Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am not sure, but I will certainly undertake to get back to the right hon. Gentleman. He raises a very important point, and schools should be vigilant about it.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

5. How many children went missing from local authority care in each of the last three years.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

The number of children reported to the Department as missing from care for more than 24 hours was 800 in 2010, 920 in 2011 and 1,490 in 2012. However, there are significant differences in data collected by the police and local authorities, which need to be addressed. The expert group on data has now made recommendations, and we will announce our actions shortly.

[Andrew Selous]

Those are large and significant numbers. Can we try to get to a situation in which at least child victims of trafficking are treated no worse than adult victims, as surely they deserve no less?

[Mr Timpson]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s analysis and about the importance of ensuring that all children, particularly those who have been trafficked who are probably the most vulnerable of all, have the protection they need within the care system. Our forthcoming revised statutory guidance on children who go missing from home or care will include specific advice on how to safeguard trafficked children. We are asking the Refugee Council together with the Children’s Society to carry out a review of the practical care arrangements for children in care who may have been trafficked, to identify the gaps in the system and to make sure that good practice is spread as widely as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

For far too long the skills system and employment system have not interacted well and have not spoken to each other. I probably spend more time with the employment Minister, the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), than with any other Minister outside my Department. I had two meetings with him on Tuesday and will have three meetings with him today, so we are working extremely hard to try to bring to an end the inconsistencies that the hon. Lady rightly highlights and that have been there for far too long.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Central Bedfordshire college also lost out in all its attempts to get capital funding under the previous Government. Does the Minister have any words of encouragement for the college? Its buildings are old and need to be renewed.

[Matthew Hancock]

My hon. Friend is a passionate advocate for Central Bedfordshire college. I am glad to say that the increased funding provided in the autumn statement means that those bids that narrowly missed out, such as that of Central Bedfordshire college, have a very good chance of proceeding at the next stage, not least because that college’s bid was very good value for money, though it fell down on some technical aspects. We are looking very closely at how we can proceed with the new funds available.

Central Bedfordshire College

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Central Bedfordshire college is a vital institution in the constituency I am proud to represent. It has a presence in all three of the towns in my constituency—Dunstable, Leighton Buzzard and Houghton Regis. I am a strong supporter of the vital work of colleges, as they provide the skills that people need to make Britain a high value-added economy. It has an excellent new principal in Ali Hadawi, who was recently appointed a Commander of the British Empire and who turned his last college into a beacon college. I have every confidence he will do the same for Central Bedfordshire college.

The college was founded in 1961 as Dunstable college, originally with a focus on the printing trade, and most of the buildings are the original 50-year-old buildings. C and F blocks, for example, were built in 1959 and 1960. The remaining buildings were built in 1968, with the newest built in 1973, so my hon. Friend the Minister can see that they are now quite dated.

Central Bedfordshire college was one of 70 colleges that lost out under the old Learning and Skills Council’s Building Colleges for the Future capital programme. The college initially put in a £5 million proposal, but was told that that was not big enough and that it should go back and produce something grander—with an atrium, I believe. The college was encouraged to work up a more expensive proposal. It then put in a £40 million proposal, but unfortunately no one at the Learning and Skills Council was totting up the total cost of all the bids and the capital programme collapsed. Central Bedfordshire college was one of 70 colleges not to receive any capital grant. Those 70 colleges then went through a bidding process for the remaining amount of money available, and 13 were successful. I believe that, for some reason, all of them were in Labour constituencies, including a late application from Hartlepool college. This took place under the previous Government.

There were then 57 colleges left with—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I am terribly sorry about that. It is a technicality, and it is perhaps something that the Procedure Committee could look into, at its own initiative.

[Andrew Selous]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

As I was saying, there were then 57 colleges left, of which 45 were given financial assistance to prop up their balance sheets. That left 12 colleges out of the original 70 without any assistance for capital funding under the old Learning and Skills Council regime. I believe that Central Bedfordshire college is one of the very few colleges not to have received any capital funding under the three enhanced renewal grant capital funding rounds that the new Government have introduced.

I would like to know how many colleges benefiting from the Learning and Skills Council capital grant, which was allocated under the previous Government, have received further capital funding under the enhanced renewal grant funding process. I would also be interested to know how many colleges had their ERG applications approved when they were not able to meet the match funding requirement. Central Bedfordshire college was able to meet that requirement in each of the three ERG application rounds that it put in for.

To recap, Central Bedfordshire college has put in three ERG bids. The first was in July 2010, when it requested a £1 million contribution from the Skills Funding Agency to match a £3 million contribution from the college itself. That bid was unsuccessful. The second bid, in November 2011, involved the college requesting a £2 million contribution from the SFA to match a £4 million contribution from the college. Most recently, in September 2012, the college requested £3 million from the SFA to match a £6 million contribution from the college.

