Teachers Strike

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I do worry about the Minister’s arithmetic capabilities when he sets himself against the IFS, which has clearly said that school budgets will be cut by 8% in real terms by 2020. That is one side of the equation. The other side, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) has said, is teacher morale, which has been compounded by some of the changes to the curriculum and the additional workload. Why have Ministers set their face against the teaching profession in this way? Have they not today reaped what they have sown?

[Mr Gibb]

I accept that the changes implemented in the past five years have been radical. They have taken many years to prepare. The primary curriculum was published in 2013 and became law in September 2014, and the first assessment of it took place in May 2016. The first teaching of the English and maths GCSE reforms began in September 2015, after four or five years of preparation, and the first teaching of a number of other subjects will take place this September. I understand the work involved in preparing for a new specification and a new curriculum, but the changes are hugely important and they will have a dramatic impact on the standard of education in our state schools in the year ahead. That is a prize well worth delivering, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will support higher academic standards in our state schools.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I hope to be able to consult extremely shortly. This is complicated and I want to give local authorities time, but my hon. Friend is right that we need to make progress.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Is there not a danger for the Secretary of State that some schools will risk losing funding and that those that gain from the new funding settlement will not gain nearly enough to offset both the freeze in the education grant and the national insurance increases?

[Nicky Morgan]

I do not want to pre-empt the consultation. There are always dangers for Secretaries of State, but there is a danger in inaction, too. We have had an unfair national funding formula for well over a decade, and probably longer. I am not going to go down as the Secretary of State who had the opportunity to try to right that wrong but did not take it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The reporting requirements that I mentioned will give small businesses the information that they need to make more informed decisions, to negotiate fairer terms and to encourage other companies to improve payment practices. We take this very seriously in the Department and we are determined to change this kind of bad practice.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

But one of the worst performers regarding late payments to small and medium-sized enterprises is the public sector. What is the Secretary of State doing to ensure that Government Departments, agencies and local government promptly pay the small businesses that they use?

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to hear that while that was the case back in 2010, when payment practices throughout the public sector were appalling, there has been a significant improvement throughout central Government and beyond since then. At my Department, for example, we take great pride in paying almost all invoices within seven days.

Education, Skills and Training

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

I am glad to see that despite being a Eurosceptic martyr, the hon. Gentleman is still alive and kicking and doing his thing on the Tory Back Benches. It was the Labour Government who started university technical colleges, and I am glad that he will have one in his own area. He is being rather churlish in talking about our record, when we created the university technical college concept.

The Government have a very large target for apprenticeships, but 30% of those starting do not finish the course, and 96% are level 2 or 3 apprenticeships, with very low numbers attaining higher degree level apprenticeships. I understand and recognise that level 2 and 3 are very important to attain, but even more important for the future health and wellbeing of our economy is expanding the higher degree level apprenticeships, and quickly.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will remember that in the previous Parliament I introduced a private Member’s Bill, the Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill. Is not a real opportunity being missed? With public procurement and major engineering projects in particular, we ought to be getting more bang for our taxpayers’ buck, with proper, decent, high-quality advanced and further level apprenticeships tied into those procurement contracts.

[Ms Eagle]

I could not agree more. I am an admirer of my hon. Friend, especially as I have seen the recent pictures of him abseiling down a very tall building, so my admiration has grown even more. His Bill was an extremely good one. It is important that the Government think much more carefully than they have done to date about how they can tie in the money that they spend on public procurement with skills creation. The Business Secretary will have to do that if he is to deliver a prosperous future for British steel, and he should think about doing it in many more areas. There is a taboo that needs to be broken.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy]

If the hon. Gentleman will let me continue, I hope I will convince him to think bigger. When I was involved in the scouts, we always said that the key to understanding youth work was to recognise that although everybody has been a 15-year-old, not everybody has been a 15-year-old in today’s world. If we really want to improve the life chances of today’s young people, they do not just need our help to get them a job. They do not seek an industry or a profession. They live in a world in which, it is predicted, they will hold seven different careers, two of which are yet to be invented.

Each generation has faced change, but this generation will see it not just in their lifetime, but within a decade. The real challenge to their future prospects is not Romanian immigrants, but robots. Just as Friends Reunited was overtaken by Facebook, so technology is replacing not just manual labour but skilled labour—prescriptions filled, legal forms checked, cars driven and retail services replaced. It is a time of peril and potential: adapt or fall behind. There is little certainty to be had and little time to catch our breath. But the fact that the world moves so quickly means that people can keep learning new skills or reapplying those that they have to the new opportunities that arise. There are more second chances than ever before.

