Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Banks]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that valid point. I shall come to that matter later in my speech when I talk about the changes that have happened over recent years, and perhaps decades, and try to illustrate why prompt payment has become so important.

Let me return to what I was saying about people trying to get their payment on time, and whether they win the argument and risk losing the customer in the process. There does not seem to be much incentive for small businesses to utilise their right against late payers, because just 10% of businesses have even considered doing so. I have been in private business all my working life, having set up my own business in 1986. I can tell this House that late payments are the biggest curse small businesses face: people striving, working hard and going out to sell their wares but then struggling to get paid. As I said, that part of the bargain is not being upheld.

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

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head, because this is not a small problem for small businesses—it is a big problem. Is he aware of research by BACS showing that 60% of British small businesses have said that late payment is a problem for them?

[Gordon Banks]

Yes, I am aware of that research, and late payment is a major problem. It is not just a transient major problem, but a constant one, week to week. I have lain in bed at night worrying whether the cheque was going to come in so that I could pay the wages of my staff. That is not a position that any business should be put in, and certainly not because of late payments.

A small business, perhaps a new one trying to establish itself, often finds a degree of comfort in dealing with a larger, perhaps household, name in its business sphere. The saying in my sector is, “You know your money is safe with so and so.” It may be safe but it may also be in their bank all the time and not yours.

We also need to consider the credibility that comes from working with such a customer and the possible opportunities, arising from volume increases, for small business suppliers to be able to renegotiate rates from their suppliers. In my experience, those will more often than not be larger companies. So the small business can find itself sandwiched between a large business customer and a large business supplier, perhaps a multinational company, and being strung out at one end and wrung out at the other. These multinational companies, understandably, have strict credit limits and they will be very quick to stop supply if they are not being paid within 30 days. Within a limited period of time they will remove the small business’s credit facilities, so damaging its credit rating, and reducing its access to key products and, in effect, its ability to pay the bill for which the multinational is awaiting payment.

As we know, the reason for late payment in these cases is often that a large customer fails to keep its side of the deal. I wish to draw the House’s attention to an experience I have encountered a number of times, where large multinationals have been pressing for payment within 30 days for a commodity sold by them to my business and yet that commodity has been sold to another division of the same company and it has no intention of paying within 30 days. Even within the same organisation we may have the supplier pressing for payment within 30 days, the product having been sold to another division in the same company as the supplier and yet it not upholding its part of the bargain and being prepared to pay in 30 days—it just strings you out. So the company wants its money in but does not want to pay the money out. That is just not good enough. The current system of being able to charge interest, at the supplier’s instigation, or being able to apply a debt recovery cost is not adequate and we have to improve these experiences.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I am certainly happy to congratulate any authority that itself takes on apprentices. We all need to set an example in all parts of Government and indeed in this House, as many Members are doing. Of course I would be happy to meet my right hon. Friend. I hope that he will welcome the traineeships programme, which was introduced by this Government specifically to provide people in that age group with a stepping stone to an apprenticeship or to a job.

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

Despite the Minister’s opening statement, fewer than one in 10 employers in England offer apprenticeships, which must surely be improved upon. Labour will ensure that all public sector contracts worth more than £1 million require the contractor to take on apprentices. That was the subject of my private Member’s Bill, which, sadly, was blocked by Ministers. Why do Ministers not wake up, smell the coffee and realise that that is the best bang for the buck of public procurement contracts?

[Nick Boles]

Well, of course I am sure that the hon. Gentleman meant to congratulate the Government on our fantastic achievement in creating far more apprenticeships. They are real apprenticeships—those that involve a job and last more than 12 months—unlike the ones that his Government produced. He is right that we need many more employers, public and private, to want to create apprenticeships. The way to do that is not to force them to do so, but to make it attractive to them to do so. That is why we are introducing new incentives through the apprenticeship grant, and why we are putting employers in charge of the standard of an apprenticeship so that they know it will be useful to them and not just some bureaucratic tick box.

Repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

There are many good ideas that were not in our manifesto; it is important that we, as politicians, are able to adapt and to reflect the times.