The college had been led to believe that its bid would be prioritised, as it had not received even a pound in capital funding from those earlier rounds. It has had no written feedback on the bid process, although it has been told that it can attend a surgery at the SFA regional office. There is some puzzlement among the people running the college as to how all this is worked out. If the process is not helping the neediest colleges, perhaps it needs to be looked at again.

I want to go into more detail about the feedback that has been received from the SFA on why the third bid was unsuccessful. Will the Minister tell me whether the due diligence exercise that is going to take place in relation to the colleges whose bids were successful could be applied to Central Bedfordshire college, to see whether it could be awarded a few more points? I understand that the bid failed by just one point, and if we could look again to see whether any additional points could be awarded, there might be a happier outcome. I understand that the college’s education case scored the highest number of points in the whole of the eastern region, and the third highest in the whole country. I am sure the Minister would agree that the education bid is at the heart of what further education colleges should be about. I wonder whether that part of the bid should have slightly more weighting than some of the more technical considerations relating to the building proposals.

As I have said, this is the third enhanced renewal grant that the college has not been successful in securing. It has been acknowledged by officials in the Skills Funding Agency that the college is one of the neediest, if not the neediest, college in the country. In May this year, I was present when the outgoing SFA chief executive, Geoff Russell, visited Central Bedfordshire college, and he commented that the college did not need just an ERG; he would have liked to have seen a complete rebuild. Speaking as the local MP, I believe that the learners in Central Bedfordshire college deserve just as much support for creating a conducive learning environment as other students in other colleges throughout the country.

If the process is not helping the neediest colleges, we should have a look at how that process runs. I shall discuss four specific technical areas where we think the bid has lost out. The SFA commented that the refurbishment element had not been properly environmentally assessed. The primary objective of the college’s bid was to construct a new centre for hair, beauty, holistic therapies and hospitality and catering, with a focus on green technology in the curriculum and skills development. In order to achieve the new build in the optimum campus location, the college had to relocate other curriculum elements, with a small amount of associated refurbishment. The college understands that it was marked down because that latter refurbishment element did not have a full environmental assessment—unlike the main new build. That refurbishment element represented only 3.3% of the total project budget. It is simply an enabling element for the project itself, and the overall project has been environmentally assessed. The college feels unhappy about that aspect of its bid’s assessment.

The second aspect of the bid was the savings in estate costs over a 20-year period. The college was advised that other bids demonstrated larger savings over the project life of 20 years. The college, however, has come in the top quarter for national estates cost efficiency, as demonstrated by the SFA’s own data collection, which I understand is known as “e-Mandate”. That makes it hard for the college to demonstrate a huge decrease in building costs related to the bid, because it starts from such an efficient base. As a result, its savings are likely to be at a lower margin. That efficiency has been achieved by the college being very prudent and managing its projects from within its own estates department, for example. Again, the college feels that this rather crude assessment fails to take into account the efficiency point that it has already reached, even for a 50-year-old building, so it believes that it has been unfairly penalised for doing the right thing, as it were.

The third technical aspect on which the bid was marked down related to the costs of the proposed project build against the SFA’s own cost plan. The feedback stated that the bid was 10% adrift from the SFA’s cost plan norms. In simple terms, the bid comprised the following three parts. First, there is the demolition of the old F block, dating back to 1959, as I told the Minister at the start of my speech. That F block was going to be replaced with a new build centre of excellence for green catering and for hair, beauty and holistic therapies. That did fall within the SFA’s cost norms. Secondly, there is the partial demolition of the B block and the construction of a new media studies centre, together with associated works, which also fell within the SFA cost norms.

It was the third aspect that I think caused the college problems: the creation of a new surface-level car park and access road from the public highway. The project costs are required to conform to the appropriate SFA cost model for the type of college establishment. The first two elements of the bid, the demolition of the F block and the partial demolition of the B block, accorded with the SFA’s criteria. It was the third element, the car park, that did not accord with its indicative costs and is being regarded as abnormal.

The college has commented that it is required to dispose of a portion of its estate in order to release capital to contribute to the cost of the project. It has also said that the land to be disposed of currently houses a significant proportion of its car-parking provision, and that because it is not practicable for it to operate effectively without replacing that lost parking provision, it must be replaced elsewhere on the campus. The replacement of the car park and the provision of a new access road are a fundamental component of any redevelopment scheme that relies on capital release from the sale of land to the rear of the college to enable the college to make its substantial contribution to the overall project costs.

It was recognised at an early stage in the preparation of the stage C cost plan that the creation of the new car park would show the project costs at an unacceptable level of variance to the cost model, and for that reason two cost model comparisons were prepared and included. The first compared project costs associated with the B and F block works and their associated external works, and the second compared all project costs, including the creation of a new car park and access road.

