Vocational Education
Andy Burnham Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to a make a statement on the next stage of this coalition Government’s radical reform programme to make opportunity more equal. I should like to outline our response to Professor Alison Wolf’s groundbreaking report on vocational education. In her work, Professor Wolf stresses the importance of fundamental reform across the board to improve state education, and I would first like to update the House on our progress towards that goal.
It is a year to the day since the new Department for Education was created to raise standards for all children and narrow the gap between rich and poor. In that year: we have introduced a pupil premium—£2.5 billion of additional spending on the poorest pupils; we have extended the free provision of nursery education for all three and four-year-olds and introduced free nursery education for all disadvantaged two-year-olds; we have launched the most comprehensive review ever of care for children with special needs; we have overhauled child protection rules to ensure that social workers are better able to help the most vulnerable children; we have allowed all schools to use the high-quality exams which the last Government restricted to the private sector; we are ensuring that spelling, punctuation and grammar are properly recognised in exams; we have recruited Simon Schama and Niall Ferguson to restore proper narrative history teaching; and we are doubling the number of great graduates becoming teachers through Teach First and doubling the number of great heads becoming national leaders of education.
We have also created more than 400 new academies, tripling the number we inherited and creating more academies in 12 months than the last Government did in 12 years. I can confirm to the House today that we have now received more than 1,000 applications from schools wishing to become academies and more than 300 applications to set up free schools, many from great teachers such as the inspirational head teacher Patricia Sowter, and the former Downing street aide Peter Hyman.
Those achievements have been made possible by the united strength of two parties with a shared commitment to social mobility working together, and I wish to take this opportunity to underline my thanks, for the part they have played in pushing this programme forward, to the Deputy Prime Minister, to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), to the Minister of State, Department for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), who has responsibility for children and families, and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws). It is my personal hope that we will all be able once more to make use of his talents in the country’s service before too long.
We will be building on the momentum generated by our reform programme by today accepting all the recommendations in Professor Wolf’s report on vocational education. She found that although there are many great vocational education courses and institutions providing excellent vocational education that are heavily oversubscribed, hundreds of thousands of young people are taking qualifications that have little or no value. That is because: the system is overly complex; after years of micro-management and mounting bureaucratic costs, it is also hugely expensive; and there are counter-productive and perverse incentives that steer students into inferior courses. In short, the damaging system of vocational education that we inherited is failing young people and must be changed now before the prospects of generations of young people are further blighted.
Securing our country’s future relies upon us developing our own world-class education system, from which young people graduate with not only impeccable qualifications and deep subject knowledge, but the real practical and technical skills they need to succeed. This Government support high-quality vocational education not just for its utility; vocational education is valuable in its own right. It is part of the broad and balanced curriculum that every pupil should be able to enjoy. It allows young people to develop their own special craft skills, to experience the satisfaction of technical accomplishment, and to expand what they know, understand and can do. As my hon. Friend the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning has repeatedly and eloquently argued, we need to elevate the practical and treat vocational education not, as it has been seen in the past, as an inferior route for the less able, but as an aspirational path for those with specific aptitudes. That is why we are taking immediate steps to rebuild the currency of vocational qualifications.
As recommended by Professor Wolf, we have reinstated several qualifications which lead to professional success, for example, certificates in electrical engineering and plumbing, which we know are highly valued by schools and colleges, and are admired by employers. Because we know that the current set of qualifications does not meet all needs, we will work with awarding bodies and others to ensure that more high-quality courses are available for students of all levels.
Because we know that the current league table system does not reward the progress made by students of all abilities, we will reform league tables to recognise the achievements of the lowest and highest-achieving. And because we know that not all qualifications are equal, we will further reform the league tables to guarantee that vocational qualifications are given a proper weighting. Their value will no longer be inflated in a way that encourages students to pursue inappropriate courses, or overlooked in a way that unbalances achievement.
Because we know the current funding system creates perverse incentives, we will reform it. At the moment, schools and colleges are incentivised to offer lower-grade qualifications that are easier to pass because they get paid on those results. That must end. The dumbing-down of the past has got to stop if the next generation are to succeed. Students should choose the qualifications they need to succeed, not those that bureaucracies deem appropriate.
However, while choice in the qualifications market is crucial, there are certain inescapable facts in the labour market that no student can ignore. Employers rightly insist that students be properly literate and numerate. They remind us that there are no more important vocational subjects than English and maths. As Professor Wolf’s report lays bare, huge numbers of students leave education without proper qualifications in those areas, making it increasingly hard for them to secure jobs. This Government will put an end to that by ensuring that all 16 to 18-year-olds who were unable to secure at least a C in English and maths at GCSE will continue to study those subjects through to age 19.
The best performing education systems not only offer a strong grounding in the basics such as English and maths, but ensure a good general education that cements the ability to reason, to assess evidence, to absorb knowledge and to adapt to new opportunities. In this fast-changing world, few 16-year-olds know exactly what they will be doing at the age of 21, let alone when they are 25, 35 or 45, so we need to ensure that every 18-year-old has followed a broad programme of study and has a core academic knowledge that provides a secure foundation from which to progress. That is why Professor Wolf backs our English baccalaureate as a springboard to future success in a rapidly changing world and stresses that it gives students the maximum freedom to choose between academic and vocational pathways throughout their life.
We know that the most prestigious vocational pathways require a rounded school education as preparation. Professor Wolf’s report underlines that some of the best vocational education in the world exists in our private sector apprenticeship programmes. The best are massively oversubscribed. BT typically has 15,000 applicants for 100 places each year. Rolls-Royce has 10 applicants for every place and Network Rail is similarly oversubscribed. There is far greater competition for some of these courses than there is for places at Oxford or Cambridge.
We want to ensure that all employers get the support they need to offer high quality apprenticeships. The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning is working to reduce the bureaucracy that employers face and to ensure that every penny spent by Government and employers on apprenticeships can be used to the very best effect, including by studying best practice with similar schemes around the world.
Professor Wolf emphasised the need for clear routes for progression, but also for greater flexibility within them. She was right to do so. We will consider what further programmes of study are needed, alongside the general educational component, to give 16 to 18-year-olds the broad education they need.
For more than a century, there have been numerous, failed attempts to reform vocational education. It is now more important than ever that we finally bring an end to the two-tier education system that has scarred our country for too long. Professor Wolf’s report, together with wider reforms like the fantastic university technical colleges being pioneered by Lord Baker, sets out a clear map of what we need to do. I am delighted that Professor Wolf has agreed to continue to provide regular and ongoing advice to Government as we implement her recommendations. I cannot think of anyone better qualified to help us offer young people the genuine and high-quality technical education they have been too long denied. I commend this statement to the House.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. I am pleased that he has managed to join us today. We touched on many similar themes yesterday in an enjoyable and lively discussion. I hope that, in preparing his statement today, he has had time to catch up on it.
We devote a great deal of time to higher education, but much less to improving opportunities for young people who do not plan to go to university. I have long advocated redressing that balance and it is now an urgent imperative in view of the Government’s changes to higher education.
As I said when the report was published, I find much to welcome in Professor Wolf’s vision for higher-quality vocational education. I agree with some aspects of what the Secretary of State has said today, particularly the commitment to ensuring that every young person reaches a decent level of proficiency in English and maths before they leave school and that all programmes of study lead to progression. I also welcome efforts to simplify the system and qualifications in vocational education to make it easier for young people to navigate their way through.
Professor Wolf recommends the adoption of multiple measures of school performance, echoing the moves we made in government towards a balanced school report card approach. The Secretary of State has accepted that today, in speaking of his promise to reform league tables to create new performance management measures in addition to the English baccalaureate. I will give careful consideration to the measures he brings forward, but I gently warn him that his plans to measure students at the top and the bottom already sound complex. Is he not in danger of recreating in another form a complex target regime of the type of which he complained so frequently when he was in opposition? Will not teachers’ hearts sink when they hear that there are to be more targets? Will they not question whether he is delivering on the autonomy to get on and teach that he promised them? Will he give us an assurance that he will consult teachers before dropping any new performance management measure on them, as he did with the English baccalaureate?
Even with a range of measures in force, Professor Wolf’s report rightly warns of the consequences if a single performance measure becomes dominant. Let me quote from her report, which said that there
“remains a serious risk that schools will simply ignore their less academically successful pupils. This was a risk with the old five GCSEs measure; a risk with the English baccalaureate; and will be a risk with a measure based on selected qualifications. It needs to be pre-empted.”
Rather than pre-empt this risk, however, did not the Secretary of State pre-empt the Wolf report by presenting his English baccalaureate as the “gold standard” for schools?
Schools are clearly seeing it that way. Why otherwise are we seeing music, RE and arts teachers being made redundant right here, right now? Why otherwise are we seeing students under pressure from schools to switch subjects halfway through their courses or to take courses that they do not really want to do, diminishing their choice? This is becoming the dominant headline measure against which all schools and students are judged. The Secretary of State needs more convincing answers on how he plans to stop that happening.
More broadly, has not this highly prescriptive league table measure, and its arbitrary subject selection, already damaged the deliverability of Professor Wolf’s vision by relegating vocational learning to second-division status in the public mind and in the minds of schools? The Secretary of State mentioned a two-tier system, but is that not precisely what this Government are creating—an elitist, two-tier system in which parents have fewer rights on admissions, making it more difficult for them to get their children into good schools? The parent voice is diminished. Creative and practical subjects are crucial to the quality vocational education that Professor Wolf advocates, but they are already a devalued currency in our schools because of the Secretary of State’s actions. Where is the creativity in his English baccalaureate? Student choice has been affected by the subject choice in the bac.
I say again to the Secretary of State that it is time he thought again about the English baccalaureate and allowed more breadth, flexibility and choice so that it caters for the talents of all students? A school system that works for everyone cannot be designed around the requirements of the Russell group. With 103 Members calling for RE at the very least to be added to the baccalaureate, is it not now time for another of the Secretary of State’s famous U-turns?
The deliverability of Professor Wolf’s vision is also affected by some of the Secretary of State’s actions in other areas. Professor Wolf rightly stresses the importance of a quality careers service to inform young people about their options—surely even more important in a world where young people are struggling to make their way. Yet as we speak, the careers service in England is simply melting away. We welcome the vision of an all-age careers service, but we ask again today: where is the long-promised transition plan to deliver it? That is yet another example of the Secretary of State’s trademark incompetence.
Given that careers advisers are being made redundant now, how will the Secretary of State secure the quality of service that Professor Wolf demands? Yesterday, we sought to amend his Bill to give young people a guarantee of face-to-face guidance in our schools. At a time when youth unemployment is at a record high and access to further and higher education is becoming more difficult, is not the web and telephony-based service proposed by the Government completely inadequate to the scale of the task?
The Government mouth platitudes about social mobility, as the Secretary of State did today, but they are systematically kicking away the ladders of support that help young people to get on in life. More young people in further education colleges on vocational courses are receiving education maintenance allowance than those in school sixth-form colleges, and they need that money to buy equipment for their courses. Will not the scrapping of the EMA hit those young people disproportionately hard, and, again, make Professor Wolf’s vision hard to deliver? Colleges and students are four months away from the start of the academic year, and are still none the wiser about what they will receive under the Secretary of State’s replacement scheme. Not for the first time, he has taken a successful policy and turned it into a shambles. Is it not time to listen to no less an organisation than the OECD, and reinstate the EMA scheme? Without it, how will the Secretary of State’s commitment to raising the school leaving age become a reality?
Professor Wolf’s report raises issues that go to the heart of the need to secure the prosperity of our country and a decent future for our young people, but by their actions the Government are taking hope away from our young people. Unless they change course quickly—on curriculum reform, the careers service, EMA and university fees—the Government’s legacy will be a lost generation of young people.
Michael Gove
I thank the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) for his response, and welcome him back to the Dispatch Box, on day release from his other job as Labour’s election co-ordinator. May I say how much we on the Government Benches are enjoying the progress he is making in that job? From Dartford and Dover to Aberconwy and Pembrokeshire, from North Lincolnshire to Southampton, Conservative councillors who won last Thursday are delighted with the progress he is making, and so are we. The longer he stays in that role, the happier all of us will be.
May I also welcome the fact that, when the right hon. Gentleman returned to his part-time role as shadow Education Secretary, he found time to endorse many of our recommendations? I welcome the support he has given to our aims of improving numeracy and literacy and ensuring that students over the age of 16 who have not secured GCSE passes in English and maths have an opportunity to acquire appropriate qualifications in those subjects.
