Greater Manchester Spatial Framework

Debate between Andrew Percy and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Percy]

I served for 10 years as a local councillor, and I cannot pretend that agreeing our joint local plans or strategic planning policies necessarily excited the electorate or was the talk of the Dog and Duck on a weekend, but the public are certainly interested in the delivery of more homes, industrial development and all the rest of it. This process is managed locally, not by central Government, so the hon. Lady will need to speak to her local authorities about how they have advertised and consulted the public; it is not a matter for me to determine.

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Andrew Percy]

I have literally five minutes, but I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman as long as he is very quick.

[Andy Burnham]

One of the problems that our constituents will have with this plan is about how the road network will cope, because it feels like it is already at saturation point. The north-west of England desperately needs significant investment in rail infrastructure. Does the Minister for the northern powerhouse agree that high-quality west-east rail across the north of England is a higher investment priority than Crossrail 2 in London?

[Andrew Percy]

I am not going to get into the divisive argument about whether what happens in London should happen elsewhere. This country should be capable of delivering proper rail networks for both London and the north of England.

All parties have a responsibility for the decades of under-investment in the north of England, particularly in east-west connectivity. We are putting £2.8 billion into the current franchises for improvements and £13 billion into transport improvements across the north over this Parliament. We have, of course, created Transport for the North, which will come forward next year with strategic rail investment proposals for the entire north. That is something we have never seen before, and it will have the basis and nature of what happens in London with Transport for London. The northern powerhouse rail and High Speed 3 proposals, which are being developed at the moment, are of course part of that. That work will be completed next year, and I hope that Transport for the North will come forward with strong proposals for rail investment, because infrastructure is really important.

I have only three or four minutes left, and I want to respond clearly to a couple of points that my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove made about brownfield sites. We have been clear that we are seeking to prioritise brownfield sites for development. We have reaffirmed our commitment to 90% of suitable brownfield sites having planning permission for new homes by 2020. We have taken action such as widening permitted development rights to help give new life to thousands of under-used buildings. We are ensuring that the new homes bonus continues to reward councils when long-empty homes are brought back into use. We are accelerating the disposal of surplus public sector brownfield land for development, and we have put an additional £1.2 billion into enabling starter homes to be created on brownfield sites.

Importantly, we will create a brownfield register, which will provide up-to-date, publicly available information about brownfield land that is suitable for development, so the public will be able to see what land is designated as brownfield in an area and whether it has been developed. We have also introduced permission in principle, a new route to planning permission that will give up-front certainty that the fundamental principles are acceptable before developers need to get into costly technical matters.

My hon. Friend asked whether we should have a more rigid brownfield-first policy. We must be careful, because not all brownfield sites can be developed, due to environmental and pollution concerns and all the rest of it, but we are clear that brownfield sites should be prioritised. That is why the percentage of new residential addresses—that includes conversions, some of them under the rules changes I mentioned before—created on brownfield sites was 61% last year, up from 58% in 2014-15. We are quite rightly trying to prioritise brownfield sites.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) and the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) raised infrastructure, and the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) mentioned road safety. Yesterday, we devolved some functions to Greater Manchester through statutory instrument, and one of those was road safety promotion. The combined authority and the Mayor will be able to exercise that new power.

We must match infrastructure to development—there is no doubt about that. That is why we announced in the autumn statement a £2.3 billion housing and infrastructure fund to do that. Over the last decade or so, we have all been victims of developments in our local areas that have not necessarily come with the most appropriate infrastructure, so we are absolutely clear about the issue.

In my final five or 10 seconds, I reiterate that the plan can go ahead only if it enjoys the unanimous support of every council that sits on the combined authority. It really is in the hands of local people.

Care Bill [Lords]

Debate between Andrew Percy and Andy Burnham

Tuesday 11th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I am not writing a budget at the Dispatch Box this evening. I will stand by our record of giving real-terms increases to local government. I warned at the start of this Parliament that if the effect of the Government’s promise of real-terms increases for the NHS—which have actually never materialised—was a raid on local government, that would be a short-term policy. It would mean more older people ending up in hospital and who then could not be discharged because there was not the care at home. That is exactly what is happening. It is a false economy. That is what we warned them about and they failed to listen.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Burnham]

No I will not, as the hon. Gentleman has not been here all afternoon.