The fourth element was health and safety, on which the bid was marked down. The college has said to me that the reason a significant improvement was not shown was that it had already taken care of that aspect of the bid. It had worked very hard, with its own money, to deal with all the health and safety issues that might have arisen, and not a great deal of further progress could have been made.

I hope that I have helped the Minister by giving him some feedback from the college. I hope that I have managed to explain why it feels aggrieved. In particular, I hope that I have managed to explain why the car park is necessary to the release of that significant extra contribution. The Minister has heard something of a litany of complaints, but I want to end on a positive note by telling him about the excellent things that the college is doing, notwithstanding the difficulties which I have outlined and which I hope he will be able to address when he responds.

Central Bedfordshire college is the proud sponsor of the new Central Bedfordshire university technical college, which is one of only two UTCs in the country that opened in September this year. It will have 600 students, and I am immensely proud that the only UTC in the east of England is in my constituency. It is a fantastic innovation, and it is exactly what the country needs to drive it towards a prosperous future.

Under construction in another location is the Incuba centre, a £5 million facility to help new businesses to develop Dunstable with a focus on the green economy. That is very welcome. It will help to re-energise the industrial base in Dunstable and Houghton Regis, and also the wider economy. Central Bedfordshire college is at the heart of that.

More recently, the college bought a former Volkswagen garage in the Luton road in Dunstable which it is turning into the most fantastic motor vehicle training facility. A real, live, state-of-the-art garage facility, in a building where a commercial garage was operating only a few months ago, will enable my constituents and people from the wider area to train to become motor mechanics in excellent conditions.

I know that the Minister is particularly interested in the college’s work with local employers. Again, it is doing all the things that he is asking colleges to do. It has, for instance, worked very closely with the Morrisons supermarket. I was proud to attend an event hosted jointly by the college and Morrisons. The college had provided up to 100 local unemployed people with a specific training course over the summer. If they completed it, they would be guaranteed a job interview at the new Morrisons branch that was opening in Houghton Regis. That initiative has been hugely successful. It has been excellent for the local unemployed people and excellent for the supermarket, which has really appreciated it. The college has done a fantastic thing.

The college is also working with other employers, including BAE Systems and Liebherr, engaging with them to develop an employer-tailored curriculum. It is working with Center Parcs, too, another new major provider of employment in central Bedfordshire, and with the developer of the new housing development north of Houghton Regis, which will require lots of construction skills.

It is a bugbear of mine that when there are major construction projects, the jobs often do not go to local people. It upsets me when people come in from miles around to take the jobs. Unemployed construction workers come to see me at my surgery. I am determined, as is Central Bedfordshire college, that many of the jobs created in the building of thousands of new houses to the north of Houghton Regis to help pay for the Dunstable northern bypass will be taken by local people. That is very important. CBC is at the forefront of providing the skills for the construction companies contracted to carry out that work.

The college also works with London Luton airport in delivering cabin crew and baggage-handling skills. It is working with Luton Town football club and the Bedfordshire football association to deliver coaching and football qualifications. It is also working with our local train company, First Capital Connect.

I hope the Minister will therefore see that the college has heard the Government’s message and is mustard-keen to provide the skills our local economy needs to help UK plc compete in the global race in which we are engaged. We just need a little bit of help with the capital funding. I think we have had a bit of a rough deal for a while now, but I know the Minister is a fair man, and I know he will look seriously into these issues. I look forward to hearing what he has to say.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Skills (Matthew Hancock)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing this debate, which is so important for Central Bedfordshire college—for everybody who works at it and, most importantly, everybody who studies at it. I know that he raised this issue with my predecessor, and he has also raised it with me a number of times. He is a powerful advocate of the need for improvements.

I also congratulate the college on its success in opening the new university technical college. UTCs are a crucial part of ensuring we have the skills we need in the years and decades ahead. I also commend the college on the work it is doing with local businesses to provide the skills employers need, and to ensure we make good any skills shortages. Colleges across the country are increasingly working with local employers and businesses to ensure we provide the skills they need. The driving mission behind the work we are doing and behind my job is to ensure that local people have the skills they need for the jobs that are available, such as in the construction industry, as my hon. Friend mentioned.

For decades, colleges were starved of the funding for capital renewal that both schools and universities enjoyed. I know that from personal experience because I studied at a further education college—West Cheshire college—in the mid-1990s. Therefore, when the Learning and Skills Council offered significant capital grants, the colleges jumped at the opportunity. My hon. Friend set out the history of what happened. Bids were encouraged, and were encouraged to grow, and then promises were made without the funding to match them. Hugely expensive projects with poor cost control delivered very poor value for money in some of the projects that were completed. They ran out of money, and building projects were stopped, sometimes after huge expense on plans and with diggers in the ground. In that context, and in the context of the wider catastrophe that was the public finances, we are now trying to rebuild. I say that to give the background before getting on to the specifics of the case.