The right hon. Gentleman asked a good question about multiple measures and the importance of ensuring that we do not create an accountability system that is too complex, but as he himself acknowledged and as has been pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), the Chairman of the Select Committee, there must be a golden mean between having so many targets that teachers are pulled in different directions, and having only one target that distorts the performance of all schools. I believe that the balanced basket of accountability targets that we are introducing reflects what teachers believe—namely, that all students of all abilities need to have their achievements recognised, that the autonomy should be over how schools teach and how the school day is organised, and that in return for greater autonomy there should be sharper accountability.
Talking of sharper accountability, the right hon. Gentleman referred to the English baccalaureate. He seemed to suggest—or, at least, seemed to want to lead the House to believe—that Professor Wolf was unhappy with it. On Saturday 12 March Professor Wolf wrote in The Guardian:
“Andy Burnham… is quoted as saying”
that she had said there was
“a ‘serious risk’ that the English bac will lead to schools ‘simply ignoring’ less academically able students. This misrepresents what I said.”
She also wrote:
“For the record, may I also note that the English bac subjects would normally absorb less than 80% of a teaching week. Both it and many other ‘academic’ clusters are therefore perfectly compatible with my recommendations for curriculum balance for 14 to 16-year-olds.”
Professor Wolf deserves better than to be traduced in that way by the right hon. Gentleman.
The right hon. Gentleman also referred to careers advice. Let me politely point out to him that the person appointed to lead on social mobility for the previous Government, Alan Milburn, said that we should move away from the failed connection system and adopt a new approach, giving
“Schools and colleges… direct responsibility for providing information, advice and guidance”.
Moreover, Professor Alison Wolf pointed out in evidence to the Select Committee that the “problem with careers guidance” had been the model that the right hon. Gentleman prefers: a model that was stuck in the past, with “one poor teacher” being expected to know about everything. That, she said, had been supplanted by a more modern measure enabling skilled careers advisers and “proper, online, updated information” to provide students with the right answers.
I am afraid that, not for the first time, the right hon. Gentleman has been found out in his old Labour ways. He has been in office for 200 days. During that time he said that our academies programme would be divisive, but more than 1,000 great teachers have embraced it. He said that free schools would generate poverty and dislocation, but the best and brightest in Labour are now embracing their radical appeal. Today he has said that the coalition Government have got it wrong on vocational education. Given his record, I am delighted to find the right hon. Gentleman sitting opposite me today.
Education Bill
Andy Burnham Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Labour’s main objection to this Bill is with how it takes power off parents and pupils—[Interruption.] Have we moved on to the amendments about admissions, Mr Deputy Speaker?
Andy Burnham
The hon. Gentleman just spoke about schools opening their doors to all children. Will he confirm that under the new clause, those schools would maintain their selective admissions policies?
Mr Brady
Absolutely. The right hon. Gentleman is entirely correct. No new selective schools would be created under the new clause. The country would have the same schools that it has at the moment, but those schools would be able to accept people regardless of parental means and the ability to pay. It would bring more excellent schools into the state sector, satisfying the objective of the Minister.
This is not a theoretical situation. I first became interested in this area because many years ago, two independent schools in my constituency did precisely this. They opted into the state sector, in those days as grant-maintained schools. St Ambrose college and Loreto grammar school, which are both Roman Catholic selective schools, were welcomed by a previous Conservative Government into the state sector, and were allowed to maintain their ethos and admissions rules. St Ambrose college is an excellent school, which educated three Members of this House, including my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). This could be called the St Ambrose and Loreto new clause.
Not only would the new clause restore the ability for excellent independent schools to come into the state sector in the way that they could under the previous Conservative Government, it would end the unfortunate state of affairs that has pertained since. Again, that is not a theoretical point. Some years ago, William Hulme’s grammar school in Manchester became an academy, but under the previous Government it was forced to abandon its selective admissions policy and become a comprehensive school. It is still a good school, but regrettably, it was required to change its ethos in a way that it had no desire to do. More worryingly, that process is continuing today. As the Minister knows, Batley grammar school is in the process of becoming an academy. Shockingly, under the present Government, it, too, is being required to change its ethos and its admissions policy in a way that would not have been required had it been a state school transferring to academy status.
I am aware of other independent schools that would be interested in pursuing this route if the Minister and the Secretary of State were to open the door to them. That point is important. Typically, these are schools that value their independence and their selective ethos, but have no desire to charge fees that might deny access to some able boys and girls who would benefit from the education that they offer. Frequently, like Batley grammar school, they are not in the most prosperous parts of the country. This measure would clearly extend opportunity to a significant number of children in less affluent parts of the country.
Mr Brady
I am grateful to the Chairman of the Select Committee for his support. As he said, the new clause would simply remove an obstacle that stands in the way of the noble ambition of some excellent schools that are deeply committed to educating children of whatever means. Many schools can do so because they have access to bursary funds that cover the fees for such pupils, but not all can. To give another example from my city, Manchester grammar school, which is a former direct grant grammar school, is a fantastic institution that had the ability to raise a large bursary fund, which allows it to operate its admissions in a needs-blind way. Not all good independent schools can replicate that because they do not all have as many successful and wealthy old boys.
To return to my central point, this is a modest measure that would correct an anomaly, but in doing so would sweep away an obstacle that can only be considered dogmatic. It is entirely in keeping with the existing policy of the coalition Government, who, in the Academies Act 2010, accepted the principle that selective schools can be academies. The Minister is a passionate advocate for the academies programme. He has always made it clear that opportunities should be opened and that good schools, of whatever kind, should be encouraged. I have always welcomed that in our many constructive conversations. This simple measure would open the door to more good schools accepting the principles that he has set out and accepting the hand of friendship to welcome them into the academies programme and the state sector. It would allow more children to enjoy a high-quality education without the threat of fees having to be paid. I hope that he will accept the new clause in that spirit.
Andy Burnham
Take two. I will speak to new clause 10 and amendments 9, 10, 11 and 13, which are in my name and those of my hon. Friends. Our main objection to the Bill is that it takes power away from parents and pupils, particularly at crucial moments in the education journey. Decisions about admissions and exclusions can be life-changing for children, and giving parents the power to challenge them is an essential part of any fair school system. Over the past decade, improvements have been made to ensure fair admissions in English schools, and the Bill will take those safeguards away. It will severely weaken parents’ rights in respect of admissions at both local and national level, and it will limit their ability to seek redress both for their own children and for others who come after them. That would be bad in any event, but when we consider that weakening of accountability in the wider context of the education system that the Government are building—a highly competitive free market—we see that it represents a real danger to the life chances of our children, particularly those with the least support.
Let us put the Government’s changes to admissions in that wider context. First, in time, there could be more than 20,000 separate admissions authorities operating in a free market, accountable only to the Secretary of State and able to bypass local checks and balances. Secondly, on top of that free-for-all we will have the polarising effect of the narrow, academic English baccalaureate. In the competitive education market, schools will desperately try to raise their bac scores, and we can see how the risk will emerge of admissions policies being constructed to support that attempt. Now is emphatically not the time to weaken the powers of the schools adjudicator to rectify non-compliance with the admissions code. With the checks and balances gone, there is a real and present danger that there could be more unfairness in the system and that parents will find it harder to get fair access to good schools.
Andy Burnham
Yes, we do, but that is not the central point. In making that move, the Minister is weakening the overall powers of the Office of the Schools Adjudicator and taking away its teeth. We hear that he is also about to weaken the admissions code—I will come on to that in a moment.
My greatest fear is that in Gove’s world, less academic children, those with less parental support and those with special educational needs will be the biggest losers. The Secretary of State is creating by the back door what, as we have just heard, his own Back Benchers are today enticing him to create by the front door—an elitist, two-tier system that is good for some children and some families, not all children and all families. We need safeguards for all parents, and I implore the House to vote to keep them. Otherwise, we will leave uncorrected the real flaw that lies at the heart of the Government’s vision for the reform of public services.
In education and in health, if the Government plan more freedom and autonomy for providers, it is absolutely essential that the change is accompanied by a corresponding empowerment of the public and a greater ability for the users of services to hold providers to account. If the Government do not increase people’s voice, they will create a provider’s market, a free-for-all with an accountability deficit. If primary care trusts or local authorities are no longer there to ensure fairness for all, it is crucial that we keep and strengthen the mechanisms that protect the rights of patients and parents.
Mr Graham Stuart
Going back to the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the English baccalaureate, does he agree that we need an assessment and accountability framework that gives equal weight to the progress of every child? If he does—I hope that we can get consensus between the Front Benchers on that—does he agree that the current levers and pressures on schools provided by the requirement of five good GCSEs do not deliver that vision, and that Members on both sides of the House need to work harder to create a system that gives equal weight to the progress of every child?
Andy Burnham
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I agree with his emphasis on the needs of every child, and I further agree that the five A to C-grade GCSEs measure had its imperfections. He might, then, agree with what I am about to say.
The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)
How does the shadow Secretary of State reconcile his rather jaundiced view of the Government’s commitment to vocational education with our stated and funded commitment to boost the number of apprenticeships for 16 to 18-year-olds?
Andy Burnham
That is not the full answer. If schools are being judged by the gold standard of specific GCSEs, does the hon. Gentleman not accept that he is creating a real disincentive for schools to focus on the kids who are not taking those subjects? I know that he cares about vocational education, and I look to him to give us some more convincing answers that show that the Government are committed to those young people.
Andy Burnham
I want to make some progress, but maybe I will give way to the Chairman of the Education Committee again later.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I am sure my right hon. Friend is aware that the latest figures given to the Skills Commission only yesterday by a professor from Southampton university show that 6% of kids in this country leaving school between 16 and 18 get an apprenticeship, and 36% go into higher education. That leaves a darned large number of young people not going to either of those destinations. I am quite fond of the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, but sometimes he uses the apprenticeships commitment to hide a lack of activity in other areas.
Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend puts his finger on it. I said when I took on this job that I wanted more focus on the 50% or more of young people who are not planning to go to university. Every Member owes that to those young people. Apprenticeships are part of the answer, but as I said a moment ago, they are not all of the answer. Sometimes we hear the Government talk only of kids on free school meals getting to Oxbridge, as though that were the only measure of the education system in this country. I am afraid that in my view, that shows the elitist approach to education that is coming through more and more from the Government.
Our new clause and amendments are intended to put power back in the hands of parents and fairness at the heart of the system at local and national level. First, given that the Secretary of State is taking more than 50 powers in the Bill to run almost every aspect of the schools system, we propose, in new clause 10, duties for him to ensure fair access to education.
Secondly, amendments 10 and 11 would reinstate the requirement for all local authorities to establish a local admissions forum. Those forums are an important part of ensuring parents’ involvement and local accountability. Parents have a right to be represented on them, and parents’ groups can come to the meetings and make representations on particular issues of concern. Parents in all areas should have a guarantee that they will be able to call on a local forum in their hour of need.
On that point, I say to the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), that he missed the point in Committee. It is no help to parents if the forums are optional. If there is to be a postcode lottery, with some local authorities having forums and others not, not all parents will have the right to call on those local independent bodies if they need to. Moreover, voluntary forums would not have the same powers as the current ones, such as the power to object to the schools adjudicator. An independent monitoring body in each local authority to ensure fair admissions criteria and processes should be an entitlement for all parents.
It is also more efficient to deal locally with issues involving local stakeholders, rather than to refer every contentious issue to the adjudicator. Indeed, the chief adjudicator supports the retention of admissions forums, as he told the Education Committee. He said:
“I believe…that admissions forums are good things. It commits all admissions authorities in an area…to sit around a table and talk over their problems.”
That brings me to amendment 13, which would restore the crucial ability of the schools adjudicator to seek early rectification of non-compliance with the admissions code in admissions policies, working through local authorities. The adjudicator is an important guarantor of fairness for parents. As he told the Education Committee, 92% of the complaints that he received last year came from parents. The Government have failed to make any case to support their changes beyond saying, “Trust the schools.” Well, the Opposition trust schools, but we also know that the adjudicator must frequently step in to correct non-compliance with the code. Indeed, the very fact that the adjudicator has that power focuses the minds of schools and local authorities to ensure that policies are fair in the first place. The Government are therefore undermining the office of the schools adjudicator in terms of helping parents when they need it.