The third area is the claims that the Bill will improve regulation. Let me ask a direct question: if this is about improving the quality of services, why remove from the CQC the responsibility to provide oversight of local authority commissioning? Why do that if this Bill is about improving regulation? Why leave local government free to do what they like at a local level—to commission for 15-minute visits or for staff on zero-hours contracts—when we have seen the failures at Winterbourne View and other places? Why remove that important role from the CQC?

Managing Risk in the NHS

Debate between Andrew Percy and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman way?

[Andy Burnham]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, but I hope he will respond to what he has just heard.

[Andrew Percy]

If a few more of the shadow Secretary of State’s colleagues had turned up to this debate, they would be able to respond to those points for him.

If I may take him back to his comments about the challenges in A and E, which have been severe this Christmas and winter, does he accept that one of the things that he and his party got wrong in government was to cut beds and close wards before putting in place proper intermediate care services? People in my constituency could not get into their local hospitals this year because of the beds that were cut when his party was in government.

[Andy Burnham]

The hon. Gentleman is doing what the Conservatives have been doing for quite a few weeks now, which is rewriting history. Does he recall the general chaos in A and E before 1997? Does he remember people waiting for hours on trolleys before they were seen or people spending a day in A and E departments? When we left government, 98% of trusts across the country were meeting the four-hour target. Sadly, we cannot say the same about the NHS on his Government’s watch.

What I have just given to the House was a warning of all warnings not to proceed with a reckless reorganisation at a time when the NHS was facing the biggest financial challenge in its history. Senior civil servants gave those warnings; the Government ploughed on regardless. That was a monumental mistake, combining the biggest ever financial challenge with the biggest ever reorganisation. Eyes were taken off the ball at the worst possible moment.

Sudden Adult Death Syndrome

Debate between Andrew Percy and Andy Burnham

Monday 25th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Andy Burnham]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely spot on, because we see incredible activity across all four nations of the United Kingdom in the wake of those tragedies. Communities are pulling together, raising funds and donating defibrillators to schools and sports clubs, which brings me to my main point: leadership is now needed at national level to co-ordinate that activity and to bring clarity to the whole situation so that the public know where to find a defibrillator and how to use one. I hope I can persuade the Government to work with Opposition Front Benchers on that. There is no politics involved here; this is about saving lives where we can and doing things to make human progress in this country. Other countries are more focused than we have been, and because of that they are saving more lives.

My feeling is that provision is too random at the moment—it is happening in some places and not in others—and we need clarity on policy at a national level so that we can piggyback on all those local campaigns to make progress. I do not think there is a funding issue, because communities will find the money to put these things in the right places, but we must know where they need to go.

It is crucial to understand that, with the best will in the world, the ambulance service is often unable to make a difference for the people who sadly fall in a busy shopping centre, railway station or sports ground. Why? Because they are unable to get there within the Government target time of eight minutes, which is too late. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West said, it is about that chain of survival; it is about equipping people with the knowledge and the kit at local level to start making a difference so that, when the professionals arrive, there is somebody there to save. That is what we have to do.

If we look at the statistics, 12 young people, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton said, die from sudden cardiac arrest in the UK every week. We underplay that problem. Until recently, the Department of Health NHS Choices website stated that the figure was 12 young people a year. The figure was corrected after it was pointed out to the Department, but it is important that the problem is not underestimated.

The clinching fact for why we should do more is that across the world, survival rates are very variable. According to the British Heart Foundation, in this country between 2% and 12% of people who suffer a sudden cardiac arrest survive, which is way too low. Elsewhere, in Seattle, as has been said, 50% of people survive, and in Japan, a public access campaign for AEDs has resulted in an immediate increase in rates of survival with minimum neurological impairment for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests.

The evidence is absolutely clear, so what about policy? What did we do while we were in Government? We must be honest. I am not here to say that we did everything right, but we did something. On the back of the focus on heart services, we introduced the national defibrillator programme in the middle of the last decade. It made a modest amount of funds available to purchase defibrillators to give to local organisations. However, I think that a mistake was made. As the programme was wound down, responsibility was passed to ambulance services.

There are two ways of looking at that. On the one hand, ambulance services have been doing brilliant work ever since as they have taken on the responsibility to improve communities’ capacity to respond. It is fantastic to see representatives of the ambulance service here today. I have certainly been impressed by what I have seen in the north-west. The team there is working with communities across the region to build their capacity to respond. The ambulance service has done good work, but national focus on the issue was lost when responsibility was passed down to the ambulance services, and we must acknowledge that.

