Crisis in Iran
Andrew Murrison Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
Sanctions glisten but they also cast a shadow. I am deeply envious of hon. and right hon. colleagues who have been sanctioned and I can only hope that mine is in the post. Can the Minister assure us that there can be no possibility of progress on the JCPOA while Tehran continues to export weapons of terror, particularly drone technology, to Russia to aid Putin’s war in Ukraine? Can she also assure me that, when the ambassador was called into the Foreign Office, that was made crystal clear to him?
Gillian Keegan
I am sure that my right hon. Friend’s letter could be in the post if he continues to raise his concerns so robustly. Iran’s nuclear programme has never been more advanced than it is today, and Iran’s escalation of its nuclear activities is threatening international peace and security and undermining the global non-proliferation system. If a deal is not struck, the JCPOA will collapse. In this scenario, we will carefully consider all options in partnership with our allies, but the JCPOA, while not perfect, does represent a pathway for constraining Iran’s nuclear programme.
Education: Return in January
Andrew Murrison Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Nadhim Zahawi
Why Dyson? Because my civil servants also set up a marketplace for other schools that want to buy air purifiers, and they have looked at what is available in the market and recommended more than just the Dyson brand in that marketplace.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
Happy new year to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. My right hon. Friend’s statement is very much to be welcomed. He is right to point out, however, that masks are not a cost-free option. What evidence does he have about their effectiveness, particularly since the evidence from the US suggests that the effectiveness of masks varies from 98% for an N95 respirator down to about 25% for a three-layer cotton mask? If he is insisting that children wear masks, he is presumably also contemplating the sort of guidance he should issue about the constitution of those masks and how they should be worn to ensure maximum effectiveness at preventing transmission.
Nadhim Zahawi
Masks are one of a number of mitigations. The most important mitigation is the vaccine—that is indisputable, whether it is the first two jabs or, now, the booster campaign—and then the testing we are conducting in secondary schools this week, which I have just described, and in other settings as we have guided. I have today published the work we have done on masks, and it has been referred to in the House; I will share that with my right hon. Friend as well. That work is based on an observational study that we conducted in the Department of 123 schools where they rigorously applied the wearing of masks. By the way, we have supplied the masks so that schools have them available and are able to make them available to their students as necessary.
However, in the face of a highly infectious variant, masks are one mitigation that I thought was necessary, based on that observational study and the recommendation from UKHSA, including some of the evidence from places such as Germany and elsewhere. It is something that I did reluctantly, because the challenges around learning are evident as well, and I want to keep them for as short a time as possible, just as we begin to—I hope—get through the bumpiest of the next couple of weeks with omicron.
Educational Settings: Reopening
Andrew Murrison Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Nick Gibb
Yes, I agree with the hon. Member. We have already purchased 1.3 million computers. They have been built to order, imported and distributed. We have distributed 876,000 of those devices, but it is not just about devices; it is also about data. We have partnered with the UK’s major mobile phone operators to provide free data for disadvantaged children to get online, as well as 4G wireless routers. I pay tribute to Three, EE, Tesco Mobile, SMARTY, Sky Mobile, Virgin Mobile, O2, Vodafone, BT Mobile and Lycamobile for working with us on this service-.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con) [V]
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the public health risk of allowing schools, particularly covid-secure primary schools, to reopen is modest, particularly when set against the three quarters of covid-symptomatic people who are currently not self-isolating, with all the risk that that brings to public health?
Nick Gibb
My right hon. Friend raises an important point. He will know, given his background, that what matters is all of us obeying the rules that are set out very clearly and how, as a nation, we can manage the reduction in the transmission of this very deadly virus. It is beholden on all of us to obey those rules. The more we do that, the quicker we can reduce infection in our society and move out of the lockdown position.
Special Educational Needs: Wiltshire
Andrew Murrison Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
Society can be judged by the quality of the provision it makes for its most vulnerable members. I therefore welcome this opportunity to raise the situation of vulnerable people in my constituency, particularly those who have special educational needs.