Not only are we failing the next generation by not acting to help them to navigate the world that is to come, but I fear that the measures in the Queen’s Speech could reinforce the inequalities that already define life chances for so many. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has demonstrated that graduates from richer family backgrounds earn significantly more than their less wealthy counterparts, even when they take similar degrees from similar universities.

That is not just happening at university. Research by the Institute for Public Policy Research shows that even at good and outstanding schools, there are large attainment gaps between rich and poor students. The OECD states that of all the countries it surveyed, the UK has the biggest gap in literacy and problem-solving skills between 16 to 19-year-olds who are not in education or employment and young employed people. Our failure to teach skills that can be transferred and that are relevant in the modern world means that too many of our young people are struggling not just in their home territory but against their European, Chinese and south American counterparts. That is not because we are members of the European Union, but because of their very British education.

As many of my colleagues have pointed out, we face the biggest skill shortage for 30 years. We have growing inequality and an outdated idea of what would fix these issues. The choices made in this Queen’s Speech about what to offer our young people give them little to prepare them for the world to come. At best, those choices will work for only a minority of young people unless they are independently wealthy—beneficiaries of the bank of mum and dad.

The education Bill is a case in point, with its obsession with turning every school into an academy, rather than turning every young person into an achiever. It works against partnership, isolating schools rather than linking them with local businesses and local communities. The Higher Education and Research Bill will put more resource into the “ladders” approach just when young people need more access—to apprenticeships, to further education and to paid internships—to open other doors. The Bill comes at the same time as the area-based review of further education seeks to close down those institutions.

Although the Government’s restatement of their commitment to sharia-compliant loans is welcome, if we fail to deal with the inequalities in resource that affect the poorest in our society in the early years, those people will continue to get a worse deal than their more affluent counterparts even if they make it to the same schools and universities.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend makes a compelling case for tackling some of the inequalities in our education system. She will know of the huge benefits that were derived from the London challenge. Does she recognise that that model ought to be replicated outside London, in places such as Greater Manchester? Indeed, a Greater Manchester challenge was created, but one of the first acts of this Government was to scrap it.

[Stella Creasy]

My hon. Friend is right to point out that there are good opportunities to create a change in results to the benefit of young people, but the Government seem to have missed them. The student loan book is bust, and university is not the only door in the maze that our young people can open to unlock their potential. We should be asking the difficult question: why, in a time of tight resources, are young people who make it through their A-levels offered a loan to go to university, but we have nothing to offer those who have a great business start-up idea? When 30% of Britain’s young people want to start a business, perhaps wanting to be the Jay-Z or the Jamal Edwards of their time, we ignore their potential—the doors they want to be opened—at our peril. This Government are focusing on the 50% of kids who do the things we see as important, not the 100% of kids who need access to the bank of mum and dad to succeed.

Money and contacts matter, as does flexibility, but none of these pieces of legislation will fundamentally tackle the inequalities that too many in our country face in accessing such skills and real-life work experience. We need to bring together not just the institutions, but the networks that can help our young people to thrive in the world to come. Ministers may tell me that the answer to the first point is their savings plan in the Queen’s Speech and all such proposals. It is certainly true to say, “Save more and you can make more choices about studying”, but lifetime ISAs will mean nothing to families who have no savings at all—those who have no spare money in the week, let alone the month.

In 2010, I stood in the Chamber and fought for the child trust fund to be saved. It was a scheme proven to help those from the poorest income backgrounds the most. In 2020, the first of them will mature, giving all 18-year-olds something—perhaps not much, but something. Instead, with the lifetime ISA, such inequalities in wealth will become even more about the difference between having money to spare and having no money at all.

Recent research shows that the bank of mum and dad bails out grown-up children an average of four times, to the value of £6,000, even after they have left home. Indeed, one in three parents have been left cash-strapped after lending money to their children. One in seven parents have had to borrow money themselves to bail out their grown-up children. This Government are reinforcing inequality, wasting potential and failing one generation while locking another into debt to try to help them. If we want to stop lagging behind our counterparts, if we really want to give our children more life chances, if we want to benefit from their potential, we have to learn to compete in the global economy, not to capsize, and that means taking a completely different approach.