We believe that the Bill weakens the adjudicator’s power, but that problem is further compounded by the potential dilution of the admissions code. Yet again with this Secretary of State and his chaotic Department, the House finds itself in the unacceptable position of being asked to legislate on matters crucial to families in this country without all the relevant information before it. I have a simple question for the Minister of State: where is the draft admissions code? Where is it? It is disgraceful that the House does not have access to that code when it is being asked to vote on the Bill.
In Committee on 29 March, the Minister told the shadow schools Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), that the admissions code
“is certainly imminent and will certainly be available before many of the future stages of the passage of this Bill”––[Official Report, Education Public Bill Committee, 29 March 2011; c. 770.]
Mr Deputy Speaker, is it acceptable that the Minister has not delivered on that promise? I put it to you that it is an affront to the House and to Parliament that the Minister has failed to honour a commitment that he gave in Committee. The code is highly relevant to today’s debate, and it should be available to hon. Members.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend puts his finger on the nub of the issue—the Minister promised in Committee on 29 March that the admissions code was imminent. We must reiterate the concerns of the schools adjudicator, because he saw the idea of simplifying the admissions code as a way of giving wriggle room to schools to use covert selection. That is a real concern for my constituents and parents in my area.
Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Bill weakens the schools adjudicator and could dilute the admissions code—although we cannot assert the latter as a fact, because we have only media reports to go on. It is a disgrace that the Minister has been unable to give that information to hon. Members, who are voting on life-and-death issues for their constituents: the question for parents is whether they can get the schools that they want. I put it to hon. Members that they will be doing a huge disservice to their constituents if they vote for a weakening of the admissions system without knowing what is in the code, and the full extent of the Government’s intentions.
Mr Graham Stuart
I asked the right hon. Gentleman earlier whether he would support the principle of an assessment and accountability framework giving equal weight to the progress of every child in our schools. Does he support that? If we collectively introduce such a system, we would not need such massive bureaucratic machinery to try to stop artificial selection in schools, because there would no longer be an incentive to pursue such measures. Rather, the system would encourage schools to attract more children who come with the pupil premium, and we could have a more equitable education system, along with the outstanding outcomes that we all seek.
Andy Burnham
I sympathise with the Chairman of the Education Committee. I am reading into what he says the impression that he fears the effect of the English baccalaureate on the proposed free-for-all system, in which there is no power at local level to challenge what schools are doing, and in which the adjudicator does not have the teeth to rewrite admissions policies. I am sensing that the hon. Gentleman has real worries about that, and I ask him to urge those on the Government Front Bench to sort it out, before we drive real unfairness into our school system.
Yes, we should have a system that measures every child’s progress in the important things such as maths and English—that will be the bedrock of any system—but I fear that the English baccalaureate is a highly divisive tool that will set some children against others and give schools the wrong incentive.
Mr Gibb
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that English, maths and double science are already compulsory up to the age of 16, and that until 2004 a modern language was compulsory up to 16? Therefore, only history or geography are added in the English baccalaureate—and they are compulsory up to 14. What is it about history or geography that he so opposes?
Andy Burnham
That is utter nonsense from the Minister, who made, with his Secretary of State, great play of autonomy for schools and teachers when in opposition. They complained about top-down prescription from the previous Labour Government, but will he accept that the English baccalaureate is far more prescriptive than anything we ever did? If so, how does he square that with his previous statements?
Mr Gibb
The English baccalaureate is not compulsory or prescriptive. It is also not an accountability measure; the accountability measure remains five or more A to C GCSEs including English and Maths, and the floor standard is 35% of those in a school achieving that. This is not a compulsory combination of GCSEs, but one of many measures that our transparency agenda ensures will be put into the public domain.
Andy Burnham
As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West says, this is a nudge with a loaded gun. Of course schools will focus on the English baccalaureate! If the Minister expects us to believe that that will not happen, he is taking us for mugs. The baccalaureate will obviously drive behaviour in our school system. The Ministers know that that is what they are doing, but they are trying to pretend that it will not happen. I am telling the Minister that it will.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
Is my right hon. Friend aware that some schools, including some in my constituency, have already moved existing year 10 pupils—generally the more able ones—off the subjects that they have chosen and on to the English baccalaureate subjects, because they are worried about the new accountability measure?
Andy Burnham
Where is student choice in this system? What are the rights of children, particularly those who have creative flair? How does the system look after the interests of those who are good at music or drama? In some schools in my constituency, around 30% are taking the English baccalaureate. Ministers tell us that it is supported by parents, yet when given the choice, many say, “This isn’t what we want for our children, because it’s too prescriptive and doesn’t recognise the breadth of experience that we want them to have.” We hear that music and RE teachers are being made redundant. It is time for another U-turn by the ministerial team that is famous for them.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. The debate may be straying into rather more general matters than the new clauses and amendments before us.
Andy Burnham
I am grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker. As I have said before, the Secretary of State is in danger of collapsing under the weight of his own contradictions, and the hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) has just made that point.
Let me return to the admissions code, which we have not seen. I hope the Minister will give the House an apology this afternoon for failing to produce it. We hear that it will be slimmed down, and that it will allow founders of free schools to leapfrog local families to the front of the queue for places—the so-called Toby Young clause. The Opposition can accept a simpler admissions code, but we will not accept a weaker admissions code.
The Government’s failure to produce the code leaves us asking one question: what are they trying to hide? That is a relevant question given that today we have further evidence, from the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady), of the true Tory instincts on education. His new clause 2 would allow independent schools that cross over to the state sector to continue selective admissions policies, as he confirmed to me, which means that formerly independent fee-paying schools would be fully funded by the taxpayer, but would remain exclusive schools selecting students on the basis of ability. I notice that 35 or more of his colleagues felt free to put their names to this outrageous expansion of selection, presumably because they are being encouraged by his own Whips and Front Benchers.
Ian Mearns
The Schools Minister has reiterated that the English baccalaureate will not be an accountability measure. He trumpeted that in the Select Committee on a number of occasions last week. I am terribly sorry but the response is one of complete and utter incredulity. I know what the press will say about the English baccalaureate within the context of the league tables. The headline writers will say, “Of course it will be an accountability measure. How can it be seen as anything else?”
Andy Burnham
We know that the measure was applied retrospectively to schools, so the Government were encouraging the media to see it as a performance-management measure. It is so unfair to schools being sent out into this highly competitive environment to have their reputations so damaged, and to have not one but two hands tied behind their backs. The Government have knocked the stuffing out of some schools that have worked so hard to improve in recent years, and it is totally unacceptable.
Experts’ warnings about the admissions clauses could not be clearer. Children’s life chances are at stake here. The Government have failed to convince the experts that we can gamble with those life chances by weakening the admissions system. I intend therefore to press amendment 13 to a vote this evening. In the face of this free-for-all in education, it is vital that the rights of parents and children are protected, and that the House does not sleepwalk today into a return to selection in our schools.
Mr Graham Stuart
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate, and to see so many faces from the Public Bill Committee, as well as Select Committee members, including the stellar four or five Labour Back Benchers under the Gallery there.
I want to discuss my new clause 22 on home education. My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) has made most of the key points about his new clause 2. This is not about extending selection in our schools; it is about taking existing institutions—in many cases, institutions originally set up to serve some of the poorest in our communities—and allowing them to serve those communities again. I must confess to having been torn before deciding that supporting new clause 2 was appropriate, although there will be differences of opinion on both sides of the House—the shadow Secretary of State failed to note that supporters of the new clause include Labour Members as well as Government Members.
Dan Rogerson
I welcome that contribution and the hon. Gentleman has been very forthright in raising the issues that he has mentioned. I am sorry to see that the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) has had some misfortune in hurting her arm and I am pleased, of course, that it has not restricted her ability to be present and to put forward her views, which she does forthrightly and in a well-informed way on all education issues. What I was trying to say in response to her is that the key to what the Government are trying to do, not just with the admissions code but with some of the bodies and partnerships in which schools have hitherto been forced to participate, which we have discussed before, will be to trust schools to take decisions. We will still have a schools adjudicator and we will still have a code that will cover such matters. The question is where we should strike the balance. The Opposition clearly feel that the Government are getting it wrong, but I want to see the code. It is unfortunate that we did not have it before this debate, but we will be able to examine it when it comes. I shall give the Government the benefit of the doubt that we are striking the right balance.
Andy Burnham
I am disappointed that the hon. Gentleman is giving the Government the benefit of the doubt and I am sorry to hear him sound like a spokesman for the Government today. Let me ask him a specific question: on admissions, does he think that the Bill as it stands is consistent with the policy passed at last year’s Liberal Democrat conference?
Dan Rogerson
A number of issues in the policy were passed at the last conference. As a keen student of what goes on at the Liberal Democrat conference, the right hon. Gentleman might perhaps have heard the speech I made there and will have been interested to hear what we had to say.
The question for me on a range of issues concerns where the balance is struck. I am happy, as I say, to give the Government the benefit of the doubt. However, on the question of sticking to key principles, I have a personal philosophical disagreement with the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady). I accept that he speaks a great deal about issues arising in areas of the country that have a selective system and that he feels passionately about that. I should possibly have discussed this with my wife before I mentioned it, because she was educated early on in a selective system in Kent and later moved to Cornwall. When she was in Kent, she was not in a grammar school, and in Cornwall she was in the comprehensive system. She went on to get her A-levels, qualified to become a teacher and has taught very effectively. I question whether, if she had remained in the selective set-up—again, this is hypothetical—she would have had the encouragement and support to go on and become a teacher. I have some questions about the effectiveness of the selective system for all pupils, although some prosper very well within it.
I welcome the Government’s commitment not to expand selection and so I hope that those on the Front Bench will resist the hon. Gentleman’s new clause. As far as I am concerned, it is a way of bringing in more selective schools funded by the state. The point I wanted to make when Opposition Members were seeking to talk about their ideological purity is that that new clause is signed by some Members from the party of the right hon. Member for Leigh but by no one from my party.
Mr Gibb
I think the hon. Lady and, in particular, the shadow Secretary of State overstate their case. We are not just extending the right to access the adjudicator to parents of children attending academies, who can now complain to the adjudicator about admissions arrangements, we are also changing the rules on which parents and members of the public can complain to the adjudicator about a school’s admissions arrangements. We are saying that any parent from anywhere can make such a complaint. We are widening the ability of parents and members of the public to complain to the adjudicator.
I turn to amendment 9. Although, again, I agree with the aim of ensuring fair access, I do not believe that the amendment is necessary. The admissions code is entirely about fairness, which is why we have an admissions system for schools. I can assure hon. Members that in our work to revise the admissions code and make it more straightforward, we have not in any way removed the focus on fairness.
Andy Burnham
The Minister has just mentioned the work to change the admissions code. Will he tell us today why he has not fulfilled his commitment to produce the code in advance of this debate? Will he be honest about the reason for the delay? Is it because there is a row going on about the content of the admissions code, so he cannot bring the issue to a conclusion?
Mr Gibb
As I said in Committee, the revision of the admissions and appeals codes is a huge undertaking, and we need to ensure that we produce an admissions system that is fit for purpose and puts trust back in schools and head teachers. We are determined to get the codes right, not just push them out quickly. We will consult on them shortly, and they will free schools of the burden and bureaucracy of the current system.
Sometimes I feel that the right hon. Gentleman overstates his case. If he looks at the Bill, he will see that there is one clause about admissions, clause 34, and it relates to admission forums and one or two of the powers and duties of the schools adjudicator. There is nothing in it about the admissions code, it just happens that at the same time as we are bringing the Bill through, we are revising the code. I would have liked to bring it before the Committee, but the work on it is extensive. As I said, we are ensuring that it is right before it is published for consultation.
Andy Burnham
That is just not an acceptable answer. The Minister gave a commitment that the code would be ready for the remaining stages of the Bill’s passage, and he has not delivered on that commitment. I ask him again: why has he been unable to publish a code for the House to consider? What is holding it up?
Mr Gibb
Well, frankly, it does not affect the issues in the Bill. There is one clause related to admissions, which is about admission forums and the adjudicator, and as I will explain, the changes that it makes are not as radical as the right hon. Gentleman claimed in his speech. Again, I thought he overstated his case.