We have been working hard to ensure that lessons are learned from that period. One of those lessons, inevitably, is that we should have a firm and unbending eye on value for money, the physical infrastructure needs of colleges and the benefits to students that capital spending can bring. The approach is coupled with the urgency for affordability. That is the background to how the criteria for making decisions are structured.

We consult the sector on the criteria for deciding allocations. We then provide colleges with advice on the criteria, assess and moderate—and fund when an application is successful. We are happy to work with the college to develop a fundable case. I will certainly look at my hon. Friend’s point about due diligence and moderation executed on successful projects to see whether those can be applied in this case.

Since May 2010, total Government investment across the country in new colleges amounts to more than £330 million. That has enabled more than £1 billion-worth of projects. Across the whole programme, £2 of private cash have been put in for every £1 of Government cash. My hon. Friend said that that was the case with Central Bedfordshire college’s bids, too.

Let me go through some of the specifics of what has happened in the three rounds of renewal grant that have been set out so far. The first is that we have had 117 bids for college funding, which would have cost in excess of £200 million if all had been approved. I entirely understand my hon. Friend’s argument about the quality of the buildings at the college—60% of its buildings are in poor or inoperable condition. I am sad to report to him that, of the 240 general further education colleges across the country, 59 are in a worse state on this measure than Central Bedfordshire college. Although the college has a high level of need, such need, unfortunately, is replicated in some colleges across the country.

The first criterion relates to the condition of the existing estate; Central Bedfordshire college has a case, but there are other colleges with a worse rating. The second criterion is value for money, and my hon. Friend reported the concerns raised about that issue. I entirely understand his point that, having done work to ensure good value for money in respect of running costs, the college feels penalised. He will understand that value for money has to be a critical part of our assessment. I give my hon. Friend this commitment: we will work with the college to see what can be done to improve the value for money in the bid. The third criterion is the benefits that would flow from the work as planned. In that area, as he stated, Central Bedfordshire college did relatively well.

On my hon. Friend’s specific questions, 10 colleges got funds without match funding, but they offered much stronger value for money and benefits in the rest of their bids. Of course, the amount of match funding is a critical part of the question, but it is not the only element of value for money. Only one college in the third round of the enhanced renewal grant had received serious amounts of money since 2001. A very strong emphasis was placed in these bids on those colleges that have received less than £5 million since 2001, and in the third round only one college, Barnsley college, had received more than that since then. By contrast, Central Bedfordshire college had received £450,000 since 2010, including £225,000 in the first round, £100,000 in the second round and £120,000 to help work up the bid for the third round. We are going to have to work with the college in future to see what further we can do to try to get it over the line.

My hon. Friend asked about written feedback, which will, of course, be provided. Earlier this month, the college, including the principal, met civil servants for oral feedback, but we will also provide written feedback.

On my hon. Friend’s point about rebuild, I am tempted not to recommend that we again go down the route of suggesting yet more expensive propositions for the college, but we should keep all options on the table. On the point about the education case being the best in the east of England, I am glad to say that these things are no longer done on a regional basis and are instead done on a national basis. The college scored well in that area.

As my hon. Friend said, the college scored 21 out of a possible 39 points in the process and was just one point short of the score deemed necessary to secure funding. There is broad agreement that the process was carried out on a fair, open and competitive basis; the process was agreed in consultation with the sector. Even so, an appeals process is available for colleges that feel they have been hard done by. I entirely understand his disappointment and I commend the pressure he is applying.

[Andrew Selous]

The Minister may not be able to do this now, but will he respond, perhaps in writing later, on the issue of the car park? It seems that the bid was marked down severely on that basis, and I want to check that he has understood the point I was making about the car park being essential for the release of a significant sum of the college’s own money in order to match-fund.

[Matthew Hancock]

I understand the point about the car park, and I will look into it and get back to my hon. Friend on the specifics. I am sorry to say that I cannot give him a clear and specific answer today, but of course I will be happy to work with him to see what we can do in the months ahead. As and when details of any future capital funding are made available, we will work with the college. I understand, not least as a result of his lobbying, the important role the college plays in the community, what it is doing to support young people and the needs that it has. We will look carefully at, and work with him on, future propositions. I hope he will accept that and that we can move forward.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

Whenever I talk to business groups—which I do frequently—they unreservedly support the Government’s emphasis on financial stability That is something that the Labour party takes lightly, although we have emphasised it. There is a major agenda to revive the British economy, but in his question the hon. Gentleman made no reference to this morning’s housing statement. At the moment, construction is the most difficult sector in the British economy, because of the collapse that took place in the wake of the boom that his party created when in office. This morning, the Government have proposed a series of businesslike initiatives to free up sites for private development, to put substantial guarantees and resources behind social housing, and to revive a sector that was destroyed in the false bubble created by the hon. Gentleman’s Government.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

T2. How much does the UK earn from overseas students, and what assessment has the Minister for Universities and Science made of the potential for further export growth from that sector?