Last week, the consultation ended on Wiltshire Council’s plans for a dramatic change to the provision for children with SEN in the county, and I would like to begin by highly commending Wiltshire Council for prioritising special needs and for being prepared to pledge serious money—£20 million—on a root-and-branch upgrade to provision for children who have complex and severe learning and physical disabilities. That does Wiltshire Council a great deal of credit, and I pay tribute to the councillors and officials involved in trying to make things better for some of my most vulnerable constituents.
However, the edge was taken off that for me when I was summoned at the end of last year to hear precisely what the council was planning to do with the money it wants to spend. I wish to take some time this evening discussing that and impressing upon the Minister how important it is that the council thinks again. Survey data shows just how unpopular the council’s approach is, closing, as it does, two well-loved schools that are at the very heart of their communities in order to create a very big one in a relatively remote location. I hope the local authority will listen to concerns expressed and adopt a different model for my most vulnerable young constituents that retains at least one of the threatened schools.
I want the Minister to help, because the Government have already been quite helpful: they have helped with £350 million in new funding for SEN announced in December; they have helped through the dedicated schools grant, with an 11% uplift in real terms for high needs between 2014-15 and 2019-20; and they have helped through the Children and Families Act 2014.
A key feature of that legislation was the SEN “local offer” that local authorities are now required to make. The offer has to be developed in partnership with the children and young people involved, their families and the relevant professionals. The attached code of practice is clear: it expects the local offer, from birth to age 25, to be developed and revised over time through regular review and consultation. Indeed, that collaborative, consultative approach runs through the legislation like a vein through granite. It is mandated; it is not an optional extra; it does not mean the local authority making up its mind and presenting users with faits accomplis. It suggests a collaborative, consultative approach that does not waste public money on working up a case that is so clearly contrary to the wishes of its intended beneficiaries.
Wiltshire Council has for some time wanted to close smaller special schools. We got wind of a warming-up exercise last year, when a member of the council made some adverse remarks about the inadequacy of hoists at Larkrise School in Trowbridge—claims that were incorrect and had to be retracted. It all runs contrary to the approach encouraged by the 2014 Act and its associated code of practice. Wiltshire Council’s vision for special education in Wiltshire is in many ways an exemplary document—it says all the right things—but at its heart it would close two schools, one in my constituency and one in that of my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan): Larkrise in Trowbridge and St Nicholas in Chippenham.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing this issue forward. As Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, he will know only too well the experiences we have had in Northern Ireland in relation to special needs education. The increasing demands on special needs education are exceptional. In England, some 1.3 million children are in special needs education and needing it. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need sweeping reform of the support available to pupils and schools to ensure, as he, I and everyone in the House would agree, that a pupil is not prevented from reaching their potential because of a lack of support services available in their postcode? What he needs in Wiltshire, we also need in Northern Ireland.
Dr Murrison
I of course agree with the hon. Gentleman. I was once a governor at a special school, before I was elected. If I reflect on the provision then and the provision now, I am quite clear that matters have improved, but that does not mean to say that we should be complacent. What the hon. Gentleman said is correct: we need to ensure that every child has the ability to reach his or her potential. That is as true of a mainstream child who is going to become a doctor or a lawyer—or even a politician—as it is for a child at a special needs school whose horizons, in a classic sense, are necessarily going to be rather more limited. They are equally important and their potential needs to be maximised.
The proposition before the council is that it closes two schools and builds a big school on the site of a third one. That would be a very big school by SEN standards, and many of us have concerns about that, because this particular subset of the school population undoubtedly benefits from a provision that is more intimate than perhaps would be necessary for their mainstream compatriots. That would necessarily not be the case were this big school to be created in place of the ones it would replace. The council refers to the big school as a centre of excellence, but my contention is that we already have a centre of excellence in my constituency—it is called Larkrise School.
The claim is made that Larkrise is bursting at the seams and that its facilities and equipment are insufficient, but there is more to a school than bricks and mortar, and there is more to a special school than hoists. The school community understands that, which is why it is so opposed to the local authority’s prescription. It is clear that, being strapped for cash, the council has to balance the books. Rightly, it worries about the financial deficits that have been projected for each of the special educational needs schools, but deficits are projected at several mainstream schools, too, and nobody is suggesting that the solution is to close them.