Although I agree with the aim behind amendment 9, I cannot agree to it. Admissions policies must be consulted upon with the local community, and every state-funded school and academy in an area signs up to the fair access protocols to ensure that the most vulnerable children are placed without delay. Failing local resolution, objection can be made to the independent schools adjudicator for a binding decision that must be complied with. I therefore feel that we must resist the amendment, which would add little to the practice of admissions or the accountability that is already in place.
I turn to amendments 10 and 11, on admission forums. As I said in Committee, local authorities and the communities that they serve must be allowed to make their own decisions on what systems will work for them. It cannot be right to assume a need in every area, and at considerable cost. Last year, a mere 14 out of 152 admission forums wrote a report, seven of which were too late to be considered by the adjudicator. Only five objections out of the 151 received by the adjudicator were made by a forum, and four of those were from one particularly active forum.
Where they are valued, those admission forums can continue. Seeking to impose a one-size-fits-all system, as proposed in the Opposition amendment, is the wrong approach. In taking the line that he has taken, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) has overstated his case about what the Government are doing in the Bill. All we are doing is making admission forums non-mandatory. They can of course continue where they are wanted.
Andy Burnham
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
The Secretary of State’s first Bill was rammed through with unseemly haste, under procedures normally reserved for counter-terrorism measures, when the odour in the rose garden was still pleasant and Labour leadership candidates were still on the hustings, so we can at least say that this Bill has had a more thorough airing. I therefore thank the members of the Public Bill Committee for their work on it, and I thank the Officials, Officers and other staff of the House who have enabled the Committee’s work to take place. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) and for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), who have done an excellent job.
The Schools Minister has been assiduous in his replies, and I thank him for that, but his courtesy has not extended to the production of the essential documents, such as the draft admissions code, that are needed to give this Bill the fullest possible scrutiny. That is highly regrettable—it is insulting, even, to Members of this House—and I trust that the same discourtesies will not be repeated towards Members of another place. Talking of discourtesies, it is a shame that the Secretary of State could not dignify us with his presence this evening. He made a cameo appearance earlier, but he obviously has something more important to do than be here to see his own Bill through. I do not know whether he has a good reason—perhaps he does—but we should have been able to expect him to be here.
Like the Health and Social Care Bill, the Education Bill threatens a free-for-all in our public services. It is a reckless gamble with standards and with the life chances of our children, with no evidence to support it. That is why we will vote against it tonight. Our principal objection to it is based on the fact that it takes power away from parents and pupils and hands it back to providers and to the centre, in the form of the Secretary of State. That is the flaw at the heart of the Government’s vision for public service reform. If they give more freedom and autonomy to providers, be they general practitioners or hospitals in the health sector or head teachers and schools in the education sector, they have to balance that with a corresponding empowerment of the public—parent and patient guarantees—and more ability for service users to hold providers to account. That is what is completely absent from the Government’s vision: this is a provider-led reform with an accountability deficit.
The health reforms have been paused, partly because of fears that the system being created lacks moderating checks and balances. Many people working in education, who will be watching these proceedings, have exactly the same fears about these schools reforms, but sadly the House, in its votes this evening, has failed to respond to them. This is a right-wing reform of our education system, a ripping up of the fabric and frameworks that have stood our services and our children in good stead for years.
Tory Cabinet Ministers are now boasting about this radical right-wing agenda. Iain Duncan Smith has said:
“We’ve got a lot—my welfare reforms, the education reforms…all of these are big, big Conservative-driven themes.”
I believe he said that today. William Hague went as far as admitting that the Lib Dems were crucial—
Mr Speaker
May I say to the shadow Secretary of State that he is quite an experienced Member, and he should not refer to serving Members of the House by name?
Andy Burnham
You are absolutely right, Mr Speaker, and I apologise.
The right hon. Member—I am struggling to remember his constituency now—[Hon. Members: “Richmond.”] That is it; I was going to say for North Yorkshire. The right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Mr Hague) said:
“A Conservative government with a very small majority or in a minority would have been massively constrained in what we could take through parliament.”
There we have it: this is a right-wing agenda propped up by the Liberal Democrats.
We heard today a bid from the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady), supported by 35 colleagues on his side of the House, to extend selection to our state education system. We know that the Secretary of State, although he could not be here this evening, attended a reception in Parliament—I think it was just before Christmas—where the hon. Gentleman asked him whether he would extend selection through his free school movement. The Secretary of State said:
“My foot is hovering over the pedal; I’ll have to see what my co-driver Nick Clegg has to say”.
Those of us who read Mrs Gove’s entertaining columns in the newspaper know what happens when the Secretary of State puts his foot on the pedal: utter chaos and disruption ensues for anybody in his vicinity. In this case, I think the co-pilot would be better off getting out of the car before the Secretary of State puts his foot down on the pedal—but as we know, the co-pilot is still unfortunately locked in the boot.
We were expecting a bit of muscular Liberalism today—indeed, we were promised it—but sadly there was none. It was just as we suspected. Parents watching this debate want to know that their child has a fair chance of getting into the school that they choose, that they will have good teachers, and will be able to get good careers advice to support them in their choices. Instead, they are getting a free-for-all with no guarantees, a weakening of the admissions system, unqualified teachers in state schools and a withering away of face-to-face careers advice.
I am sorry that we did not get the chance tonight to move an amendment, which my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West was going to take on, about the need to have qualified teachers in our state schools. I hope that Members of the other place will return to that issue to stop this risky gamble with standards in our schools.
The Bill exposes a curious contradiction in this Secretary of State’s approach to school reform. He has not decided yet whether he truly believes in freedom and really wants local people to get on and do the job that they want—as the Minister just said he did—or whether he wants to dictate to them what they must do and how they must do their jobs. We have an Education Secretary who preaches freedom, but then wants to dictate the books that children read in primary school. He says that teachers know best, but then demands that they use synthetic phonics to teach reading. He lauds professional autonomy, but makes it clear which subjects he approves of in his English baccalaureate and which are second best. That is not good enough: he needs to decide. If he wants teachers to get on with their job, he should let them do it. We should not have this contradiction at the heart of policy that is causing people across the country to lose patience with him.
I gather that the Secretary of State is downstairs at a function or party this evening. I find it hard to believe that he is not here to speak up for his own Bill, to defend it and to tell us why I am wrong and why he has the right vision for our schools. The fact that he is not here means that he cannot face this House to ask for the 50 powers that he is taking in the Bill. We might have thought—might we not?—that he would have the courtesy to come and ask the House for those powers. It is a sorry state of affairs, and shows something of the arrogance that increasingly characterises the Government.
I believe that the Secretary of State is failing to take the education profession with him. They need stability and he is providing chaos. He is losing the confidence of head teachers and teachers. The Education Bill will now move to the other place and I know that their lordships will seek to moderate it, protecting fairness and promoting high standards in every school for every child. I urge them to do so and to give the Bill the fullest possible scrutiny, because this House of Commons, as it has shown today, is in danger of sleepwalking towards an elitist two-tier education system that will be good for some children and some schools, but not all children and all schools.
Sure Start Children’s Centres
Andy Burnham Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House believes that improving the life chances of children and young people from all backgrounds should be central to Government policy; recognises that the Sure Start network of 3,600 Children’s Centres, introduced by the previous administration, is crucial in delivering high quality early education and early intervention for children, as well as support, advice and specialist services for parents and carers; notes that the funding to local authorities for the Early Intervention Grant in 2011-12 represents a real terms cut of 22.4 per cent. nationally, compared to the 2010-11 allocations before in-year cuts to area based grants; recognises that, in the context of this cut to early intervention funding, the large, front-loaded cuts to other local authority funding streams, and the removal of the ring-fence around Sure Start funding, Sure Start Children’s Centres will inevitably be put at risk; notes that before the General Election the Prime Minister promised to protect and strengthen Sure Start; and therefore calls on the Government to protect the Sure Start network of Children’s Centres by thinking again about their deep cuts to Sure Start funding, to monitor the evidence and, if local authorities are choosing to disinvest in Sure Start centres, to commit to reinstating the ring-fence for Sure Start funding to ensure that vital and valued services are not lost.
How tempting it might be to continue the discussion that just took place. The record of the Department in answering parliamentary questions and letters is pretty lamentable: 90% of named day PQs are not answered on time. That gives a glimpse of the chaos that reigns in the Secretary of State’s Department. But I note your ruling, Mr Speaker, that the matter is closed for now, so we will turn to Sure Start.
It is not always the case that policies debated and voted on in the House become universally accepted as a good thing in the country at large, but occasionally, between us, we get it right. Every now and again an idea comes along that is right for its time, addresses a real need, makes life better for many people and slowly becomes part of our national fabric. It acquires a broad appeal across the Benches of the House and its longevity becomes secured. Sure Start, it seems, is in that rare category of policies.
Last year, a survey by the Institute for Government considered the most successful policies of the past 30 years. Sure Start was judged to be the fifth most successful, beaten only by the national minimum wage, devolution, privatisation and the Northern Ireland peace process. Such a commendation for a flagship policy of the last Labour Government gives rise to a deep sense of pride among Labour Members today, but we are realists too. We know that other Labour achievements, such as the national health service, the Open university and the national minimum wage, will endure only if we convince all parts of the House that they are right.
It did not go unnoticed just over a year ago when the then Leader of the Opposition, now the Prime Minister, gave this pre-election manifesto statement to the National Childbirth Trust:
“We are strongly committed to Sure Start Children’s Centres and will strengthen this service”—
a clear promise to parents when the Prime Minister sought their votes. We have called this debate today to hold him and his Government to account for it.
This is not our first recent opportunity to discuss Sure Start. Seven weeks ago, the House had an excellent debate about the subject, but back then councils were still setting budgets and making choices. Today, we are in a much better position to make sense of the emerging picture on the ground, and we can judge the oft-repeated claim from the Secretary of State and his Ministers that they have given councils enough funding to keep all Sure Start centres open and, in the words of the Secretary of State at the most recent Education questions in an answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), that they have given them
“sufficient to guarantee every child a high-quality place.”—[Official Report, 21 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 697.]
Today, we can test the claim made by Ministers from the Dispatch Box that councils have enough money to do both. Does the claim hold water?
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Is the right hon. Gentleman not pleased to know that in Harlow all the Sure Start centres remain open and are as strong as ever? Given that councils throughout the country have £10 billion in reserves, should they not use some of that money to strengthen their Sure Start centres?
Andy Burnham
I certainly say, “Good old Harlow”. The hon. Gentleman sits on a very fine inheritance from Labour in that constituency, and I trust that he will look after it well. Indeed, he follows a very distinguished former Member.
Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman does not consider Kent to be a bastion of Labour support, but all the children’s centres in the county are being kept open.
Andy Burnham
We will judge a week on Thursday whether Kent can return much Labour support, and we look forward to that judgment, but again I pay tribute to those local authorities that in difficult circumstances are doing their best to keep the Sure Start infrastructure intact. They deserve credit for that, because they are making some difficult decisions, and later I will go through some local authorities and list those examples that the House will be interested to hear.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
Westminster council is also seeking not to lock the doors of its 12 children’s centres, but it is achieving that by implementing an 18% cut in funding through reduced outreach services and reduced services for child development, and by ensuring that smaller centres no longer provide any help for families seeking employment. How does that fit with the Government’s objective of getting mothers back into employment?
Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I look over her local authority’s border into Hammersmith and Fulham, where even more worrying steps are being taken, steps that my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) has skilfully exposed. I will come to those issues later, because there is a real issue about whether, in keeping open a centre, the service to parents in local authorities throughout the country is being destroyed. That is the key issue for the House to consider.
Let me, however, give the Government credit where credit is due—most unlike me, but here we go: they have certainly talked a good game on early intervention. To show just how committed they were to the issue, they commissioned not one but two distinguished Opposition Members to advise them on it, and the Field review—I am pleased to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) in his place—and the Allen report found common ground.
First, each report sets out a persuasive case for investing public resources heavily in the early years of a child’s life. They argue that doing so will help us to tackle the root causes of poverty and to build true social mobility in Britain. Only that will challenge a society where, in the words of my right hon. Friend,
“at the age of three but certainly by five, the die of life is set for most children.”—[Official Report, 2 March 2011; Vol. 524, c. 320.]
We all must seek to work together to challenge such a world.
Secondly, their recommendations are based on the assumption that the existing 3,600 Sure Start children’s centres throughout the country, one to serve every community, should be the essential infrastructure—indeed, the delivery system—if the vision of high quality early intervention is to become a reality. That is the key question that we need to consider today.