[Mr Willetts]

We estimate that overseas students in higher education bring £8 billion to the British economy, which shows what a major export industry it is. We can be very proud of the success of our higher education sector, and that is why Britain has no limit on the number of suitably qualified overseas students who can come here to study.

Secondary Education (GCSEs)

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for asking her question. I am a man of my convictions, and my convictions are that we need to improve our GCSE system. That is why we have outlined proposals that will ensure that we change the way in which children sit qualifications at the age of 16. In place of a two-tier system, with GCSEs split between foundation and higher-tier, we will have one qualification for all students. In place of competing exam boards where there is a race to the bottom instituted under the Labour Government, we will have exam boards that will be asked to compete to go to the top, and all those exam boards will be asked to produce qualifications that are more rigorous.

Instead of 60% of students being assumed to succeed and 40% being written off, we will set a benchmark whereby at least 80% and a rising proportion of students succeed over time. Instead of a flight away from rigorous subjects like history, geography and modern foreign languages, physics, chemistry and biology, we will ensure that those subjects are incentivised in league tables and accountability measures. We will ensure as a result of these changes that the drift towards mediocrity that the last Government’s qualification system incarnated is finally addressed.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I applaud the measures my right hon. Friend has taken more greatly to value spelling, punctuation and grammar. In that respect, does he share my concern about a school I came across recently whose policy was to correct no more than three spelling mistakes in any piece of work? Does he agree with me that that is a false kindness to children who might put in with a CV a covering letter with spelling mistakes, which is then put in the bin with the child’s potential being wasted?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One change we have already made to GCSEs—again, I do not know whether or not the Opposition back it—is to reintroduce marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar so that all students know that rigour is demanded at every point.

During the course of this debate—including the speeches from the Front Bench and subsequently—we have not heard a single constructive proposal from the Opposition on how to change exams. By contrast, the coalition Government have spelled out steps to ensure that more students take more rigorous subjects; steps to ensure that we deal with a race to the bottom and the wrong type of competition; steps to ensure that we remove a cap on aspiration; steps to ensure that we match the quality of the International GCSE and Singapore O-levels.

School Funding

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Let me be the first to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on a superb introduction to this important issue, which has drawn a large number of hon. Members to the Chamber. It would have been nice to see a few hon. Members from Her Majesty’s Opposition, but they seem to be somewhat absent. I congratulate my hon. Friend on the sensitive way in which he has raised this important issue.

We all have a duty to speak up for our constituents. Central Bedfordshire council is in the unique position of having a local authority on one side of it, Luton, which is generally poorer than central Bedfordshire, and a local authority on the other side of it, Buckinghamshire, which is richer. Both authorities receive more money per child than central Bedfordshire. I put it to the Minister that it is very hard, as a Bedfordshire MP, to explain to my constituents why the authorities on either side, one of which is poorer and one of which is richer, receive more money. It makes an eloquent case for why the formula has no logic or rationale.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

I am intrigued by the disparity and lack of clarity in Bedfordshire. Three years ago, Cheshire county split into two unitary authorities—east and west. Cheshire East, which includes Macclesfield and Congleton, receives £10 million a year less than Cheshire West. The reason for the disparity is not clear at all, which highlights my hon. Friend’s point. The formula needs clarity and transparency, as well as fairness.

[Andrew Selous]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for illustrating a problem similar to the one in the bottom part of Bedfordshire. That adds to my argument.

Each child in central Bedfordshire receives £4,658, compared with a child in Luton who receives £5,315 and a child in Buckinghamshire who receives £4,814. A child in Luton gets £657 more and a child in wealthier Buckinghamshire, our neighbour, gets £156 more. Every political party across the spectrum in central Bedfordshire is unhappy about that. The leader of Central Bedfordshire council wrote to the Secretary of State on 25 January to express the views of the whole council on this matter.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on securing this debate.

If my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) would like another example, Leicestershire is the lowest-funded local authority per pupil head in the country. One disparity between the county and neighbouring Leicester city—I am sure that hon. Members have examples of a city next door to a county—is that pupils in Leicester get £900 per head more than pupils in Leicestershire. Yet books and teachers’ salaries do not cost any more in the city than in the county.

[Andrew Selous]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point powerfully, because that is my point, too.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on securing this debate.

The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) made about teachers’ salaries is vital, because those constitute, as all hon. Members who have been school governors know, the vast majority of a school’s budget. I am not in favour of differential salaries throughout the country. We need standard salaries. It is all the more important that schools funding should be fair, per head, because those basic costs should be the same throughout the country.