Instead of what this Government are doing, we need to bring different services together. We need to link universities, businesses, schools, further education colleges and communities, not segregate them. We need to break down the old divisions between education and working life, and between conventional academic achievement and lifelong employability. We need to move away from teaching functional skills that are outdated almost as soon as they are learned. Instead, our young people need real-world learning experiences and transferable talents, such as complex problem-solving and team-working skills, much as the hon. Member for Chippenham set out. We need fundamentally to rethink how we spend resources and share them, offering loans and support not just to 50% of young people, but to 100% of them. That will end their need to have the bank of mum and dad on their side if they are going to survive the 21st century.

I therefore urge Ministers not to assume that their own life choices should define the life chances we offer all young people, but I fear that plea will fall on deaf ears. That is why this Queen’s Speech proves that, under this Government, we will always be a nation playing catch-up with our present, not shaping our own future—getting the public further into debt to keep going, not to get going, and making the bank of mum and dad the only hope to the detriment of too many and to the cost of us all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling), and I enjoyed picturing her as a blonde on a wire. I am sure she will not get stuck, and I admire the gusto with which she undertakes her role as a constituency MP. However, she did make me reflect on the introduction of the National Citizen Service, alongside the demise of our youth service. I wish the NCS well, but I regret that my local community no longer has a targeted, effective resource to deal with real and immediate problems, not just for young people, but for the wider community.

It is also a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), although I wish we had conferred a little earlier because I found myself scratching out large segments of my speech. She did a great job of explaining why the credibility of the life chances strategy will be questionable when it emerges, given the Government’s record.

I find myself pondering the term “life chances”. It is a much better term than “social mobility”, which is not particularly widely understood. I looked it up, and found that “life chances” was initially coined by Max Weber, the famous sociologist, and it is a positive thing that the Tories are taking reference from his work. My concern, however, is that the term “life chances” will become rubbished because the Government will mess things up, and will not deliver any meaningful improvement in life chances to most people in the country. The term could well go the way of “localism”, “the big society” and—increasingly in my part of the country—“the northern powerhouse”. That term is treated with utter derision and contempt, and I would hate that to happen to “life chances”. I am no one’s class warrior, but I am Labour, and we are about life chances and widening equality of opportunity. That is what we are here for—all Labour Members are in the Labour party because they are interested in life chances. [Interruption.] I am happy to take an intervention if someone wishes to make one.

It is difficult to see how the Government intend to proceed with improving life chances. They are still paying for a social mobility and child poverty commission, which writes excellent, first-class reports and commissions superb research, yet there is precious little sight of that in any Government policies. The commission makes specific recommendations that relate directly to the issues under consideration, but the Government ignore them.

We have heard from many Members who are worried about the quality of apprenticeships—I know I am, and I have seen extremely questionable examples of short, poor-quality apprenticeships that do not lead anywhere. According to the commission, we should have a target of around 30,000 higher level, level 3 apprenticeships. Life chances differ depending on what someone does when they are 16. The decisions they make then determine their life chances for the rest of their life. If they take a non-academic route, their chances of doing well later in life are greatly diminished.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend reminds me of the Aimhigher scheme that operated in my constituency in 2010. It was all about encouraging young people from deprived backgrounds to think that higher education was something for them—basically, it did the things that my mum and dad did to encourage me to go into higher education. Is it not a travesty for those young people that one of this Government’s first actions was to scrap Aimhigher?

[Jenny Chapman]

It is. Our universities do not do nearly enough to encourage a broader range of people to attend their institutions. There are little schemes—I am sure there are some lovely pockets of good practice around the country; I have seen some gorgeous things with primary school children wearing hats around local universities—but their long-term impact is very weak.

We find that the life chances of non-graduates, the people who do not go on to university, are limited. Some 42% do okay: they find themselves in the top half of occupations, are relatively well paid, and receive further training and progression throughout their careers. However, men in lower-half occupations are low paid, with no progression. They make up 16% of non-graduates. They are mostly younger men and they work in lower-paying occupations. There are then the skilled but stuck. Generally, they are women in part-time work. They, too, make up 16% of non-graduates. They are mostly mothers working in low-paying occupations, such as sales and customer service, because they are unable to retrain, get childcare or part-time work in occupations for which they may well be qualified.

