination to change that.

What worries me most, as the father of a 10-year-old, is that qualifications in Wales could be seen to be secondary to their counterparts in England. I really hope that, for those who gained GCSE qualifications last year, employers will accept Welsh qualifications as being of the same standard as those in England. However, there was an upgrade in more than 1,000 cases, and that may make employers and higher education institutions question them. For example, the Welsh baccalaureate is not accepted by some universities, and that is sad. That reputational damage is now being perpetuated by the outcomes of what the programme for international student assessment judged to be tragically lower standards. As we seek to attract investment to turn the economy around, the quality of public services is essential.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

I hope the hon. Gentleman does not feel that I am just trying to look on the positive side, but he must be aware that Cardiff university is a Russell Group university and that it accepts students from the Welsh education system. It also has two Nobel laureate prize winners.

[Alun Cairns]

Cardiff university is a fantastic university. The funding structure in Wales is starving the university of funding, as compared to its counterparts in England. The question we need to be asking ourselves is this: how can Cardiff university maintain its standards and status when, because of the different funding structure, there is more funding going into higher education in Wales? That is another sign of the reputational damage being caused by the decisions that are being taken.

[Owen Smith]

The hon. Gentleman says that he wants to show some respect for devolution, but could he be a little more impartial with the facts he employs? Will he tell us, for example, whether he accepts that the Welsh Government should be congratulated on a fall of just 250 in the number of students applying to university in Wales, when the fall in England has been 25,000—a hundredfold difference?

[Alun Cairns]

That is the sort of response that does not get us anywhere. I am looking for an intelligent debate to accept the reality of the situation. Unless we accept the reality, we cannot take the intelligent decisions needed to make changes.

In the time that remains, I want to mention health. I had hoped that yesterday was a turning point. The right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) made an extremely powerful contribution to the debate yesterday. Two weeks earlier, we had learned of data she had brought to the attention of Professor Sir Bruce Keogh. He wrote to his counterpart in Wales, seeking to probe the data that had been shared with him. The response came from a politician, rather than a clinician, who was furious and said that this was an attempt by the Conservative party to

“drag Welsh NHS through the mud”.

The reality, however, is that Sir Bruce Keogh stated in the e-mail that he did not know enough about it, but thought there was a potential smokescreen. There needs to be an intelligent debate, otherwise its reputation will be damaged further.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

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[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) on securing this debate today. It has been an extraordinarily wide-ranging debate, as is traditionally the case with St David’s day debates. Many Members rightly highlighted the importance of having time in this House to debate the issues of Wales. I think that we can all agree that in the past three years, insufficient time has been spent on debating Welsh matters. Ignorance of the realities in Wales has perhaps grown in this House as a result. I hope that we have done something today to redress that imbalance and to shed some light on the issues, as I hope to do in my short remarks.

My hon. Friend made a particularly enlightening and topical opening to today’s debate. He talked about the need to reflect the fact that people in Wales have shared identities in that they are both Welsh citizens and British citizens. Indeed, they can play rugby for Wales and for the British Lions—they can captain either team and still feel themselves to be British and Welsh. That is something that I feel very strongly about and that I hope everyone in this House supports. My hon. Friend also said that we need to capitalise on the great economic strengths of our country, and especially on the energy and tourism potential of Wales. I entirely endorse all that he said in that regard.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) reminded us of the history of the St David’s day debate. He even told us that this was the day of St Colette, the patron saint of pregnant women. At this point, I cannot help but congratulate Kate Groucutt, who is pregnant and leaving my office. She has been the special adviser to the Welsh Affairs team over the past few years.

More importantly, but slightly surreally, my right hon. Friend talked about the problems in his constituency of head shops, which sell legal highs. The problem is massive and growing in communities such as his and mine, and we must get to grips with it notwithstanding the difficulties of legislating in this complicated area.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) talked about the economy of Wales, and highlighted two issues in her constituency that have wider implications and ramifications across the UK. The first was the loss of steel jobs at the Orb works, due to the inordinately high energy prices that companies in Britain are paying compared with their European competitors. I am sure that we all understand that we need to get to grips with that matter not just for individual consumers of energy in this country but for vital foundational industries.

The second was the problem of offshore jobs. My hon. Friend highlighted the irony of a Government who claim to be seeking to reshore jobs overseeing the offshoring of Government jobs in the Ministry of Justice shared services centre in Newport. You could not make it up, Madam Deputy Speaker, but it is what is happening.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) raised the important issue of truancy and called for improvements in the way in which our schools deal with challenging children in Britain, and I entirely agree with him. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) also talked about the economy and threw his weight behind the proposal for a motor sport track and arena in Blaenau Gwent, and I support him on that, as I know the Secretary of State does. My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) talked about women in Wales and the need for others to promote the talents of women within Wales. She highlighted the fact that the Labour party has done that in the National Assembly, where women make up almost 45% of all groups, and here in Westminster, where the Labour party stands alone in having a significant proportion of female members—32% of the current parliamentary Labour party. We need more, but it is a good start and better than what we are seeing from the Government.

The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) talked about local government and the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) talked about devolution and suggested that I should be sophisticated and enlightening when addressing it myself, and I shall seek to do so at an appropriate moment.

Government Members told us that they wanted to be respectful and positive—I think those were the words—about Wales and then failed to offer a single respectful and positive word; that was certainly the case for the Conservative Members. There were a number of positive remarks made by Liberal Democrat Members, such as the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams), who congratulated the Welsh Government on their investment in flood defences in Wales; £4 million has been invested, in distinct contradiction to the direction of travel in Westminster where we have seen £97 million cut from flood defences, as confirmed last week by the Office for National Statistics. Perhaps that is why we did not see the same degree of problems in Wales as we did elsewhere.

The hon. Members for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) and for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) were particularly jaundiced in their view of Wales and highlighted the volume of column inches about what they saw as poor public service performance. They bemoaned the fact that Wales was getting such bad press, but they know full well why Wales is getting a bad press and it is not because of the performance of Welsh public services and certainly not a fair representation—

[Alun Cairns]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Owen Smith]

I am not going to give way—[Interruption.] No, I will not give way, because I—[Interruption.] Okay, I will give way once.

[Alun Cairns]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, but mortality rates, cancer waiting times and A and E access are just three examples; diagnostics in the health service are another. Those are fundamental issues that are dominating the UK newspapers because of poor performance in Wales. Is that not a sad situation?

[Owen Smith]

If the hon. Gentlemen can point to a hospital in Wales in which there are higher levels of unexpected mortality than he thinks there ought to be, I will listen seriously to him. However, he has not offered that—

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[Alun Cairns]

The Princess of Wales.

[Owen Smith]

He says the Princess of Wales, where risk adjusted mortality indices improved by more than 20% over the past three years. We have seen significant improvements in mortality indices in Wales and he will know that people cannot do what he and his colleagues have done—and worse, what the Prime Minister has done on 29 occasions in this House—and take out of context extraordinarily complex mortality statistics and use them as a means to smear the Welsh NHS. Only this week, I was confronted with the reality of that smear campaign when I was contacted by members of the Welsh NHS work force to ask me—

[Alun Cairns]

The unions.

[Owen Smith]

No, it was not a union. Somebody working in the NHS contacted me on their own behalf to ask what they could do to stop the Tories’ smear campaign dragging the reputation of the Welsh NHS through the mud. Members do not need to take my word for it; they could take the words of doctors in Wales. The British Medical Association in Wales said very clearly that this was “a wicked”—[Interruption.] The Under-Secretary says from a sedentary position that this is about the trade unions, implying that it is somehow connected to the Labour party. He knows that that is not the case; he knows—[Interruption.]