[Andrew Selous]

I thank my hon. Friend for speaking with passion and for further illustrating the point, which all hon. Members are making.

Some hon. Members have already mentioned that relatively wealthy areas often have significant pockets of deprivation. That is true in my constituency. There is deprivation in Houghton Regis, for example. The indices of multiple deprivation in some wards in that town are not dissimilar to those in much higher-funded Luton next door. The formula fails poorer children in wealthier areas. We need to look at that to see whether the formula could drill down and give additional funding for poorer children in slightly wealthier areas.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that the pupil premium has been a great advance for poorer children, but in many counties there is quite a low level of unemployment and poorer constituents often do not qualify for free school meals and miss out, and are not being helped by the differential funding that he rightly condemns.

[Andrew Selous]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for adding that important point to the debate.

This Government made an impressive start on this issue by publishing “School funding reform: next steps towards a fairer system” a few weeks ago. I am grateful to the Minister and his colleagues at the Department for recognising the problem and setting out a route map for dealing with this issue. Having looked through the document, I understand that it will look to vary funding between different areas to try to deal with some of the discrepancies by up to 1.5% variance from the minimum funding guarantee per year. That will apply in both 2013-14 and 2014-15. That is an important start for which we are all grateful.

It is worth putting on the record that this Government came into office inheriting a complete economic shambles. We are still having to borrow £120 billion just to pay for public expenditure this year and we are honouring our commitments on increasing funding to the NHS and on international development. Notwithstanding that, Ministers in the Department have maintained cash budgets for schools, which is no mean achievement. That should go on the record in this debate. Many hon. Members know that the only way to deal with this issue, and the unfairness that many of us are rightly raising, is to get the economy growing and get real economic growth. In a time of rising budgets, I believe that by doing so we will be able to make significant progress towards dealing with these inequalities. I should welcome some reassurance from the Minister that that will happen as the economy grows.

Early Intervention

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I completely agree that Home Start does some excellent work—in my constituency, it is actually based directly below Norpip—and we work together with it. But I am talking about psycho-therapeutic support for the most difficult early relationships. Often it is parents’ own unhappy lives that give them problems bonding with their babies.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I hugely congratulate my hon. Friend on the mature way in which she is discussing issues that politicians often find hard to discuss. Does she agree that it is often easier to give children this incredibly important love if both parents are loving and committed to each other? That can be hugely helpful.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Of course, as I said, it is often parents’ own unhappy lives that cause them to struggle to bond with their baby. For example, a mother who did not form a bond with her own mum as a baby will struggle to bond with her own baby. Her capacity to love her baby will be impaired. Often, relationship or marital breakdown, extreme poverty, drug abuse, perhaps domestic violence and other such issues make it incredibly difficult for the mum and the family to find the love that the baby desperately needs. Often, the baby becomes the last person whom anybody thinks about.

In truth, of course, early intervention and early attachment is no respecter of class or wealth. One can be extremely poor and extremely securely attached to one’s baby, but equally one can be extremely wealthy, with all the privileges it brings, and bring up the least happy child in our society. It simply does not go with the turf.

I urge the Government, in the light of our correct decision to turn to localism in the early intervention agenda, to allow local communities, in as many ways as possible, to make decisions for themselves. We must educate people much more on the importance of early attachment and the need for that early bond. Oxpip, for example, trains social workers, health visitors and midwives, and on the evaluation forms almost everyone says, “If only I had known this sooner.”

In the case of baby Peter, I remember thinking, “How could any mother allow someone to stub out a cigarette on her baby? How poorly attached was she to that baby!”, but then my next thought was, “What if he had survived?” All the talk was about how physically damaged he was, but what about how mentally damaged he was? This is the problem. We have to educate people, particularly in the perinatal, infant health care and mental health care professions on the crucial importance of early attachment.

That requires, first, proper training for social workers, health visitors and midwives on understanding early attachment itself. We need proper training of the sort that Oxpip provides. Secondly, sadly we often find that schools say to a young girl, “Well, if you’re not going to make it as a hairdresser, have you thought of child care?” Too many nurses, therefore, are very young people—often girls—who themselves have not had a happy childhood and who are looking for love with somebody else’s baby, but of course it does not work that way. To be a proper nursery worker, somebody needs to have the empathy skills, not simply the right national vocational qualification or GCSEs. That is incredibly important.

Thirdly, on another call to action for the Government, we desperately need to ensure that children themselves understand this point. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) has talked of children entering school who do not recognise their own name unless it is yelled at them with real hatred—and probably with some stinking epithet attached at the end. The point is not that the child is not school-ready but that massive damage has already been done. If we do not intervene until school age, therefore, we are just dealing with the consequences—but that is not prevention; it is firefighting. What I would like to see, therefore, is all children in their science GSCE being taught about early brain development—being taught that the brain is not fully developed at birth and that the earliest relationship will have profound consequences for the healthiness of the brain as people grow up.