The county’s financial position is not helped by its having to place 300 special educational needs pupils outside Wiltshire because of the long-standing insufficiency of in-county provision. Those of us who represent seats in Wiltshire will be well used to people attending our advice surgeries to discuss that. The council wants to remedy this out-of-county placement situation by creating a new school with 350 places serving the north of the county. Although the way that the numbers are presented in the consultation documents makes comparison very difficult, 350 places seems inadequate to cope with the planned closures, the out-of-county placements and the growth that is projected given local population increases, housing demand, and the recently announced moves of the residue of the British Army in Germany largely to Wiltshire and the need to accommodate them. Even by its own arithmetic, the council appears to be set on under-provision. That means that out-of-county provision is bound to continue, that projected spend on the new school will be greatly exceeded, or that the new school will very quickly become overcrowded, or, more likely, a combination of all three.
The plans anticipate no sixth form. Instead reliance will be placed on the county’s further education college, Wiltshire College, for 16 to 19 provision, together with a vaguely defined private provision. No further details are given. For example, we do not know how many days a week pupils aged 16 to 19 will have.
All this is of great concern as SEN pupils across the UK have been let down historically in our system in the transition from school to adulthood—from school to life as supported young people in the community. Provision for 16 to 19 is absolutely crucial in this transition. Wiltshire Council’s consultation document asserts that the new centre of excellence will be able to provide what is called
“outreach capacity to support mainstream schools.”
It is not clear what is meant by that. On the face of it, there is a risk that resource will be diverted from the severe and profound to the milder end of the SEN spectrum. That is surely not what is intended. If it is, it needs to be stated in plain terms. The perception is not helped by the confusing terminology used in the text and the apparent misunderstanding of which schools currently offer what, in what is admittedly a complex and overlapping needs mix. Response to the consultation has rightly honed in on that.
Last month, I took part in a march in Trowbridge in support of the threatened schools. Predictably, there were children, parents and teachers, but what struck me was the number of ordinary citizens with no direct link to the school. The orthodoxy is that society wants people with disabilities of the kind that special schools deal with to be hidden away. The orthodoxy is that society is embarrassed by them and that they make it feel uncomfortable. Well, that may be the orthodoxy but it is not true in Trowbridge. Larkrise has a very special ethos. It does not believe in the hiding away of kids with the most profound difficulties. Its students are part of the local scene, out and about in the community. Nobody gawps at them, looks away or crosses the road, because they are an accepted and expected part of the community. They are recognised, welcomed, and helped in the shops, and that does not happen by accident.
We must not hide special needs children away in remote large, impersonal facilities, miles from their homes and communities. That is the very opposite of inclusion. It is segregation. Now I know that that is not the intent of the council, but it would be the consequence of its plans as drafted. Mobility today means that, like as not, children in mainstream schools will make their adult lives away from the towns in which they grew up, but children with special educational needs are much more likely to remain. Where they are is where they will be. Larkrise understands that, which is why its staff, ably led by headteacher Phil Cook, have put so much effort into local involvement and ensuring that their children are integrated in the community. I know that a similar situation applies at St Nicholas.
It is not surprising that, in its latest report, Ofsted rated Larkrise as “good”. It is surprising that the council believes that shutting this good school in Wiltshire’s county town should be part of its plans for raising standards. That is particularly so, as the council’s own task group stated that
“it would not be appropriate to combine all three schools into one site”,
and its “School Places Strategy” document says that children are best educated at the heart of the community—absolutely.
Over the year, parents with statemented children, and now children with educational health and care plans, have been to see me in my advice surgery. Invariably, the issue is not directly about care or education, but about transport.
James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and speaking out so passionately for his constituents in Trowbridge. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) on speaking out for the parents from St Nicholas. Does my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) accept that there are a great many children with special educational needs throughout the county for whom Rowdeford would actually be a great deal more convenient than either Trowbridge or Chippenham, and that what the county is proposing—a £20 million investment to build a really state-of-the-art school—might well be welcomed by children with special educational needs across the whole of the northern county, leaving aside his own town of Trowbridge?
Dr Murrison
I am particularly grateful for my hon. Friend’s presence here today, and the presence of my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham. I join my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) in welcoming the extra money that is going into special educational needs, and I commend the council for that, but it is counterintuitive to suppose that the replacement of effectively three schools with one at Rowdeford would reduce travel times.