That brings me to the crux of what I wanted to say, particularly to the Minister. I think that, between us, we can develop a set of simple policy calls that could make a difference and save lives. I will identify three in particular. As hon. Members have said, there is a compelling case for putting emergency life skills on the national curriculum and for making time available, perhaps as part of the personal, social, health and economic education component, to provide training for all young people. No young person should leave school without knowing how to provide CPR and use a defibrillator, because it is not all about defibrillators or CPR—the two together are important. If we train young people in those skills, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw said, they will go home and talk to others about them.

I have seen what the British Heart Foundation does in schools. The courses that it delivers for young children are outstanding. It would be easy to add such courses to the national curriculum. My children tell me all the things that they are doing in school: the things that they are learning to make in home economics, and the kings and queens that they know about. It is odd that we do not ensure that every young person in this country leaves school at 16 knowing how to save a life. What more basic skill could we give them during their school years?

[Andrew Percy]

On the right hon. Gentleman’s attack on kings and queens, as a former history teacher, I attach importance to learning about them. An easy way to do what he suggests without crowding the curriculum too much would be simply to require all PE teachers to have the training, so that they can disseminate it as part of PE, which is required all the way through school. It would be a simple way to teach it without crowding the curriculum.

National Health Service

Debate between Andrew Percy and Andy Burnham

Monday 16th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

The Bill that the Government brought through is an attack on the N in the NHS; that is what it was designed to do. It was designed to break national standards; to break national pay; to break waiting time standards; and to allow primary care trusts to introduce random rationing across the system. That was the intention of the Bill that they brought through; they wanted an unfettered market in the health service, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why we are saying that we will repeal this Act and restore the N in NHS at the earliest opportunity.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

On 28 June, in response to misinformation put out by Labour councillors, the medical director of my local hospital trust, a doctor of 30 years, wrote an article in my local paper under the headline “NHS faces greatest challenge”. She talked about staff costs, treatment costs and the 2008 Nicholson challenge. She said that the trust’s problems date “back to 2008”, and she continued:

“Having been a doctor for nearly 30 years, the 2008 Nicholson challenge is, by far, the greatest challenge the NHS has ever faced”.

What should we believe: the picture being presented by the right hon. Gentleman or this article?

[Andy Burnham]

The hon. Gentleman is making my point; if he was listening to what I said at the start of my speech, he would have heard me say clearly that the £20 billion Nicholson challenge, which I set, was always going to be a mountain to climb for the NHS. Let us be clear that it was. What was unforgiveable was combining that Nicholson challenge with the biggest ever top-down reorganisation in history, when the whole thing was turned upside down, managers were being moved or made redundant and nobody was in charge of the money. That was what was so wrong, and that is what the hon. Gentleman should not be defending if he is defending staff in the NHS.

The third area where we need action from Ministers is on protection for staff. The Deputy Prime Minister said recently:

“There is going to be no regional pay system. That is not going to happen.”

But we heard yesterday that a breakaway group of 19 NHS trusts in the south-west has joined together to drive through regional pay, in open defiance of the Deputy Prime Minister. They are looking at changes to force staff to take a pay cut of 5%; to end overtime payments for working nights, weekends and bank holidays; to reduce holiday time; and to introduce longer shifts. We even hear that if staff will not accept this, they are going to be made redundant and re-employed on the new terms. So let us ask the Secretary of State and the Minister to answer this today: do the Government support regional pay in the NHS and the other moves planned by trusts in the south-west? If they do not, will they today send a clear message to NHS staff in the south-west that they are prepared to overrule NHS managers?

Fourthly, I shall deal with reconfigurations. The House will recall the promise of a moratorium on changes to hospitals and the Prime Minister’s threat of a “bare-knuckle fight” to resist closure plans. In 2010, the Secretary of State set out four tests that all proposed reconfigurations had to pass. They related to support from general practitioners, strengthened public and patient engagement, clear clinical evidence and support for patient choice. He said:

“Without all those elements, reconfigurations cannot proceed.”

So let me ask the Minister: does he think that the A and E units closing at Ealing, Hammersmith, Charing Cross and Central Middlesex pass that test? How about St Helier, King George, Newark and Rugby? Is it not clear to everyone that the Prime Minister’s bare-knuckle fight never materialised? Is it not also clear that no one told the Foreign Secretary, the Work and Pensions Secretary or even the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), who is responsible for care and older people and who has launched a campaign against his own Department? What clearer sign could there be of the chaos in the Department of Health and of the chaos engulfing the NHS? Will the Secretary of State now take action to stop reconfigurations on the grounds of cost alone?