The departmental Select Committee in the previous Parliament found that Sure Start had begun to make an appreciable difference to children’s lives. It stated:
“Parents in Sure Start areas relative to those in non-Sure Start areas reported using more child and family-related services…and their children were socially more competent. These results seem to show that programmes are becoming more effective over time, particularly in their work with the most disadvantaged, and that children are feeling the benefit of longer exposure to the programmes.”
That is a ringing endorsement.
In essence, Sure Start built into the early years universal comprehensive education. Its strength is that it brings together parents, of all backgrounds, who may not have known each other before. Instead of providing only state support, Sure Start, by bringing those people together, helped them to create self-sustaining support networks in the community, through one parent working with another, and in that way it gave all young parents the extra support that they need. That is a fundamental strength of Sure Start, and it must not be lost.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend will be pleased to know that Labour-controlled Tameside council has committed to keeping open all its children’s centres, despite a tough financial settlement, but did not the Conservative spokesperson on children and families let the cat out of the bag on the front page of the Tameside Advertiser this week, when she said that Sure Start should not be a universal provision serving every community?
Andy Burnham
That absolutely does let the cat out of the bag, and I am about to go through some examples of Conservative spokespeople in local government who do not seem to have read the Prime Minister’s words before the election last year.
I congratulate Tameside council, however, because it has dealt with a disproportionately larger cut to its early intervention grant than other authorities in Greater Manchester—Trafford, to name but one, which Government Front Benchers routinely mention. In Tameside, for every young person aged under 20 years old there has been a £70 per child cut in the early intervention grant.
The council is working in those circumstances to keep the network of Sure Start centres open, and that is why I congratulate Tameside, and I hope my hon. Friend will take my congratulations back to his friends. Owing to all the benefits that I have described, it is not surprising that the Field review concludes:
“Local Authorities should aim to make Children’s Centres a hub of the local community”.
My right hon. Friend describes them as a “targeted universal service”.
Two authoritative reports delivered to the Government advocate the importance of children’s centres, but now we get to the heart of the matter. We will soon discover whether the Government really wanted to hear the views of my esteemed friends on that crucial subject, or whether they were brought in for presentational reasons—as a piece of theatre to send a desirable political message.
To be fair to the Prime Minister, I remember well how about a year ago, during the election campaign, some Labour Members doubted the sincerity of his commitments to Sure Start. I looked back to what he said, however, because I remembered it from the television debates, and on 5 May 2010, on the very eve of the general election, readers of The Independent sent in questions to the then Leader of the Opposition. A questioner asked:
“As a parent who relies heavily on Sure Start centres for the educational and social needs of my child, I would like to know whether these centres will continue to receive funding.”
The Prime Minister replied:
“Yes, we back Sure Start. It’s a disgrace that Gordon Brown has been trying to frighten people about this. He’s the Prime Minister of this country but he’s been scaring people about something that really matters.”
That is what the Prime Minister said last May. In some ways, his anger was reassuring because it looked as if the Government-to-be were genuinely committed. I wonder how the Prime Minister feels today, given that it has turned out that those things that, as he said, “really matter” are under serious threat.
Evidence is emerging of widespread disinvestment by local authorities in Sure Start children’s centres. That seriously challenges the deliverability of the vision set out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
I am happy to join the cavalcade of other Conservative authorities that have already been mentioned; in West Sussex, no Sure Start centres are closing. Indeed, there is a greater desire to improve the services for early years. Surely that is at odds with what the right hon. Gentleman is saying.
Andy Burnham
It is a mixed picture. We will get to the bottom of the true picture on the ground as we get into the debate today. If Conservative local authorities are not just keeping the centres open, but protecting the services within them, I will of course recognise that that is what we want and what the Government said they would do. If that is the case, then good. But other Conservative-controlled authorities are not doing that. My question back to the hon. Gentleman is: what are he and his Front-Bench colleagues saying to Conservative authorities that are disinvesting from Sure Start and siphoning the money out? I look forward to an equally fulsome answer on that question.
If the Government accept the vision in the review that they commissioned my right hon. Friend to produce, I put it to the House that it must urgently consider what is happening on the ground and ask the Government to change course to preserve the network of children’s centres and services. As I will show today, children’s centres are closing right here, right now. Highly trained staff are being made redundant. Some children’s centres are keeping the lights on, but no more. That is the reality on the ground that the Prime Minister must urgently confront.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
I draw my right hon. Friend’s attention to what is going on in Sefton. The council faces 30% cuts in its budget and it has had to review all 19 of its Sure Start centres. A Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition has made that decision, which emphasises my right hon. Friend’s point about the cuts being made by Conservative-run or led authorities. Families in Sefton are clear that they need the entire network. It is essential for people from all the different parts of the community that the network should be maintained. People from different parts of the community need different elements of the service.
Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend points out that coalition councils are not acting to protect Sure Start. He has come to an important point. The Government will have to decide. When the Prime Minister made promises last May, was he promising to keep Sure Start as a universal service? If he was, he really has to act. If, however, he had decided to let it become a targeted service—available in some communities and not in others, available to some parents and not others—he needs to be honest about that. He needs to say that and it needs to be clear that that is the Government’s policy.
The Government built a clear expectation among parents that they were preserving Sure Start as a universal comprehensive service that would give all children the best start in life. Indeed, at the last Education questions, the Secretary of State said that he would guarantee all children a high-quality place. The Government will have to live up to that promise.
If today the Prime Minister believes as strongly in Sure Start as he appeared to on the eve of polling day, he must act to save it. He must stop the disinvestment in Sure Start by councils and reinstate the Sure Start ring-fence in the next financial year, as our motion suggests, to protect a service that is still very much in the early years itself.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
Will the shadow Secretary of State also congratulate Medway, an authority that is retaining its 19 Sure Start centres? It is going beyond that and showing the Government’s commitment to helping and supporting the young ones in their early years. I have a letter from the Department for Education dated 13 March 2011. It says that the Government are giving an additional £275,000 to Medway to increase provision to two-year-olds, three-year-olds and four-year-olds. That shows the commitment from local councils and the Government.
Andy Burnham
I am not in a position to judge the decisions of Medway council. What I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that the cuts introduced by the coalition since the last election have led to a £40-per-child cut in the early-intervention grant in Medway. If the council is making the best of a bad lot, I say good luck to it; I hope that the hon. Gentleman will encourage other councils to do the same.
Andy Burnham
I have given way to the hon. Gentleman once. I will now make some progress.
There is a dissonance between commitments given from the Dispatch Box by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State and the actions of councils on the ground, which are dealing with the reality—the hand of cards—that the Government have given them. How did we get to this position? First, let me examine the issue of national funding to support Sure Start. In his statement to the House on the spending review, the Chancellor said that he had found
“more resources for our schools and for the early years education of our children.”—[Official Report, 20 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 964.]
On that day, we said that that was a highly questionable statement. But ever since, the Secretary of State and his Ministers have stuck loyally to the line that the Government have given councils enough money to maintain children’s centres and services—that is, until the debate led by my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) a couple of weeks ago on estimates day. I do not know what possessed him, but the Secretary of State intervened on a point being made by my hon. Friend and for the first time broke the discipline that Government Front Benchers had been observing so carefully. He said:
“The hon. Lady was kind enough to mention earlier that by her own calculation ring-fencing Sure Start within the current early intervention grant envelope would mean that other services would have to go. How will she protect those other services? Will she raise taxes, cut spending elsewhere or, as she said earlier, simply cross her fingers and hope for the best?”—[Official Report, 2 March 2011; Vol. 524, c. 359.]
That is a revealing statement, for implicit in the Secretary of State’s words is the admission that the Government have not given councils enough money in the early intervention grant for everything that they need to pay for to sustain both Sure Start and other crucial services, such as short breaks for disabled children, teenage pregnancy services and the children’s social care work force.
The Secretary of State could not have been clearer—we cannot have both: ring-fence Sure Start, and face cuts to some of those essential services for children. At least we saw a degree of honesty from the Secretary of State, but his problem is that his statement directly contradicted the Prime Minister’s a few weeks earlier; that is not a good career move for a man in his fragile position.
In February, at Prime Minister’s questions, the Prime Minister claimed the polar opposite of what the Secretary of State said. He said:
“On Sure Start, the budget is going from £2.212 million to £2.297 million. That budget is going up. That is what is happening.”—[Official Report, 9 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 293.]
To be fair to the Secretary of State—and I do not often say this—on this occasion he has a much better grip on the detail than his boss. The £2.212 million referred to by the Prime Minister is the early intervention grant for 2011-12. The Prime Minister conveniently took 2011-12 to be his baseline year—and yes, between 2011-12 and 2012-13 the contribution goes up in cash terms. However, not for the first time at the Dispatch Box, he was playing fast and loose with the figures. The only way to show what has happened to Sure Start and early intervention since the change of Government is to compare 2011-12 with the financial year that has just ended—that is, 2010-11. A departmental ministerial statement dated 13 December 2010 said that in 2011-12 the amount to be allocated through the early intervention grant
“is 10.9% lower than the aggregated 2010-11 funding through the predecessor grants.”—[Official Report, 13 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 67WS.]
The Prime Minister said that the budget was going up; the Department explicitly says that the budget is going down. That is not acceptable. In fact, it is worse than that because the Department’s calculation leaves out in-year early cuts after the general election to the area-based grant that many local authorities, particularly in more deprived areas, used to receive.
New research from the Library gives us the full picture. Its figures show that the equivalent EIG at the start of 2010-11 was £2.794 million, meaning that this year’s £2.212 million represents a real-terms cut of 22.4%.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
The implication of what the right hon. Gentleman is saying is that under a continued Labour Government the cash settlement for all these services would have remained the same, yet in the Labour manifesto there was no promise to ring-fence the Sure Start grant, the Department for Education or the Department for Communities and Local Government. Given that the previous Chancellor intended to make savings across Departments, where does the right hon. Gentleman believe that this money would have come from?
Andy Burnham
Sure Start was ring-fenced—that was the policy of our Government. The Labour manifesto talks of strengthening early intervention. I am holding the Prime Minister to account for what he said when he was seeking the votes of people in this country. He said, in terms, that he would strengthen Sure Start, so I am saying that we should look at the evidence on the ground. Is Sure Start strengthening or weakening? When I read the hon. Gentleman some of the evidence, I hope that he will make an honest judgment on whether the service is getting better or is under threat.
The research from the Library tells us that in England the average cut in the EIG between 2010-11 and 2011-12 is £50 for every child in this country. Altogether that is absolute proof that the PM, who is undoubtedly a good talker—a PR man—is dangerously cavalier with the facts at the Dispatch Box, as Oxford university recently found to its cost. He said at the election that he would protect Sure Start, but in fact he has cut it, in real terms, by about a quarter. This takes us to the crux of the matter. The Government have not had the guts to be honest about the cuts that they are making to Sure Start. Instead, they have cut the budget, removed the ring fence, and offloaded the problem and the responsibility on to local authorities up and down the country, some of which face invidious choices in cutting essential services for children—child safeguarding and other important services. That is a terrible position for local authorities to be in, be they Conservative, Liberal, Labour or in coalition. Some other councils are cutting way beyond what would have been the ring fence. They are cutting into funds that were given by the Government for the purposes of Sure Start, siphoning them off and spending them elsewhere.
Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman talked about cavalier language. At the last election, Harriet Harman, the Member for—
Ben Gummer
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for correcting me.
At the time, the lady of whom I spoke came to Ipswich and told my constituents that children’s centres would be cut in Ipswich. Since the election, every single centre has stayed open and two more have been added. The right hon. Gentleman is a decent man. Will he apologise on her behalf for having misled people, because I have tried to get her to apologise and she has refused to answer my letters?
Andy Burnham
I will happily look at what is happening on the ground in Ipswich. However, there is an important difference that I point out to the hon. Gentleman. It is possible to keep a children’s centre’s lights on and keep a receptionist and a cleaner, but what is going on inside? Is he satisfied that an appropriate level of service is being provided to support the parents of Ipswich? That is the judgment that he has to make. It is not just a case of whether he can come to the House and say that Ipswich is keeping the lights on—it needs to do more than that. Indeed, his own Government have funded it to do more than that. Suffolk, which is the local authority concerned, has had a huge cut of £40 per child in its area. He has to ask his Front Benchers whether that is acceptable for his constituents.