It has been a constant throughout my 18 years as a Member of Parliament that transport is the overwhelming preoccupation of parents with children at special needs schools. It is difficult for many of us who do not have direct contact with children with special education needs to understand how important it is. For the parents of a mainstream schoolchild, getting their child to school may be difficult, but for the parents of a child with special educational needs, it can be a preoccupation. It can be the cause of anxiety, distress and behavioural difficulties, and it can be the key focus of the parents’ day. Sometimes we forget how vital it is to ensure that the impact of travel-to-school times is minimised in order to enhance the quality of these young people’s school experience. That is why the council needs to think again about the plan to replace the three schools with one school, as it seems intuitive that that will increase the trauma that travel to school causes.
The council has made great play of getting more therapists into the proposed new school, and it is right to want to improve the level of service for children in school, but it is not clear how that will happen, since the principal difficulty with therapists right now, as I am sure my hon. Friends will agree, is a county-wide shortage of suitably trained staff. How will the council magic up physios, occupational therapists, and speech and language specialists at the new establishment when it cannot at existing schools? To what extent has it taken into account the disincentive introduced by increased travel-to-work times for them? As a rule, therapists are not wealthy people. They tend not to live in premium price market towns such as Devizes and associated villages. They do live in larger settlements such as Trowbridge and Chippenham.
Local campaigners have produced a helpful map to evidence precisely that. Wiltshire Council is rightly concerned about the number of SEN out-of-county placements and the cost, but it is not clear that the new mega-school will help. By the council’s own figures, it will be inadequate to satisfy demand. The council has not published evidence that it has consulted with other local authorities to see whether a model based on collaboration might be possible given that the administrative borders hold very little interest for a mum or dad trying to get their child to school.
In many ways, Wiltshire Council has been showing the way. It has grasped the 2014 Act imaginatively and worked on its version of the local offer, from birth to 25, all the way to placement in the community. I applaud it for that—I really do—but I also believe that it has temporarily lost its sense of direction. Its plans to close Larkrise School and for a new super-school are plain wrong. Its action and its conduct in this matter is wholly out of character. I expect the council to respond to the consultation fully and openly—
Dr Murrison
I expect the council to respond to the consultation fully and openly, and I expect it to be prepared to change course in accordance with the intent and the ethos of the 2014 legislation.
I extend an invitation to the Minister to visit Wiltshire to see the good work that has been done and to better understand the SEN vision of service users, their families, and staff. I invite him, furthermore, to visit Larkrise School—a good school, according to Ofsted—and to view the council-owned site next door on Ashton Street that is the very obvious place to spend some of the £20 million to expand provision in Wiltshire. I hope that he will apply his good offices to assist the council in matching its very good intentions with a plan that genuinely improves the lives of the vulnerable young people I have the very great privilege to represent.
School Funding
Andrew Murrison Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Justine Greening
Under the proposed formula on which we are consulting, London schools, purely because of the underlying cost pressures of running schools in London and the deprivation levels in their areas—although they have reduced, they are still comparatively high—will still receive, on average, 30% more. My hon. Friend will of course want to speak up on behalf of her community. This is about ensuring that we fund the right amount by using current data on deprivation, rather than data that are five or 10 years old.
We believe that the Department can work with schools to help them to make the best use of their resources. I want every single pound that we put into our schools system to be used efficiently to improve standards and have the maximum impact for pupils. We know that we can work with schools to ensure that they can use this record funding to make the maximum impact. Indeed, I would point to the situation in York. It has been one of the lowest funded authorities in the country, yet 92% of its schools are good or outstanding. We therefore know that we can make progress in education while making efficiencies.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I very much support what the Secretary of State is trying to do, since Wiltshire is one of the worst-funded education authorities in the country. However, will she look again at the sparsity factor, because school governors are currently crunching the figures, and some of them are saying that they worry about the viability of small schools in rural locations being undermined, which clearly will not be the intention of the Secretary of State?
Justine Greening
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, we looked at the formula to ensure that we did introduce a sparsity factor. Not all local authorities actually had a sparsity factor in their local formula, but we are now making sure that it is there for every single school. We have also introduced the lump-sum formula.