It is not the case that the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was introduced simply to maintain the coalition. The previous system, whereby prerogative power was exercised over a democratic process for political advantage, served the wrong interests. Imagine Gordon Brown sitting in Downing street in 2007 chewing his fingernails and trying to decide whether that was the right time to call an election so that he could have another five years in government.

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

The Minister means “the right hon. Gentleman”.

[Mr Gyimah]

I meant to say “the right hon. Gentleman”. I stand corrected.

By setting out the general election timetable in legislation, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act removes a Prime Minister’s power to call a general election. Removing that power from the Executive and giving it to Parliament enhances the transparency of our democratic system and represents a significant surrender of political power. Fixed-term Parliaments also provide a number of practical benefits to both Parliament and the Government. They provide greater certainty and continuity and enhance long-term legislative and financial planning, as the hon. Member for Nottingham North said. They also afford greater political stability by giving future Governments foreseeable terms.

Some of the arguments that we have heard against fixed-term Parliaments are that they are inflexible, that they were conceived in a hurry and that the consequences were not fully thought through. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone. It is also argued that fixed terms prevent a Government from ending and Parliament from dissolving when they reach their natural end, when it would be most beneficial for a new Government to take the reins. But as I have said, there are benefits to stability, certainty and transparency, and to those inside and outside Government being able to plan.

The question of flexibility has been raised in the context of the Scottish referendum and the need to change the timing of the next general election. Under the Act, the Prime Minister of the day is able to lay an order before both Houses to extend the date of a general election by a maximum of two months to deal with unexpected developments, although they must spell out their reasons for taking that step. The Act also provides for early elections to be called if a motion is agreed by at least two thirds of the House or without Division, or if a motion of no confidence is passed and no alternative Government are confirmed by the House of Commons within 14 days. I do not believe that that limits voter choice.

Prior to the Act, a party could change its leader midway through a Parliament and that new leader would become Prime Minister. In that situation, the new Prime Minister would be under no obligation to call a general election for five years. Under the terms of the Act, however, the leader could still go to the country, although a vote in the House in favour of so doing would require a two-thirds majority. It is unlikely that the Opposition would withhold their support, for reasons of political consensus.

National Minimum Wage

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, and in my constituency I have seen the stress, upset and angst caused by the bedroom tax, causing people to have to leave an area in which many of them have grown up and love so much. My hon. Friend is right: the bedroom tax shows the instincts of our different parties.

Although we are, of course, proud to have established the national minimum wage, which helped to end exploitation and extreme low pay, it did not end low pay per se. Under this Government working people have experienced their wages dropping by an average of more than £1,600 a year. The 1 October rise in the minimum wage is the first real-terms increase during this Parliament, and it is still 4.1% below its 2008 peak and just 2p above its equivalent value in 2005. Therefore, if we are elected next year, our goal will be to halve the number of people on low pay in our country. To achieve that, we need the minimum wage to evolve to address the broader problem of low pay, which is the purpose of the motion.

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

We need that proposal, but we also need effective enforcement of the national minimum wage. Is my hon. Friend appalled, as I am, to learn that as many as 300,000 people in this country are still being paid below the national minimum wage and yet, in the past four years, there have been only two prosecutions?

[Mr Umunna]

I am appalled by that. My hon. Friend is right to mention enforcement. I will come to that, but I pay tribute to his work—I have been to his constituency—on ensuring that those who work hard get a decent day’s pay, in addition to his work on training and apprenticeships, which he has talked about a lot.

Infant Class Sizes

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

Parents in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency rightly want the best for their children. I cannot help thinking that they will not necessarily achieve that given that the number of children in primary class sizes of more than 30 has increased by 134% in his constituency. I cannot imagine that that will increase the attainment and the results that his constituents are looking for.

On 10 May, The Observer reported that the previous Secretary of State had raided £400 million from the basic need fund used to keep class sizes down to pay for the free schools programme. The paper reported that

“Gove had secretly taken the money from the Basic Need fund…in the face of stiff opposition from the Lib Dem schools minister David Laws.”—

clearly not that stiff an opposition.

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

I am sure that the Liberal Democrats in Stockport will be proud of the record that the number of children in large class sizes has increased by 202%. What does my hon. Friend say to my constituents in Tameside, where more than 1,600 young people are now being taught in large class sizes, an increase of 2,567% since 2010, which is an utter disgrace?