Let me go around the towns and point out what is happening on the ground. Derby, home to a Tory-Liberal coalition, seems like a good place to start. Surely there, if anywhere, people would implement coalition policy to the letter, would they not? Well, perhaps not, because we find that in Derby six children’s centres are threatened with closure. In a BBC news report on 10 March, Kelly Jennings, daughter of the Tory leader of the council, Harvey Jennings, said:
“I voted for the Conservatives because I thought there was going to be more help for the NHS. Now they are cutting that off and locally they are cutting off the Sure Start centres which single parents like myself rely on.”
We have been very pleased to welcome Kelly into the Labour party because she sees that in these tough times only Labour will be the voice of people and stand up for the services on which people depend. [Interruption.] Conservative Members laugh, so let us look at some Tory authorities. We have heard wonderful praise for many local authorities today; let us look at a few others. Are they working hard, like other authorities, to implement the Prime Minister’s clear pre-election pledges?
In Hammersmith and Fulham, we saw the first use of an interesting tactic that my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) mentioned earlier. Many of its 16 children’s centres were under threat of closure. My hon. Friend went to the council meeting to see it discuss the issue. Then we heard the news that six would become hubs and 10 would remain as spokes. Only when we dig a little deeper do we find that nine of those so-called spokes will receive £25,000 a year. What is that enough to pay for—a receptionist, a caretaker, a bottle of bleach? Is there much more that it would pay for? I do not know, but it could not be very much. At the last Education questions, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) recalled the hospital without patients in “Yes Minister”. This coalition may be remembered for a more modern equivalent —a children’s centre without any children in it. That could be the Secretary of State’s legacy. I do not know about hubs and spokes, but there are certainly plenty of mirrors and smoke when it comes to presenting the facts about Sure Start.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I hope that my right hon. Friend might have an opportunity to look at what else is happening in Hull, controlled by the Liberal Democrats, which has seen a 32% cut in the children’s budget across the board and a 50% cut in the money going to children’s centres. Of the 20 children’s centres that we had under the Labour Government, 13 have effectively been mothballed by the Liberal Democrats and will have very few services.
Andy Burnham
I am glad that my hon. Friend raises that important point. As she says, the budget for Sure Start in Hull has been cut by 50% from £9 million to £4.5 million. During a previous Opposition day debate on the education maintenance allowance, the Secretary of State stood at the Dispatch Box and advocated that people should vote Liberal Democrat, particularly in Hull, pointing to some excellent provision that was available. I wonder whether we will hear that again or whether he will revise that advice to the electorate in advance of next Thursday. A 50% cut—can that be what the Prime Minister had in mind when he said he would strengthen Sure Start? This is the decimation of services on the ground.
Let us talk about some more Tory authorities before we get on to the Liberal Democrats. Tory-controlled Barnet is removing funding from eight of its 21 children’s centres, making £6.4 million of savings. Tory-controlled Bromley is closing 13 of its 16 centres. How can there be a service for the whole borough when just three centres are left? Are Ministers really saying that every parent in Bromley can access those centres and their services? I doubt that very much.
In Hampshire, 28 of the 81 children centres are set for closure. However, we should not worry because help is at hand. The right hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) has signed a petition against the changes. Thank God for that!
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
I would like to correct the right hon. Gentleman on his facts, unfortunately. Hampshire county council has pledged to protect all front-line Sure Start services and only back-office costs will be cut.
Andy Burnham
Well, there was a plan to close 28 children’s centres. I was led to believe that the council was considering the plan and consulting on it. I do not know when it had a change of heart. Perhaps it was because of the force of the representations of the right hon. Member for Eastleigh. We will have to find out. I am tempted to ask the Liberal Democrats to relay back to their colleague that rather than sign the petition, it might have been better for him to speak up in Cabinet to oppose the Secretary of State for Education and his cuts to the early intervention grant. Would that not have been a quicker way of resolving the matter, whether or not the local authority has had a last-minute change of heart with the local elections looming?
I do not know what to make of the behaviour of the right hon. Member for Eastleigh. Am I alone in finding his behaviour increasingly strange and Cable-esque? For the past 11 months, he has sat with his Lib Dem colleagues in Cabinet as the Tories have put various questions before them. They were asked, “How about trebling tuition fees and creating a market in higher education?” They said, “Why of course, be our guest, go and do it.” The Secretary of State for Education asked, “How about scrapping EMA?” “Please do,” said the right hon. Member for Eastleigh, “and why not decimate the careers service while you’re at it?” They were asked, “Shall we cut Sure Start?” “Please do,” said the right hon. Member for Eastleigh, “it will give me a good campaign at local level. Please get on and do it.” However, when the Tories ask, “Won’t AV mean we spend a little more on counting machines and the cost of elections?” all of a sudden, there is talk of resignation, legal challenges and Lord knows what. I struggle to understand that response from the right hon. Member for Eastleigh.
Does that synthetic rage not expose once and for all the absolute moral bankruptcy of today’s Liberal Democrats? When the interests of millions of young people were at stake in Cabinet discussions, they sat on their hands, but when their self-interest is challenged because they might not win a vote on a change to the voting system, it is time to bring down the coalition. That tells people everything they need to know about the Liberal Democrats: their politics are flaky, unprincipled and cynical, and their disloyal Ministers are preparing for life beyond the coalition.
There have been increasingly desperate statements from the Deputy Prime Minister. What has he said about Sure Start? At the Lib Dem spring conference he said:
“I cannot tell you how proud I am that not a single Liberal Democrat-led council is closing a single Sure Start children’s centre.”
Liberal Democrat Members have gone quiet. Are any of them prepared to back up that statement today? Stand up now. Does anyone hold to that statement?
Andy Burnham
You do. So the Liberal Democrats all think that that is a correct representation and stand by it.
Let us consider Kingston upon Hull, where there is a 50% cut in the Sure Start budget. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) says that that is not true. Perhaps somebody has more up-to-date information and will beg to differ. Kingston upon Thames is another interesting and revealing example. Channel 4 FactCheck picked up the suggestion from the Deputy Prime Minister that the Lib Dems were not closing any centres and Cathy Newman went to Kingston upon Thames to look at whether any centres were being closed. Indeed, one was being closed in Hook. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for North Cornwall says that it is not a Sure Start centre. Well, when Cathy Newman went there, she found a plaque on the door that read, “children’s centre”. How can it not be a children’s centre, I ask the hon. Gentleman? I am struggling with this defence.
I acknowledge that Labour councils, too, are taking difficult decisions. We have heard coalition Ministers target Liverpool and Manchester. Liverpool is losing £90 per young person and Manchester £80. Both are working to keep service reductions to a minimum. Hampshire, by contrast, is losing just £30 per child and plans to close 28 centres. How does that work?
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful for what my right hon. Friend said about Liverpool. Will he join me in congratulating Labour-led Liverpool city council, which has not closed any children’s centres and is desperately trying to keep them all open? I hope to intervene on the Secretary of State to ask for his support for that.
Andy Burnham
I do congratulate Labour-led Liverpool city council and its leader, Joe Anderson. Sure Start is clearly close to his heart, as he said when he set the budget. I am delighted that it is working to keep all its centres open.
Perhaps our calling this debate has led some people at local level to have a change of heart. Perhaps it has led to some U-turns at local level, of the kind we have become familiar with from the Government. The hon. Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage) mentioned Hampshire. [Laughter.] The Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) laughs, but only yesterday, Hampshire decided that its centres would remain open, but that the budget would be cut from £17 million to £11 million. [Interruption.] I do not read the Hampshire local press every day. Does the Under-Secretary? The council had a plan to close—
Mr Speaker
Order. I will say two things. First, it is not necessary for the Under-Secretary to behave like a child to demonstrate his empathy for children. That is not a requirement of the job. Secondly, although I am very much enjoying the right hon. Gentleman’s geographical tour of the United Kingdom and always relish his exchanges with the Secretary of State, I am conscious that Back-Bench Members also wish to contribute. I am sure that those on the Front Benches will take account of that and apply a certain self-denying ordinance.
Andy Burnham
I agree, Mr Speaker, and will bring my remarks to a close.
Liverpool is doing well, despite facing difficult budget cuts of £90 per child. Hampshire is losing just £30 per child and is in a mess at local level, as is clear. These are the real politically motivated cuts. Hampshire is cutting its budget from £17 million to £11 million—a council in a more affluent area siphoning funds out of Sure Start and away from children who are facing the biggest challenges.
The evidence is racking up. Sure Start is being starved and is shrinking. Coalition policy is turning a much-loved, universal service into a patchy postcode lottery, which breaks the Prime Minister’s promise to parents. The ministerial team are making a mess of this successful policy in precisely same way as they mangled EMA and school sport partnerships. The Government say that they accept the Field and Allen recommendations, but the rhetoric does not match the reality. Early intervention services are under intense pressure as councils wrestle with impossible choices. Later this week, Labour will publish a survey of 70 directors of children’s services, which reveals a worrying picture of the quality and coverage of child safeguarding services in the current climate. It is becoming increasingly clear that Sure Start will not survive if the removal of the ring fence continues.
The motion makes the reasonable request for the Government to consider the emerging evidence and change course. We were right about school sport and we were right about EMA. If the Government care about the promises they have made, it is time for another U-turn and the reinstatement of the ring fence. I hope that they will listen, but somehow I doubt that they will. The decisions to shrink Sure Start fit entirely with the direction of Government education policy: at every stage of the education journey, they are making life harder for those who face the biggest challenges. They are breaking the promises that they made. We have heard what is happening to pre-school education, despite the fact that the programme for international student assessment has shown that all the best school systems in the world are based on the most extensive pre-school provision.
On four-to-16 education, the Chancellor stood at the Dispatch Box on the day of the spending review and promised more resources for schools, and said that the pupil premium would be “truly additional”. Heads know how hollow those words were, as they have to use a static or falling budget to buy back central support services previously provided for free by the local authority. Most schools are facing 80% cuts in their buildings budgets, as the Secretary of State showers extra money on his free schools.
On 16-to-19 education, the Prime Minister made a personal promise to young people at a further education college to keep the education maintenance allowance, but the Government scrapped it. Even the OECD has recently called on the Government to reinstate it. The effect of scrapping it will be that education and the route to a better life will now be closed off to many young people.
On higher education, holier-than-thou promises from the Government that £9,000 fees would be the exception rather than the norm have proved utterly false, as we will debate later today. Universities such as Cambridge are left to say what the Government will not—that state school pupils will start to drop off and find it harder to gain access.
What is the combined effect of all those misguided education policies? I can almost hear the sound of falling aspiration in my constituency and in former industrial areas where so much was done to lift expectation, and I can tell the Secretary of State that it terrifies me. The Government are breaking their promises to parents and young people, and the effect will be to reinforce disadvantage at every stage of the education journey. Families with a little extra money will probably be able to insulate themselves from the worst of the changes, but the combined effect on the children who have least will be that the odds are stacked even further against them by an old elite, slamming the door in their face and kicking away the ladder.
What about when young people try to move from education into today’s more competitive workplace? The Deputy Prime Minister made a feeble promise to open up work experience and internships, and days later the Prime Minister laughed in his face and reassured his old network that it would be business as usual.
The coalition’s true colours are slowly being revealed, and what we see is the same old ruthless Tories. Promises were made to soften their image—“We will look after the NHS.” “EMA will stay.” “Sure Start will be strengthened”—but they have all been cynically abandoned after less than a year in office. The Government are acting as though they got a mandate last May. They did not, but we have a Liberal Democrat party that is letting them behave as though they did. Last May, the Liberal Democrats sacrificed everything and sold the shop for a referendum on the voting system, a change that they want in their own electoral interests. Now we see how viciously they are prepared to fight to secure that self-interest, while we remember how meekly they sold down the river millions of young people whose votes put them in Parliament.
Children and young people deserve a lot better than this. Labour will stand up for young people and give them all a fair start in life, and we will be their voice in tough times. I commend the motion to the House.
Michael Gove
QPR, as it happens, but I admire Liverpool, and particularly Kenny Dalglish. [Interruption.] We are top of the league, you know.
Another gloomy prediction was made by Labour Members, but it has not come to pass—that of a double-dip recession. That was the mantra at the top of the Labour party, from the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), the Leader of the Opposition and the Labour election co-ordinator, whatever his name is. The news today, however, is that our economy is growing once more—another gloomy prediction confounded.