We got to the stage in developing the formula where the only way we could continue to improve it was to ask people what they thought about it, which is why the consultation is so important. It is important that we get the formula right, but I recognise that this complicated formula has to work for schools around the country that are in very different situations, which is why the debate is so important. Following the phase 1 consultation, it is right that we steadily take the time to hold a phase 2 consultation to help us to finalise a formula that can work and have real longevity.
We will work with schools to help them to improve their efficiency. We have already published a school buying strategy that sees us launching an efficiency website. We are putting in place national deals to help to ensure that schools get the best deals on things such as utilities. We are putting in place buying and digital hubs so that strong procurement teams are close to schools to give them advice when they need it. We are also setting up school business manager networks so that we work with the people who are driving efficiencies in schools to share best practice and improve performance. Over time, I believe that we really can take some steps forward on that.
We are making sure that record funding is going into our schools, we are making sure that our curriculum is stronger than ever before, and we are actually turning out young people with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful. That is not the only part of our education policy; we are also investing in apprenticeships and radically reforming technical education. We are going to make sure that this Government end up being able to say that every young person, wherever they grow up, is able to do their best and reach their full potential. I hope that, over the course of the debate, colleagues will recognise that that is the strategy that we will deliver.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Murrison Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Justine Greening
The pupil premium was introduced by the previous coalition Government and it is continuing to be supported throughout this Parliament precisely to make sure that funding gets to those children who need it most. Last week, I announced the national funding formula, which also prioritises resources going towards disadvantaged children.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
The Secretary of State will know how traumatic it is for students and teachers to get children through GCSE maths and English resits, which can often blight their post-GCSE studies. Can we have a curriculum that is vocationally based for numeracy and literacy, which would give people the skills they need for work—without having to go through this traumatic and often wasteful experience?
Justine Greening
It is important that all children leave our education system with something to show for their names, particularly in maths and English—ideally at a level congruent with their potential. We brought in the GCSE resit policy, because we think that students who achieved a D grade and were therefore pretty close to the better standard should have another go at doing so. However, the functional skills qualifications have been well received by employers and we want to look at how they can also play a role in enabling all our young people to show their accomplishments.
National Funding Formula: Schools/High Needs
Andrew Murrison Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Justine Greening
We heard terrible scaremongering and numbers from the NUT that proved to be incorrect. It said that some schools would lose 10% under this funding formula, but, as I have set out, that is absolutely not the case. I would encourage the hon. Lady, like all Members, to look at the data for her own constituency. We will be publishing a lot of data once this statement is done, as is customary, because we want to be clear. This is a big step forward for schools funding and it is important that we are clear with people about the implications for their schools. That is what we have done.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I particularly welcome the Secretary of State’s reference in her statement to sparsity and mobility. It is great news for constituencies such as mine. Does she agree that one of the most mobile pupil populations are the children of our armed forces families? How will she promote the pupil premium that we introduced in 2011 in the funding formula?
Justine Greening
The pupil premium is largely unaffected, but as my hon. Friend points out, there is now an element to ensure that the children of forces families are not disadvantaged when, as often happens, people get posted to different places and their children have to switch schools. That was one reason we were keen to handle the mobility issue carefully within the funding formula.
Term-time Holidays
Andrew Murrison Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
People in land-based employment feel frustrated by term times and holidays based in an agrarian past. Does my hon. Friend agree that communities in rural locations often have small village schools that stand to suffer disproportionately in the event of disruption in the classroom due to absences such as he has described?
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend makes a very valid point. This is about not just pupils’ education but the challenge presented to teachers as they seek to deliver catch-up lessons for pupils who have been absent. In a small school with small class sizes, that is doubly difficult for teachers.
Education Funding in London
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Robert Neill
I entirely agree with the right hon. Lady. I say to the Government that I hope that this could be reflected the formula without causing any damage to the overall principle. That is for the very good reason that because inner-London boroughs are geographically so small, and part of one single housing market and one single jobs market, people will very frequently move across them. In my constituency, one can move a quarter of a mile or half a mile down the road and be in one of two other London boroughs. London boroughs experience much more cross-border mobility than in a shire county where one could move 20 or 30 miles and still be within the same county. I would urge that that matter could fairly be taken into account.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his remarks. The right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) mentioned turbulence as a reason for funding certain schools, particularly in London. Does my hon. Friend agree that London is not the only place where turbulence is suffered, and that the pupil premium that the Government rightly introduced to allow for the fact that service families move all the time is germane to this debate and needs to be reflected in the funding formula?