About 26% of non-graduates are young, tend to have children and have low qualifications. Again, they are mainly women. They are at real risk of getting stuck. They may have messed up and not done so well in their GCSEs. Perhaps they did not get any advice on what was best for them and made a poor choice. They may have ended up doing hairdressing, beauty therapy or going into another low-paid profession because their friends were doing it and the alternatives were not explained to them. It is now almost impossible for them to get out of that profession and into something with a real chance of progression. If we are talking about life chances, it is this stage in education—if I could fix one thing—that really needs to be addressed. It is underfunded and ignored. There is no decent advice for young people before they make these decisions.

One recommendation from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission is for a common access point. For young people going to university there is the UCAS system. They make their application and are supported through the process. There are deadlines and they understand the process. There is a whole host of information about the outcomes, routes and destinations available on the internet. There is nothing like that for those trying to get on a further education course and that needs to be addressed.

Term-time Holidays

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

The schools themselves will have increased freedoms if they adopt academy status, including over term dates and the curriculum, but there are rules that apply to individuals. There is no freedom for an individual not to educate their children: they either have to attend school or obtain education otherwise. That is the law. This is about the law that applies to parents. We want a society where education is compulsory for all children in our country.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

But the Minister must acknowledge the limbo that schools now find themselves in. Headteachers know precisely what the regulations say, but they also know what the High Court ruling was. Will he clarify for the benefit of the headteachers who might be listening what he thinks should take precedent—the High Court judgment or the regulations as they stand? If it is the High Court judgment, how quickly will the Government come back to the House to assert what they want to happen?

[Mr Gibb]

We are still waiting to receive the written judgment of the High Court, and as soon as we do we will revert to the hon. Gentleman and the House.

Key Stage 2 Tests

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

I agree with my hon. Friend. As I said, the whole system depends on the integrity of professionals. We need our senior markers to have access to this material weeks before it goes live. We need our test developers to have access to individual questions months before the tests go live. We test these tests with a large number of pupils before we are sure that they have the right degree of demand. A range of people have access to this material long before it goes live in the classroom. If people do not have that professional integrity, there will be problems. We will be investigating to identify the individual and to ensure that Pearson’s processes are tightened up so that this cannot happen again.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

The Minister needs to move to the bottom of the class, because he must try harder. This is not the first time that tests have been compromised in this academic year; it is the second time on his watch. Will he sincerely apologise to parents, teachers and those pupils who have taken the test today? Will he also assure them and us that every measure that he needs to take will be taken so that this will not happen on a third occasion?

[Mr Gibb]

I did apologise for the problem with the key stage 1 spelling test when that material was inadvertently put online. This issue has not damaged the integrity of the grammar, punctuation and spelling test being taken by 600,000 10 and 11-year-olds today. It was put on to a secure website, protected by password and available only to markers, and 93 of those markers examined the material. We have looked on the websites and at social media—officials were doing this work through the night—to see whether there was any compromising of the test. There is no such evidence.

The Standards and Testing Agency is confident that the test has integrity and it will go ahead. This is a complex process of administering these tests for 600,000 pupils every year. This year was always going to be a challenging year, as it is the first to assess the new and more demanding national curriculum that came into force in September 2014 and that schools have had since July 2013. There is therefore an element of controversy to it. We do not apologise for that controversy, because we believe as a Government in raising academic standards in schools. That is what we came into office to achieve.

We are a Government that will achieve and are achieving those high academic standards, but there are some—I assume that there are no such people on the Opposition Benches—who do not necessarily agree with us that it is important to raise academic standards. Somebody decided that their own opinions were more important than their professional integrity, and decided to breach the trust they had been given and the confidentiality contract into which they had entered, and leaked one of those tests to the media.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the issue of cutting business regulation, but I do not recognise the £22 billion a year figure for EU regulation. I am sure that he will agree that as well as looking at the costs of regulation, we should consider the benefits of the single market. With 500 million consumers, it is the world’s largest economic zone, and there is no doubt that it helps to generate jobs throughout Britain, including in Greater Manchester.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will be aware that many small businesses often apply to only one lender for finance—usually their bank—and that two in five of those turned down do not go on to apply for finance anywhere else. What more are the Government doing to ensure that small businesses have access to as good a range of financial products as possible to keep the economy moving in the right direction?