That brings me to my fifth and final area for action, which is NHS spending. The coalition agreement said:

“We will guarantee that health spending increases in real terms in each year of the Parliament.”

That is health spending, not the health allocation. Official Government figures show that actual spending has fallen for two years running and the underspend has been clawed back by the Treasury. Of all the promises the coalition has broken, people will surely find that one the hardest to understand given that the Prime Minister appeared on every billboard in the land, on practically every street in the land, promising to do the opposite just two years ago.

Education Bill

Debate between Andrew Percy and Andy Burnham

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. I was struck yesterday by the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), who feels that his report, which was commissioned by the Prime Minister, will be undermined if cuts on such a scale proceed, because the delivery system for early intervention will simply no longer be in place in constituencies throughout the country. Let us remember that this Prime Minister accused the former Prime Minister of trying to scare people about Sure Start. This Prime Minister said that he would build on Sure Start, but that is yet another broken promise.

Let me turn to how the Bill takes power from the profession. The Education Secretary says that he wants to put teachers in the driving seat, but again we see a widening gap between rhetoric and reality. There has been a 10% drop in applications for teacher training this year, which does not say much for his powers of recruitment. The drop has been blamed on his decision not to allow the Training and Development Agency for Schools to run its usual advertising and marketing campaigns to attract people to the profession. With the Bill’s abolition of the TDA, teacher training places cut by 14% and most bursaries scrapped, surely we can expect to see teacher shortages in a few years’ time.

The Bill restricts teachers’ freedoms, undermines the status of their profession, reduces their entitlement to ongoing professional development and fails to protect the rights of support staff. Ongoing development is a hugely important issue for many teachers. The TDA provided a vehicle for identifying the training needs of the profession, and its abolition raises concerns about the future of teacher training and professional development.

The think-tank million+ says that

“the TDA avoided teacher training being the subject of political interference”,

and that

“given the current ministerial view”,

there is a

“real danger that teaching as a profession is being downgraded.”

Those are its words; that is what million+ says.

[Andrew Percy]

Will the shadow Secretary of State give way?

School Sports Funding

Debate between Andrew Percy and Andy Burnham

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

If the hon. Gentleman spoke to those school sports co-ordinators, he will have found that they are pretty hurt and pretty angry. He just nodded at that, so is it not right that I reflect some of that feeling in this House this afternoon? Is it not right that I give a voice to those 3,200 people, who cannot stand here, and put across the passion that they feel about the young people with whom they are working. [Interruption.] I am coming to a positive proposal. I feel passionately about this, but I also want a way forward and it is all about whether people are prepared to listen. We cannot get everything that we want, but I am prepared to negotiate and to compromise—I hope that the same applies to those on both sides of the House.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

rose—

[Andy Burnham]

I will give way one last time, then I will finish my remarks.

[Andrew Percy]

I certainly think that school sport partnerships have done some excellent work in my area. I have spoken to school sports co-ordinators and to head teachers and it is fair to say that head teachers and deputy head teachers have a range of views on the effectiveness of the partnerships and how valuable they have been in their area. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that if they have been doing work in the way that he has outlined, it will still be possible for those head teachers and those schools to work in partnerships to produce just the same things that have happened before?

[Andy Burnham]

I have heard what the hon. Gentleman said and his comment that the partnerships have done excellent work stands in stark contrast to the position of his Front-Bench team. He is just giving head teachers a prescription for more work and more bureaucracy; they will have to rush around on their own trying to find the coaches. The current system works, so why is the Education Secretary dismantling it?

The Government and the right hon. Gentleman have talked themselves into a mess—not for the first time. The spin just does not end. He says that school sport partnerships will be replaced by an Olympic-style school sport competition, but there are two problems with that statement. First, such a competition is no substitute for year-round sport in all schools for all children, and secondly, such a competition already exists; it is called the UK school games and it has been in place since 2006.

We are getting to the heart of the matter now: the right hon. Gentleman’s mishandling of his budget. There is now real confusion about whether this money for school sport has been cut or de-ring-fenced, as Ministers have been saying. He says that we should give money to schools and let them decide, but yesterday his schools Minister, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), said of the Youth Sport Trust grant:

“The money saved will not be fed through the Dedicated Schools Grant”—[Official Report, 29 November 2010; Vol. 519, c. 532W.]