Robert Neill
I supported the introduction of the pupil premium, as did my hon. Friend. It is worth stressing that although turbulence occurs in other places, it is particularly acute in London owing to the size of its population and the churn of its population as a whole, with people moving in and out of London, and people moving within London, and therefore families and children moving and London authorities having to cope with far more cross-borough placements than other areas. That issue, together with the artificial distinction I mentioned, could be sensibly incorporated into the formula to reflect the position in London.
Many other hon. Members want to speak and I do not want to deny them the opportunity, but I just want to touch on a few other matters. We have discussed the two key issues, namely the churn and mobility and the inner-outer distinction, which is out of date. There is also pressure on how the question of deprivation is measured. It is currently done by postcode, but there can be massive extremes of wealth and poverty within some London borough postcodes. That is very apparent in some places in docklands.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Andrew Murrison Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Alok Sharma
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As the Secretary of State said, Labour had 13 years to fix this and it did not. This Government are now getting that right.
I spoke this morning at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, which is much more interesting and exciting than it sounds. It greatly welcomed the business measures in the Budget, particularly the drop in corporation tax. I have to say to the shadow Chancellor, who is now back in his place, that if we drop corporation tax rates, investment will come into the country, which will allow us to raise more money. That is something that he needs to understand if he ever hopes to become Chancellor himself.
The changes to business rates are incredibly welcome to many small businesses, for which business rates constitute a large component of their fixed costs. I welcome, too, the abolition of class 2 national insurance. I hope that we are seeing a move towards a merger of national insurance and income tax. I know that this is potentially very complicated, but the dividends it will pay in terms of tax simplification will be huge, as will be the benefits for businesses.
Investment in infrastructure—many billions have been invested since 2010, and there is more to come during this Parliament—has been a hallmark of this Chancellor’s Budgets. My own constituency has benefited from significant rail investment: nearly £1 billion has been invested in Reading station, and Crossrail is coming, as is rail electrification. There has been investment in local stations as well. However, may I issue a plea to those who are looking at the Hendy report consultation? Two stations in my constituency, Theale and Green Park, are fully funded, but their development has been delayed. I hope that, as a result of the consultation, we can actually get moving so that my constituents can benefit. I welcome the work that the National Infrastructure Commission is doing in driving forward investment and infrastructure in the United Kingdom.
A few weeks ago, I was appointed the Prime Minister’s infrastructure envoy to India. I think that the experience that will be gained by us in this country, and by our companies, will be fantastic. It will not only allow us to help countries such as India with growing economies to raise finance in the London market, but enable our world-leading businesses that are involved in infrastructure to go out and assist those economies.
Finally, let me say something about Europe. I am very much in favour of a stronger, safer, better-off, reformed European Union, and I will be campaigning for us to stay in the EU. I know that we have a limited amount of time today, and I do not want to initiate a huge debate on the subject, but I will say this: if, on 24 June, we wake up and find that the British people have chosen to leave the European Union, there will be a period of uncertainty. That is the one thing with which no one can disagree. There will be uncertainty because we will not know how long it will take us to renegotiate some kind of relationship with Europe, what the cost will be, or how investors will react. I have heard Conservative Members say that investment will continue to flow in, but I do not agree. Given what is being said by foreign countries and foreign companies, I think that they will think twice, and will wait to see what our relationship with Europe looks like before investing in the United Kingdom.
Uncertainty has two impacts. Businesses hate it, which means that they stop investing, and consumers hate it, which means that they stop spending money. The effect of all that will be very bad news for our economy. Both the Office for Budget Responsibility’s book and the Red Book contain all sorts of predictions about how our GDP could be hit if we left the European Union, but, by any measure, it will go down. All the net savings that my colleagues who want us to leave the European Union say we will gain will, I think, disappear as a result of the losses that will follow a fall in GDP and a consequent hit on tax revenues. I therefore hope that all of us, not just in the House but throughout the country, will think very carefully before voting in the referendum on 23 June.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend remember the same concerns being expressed when this country was considering whether it would be wise to join the eurozone?