[Sajid Javid]

First, the hon. Gentleman may know that one of the changes brought in during the coalition Government was that if a small business’s application for credit is refused, that application can be passed on, with the business’s permission, to other potential lenders. That has certainly helped to change the landscape. We can also help to increase competition, on which the Treasury has been leading. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the number of providers of SME finance, he will see that there has been a dramatic change there, too.

Trade Union Bill (Discussions)

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

Of course I confirm that, but the position governing strike action, the proper regulation of trade union activities with regard to finances and membership, and the position on picketing and intimidation of non-striking workers, were not acceptable until this Bill was introduced, and they will remain not acceptable until the Bill has secured Royal Assent. Of course I accept that trade unions have an important role in society, but they needed and will benefit from this reform. I put on record my gratitude to all my hon. Friends, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex, for their support for the Bill.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Today is International Workers Memorial Day, which serves as a poignant reminder of why we need good and strong trade unions in our society. I also think it right that the trade union movement is opposed to many of the measures in the Bill, which is an attack on how it operates on behalf of its members. On the substantive point of the urgent question, the Bill is not yet legislation and has not been enacted. Surely the fact that a Labour-affiliated trade union has decided to donate some of its Labour-affiliated political fund to a Labour-supported campaign is perfectly within the law.

[Nick Boles]

The hon. Gentleman is correct.

Trade Union Bill

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 27th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

The Minister will no doubt have seen the evidence from the Electoral Reform Society that the incidence of fraud in electronic balloting is no different from the incidence of fraud in postal balloting. In the light of that evidence, what is his objection?

[Nick Boles]

The hon. Gentleman will have to be a little patient, because I am going to come on to talk about evidence from around the world of some of the problems that other systems have encountered when trying to embrace electronic balloting too quickly and without adequate preparation.

I appreciate from previous debates on the Bill in this House that there are differences of opinion about whether electronic balloting is sufficiently safe and secure. Lord Kerslake said that he personally was convinced that the case for it had been made, and we have heard from others in recent minutes that they too are so convinced, but Lord Kerslake was good enough to say that he appreciated that others were not. I remind the House that the Open Rights Group gave evidence to the Speaker’s Commission in which it neatly summed up the concerns over the security of online voting. It stated:

“Voting is a uniquely difficult question for computer science: the system must verify your eligibility; know whether you have already voted; and allow for audits and recounts. Yet it must always preserve your anonymity and privacy.”

That was the view of the Open Rights Group, and that is the view that we must investigate more carefully. Lord Kerslake explained that that was why his clause, added to the Bill in the other place, required that a review should be commissioned.

There have already been many reviews looking into this matter, such as those carried out by Electoral Reform Services, WebRoots Democracy and, of course, the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy. They have made encouraging comments about a move to electronic ballots, but none has been able to provide assurance on managing the risks. While there is still this doubt, I can see merit in exploring the issues further. And of course the important difference is that this review will be specifically in the context of electronic ballots for industrial action. So, in accepting that there should be a review, we accept the spirit of the clause on electronic balloting. In fact, we accept virtually the entirety of the amendment made by the Lords on electronic balloting.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I understand the position that the Minister is setting out, but I am struggling to understand his logic. If he is saying that electronic balloting is neither secure nor anonymous, is he implying that when Conservative party members vote for a particular candidate online in an internal Tory party election, it is neither secure nor anonymous?

[Nick Boles]

With the greatest respect, I would point out to the hon. Gentleman that that is an internal election within an independent organisation. We are talking here about statutory elections, which are important because the public has a deep interest in their result and it is quite right that we should hold them to a higher standard than we do others.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I want to make it clear right at the outset that we remain opposed to this Bill. Despite some of the changes that it has undergone in another place, it remains a dreadful, mean-spirited, partisan, petty piece of legislation. Having got that off my chest, I recognise that Members in another place have made a valiant attempt to make a silk purse out of this particularly malformed sow’s ear, so that after today it may end up being a slightly less ugly sow’s ear than it was, but it will remain a malodorous porcine lug, for all their lordships’ noble efforts.

Many of the changes that peers made are welcome if we consider the crudeness of the Bill in its original form. On the first group of Lords amendments and the Government’s response to them, Lords amendment 2 was passed in the other place by 320 votes to 181, requiring the Government to commission a review of electronic voting in industrial action ballots within six months of Royal Assent. After the review, amendment 2 would require the Government to publish a strategy for rolling out electronic voting.