We also heard a series of gloomy predictions from Labour Members about what would happen to the network of Sure Start children’s centres in this country. We were told by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) that we would see a reduction in the number of children’s centres in Hammersmith and Fulham, but actually, as the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) almost acknowledged, not only are all the existing Sure Start children’s centres being protected but a new one is being built. There is an increase in the number of Sure Start children’s centres in Hammersmith and Fulham.
The right hon. Member for Leigh told us halfway through his speech that Hampshire was going to close all its children’s centres. Sadly, that slur—[Interruption.] It was a slur. That slur on Hampshire county council was very effectively rebutted by my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage). The council is ensuring that every single children’s centre will remain open. The right hon. Gentleman did not have the grace to acknowledge either that it was a Conservative local authority that was keeping them open or that he had got it wrong. I admire his passion, but he must get his facts right before he comes to the Dispatch Box and attempts to tarnish the good name of an effective local authority that is doing a great job for children and young people.
In a spirit of generosity, I have to say that a great many Labour local authorities are doing a good job and ensuring that Sure Start children’s centres remain open. There are also Liberal Democrat local authorities doing a good job. One of the most disappointing things about the right hon. Gentleman’s speech was his attack on the Liberal Democrats, which I felt was mean-minded and beneath him. I understand that as an election co-ordinator, with just a week to go before he shores up the Labour vote that is collapsing in Scotland and evanescent elsewhere, he has to pick what he thinks is an easy target, but he has picked the wrong target.
My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, with whom I do not always agree, was right when he said that Liberal Democrat authorities were keeping all their Sure Start children’s centres open. We can look at what is happening in Kingston upon Hull, where all the centres are remaining open and services are being delivered from all of them. The same is true in Kingston upon Thames. The Liberal Democrat councillors in those authorities represent a party that I would not vote for, but they are doing the job a darned sight better than the Labour councillors who used to run Hull when it was the worst local authority in the country according to the Audit Commission. It is now the most improved.
Michael Gove
Talking of room for improvement, I give way to the shadow Secretary of State.
Andy Burnham
Before we leave this matter, let us get to the bottom of the point about Hampshire. There was clearly a change of heart yesterday—[Interruption.] Will the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), hear me out? If there was a change of heart, the news had not reached me, and I welcome it. However, we must ask, a change of heart to what? The Sure Start budget there is going from £17 million to £11 million, a 35% cut. Is the Secretary of State applauding Hampshire for making a cut on that scale? He has just applauded the local authority and invited me to do the same. Is he saying that such a cut to Sure Start is acceptable and that the local authority should be applauded for cutting the service by more than a third?
Michael Gove
The right hon. Gentleman has not misled the House—he never misleads the House—but I am afraid that he has got himself in what we call in Scotland “a bit of a fankle”. He asserted that Hampshire was going to cut children’s centres, and then he was caught short by the facts. I know that he has more respect for the House than to want to put himself in a position of having inaccurate facts in front of him, so all he needs to do, as graciously as is his natural custom, is acknowledge that Hampshire is keeping its children’ centres open and congratulate it on that.
One reason why Hampshire, Hammersmith and Fulham, Kingston upon Hull, Kingston upon Thames and many other Conservative and Liberal Democrat councils, as well as Labour ones, can keep their Sure Start children’s centres open is that there is enough money. I can make that assertion because of the evidence that has been put forward by two of the people who have the best understanding of the early years. Anne Longfield OBE, chief executive of 4Children, has said that the Government are
“continuing to provide adequate funding to keep centres open and councils should resist the temptation to use this money to plug gaps elsewhere.”
Anand Shukla, the acting chief executive of the Daycare Trust, has said:
“The Government has allocated sufficient funding for the existing network of Sure Start Children’s Centres to be maintained”.
The money is there—independent witnesses say so—and well-run local authorities all over the country, represented by councillors of different parties, are maintaining that network. Therefore, every single plank of the right hon. Gentleman’s argument has collapsed beneath him, and I have been on my feet for only six minutes.
Michael Gove
I believe that money additional to the early intervention grant has been budgeted for to cover the years 2012-13 to 2013-14, and we are currently discussing with the sector how to ensure that the money is spent most effectively. Rather than having a top-down approach to delivering support for children in the early years, we need to work in partnership, not just with local government, where there are many brilliant leaders, but with those in the voluntary and charitable sector who have a huge amount to add.
I mentioned Anand Shukla and Anne Longfield, but I am also very grateful to people such as Bernadette Duffy, who runs the Thomas Coram children’s centre, which has helped the coalition Government to move forward in developing a framework to ensure that children in the foundation years receive the support that they really need. For example, all of them have worked with us on the response to the report by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead and the interim report produced by the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen). In both reports a compelling case was made—this argument was also made eloquently in the first half of the speech by the right hon. Member for Leigh—that investment and the right interventions in the earliest years can have a dramatic effect in closing the opportunity gap that has grown up in this country.
All of us will have been struck by some of the figures released by the coalition Government and analysed by the Financial Times this week that show that social mobility in this country is still not moving in the right direction. In particular, we see evidence in some of our most deprived areas of children who have not reached an acceptable level of child development by the age of five. In those deprived areas, children who are falling behind continue to do so. I want to ensure that as much as possible we have a cross-party approach to dealing with that problem. Again I have to say that steps were taken by the Deputy Prime Minister, in the launch of his social mobility strategy, to outline exactly what we need to do to tackle these problems. All of his suggestions, particularly the emphasis on intervention at every stage in the life cycle and the prioritisation of early years, would seem to commend themselves to people of good will in every party.
Andy Burnham
I want to make it clear that I welcome some of the steps that the right hon. Gentleman is taking, particularly on two-year-olds, which builds on something that we were talking about. However, I want to ask him a serious question. I am listening carefully to what he is saying, and he is itemising some of the individual things that the Government are dong, but I want to know about the big picture so that I can understand his position on Sure Start. He talked about how Sure Start will develop in the future. A simple question: does he envisage Sure Start as a targeted service or a universal service?
Michael Gove
I envisage Sure Start as a universal service. [Interruption.] Second question? It is an interview. I almost feel like I am on “The Andrew Marr Show”—I will come to him in a moment. I believe that Sure Start is a universal service, but it is also important to recognise that there are children in greater need on whom we should target greater resources. The original Sure Start programme started out targeting areas with the greatest need, and subsequently, as it moved to phase 3, it became universal. Even within that, it is an example of what one might call “progressive universalism”. Yes, the service is there for all, and yes we recognise that disadvantages exist, even in some of our apparently wealthier communities. That is why the service should be universal. Nevertheless, we know that there are areas of real deprivation, such as the constituency that the right hon. Gentleman represents, and we need to ensure that our resources and energy are targeted in that area.
Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)
This Opposition day debate has been billed as one that would land a big blow on the Government on a crucial issue. The shadow Secretary of State gave us a number of examples in his lengthy trip around the country, but they were perhaps not the killer blow that he was hoping to land. He prefaced his remarks by saying that there was a great deal of recognition on both sides of the House of the good that Sure Start has done. I share that view, having seen what Sure Start has achieved in my constituency and elsewhere. Notwithstanding the issues raised in the National Audit Office’s report, to which we might return later in the debate, the programme has great strengths. All things can be worked on and improved, but the programme’s fundamental objectives of reaching and supporting people who need help, and encouraging people to work together to support each other, have been achieved in many children’s centres. Of course we welcome and support that.
Speaking as a rural MP, I believe that delivering such services in places such as North Cornwall is different from delivering them in urban areas. There has always been a hub and spoke approach in rural areas, because of the many village Sure Start children’s centres that we have. I see that as a strength, in that some services travel around all of them. I would caution the shadow Secretary of State against saying that there must be a fully staffed suite of people just hanging around in case someone walks in through the door. Instead, we should be looking at the best way of using resources.
Andy Burnham
I agree; that is a reasonable and fair point. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the examples that I gave. I think that he is the Back-Bench education spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, and I would like him to give us a straight answer today. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) that Lib Dem-controlled Hull city council is cutting the Sure Start budget by 50%. Does the hon. Gentleman support that move?
Dan Rogerson
We are in a period in which people are getting used to a coalition Government, and I am certainly not a Front Bencher here. I am speaking as a Back Bencher, and I am sure that you would be the first to jump on me if I claimed to be a Front Bencher, Mr Deputy Speaker. I and a number of other Liberal Democrats have a Back-Bench group in which we discuss many of these issues with other people inside and outside the party. We are also able to talk to the Minister of State, Department for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), who, as a Minister in the coalition Government, is at the heart of taking these decisions and leading policy forward, along with her other colleagues. My view on what is happening in Hull is that it now has a council that has taken over what was the worst council in the country under Labour and turned it around. It is in challenging financial times—I want to return to that subject later—but it has managed to ensure that all its children’s centres will remain open.
As I said earlier, the hub and spoke model, which is already operating in other parts of the country, can be successfully undertaken. The shadow Secretary of State also referred to a postcode lottery. That is one way of saying that locally elected councillors should be able to take decisions that affect their local areas and, having talked to the local community, use the money available in ways that the community believes will be most effective. That is my view of how local democracy should work. Instead of talking about a postcode lottery, we could talk about the young people in my constituency who had £300 less than the national average for their education under the Labour Government. Cornwall is recognised by the European Union as one of the most economically disadvantaged areas of the country. Those are the issues that we should be looking at, rather than at the way in which different councils take decisions about the money at their disposal.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to early years provision. As we have heard, they have involved Opposition Members in the debate, and I am delighted to see the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) in his place today. The Liberal Democrats have always placed a strong emphasis on early intervention, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), who is no longer in her place, for the work that she has done over the years, inside and outside the party, and for chairing the all-party parliamentary group on Sure Start children’s centres. She makes a significant contribution to the debate.
The shadow Secretary of State attempted to say that the only thing that the Liberal Democrats were worried about was next week’s referendum. It is absolutely clear, however, that the coalition Government will continue, whatever the result of the referendum. I would point to the commitment to investing in child care and early years education for two-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds as something that my party has been arguing for. I also believe that the pupil premium, which the right hon. Gentleman has real problems with, will deliver real change and real investment for disadvantaged young people up and down the country. I would also point to the review by Dame Clare Tickell, and the aspiration to simplify and streamline the bureaucracy around the early years foundation key stage. That was in the Liberal Democrat manifesto. I am sure that the Secretary of State and Conservative colleagues will want to emphasise their own credentials when it comes to tackling bureaucracy, but those measures were certainly in our party’s manifesto. I therefore have no problem with running through the Government’s programme and looking at all the Liberal Democrat priorities that are being delivered in it.
The key point that I want to make is that we are in difficult financial circumstances and, yes, the money going to local government has been restricted and efficiencies are having to be made. As other hon. Members have pointed out, a pot of fairy gold seems to exist in the minds of Opposition Members, along with the belief that, were they in charge, all the financial problems would be solved. However, the cuts programme that they set out when they were pretending to be responsible in government has now disappeared. They said that billions of pounds of cuts would be necessary, but they are now not being at all specific about where those cuts would have been made. It is tiresome that, time and again in these Opposition day debates, whatever the subject, all we hear from them is, “Of course we know that cuts have to be made, but we wouldn’t do it there or in that way.” They never tell us what their alternative would be.
It will become increasingly obvious as this Parliament progresses that that refrain just will not do. When that refrain is tied to a motion such as the one before us, which seeks to scaremonger before a local election about the closure of a service on which people rely, it is even more unfortunate. It is also unfortunate that the “killer statistics” that the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) was hoping to present have not emerged; the picture is different.
Sadly, some jobs will go, which is absolutely to be regretted. I look forward to continued investment in early years education and leadership programmes that might provide something for people wanting to move from one job to another and allow them to carry on using their skills and make a contribution. I also welcome the Government’s Green Paper on special educational needs, particularly the strong aspiration to tie in health spending on matters that perhaps previous were seen as solely the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Education. There are lessons to be learned from Sure Start. In its early days, there were programmes to support breastfeeding, for example, which a primary care trust sometimes struggled to fund, given that supporting children’s centres was not part of the Department’s core area of responsibility. That was a controversial matter at the time.