Alok Sharma
I have never been keen on our joining the euro. All I can say is that I think there will be a huge amount of uncertainty if we decide to leave the European Union. That is what I want to guard against, so I ask everyone to vote to remain in the EU.
I commend the Budget to the House.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I followed the remarks of the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) with a great deal of interest. Clearly, I do not agree with many of them, but I do commend her for the passion with which she prosecuted them.
This is a good Budget, and it is a good Budget for the next generation. I am the father of five children, so the next generation is important to me. I also represent a number of schools that have benefited from the pupil premium and other such changes, and a large number of service families who have been particular beneficiaries of them. I most certainly welcome the acceleration of the move towards fairer funding for schools.
However, I am ever so slightly cautious about the maths thing. I noticed that we will be consulting on whether we should have maths to the age of 18. Maths can be great, particularly vocational or lifestyle maths—the sort of maths that my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) had in mind—but it can also be demotivating and a somewhat depressing experience for children for whom maths is not their bent. I would be a little bit of cautious about making the introduction of that particular discipline compulsory to the age of 18.
I am a strong supporter of the sugar tax. The Opposition has suggested that this may be a pun-rich artifice to draw attention away from the three fiscal tests. That is grossly unfair, because the sugar tax will come to be seen as an historic tax. It is an indication that the Government are prepared to act on important public health measures when it becomes clear that voluntary measures have not succeeded.
I am very conscious of Robert Chote’s clarification of the position of the Office for Budget Responsibility on Brexit and the importance of not misrepresenting organisations such as his. However, as we have already had talk of the European Union as part of this Budget debate, I would like to weigh in with my own observation about the tampon tax. I commend the Chancellor for his imagination in finding £12 million from this tax to spend on relevant women’s charities, but it is a great pity when a country such as ours has to tiptoe around a requirement instituted by the European Union. Where on earth is the sovereignty in a state that cannot determine even the tax paid by its citizens on tampons?
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury will be undertaking a drive for efficiency and value for money. In so doing, I hope that he pays attention to Lord Carter’s review of efficiency in hospitals, which was published last month. It is a marvellous piece of work that draws attention to the unwarranted variation across our national health service that is costing somewhere in the region of £5 billion a year. The concept of a model hospital and metrics such as the adjusted treatment cost and the weighted activity unit are absolutely necessary if we are to make what is an efficient service even more efficient, and bring our healthcare outcomes up to the level of the very best in Europe, and not, as is so often the case, around about the level of the worst.
Simon Stevens’ £22 billion funding gap seems unbridgeable without measures of the sort that has been presented by Lord Carter of Coles. Part of the answer is right-sizing the national health service estate, and we will increasingly have to get to grips with the need to regionalise our acute sector and secondary care hospitals. That will involve some difficult political decisions, but we must not baulk at them if we are to drive up healthcare outcomes.
Yesterday, I was called a health fascist by a colleague for my views on the sugar tax and on taxing tobacco. I make absolutely no apologies if indeed that is the case. I am particularly exercised about tobacco. Smoking is the captain of the men of death in this country. It kills 100,000 people a year, far more than obesity, alcohol and illicit drugs put together. It causes death before normal retirement age in 50% of those it kills. It causes 20 times as many smokers as die to have smoking-attributable diseases and disability. If we are serious about public health, we have to be serious about smoking, and although rates have fallen in recent years, they appear to have reached a plateau, and we need to drive them down much more and much more rapidly.
There is no safe threshold for smoking. Unlike many substances which we might like to control—I am thinking particularly of alcohol—there is no safe threshold. It is surprising, maybe, that this product is available for sale at all. Half of all health inequality between social classes 1 and 5 is thanks to cigarettes. Poorer people consume more, draw on their cigarettes harder, use higher tar products and leave shorter stubs. Their smoking is worse not only in quantitative terms, but in qualitative terms.
Bravo to the Chancellor for listening to Action on Smoking and Health. Well done for raising the duty by 2%. I would like to see it higher. Well done for the innovative minimum excise duty tax to head off trading down. In all, it is a good Budget—a good Budget for the next generation.