Government amendment (a) would revise Lords amendment 2 so that Ministers are required only to publish a response to the review, but need not take further action to actually introduce e-balloting. The Government have consistently resisted e-balloting on the grounds that they still had concerns about the safety of electronic voting, despite the fact, as many hon. Members have pointed out, that the Conservative party used electronic ballots for the selection of its London mayoral candidate, although I suppose the Conservatives may now be regretting that, given the poor performance of the candidate they selected using that method. Perhaps that explains the Government’s concern.

It is clear that the Government’s real objection to e-balloting and, indeed, to workplace balloting, which we argued for unsuccessfully in this House and in the other place, has been that they do not want high turnouts because their new threshold barriers could be more easily reached if more people were more easily able to vote.

Not only will all ballots for industrial action require a minimum 50% turnout under the Bill, but those working in the loosely defined “important public services group” will face an additional hurdle of needing a 40% yes vote from all those eligible to vote. That means that these thresholds place higher requirements on those industrial action ballots than on any other democratic process within the UK. For example, the 50% turnout threshold was not reached for the last London Mayoral election or most local government and devolved elections.

The Government have agreed that Ministers should be required to commission an independent review of the use of e-ballots for industrial action within six months of Royal Assent. They have agreed that it will be possible to run pilots as part of that review, as the Minister said, but the Government are proposing that after the review Ministers would need to publish a response, but not necessarily to take any further action. There would be no requirement to publish a strategy for rolling out electronic voting.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Is there not a slight concern that this is just a delaying tactic by the Government, who do not intend to introduce these measures? Given that in 2016 many people are quite used to banking online, registering to vote online and submitting their tax returns online, do not questions about security and anonymity fall by the wayside?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

I know this Government love things foreign, but may I tell the Minister, with great respect, that he need not go very far to find examples of where e-voting has worked and there have not been any problems? I am referring to the pilots that took place in 2004, including in my constituency and others in the north-east, after which the Electoral Commission’s report found no problems with e-voting. He will obviously want to go on a fact-finding trip to the Philippines to look at this—I am sure we would all welcome his going there—but the fact is that he just needs to look at has happened in this country.

I must say that the Minister put up the very flimsy defence to the question, “If it’s all right for the Conservative party, why is it not all right for the trade union movement?” I would have respected his position if he had come up with concrete reasons why he thought electronic—[Interruption.] Well, he cites the Philippines, but has he actually looked at the Electoral Commission’s report on e-voting in 2004? It quite clearly stated that there was no issue of fraud or any risk to security. The fact that the Government then got cold feet about what I must say was a rather hysterical campaign against postal voting is neither here nor there.

[Andrew Gwynne]

That has been said not just by the Electoral Commission, but by the Electoral Reform Society, which is obviously expert in e-voting. It has certainly conducted a number of internal elections for the Labour party using e-voting, and it would be quite capable of running similar elections for the trade union movement.

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The Minister backed himself into a corner by saying that such votes were so important that they could not be done electronically. Let us look, for example, at foundation trusts, which elect their governors by electronic voting and are quite happy that such a system is secure. The Minister may think that that is not very important, but my constituents certainly think that choosing those who run their local hospital and have a lot of powers in my area is a pretty important decision.

My hon. Friend is right that electronic voting is used by many organisations, including private companies and charities, to consult their members. Organisations such as the Electoral Reform Society, which are used by many bodies to conduct ballots, whether in electronic or postal form, not only have a track record of impartiality and strict adherence, but are respected not just in this country but internationally—the Minister is interested in international comparisons—so it is pretty pathetic to say we need more evidence.

The other weakness in the Government’s argument is that I am not convinced that, once they have had this so-called review, they will actually implement the proposal. The proposal came from the trade unions, and I congratulate the general secretaries and others who have backed it. It would be a move forward by improving access to voting for trade union members and by improving the situation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I had the pleasure of visiting The Bath Studio School with my hon. Friend, and it was excellent and inspiring for the young people there. Some 1.4 million more children are in schools rated good or outstanding than in 2010. We intend to push on with that.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State share the concerns of parents at Audenshaw School academy trust, which has withheld £40,000 a year of pupil premium money for the past three years? Is that not the wrong intention for that money?

[Nicky Morgan]

I am of course concerned to hear about that. The hon. Gentleman and I have had conversations about academies and schools in his constituency. He can write to me with further details, but, yes, the pupil premium money has to be spent on those most in need and has to get to the frontline.