Finally—this is the other call to action—the protocols in nursery care often mean that someone will do the nappies for the morning run, while someone else will do the noon run and someone else the after-lunch run. That has to stop. Nurseries need to understand that for attachment to take place, there must be a bond between the nursery worker and the baby, so that that person can make a genuine contribution to the baby’s attachment ability, rather than detracting from it. Nursery protocols can therefore be either extraordinarily helpful or extraordinarily harmful in improving the quality of attachment.

There is an awful lot of understanding about the issue now. Most people would accept that early intervention is crucial, but when I go and talk at conferences, or even when I talk to colleagues in the House, people understand “early intervention” to mean different things. I have had councillors saying, “We do early intervention to prevent people from having house fires. We go round and advise them on smoke detectors, and so on.” Other people say, “Of course, early intervention is stopping teenage girls getting pregnant.” Others think that early intervention is about sports clubs to stop boys joining gangs. The terminology has become so confused that people do not really understand what early intervention is. All those other interventions have their place. They are all critical in repairing the damage that has been done. However, if we are serious about creating a better society for our children and our children’s children, “early years prevention” must mean just that: from conception to the age of two. We can do no better than that for our children.

New Schools

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

That is a very fair point. I know that some promoters have superb visions for their schools and that there is real demand, but in some areas, such as London, there are difficulties in securing the right site. If we can work constructively, I am sure that we can make it happen.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

May I warmly welcome the new university technical college announced by the Secretary of State today for Houghton Regis in my constituency? What difference does he think it will make to the manufacturing industry locally, which has had a challenging time in recent years?

[Michael Gove]

We are all committed across the House to rebalancing the economy and ensuring that, in addition to our strength in financial services, we recover our strength in manufacturing. If we are to do that, we need to ensure that children acquire the necessary mathematical and scientific skills at the earliest possible age. I think that the involvement of more than 130 companies in the UTC programme, as well as high-performing higher education institutions, will help us to do just that.

Public Disorder

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

The rioting that affected Clapham Junction, which is in the heart of Battersea—to make a boring geographical point, it is not in Clapham, but in Battersea, as Clapham is several miles away, a point that causes great confusion—affected many businesses, leaving some of them very damaged, and left the community badly shaken. I live very close to Clapham Junction and once the police made it clear that serious trouble was expected, from about 8 o’clock, I spent an hour or so visiting businesses that were still open, particularly takeaways and restaurants, to advise them of what was going on and to urge them to take precautions. Many of them felt that they had not been given sufficient warning by the authorities and felt rather let down, and that has resulted in a loss of confidence in the authorities.

I am also glad that, although we all acknowledge the bravery of the police and what they did, the Prime Minister said in his statement that senior police offices have acknowledged that some of the tactics need to be reviewed. In truth, parts of my constituency were a free-for-all for hours, with scenes broadcast on rolling news of people helping themselves that made it far harder to restore order. The numbers piling in were increasing as that carried on. Many people were appalled to see open criminality being tolerated on the streets.

I do not know what shocked me more: passing the giggling groups of teenagers phoning their friends to check on their trainer size, the van that parked opposite my house with eight or nine balaclavaed youths piling out of it who went up to Clapham Junction, gathered up armfuls of stuff, got back in the van and drove off—obviously I have given the registration number to the police—or the fact that the first person convicted lives in Battersea and is a 31-year-old school worker in a south London primary school. We have to be very careful about reaching for easy solutions about social exclusion when we look at some of the people who have been convicted.

[Andrew Selous]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if that school worker is convicted—I say this in the presence of the Secretary of State for Education—it would perhaps be a good move for the school to consider dismissing them from its employment as a poor role model to the children?

[Jane Ellison]

In truth, I cannot see how someone convicted of that offence could possibly be a role model. I am sure that the authorities will take the right action.

I want to say a word about the mix of police skills, and about numbers. A lot of points have been made—some of them a bit party political—about numbers, but in my conversations with my area commander, the emphasis has been on having the right skills mix available to the police. The skills that a safer neighbourhoods team constable has are quite different from those of a trained public order officer, and the two cannot easily be substituted for each other, so it is not purely a police numbers issue; it is about those on the ground having the right skills mix to deploy, and being able to react to a very fast-moving new challenge.

On the effect on retailers, I think people have been shocked to realise that loss of livelihood does not feature as high in the priorities as many feel it should when it comes to public order. It is a very serious thing for people to lose their business or their job, particularly in retail; the ultimate irony is that retail is an area of the economy that provides entry-level jobs to young people straight from school. It is the most stupid area of all to attack, and to deprive people of jobs in. If JD Sports pulls out of some of the areas that have been badly affected, the people affected would have a very similar demographic profile to those who attacked it. That is absolutely crazy and self-defeating, so I very much welcome the measures that the Prime Minister announced on business rates holidays and so on.