So which is it? Will head teachers be able to find this money or not? Will it be in their budgets? Is it not the case that schools will be asked to pay for sport themselves, as well as for many other things that they currently get for free? Is this not a false economy, as those services can often be provided more cheaply through the economies of scale that come from providing a service across a whole area with the expert support of a national body such as the Youth Sport Trust?

All this will not take us out of the impasse, which brings me to my final point, which is a genuine suggestion about how to take things forward. As in any sporting dispute, we need an independent referee. I suggest that in this case we bring in thousands of them. Surely the best way to resolve this argument is to ask the head teachers of this country about the effectiveness of school sport partnerships. A simple question could be put to them in a survey: would they prefer a funding package to be found to maintain the SSP infrastructure or would they prefer to have each to their own and the freedom to decide? I can tell the Secretary of State today that I have received an offer from a reputable firm to do a survey for free, which I shall share with him. I urge him to take that offer forward, as long as he consults the Opposition on the questions that would be asked. I believe that he would find it helpful as it might shed new light on the misplaced suspicion that lies at the heart of his policy pronouncements. He seems to distrust any system of collective or central support for schools. He nods at that, and I am disappointed about that because there is an ideological problem here.

The drift of the right hon. Gentleman’s policy is towards a more atomised school system, where schools become walled gardens and do their own thing, competing fiercely, and where collaboration is frowned upon. That vision conflicts with the idea of providing excellence and specialist provision to all children, as it becomes more costly and complicated when schools go it alone. Sport needs central organisation, particularly competitive league and cup competitions, and there are also only so many qualified coaches. To give children access to the best, it is easier to work together across a defined area and to share resources. Far from being bureaucratic, it reduces the bureaucracy on schools. If they were left to do it all themselves, more time would be spent on it and the quality would not be as good.

Today, I can tell the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) that I have given the Secretary of State a solution that fits the White Paper that the Secretary of State published last week. Let the heads decide—it is a simple proposal.

In conclusion, we have built up a school sports system in this country that works. Thousands of people have built it up with blood, sweat and tears. They have worked hard at it because they believe passionately in what they do. The Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) laughs at that and in doing so he denigrates their commitment. I do not often implore anyone to do anything, but I am imploring the Secretary of State today to keep the basic school sport partnership structure in place. When I think of all the positive energy that will dissipate if they are broken down, it makes me want to weep.

My own life has told me that good school sport must be a right for every single child in this country. It raises academic standards, builds strong schools with a sense of identity and togetherness and builds well-rounded children. For some young people—perhaps the less academically minded in the class—the day they go to school with their boots in their bag is the day they have a spring in their step and a bit of hope in their heart. Let us not take that away from them. I commend the motion to the House.

Funding and Schools Reform

Debate between Andrew Percy and Andy Burnham

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I must say, the hon. Gentleman’s literacy was very impressive there when he read the Whips’ handout. He almost read it word for word, and he did not have any help.

The hon. Gentleman cannot deny the figures that I have just read out, which show a transformation in our secondary schools. Half of schools were not achieving the basic benchmark in 1997, but today it is fewer than one in 12. Just think how many thousands of kids have hope of a better life because of that transformation in our schools, particularly in our most deprived communities.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I will tell the right hon. Gentleman what the reality was in some of the most deprived schools, because I was teaching in some of them. Children were forced on to courses that they did not want to be on simply to shove up standards, and the gap between the best and worst-performing schools widened over Labour’s time in office. The reality is that in the area in which I used to teach, children are less likely to progress socially than those from schools elsewhere. Statistics and figures are one thing; the reality is something very different.

[Andy Burnham]

The reality is very different. Is the hon. Gentleman really saying that head teachers and teachers in primary schools in his constituency would say that there has been no change in primary schools in the past 10 years? Is he really saying that secondary schools have not improved? The figures tell us what has happened. Am I saying, “It’s all perfect”? No, I am not, because more needs to be done. We turned failing schools into good schools and I am very proud of what we as a Government achieved for some of the most deprived children in our country.

It is encouraging that the right hon. Gentleman told the national children and adult services conference recently that he will set new minimum standards for schools—we welcome that continuation of Labour’s successful national challenge programme— but he is about to take huge risks with all the progress that we made. One area on which we should both agree is that excellent teaching is the surest route to the highest standards.

It was with some surprise that I heard the Secretary of State confirm to the House on Monday that his free schools will be able to use public money to hire whomsoever they like to teach, with no teaching qualification requirement. When he took up the job, he said that teachers should have a good 2:1 degree. He should be consistent in this important area: investing in our teacher work force is of fundamental importance to good school standards.