[Tristram Hunt]

My hon. Friend is exactly right; it is a disgrace. I say to his constituents and to parents in his constituency, as I do across the country, that they should vote Labour to make sure that spending is prioritised in areas where it is needed.

We know from the National Audit Office that two thirds of all the places created by the free school programme have been created outside of areas classified as having high or severe primary school need. We also know from the Public Accounts Committee that a quarter of free schools opened by September 2012 had 20% fewer pupils than planned. Most recently of all, the Institute of Education has found that free schools do not even fulfil their supposed purpose of spreading opportunity to the poorest pupils, particularly when it comes to primary schools.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

More than ever, companies are involved in delivering apprentices and having apprentices. Colleges are increasingly providing the training for apprenticeships, but it is also important that we raise quality by ensuring that employers write the training that is required for young people to learn the skills necessary to get a good job.

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

Sadly, some young people and their parents still see apprenticeships very much as an easy option, so what are the Government doing to better sell the benefits of apprenticeships, and to increase the number of higher and advanced-level apprenticeships, as an alternative pathway to that provided by degrees?

[Matthew Hancock]

Our vision is that when young people leave school or college, they have the opportunity to go to university or into a high-quality apprenticeship. We have a programme of reform to increase the quality of apprenticeships, including offering more English and maths and a minimum duration. Undoubtedly, there is more to do to persuade people that apprenticeships are of high quality and that apprenticeships can get them anywhere.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

I strongly support Lowestoft college, and I particularly welcome the fact that the number of apprenticeships in my hon. Friend’s constituency has almost doubled since 2010. As he knows, we are looking into the allocations to individual colleges, and also looking into measures to mitigate the effects of the change we have had to make.

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

During our last session of Education questions, I asked the Minister about a survey conducted by The Times Educational Supplement, which found that three quarters of young people had not received information about apprenticeships as part of their careers guidance. Does he still stand by the words of the Secretary of State, who said at a meeting of the Select Committee in December that he had no plans to review careers guidance?

[Matthew Hancock]

If I recall correctly, my right hon. Friend—my boss—said that we would shortly be publishing further statutory guidance, and we will.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

I am delighted to join my hon. Friend in recognising the work that Sara has done not only to win the prize that she so thoroughly deserves, but as a true ambassador for apprenticeships as she goes around explaining the benefits of apprenticeships to young people, employers and the wider economy.

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

A recent survey by The Times Educational Supplement showed that three quarters of young people did not receive information about apprenticeships in their careers lesson, so does the Minister still stand by the words of the Secretary of State to the Education Committee in December that the Government have no plans to address and amend careers guidance?

[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.

Child Care

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

Today we are concerned with highlighting the record of this Government, and, as I have said before, Labour is the party of Sure Start and of increasing fourfold the provision for under-fives. The values of this party are to ensure that young people have the best start in life, and today we are considering the total disconnect between living standards and the cost of child care.

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

Should we not be frankly appalled that although the Prime Minister pledged at the last election not to close Sure Start centres, since the election an average of three Sure Start centres a week have closed? There are now 35,000 fewer child care places at a time when there are 125,000 more under-fours.

[Tristram Hunt]

On the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg address, my hon. Friend delivers an intervention of such succinct clarity that Lincoln himself would be proud.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am sorry, but I want to talk about child care.

As well as complete economic ineptitude, Labour seems to have learnt nothing from its time in office about child care or nurseries. It still thinks the answer is spending more money, rather than reform. Baroness Hughes, children’s Minister under the previous Government, admitted that their approach was “probably wrong.” She said:

“We were so keen to stimulate demand from parents but in retrospect that was such a mammoth task. We ought to have focused on the supply side, supporting providers, then we could have done more and quicker.”

I could not agree more, yet Labour has nothing to say about supply; it talks only about spending more money. Let us remember what happened last time it did that. We ended up with some of the highest child care costs in the OECD, parents were paying out 27% of their income on child care, staff had some of the lowest salaries in Europe, contrary to what the shadow Secretary of State said, and under Labour’s preferred measure, prices increased by 50% during the Labour years.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Reports suggest that the Government will not meet their own target of supplying child care places to the 40% most deprived two-year-olds in the country, so will the Minister be open and transparent with the House? Will she meet that target—yes or no?