I should like to make a plea, and I am sure that hon. Members will take this up with their councils. As we know, many small businesses do not apply for the relief that they are due. I have said to my council, which has been very responsive to the idea, that it should provide a form-filling service to very small businesses, to make sure that they hit their deadlines and that nothing is rejected because the forms are not in order. Wandsworth has been very responsive to that idea, and I very much hope that other councils will do the same. We do not want to hear of people missing out because they missed the deadline.

There will be a lot of focus in the coming months on the causes of the problems. Essentially, there will be a focus on the gulf between the values of the young people who marched towards Clapham Junction on Monday night, armed with a brick, and the many more young people who descended on Clapham Junction the next morning, armed only with a broom, to help with the clear-up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

When I was asked this morning why I had made a 2,000 mile round trip, leaving my family to be here, even though my constituency is not affected, my answer was very simple. It is because I care for this country, like every Member here, and I am deeply upset and angry at what has happened.

My constituents have said to me clearly that they want to see the rioters made to clear up and pay for the damage that they have caused, as well as being punished. They want to see the police move more swiftly, being deployed when needed and acting more robustly when necessary. I have a concrete proposal to make tonight. I do not want us to use the term “shoplifting” any more; I think that we should rename it “shop theft”. Let us call it what it is. At the same time, an £80 fine for stealing up to £200 worth of goods is simply inadequate. We need tougher sentences for shop theft, as I believe we should call it. Many of my shopkeepers in Leighton Buzzard and elsewhere have talked to me about the problems of shop theft—indeed, it is a problem for us all—so I would ask the Government to act on that.

I praise the broom armies that we have seen in Battersea, Hackney, Liverpool and other areas. There is good in this country. Many people have praised Tariq Jahan from Birmingham, and I join them. I also wish to praise Pauline Pearce from Hackney, who told a mob of youngsters that they were doing wrong and that they should not riot. Good on her! Let us have more decent British citizens like her standing up and doing the right thing, because then we will have less trouble. We all have a stake in this, not just the forces of law and order. Every one of us—Members of Parliament and members of the public—can play our part in stopping these rioters getting their way.

Of course our young people need hope for the future and a stake in our society, a home of their own, a job, support when they get married and help with saving and loans to start up a business. The Prime Minister said that he hoped this debate would look at changing the culture in our country. In my own small way, I want to play a little part in doing that this afternoon.

Where do we learn right from wrong? We learn it from teachers and from the police, but above all we learn it from our parents. Being a parent is a really tough job if there are two of you, but it is particularly tough if there is only one of you. I salute single parents, many of whom do a fantastic job, but if there were more fathers around fewer people would join gangs. I salute Tony Wright, a former Labour Member, who said a few years ago:

“When some other hon. Members and I were children, the cry would sometimes go up, ‘Wait until your father comes home.’ For many children in this country, there is no father to come home.”—[Official Report, 24 May 2005; Vol. 434, c. 650.]

He was right. Let us unite around the need for more fathers to help bring up our children and teach them right from wrong. That is what the Prime Minister called on us to do when he spoke earlier today.

There are things that we can do to strengthen families, such as community family trusts—there is one in my constituency. The “Let’s Stick Together” course is being piloted by the Department for Education in an excellent initiative. It started in Bristol and is spreading around the country. It is a small start, but let it spring up in every constituency. We can also reduce the couple penalty in the benefits system, and the Work programme will be a big help in that area too. We all have a part to play by acting responsibly. Being a parent is the most important thing that any of us will do, and that is part of the solution.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

The right hon. Gentleman has a short memory. He does not seem to appreciate that the failed model of growth that we inherited was not simply a question of the budget deficit, as we had a massive problem with consumer debt, which inhibits consumption; we had a massive property bubble, which collapsed; and we had a banking system, the largest in the developed world, that collapsed on us—and we are having to dig our way out. A major rebalancing of the economy is having to take place. It is difficult, it is painful, but as I said in response to the earlier question, that rebalancing is now occurring through the growth of manufacturing and exports and through business investment, which is where it needs to be.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

T4. Small businesses are the engine of growth and jobs for our economy, and all the time that owners and managers spend dealing with red tape is time taken away from expanding their businesses, so what have the Government done to reduce regulation on small businesses?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that we are spending a huge amount of time on tackling red tape through the red tape challenge, and I can report to the House a little victory. On bank holiday Monday, I attended the EU Competitiveness Council to argue for an exemption for micro-entities from various accounting rules under an EU directive. I am sure that the House will be pleased to know that that exemption passed the Council.