[Elizabeth Truss]

We have more than 200,000 full-time places available in our system, and we have said that all those eligible children will have places if their parents want to take them up.

[Andrew Gwynne]

What about the target?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I have just answered the hon. Gentleman’s question.

I was talking about why Labour made such a mess of child care. It piled red tape on schools and nurseries, making it harder for them to expand. Furthermore, even though parents like flexible, affordable, home-based care, the number of childminders halved under Labour, because of the level of regulation, the difficulty of becoming a childminder and the fact that the funding system was skewed towards nurseries and away from childminders.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I will take your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am the father of a two-year-old toddler and now a two-week-old baby girl, as well, so perhaps I should declare an interest. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) asks me their names. My two girls are called Gracie and Annie, but enough about my family; let me move on to the substance of the debate.

Investment in child care is one of the most important sets of investment that any Government can make. I think it was my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) who made the point a few weeks ago in one of the many articles she writes that we often talk about the importance of infrastructure investment—very topical at the moment, given the controversies over High Speed 2—and that child care should be viewed as an infrastructure investment. I entirely agree. Investment in child care is good not only for our future economic capacity, but for our children. That is what I shall focus on in my speech.

There is a general debate about how to raise the trend rate of growth in this country and how to rebalance the economy. We also debate how, if growth happens, it should be shared fairly and not snaffled away by the privileged few, as seems to be happening under this Government. Investment in child care must be an absolutely central part of building the economy of the future that we all want to see. I consider it to be one of the best social and economic investments that we can make. However, today I want to emphasise the benefits that it has for children.

I am sure all Members will agree that learning begins at birth. The first few years of a child’s life are critical to its development. Children need a stimulating, caring environment: they need opportunities to interact, to be talked to, to play, and to explore in safe surroundings. While I entirely accept that academic researchers differ on what is the right balance for a child between being in child care and being at home and that there are different conclusions to be drawn, it is undeniable that good-quality, affordable child care is central to a child’s development.

Both Front Benchers mentioned Baroness Morgan’s observations on preparing children for school. Academic evidence suggests that children who have experienced child care are much further ahead when it comes to development and readiness for school, but we also know that child care gives society an equality dividend. It helps women, in particular, to move into the labour market, but all too often they are priced out of that market by the cost of child care.

Ministers boast about the state of the economy, and say that we have turned the corner. Some top Tories even claim that they are on the glide path to victory, which I would describe as a brave and, indeed, arrogant prediction. In reality, however, the economic benefits that exist are not being shared. There is a huge squeeze on living standards, and hard-working people are worse off and therefore cannot afford child care. We know from the figures that 2 million children in poverty live in households containing a single earner, and that nine out of 10 of the workless partners are female. Securing good-quality, affordable child care and helping mothers to return to the labour market is one of the best ways in which we can make a significant dent in child poverty numbers. But what is the record of the present Government?

As the Minister knows, I have tremendous respect for her. I listen carefully to her speeches, and read a great deal of what she says. However, the fact remains that the cost of nursery places has risen by 30%, and Ofsted figures show that there are 35,000 fewer child care places. The average bill for a part-time nursery place providing 25 hours a week has risen to £107. Breakfast clubs have been scaled down, and the cost of summer holiday child care places has passed the £100-a-week mark for the first time ever. Although all the academic research tells us of the advantages enjoyed by children and toddlers who have been exposed to books, the Secretary of State—who likes to think of himself as a champion of academic rigour—has halved the Bookstart grant.

The Government have implemented a range of policies that affect mothers. For instance, they have cut the child care element of working tax credit: a total of £7 billion has been cut from working parents’ tax credit. In two months’ time, many of the higher-earning parents whose child benefit is being clawed away will have the taxman knocking on their doors because of the Government’s woeful handling of the situation.

Perhaps the Government’s worst act of vandalism against early-years provision is the fact that there are 578 fewer Sure Start centres. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) quoted what the Prime Minister said before the last election, but as the Tories have taken it off their website, it is worth quoting again. He said that we were scaremongering. He said that the Government would back Sure Start. He said that it was “a disgrace” that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) was “trying to frighten people”. The fact remains, however, that we have 578 fewer Sure Start centres. The Tories can take that quotation off their website, like some Bolshevik politburo apparatchik trying to doctor photographs, but we will continue to remind the British people that the Prime Minister promised to maintain Sure Start centres, and that under his Government we are losing them.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is making a very important point about the breaking of the promises made by the Prime Minister at the last general election. Not only did he say that he would keep Sure Start centres open; he also said that the Government would invest in 4,200 extra health care visitors. How does my hon. Friend think that that target is going?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

It sounds like an example of “same old Tories”—yet more broken Tory promises.

As I said earlier, I have tremendous respect for the Minister. I watched her carefully as she toured the studios yesterday, when she talked about the Conservative proposal for tax relief. That tax relief, however, will not be introduced until 2015, and I understand that it will apply only to couples when both partners are earning. If a couple have a two-year-old at nursery, one partner is working and the other is at home caring for a newborn child, that couple will receive nothing—zilch. There will be no help for them whatsoever from this Government.

Qualified Teachers

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

The central point I want to make is that we as a country have to make education our No. 1 priority. We need to drive up results, enhance the status of the teaching profession, recruit the brightest graduates, train them better and insist on higher standards.

The fact is that not enough young people are succeeding in science, maths or technology, or going on to apprenticeships, particularly in high-tech industries. We are not sending enough young people to university and not enough young people from state schools are going to the best universities. We have to be honest with ourselves, however challenging it may be, that standards and results in too many state schools are just not good enough.

Britain is falling far behind other countries on basic numeracy and literacy. The OECD has just reported that, on basic skills, the UK is behind not just countries such as Finland, South Korea and Germany, but others such as Estonia, Poland and Slovakia.

Some areas in Britain are lagging even further behind. Just two schools out of seven in north Dudley reached last year’s national average with regard to five good GCSEs including English and maths. Six out of 10 across the borough as a whole failed to meet the national average. I do not think that any school in the country should be seeing fewer than 70% or 80% of its pupils achieving that level.

This year, I am pleased to say that results improved at four of those schools, but what shocks me is the extraordinarily wide variation in achievement between schools with similar intakes. Children starting at two schools in Dudley had achieved exactly the same key stage 2 results, yet five years later twice as many pupils in one school achieved better GCSE results than the other.

Just a few years ago, only a third of pupils at Ellowes Hall school managed to get successful grades; now, more than eight out of 10 do so. It is without doubt the best state school in the black country. If we take into account the value it offers its students, it probably has a good claim to be one of the very best schools in the country. It still has the same kids from the same families and largely the same teachers, but the thing that has changed is that it has a brilliant new head teacher, Andy Griffiths, and there is a relentless focus on standards and discipline. He has motivated the teachers and made the pupils believe in themselves.

Results are finally improving at Castle High, my old school in the middle of Dudley, under a new head teacher, Michelle King, and Dormston school, which suffered a catastrophic collapse in standards, now has a brilliant new head teacher, Ben Stitchman, who is turning things around.

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

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that one of the best ways of driving up standards in our state schools is to get quality leadership in place. Is that not one of the key aims in driving forward the improvements he has mentioned?

[Ian Austin]

My hon. Friend is right. What unites all of those schools and others where results are improving is high-quality leadership. Being a great head teacher comes from being a great teacher. They know all about managing behaviour and discipline. They know how to get the best out of pupils, and they set high aspirations and demand high standards. I am concerned that, by not insisting on the very highest standards for teaching, the Government could be weakening the national stock of educational leaders for the future. That is so important, because the quality of teaching transforms opportunities for the rest of pupils’ lives. According to the Sutton Trust:

“Bringing the lowest-performing 10% of teachers in the UK up to the average would in five years bring the UK’s rank amongst OECD countries from 21st in Reading to as high as 7th, and from 22nd in Maths to as high as 12th. Over 10 years the UK would improve its position to as high as 3rd in Reading and 5th in Maths.”

My central point is that standards in too many schools are not high enough, and I do not think it is possible to tackle that by insisting that teachers in state schools should not have to have the very best qualifications.