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
I start by addressing the sunny side that we have been aiming to get to today by talking about the benefits of Sure Start. It has been fantastic for many of my constituents. At the age of 17, one of my constituents found herself pregnant with twins as a single mum. She had to deal with the challenges of that without the help of a loving family around her, and the burden of those challenges led her to self-harming. I am pleased to be able to say that she is now the proud mum of healthy, happy five-year-old twins, and she maintains that that is all down to the help and support she received from Sure Start. It led her to gain the right medical help that she needed and to gain the parental skills necessary to cope with the challenge of twins—which, let us face it, we would all struggle with. Sure Start put her on the right track and taught her how to be a responsible parent, giving her the skills required to be self-sufficient—so much so that she now acts as a mentor to young mothers in my constituency. She is a bright, shining example of why Sure Start is a good thing. The fact that people who were previously on the edge of society can come back in that way shows the great value of Sure Start.
My husband is in the military, so I know at first hand the difficulties involved in trying to bring up a family effectively as a single mum while a partner is away on duty. Two weeks after the birth of my second child, my husband was deployed overseas. Fortunately, I had a strong and supportive family around me to help, but I know that others are not so lucky. On my visits to local Sure Start centres throughout my constituency, I have met many mums with partners in the military who are living in married quarters that are miles away from their home town and from the support network of family and friends that those with young children sometimes need. All of them have emphasised the importance to them of Sure Start. It provides support for mothers to come together and gain the help and advice they need, and it provides them with a welcome opportunity to talk to someone over the age of five.
Sure Start centres provide important services for children and families and they must not be undermined. A recent independent review found that 54% of current incidents of depression in women and 58% of female suicide attempts can be attributed to adverse childhood experiences. That hammers home the great importance of the early years of our childhood to our future prospects. Research has shown that a child’s development at 22 months is an accurate indicator of educational outcomes at 26 years of age, while boys deemed to be “at risk” at the age of three have almost three times more criminal convictions in adulthood than their peers. This is why we must support children from the very start.
It is important to remember that Sure Start was initially introduced to provide a haven of support and advice for our most vulnerable families in particular, yet Ofsted reports that, under the last Government, half of Sure Start children’s centres were not reaching out to the most vulnerable. Therefore, it is crucial that these resources are protected in order to help those who are most in need of help—from the children, whose health and well-being is improved, to the young parents, who are given the support and parenting skills that may have been lacking in their own lives. I know how much they gain from this lifeline.
Sure Start was one of the few positive legacies we inherited from the previous Labour Government, and it surprises me that it is the Labour-run councils up and down the country who are seeking to save money by closing these valuable centres almost as a first resort.
Caroline Dinenage
I will go on to give a couple of examples.
Some of these councils are cutting valuable front-line services to save money, while protecting the pay packets of the council hierarchy. There are some bizarre—and, frankly, ridiculous—job titles, including a creative director at the county council of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), earning £120,000 a year. Labour-run Liverpool city council is closing four Sure Start centres, and its record is a prime example of the wasteful spending that has plagued the effectiveness of our front-line services as, meanwhile, it has an astonishing 23 employees earning over £100,000 a year. Its recently retired chief executive earned more than double what the Prime Minister earns.
Labour-run Manchester city council has put question marks over its Sure Start centres, as the right hon. Gentleman outlined, despite having paid 18 employees over £100,000 a year, having cash reserves of £95 million, as my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) pointed out, and having the highest levels of funding per head in the area. The recent efficiency measures will provide the councils that have been reckless in their spending with an opportunity to reform their strategies and, as a result, function in a more streamlined and effective manner.
Caroline Dinenage
I cannot comment on the councils in the hon. Lady’s area. I can only speak about my own area, which has some of the highest levels of social deprivation in the south of England, and highlight the fact that our country would not be in this situation—spending 39 times the Sure Start budget on the deficit—if the previous Government had not left us in such a pickle.
Caroline Dinenage
Much as I would love to give way to the shadow Secretary of State, he will have plenty of time to say what he wants when summing up.
Hampshire county council has been discussed a lot in the debate. There were plans to keep the number of individually managed centres at 81, but to reduce the number of management hubs to 53. There were never plans to reduce the number of centres. No Sure Start centres in Hampshire were ever planned to be cut; it was just the management of them that was considered. I can well understand why the Opposition struggle with the concept of reducing bureaucracy, management and red tape even though not doing so would be at the expense of front-line services.
Hampshire county council is making £6 million-worth of savings while protecting front-line services. It is even planning to increase the number of family support workers but outsourcing some of the IT and admin from the county council in Winchester and merging some of the management structures of the smaller centres that are closer together. No front-line Sure Start services will be cut, nor will any family support worker posts. From speaking to the mums who use the Sure Start centres, I know that the most important thing for them is that the service will continue in the same way. In fact, they have all identified that savings can be made, while front-line services can be protected. I have given them my absolute commitment that I will continue the dialogue with Hampshire county council to ensure that that is what happens to front-line services and that no mums or families suffer in any way. That is why I called on the Prime Minister in a recent Prime Minister’s Question Time to endorse proposals that protect front-line services, and that is why I criticised the mischief-making that has resulted in Sure Start being used as a political football. It is, was, and always will be, far too important for that.
Sure Start transforms lives in areas such as Gosport, and I have been inspired by the work of our local centres in dramatically improving the well-being, educational achievements and health of children.
Julie Hilling
I am absolutely delighted to answer that question, because Bolton council prepared for £15 million of cuts this year—the amount that the Labour Government told the authority that it was likely to face. It was therefore facing £60 million of cuts over four years. No doubt, that money was difficult to find, but the council now has to find £60 million of cuts over two years, and potentially another £30 million after that. With £15 million of cuts, would life have been hard? Yes, life would have been difficult, but instead of that it has to find £42 million of cuts.
Andy Burnham
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way because I can, I hope, give the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) an answer and support what my hon. Friend is saying. Let us look at the range of the per-child cuts under the early intervention grant this year. In a number of authorities, such as Kingston upon Thames and Hampshire, they start from £30 per head for every person under 20. Let us turn to some of the authorities that my hon. Friend mentioned. The cut for Wigan is £60 per head, while for Liverpool—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The right hon. Gentleman is supposed to be making an intervention, and we are coming towards the end of the debate.
Post-16 Education Funding
Andy Burnham Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to a make a statement on education after the age of 16.
Today’s statement builds on the work of my colleagues such as the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws), the original architect of the pupil premium; the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), who has secured additional funding for reform of early years and special needs provision; my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, who has been leading the coalition’s radical programme of work on social mobility; and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), whose work as advocate for access to education has been driven by the ethical imperative of making opportunity more equal.
All of us know that an increasingly competitive world economic environment means that our children need to be better educated than ever. Sadly, however, we have been falling behind other nations in our educational performance. The OECD has reported that despite sharply rising school spending over the past 10 years, England has slipped down the international rankings from fourth to 16th for science, from seventh to 25th for literacy and from eighth to 28th for mathematics. Last month, in a new report, the OECD revealed that we have one of the most unequal education systems in the developed world. We have a system of education spending that is fundamentally inefficient, and we have an insufficient supply of high-quality vocational education.
The OECD’s challenge is underlined by the conclusions of Professor Alison Wolf’s report on vocational education. Professor Wolf has revealed that nearly half of school leavers never secure five decent GCSEs including English and maths, and that many of the qualifications that they currently secure are not respected by employers and colleges. The case for reform that she makes is unanswerable. We cannot carry on with a vocational education system that is broken, and we are determined to ensure that we have a technical education system that is among the world’s best.
Action has already been taken by my hon. Friend the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning. The number of new apprentices taken on in the last quarter was 54,000, 8% up on last year, and I expect that number to rise further in the months ahead. More young people are being trained for work, and the number of young people between the ages of 16 and 18 not in education, employment or training actually fell by 15,000 in the last quarter of last year. However, we know that more needs to be done. In particular, action needs to be taken to reduce bureaucracy. That is why my hon. Friend will be working with me in the months ahead to make it easier for small and medium-sized enterprises to hire apprentices, so that we can ensure that the next generation enjoys opportunities that were denied the last.
Critically, we know that the biggest determinant of whether students can stay on is their attainment at the age of 16, and specifically whether they secure good GCSEs in subjects that universities and employers value. So to raise attainment, especially among poorer students, we have radically extended our academies programme, introduced a new, more aspirational measure of performance, the English baccalaureate, and are investing an additional £2.5 billion in the pupil premium for students who are in school to the age of 16. Today I can confirm that, building on the pupil premium, we will introduce additional funding for the education of students over the age of 16 who stay on at school and college.
We are already increasing funding for post-16 education next year to more than £7.5 billion, which is equivalent to more than 1.5 million places in schools, colleges and training. Within that £7.5 billion, £770 million is being spent on supporting the education of disadvantaged 16 to 18-year-olds. That is £150 million more than would previously have been available to schools and colleges specifically for the education of the most disadvantaged 16 to 19-year-olds. Nearly 550,000 young people will benefit from that student premium.
As we plan for more students to stay on, so we must reform how we fund the institutions that educate young people over the age of 16. I will therefore consult on a fairer funding formula for all schools and colleges in the sector. Already, thanks to the measures taken by the coalition Government, there will be more places in schools and colleges for students, particularly those who want a high-quality technical and vocational education. Because of the steps that we have taken to reduce waste and remove inefficiencies, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer released in the Budget another £125 million to build new schools and colleges in England. We will double the number of university technical colleges planned from 12 to 24, and we will work with leading figures in industry and commerce to create a new generation of 16-to-19 technical academies that will support the growth industries of the future.
All schools should have the ability to benefit from a closer engagement with business, so I have today asked Bob Wigley, the chair of the Education and Employers Taskforce, to bring forward proposals that will allow every school to develop a link with local businesses through engagement with volunteer governors.
However, we must also ensure that no young person is prevented from staying in education or training for financial reasons. The education maintenance allowance was used by the previous Government to provide an incentive for young people to stay on, and it led to a small increase in overall participation, but as a report commissioned by the previous Government pointed out, there are real questions as to whether it is socially just to pay 45% of students a cash incentive to stay in learning when we could concentrate our resources on removing the barriers to learning faced by the poorest.
The social justice case for reform has already been made—by the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), when he was Education Secretary in the previous Labour Government. He said in 2007 that the EMA was an incentive that
“we will not be using”
in future. Instead, he argued, a Labour Government would need to “divert that” EMA “money into other areas”.
“What we will need to do”,
he argued on behalf of the Blair Government, is
“offer…assistance to youngsters…from poorer backgrounds”,
which is precisely what I propose to do.
Today, I can announce the shape of the new, more targeted, student support scheme that we pledged to introduce last autumn. We have consulted extensively to ensure that we support those most in need, and I am particularly grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark for the work that he has done to help to secure a progressive solution.
The Government have already ensured that every household in which the family are not on the higher rate of tax, and where children stay on in school after the age of 16, will receive increased child benefit, and today I propose to increase the amount of support that we give to the most vulnerable. Twelve thousand students, those in care, care leavers and those receiving income support, including the severely disabled, should in future all receive an annual bursary of £1,200 if they stay on in education—more every year than they ever received under EMA.
I also propose that those most in need who are currently in receipt of EMA be protected. All young people who began courses in 2009-10 and who were told that they should receive EMA will still receive their weekly payments. Young people who started courses in the 2010-11 academic year and received the maximum weekly payment of £30 should now receive weekly payments of at least £20 until the end of the next academic year.
In addition, those students will be eligible for support from an entirely new post-16 bursary scheme. Our scheme will help to ensure that the costs of travel, food and equipment for poorer students are properly met, so that no one is prevented from participating through poverty. One hundred and eighty million pounds will be available for that bursary fund, which is enough to ensure that every child eligible for free school meals who chooses to stay on could be paid £800 per year—more than many receive under the current EMA arrangements.
Schools and colleges will have the freedom to decide on the allocation of the bursary. They are best placed to know the specific needs of their students, and we will give professionals full flexibility over allocating support. We will now consult on the implementation of the new scheme, so that allocations can be made for the new arrangements to come into effect from this September.
In these extremely difficult economic times, the coalition Government are prioritising the reform and investment we need across the education system. We are providing more investment in the early years to tackle entrenched poverty; tougher action to turn around underperforming schools; more investment in improving the quality of teaching, especially for the most disadvantaged; higher standards for all children at every stage, to get more going on to college and into fulfilling jobs; more academies to extend opportunity across the country; sharper accountability for how every penny is spent and how every pupil is taught; and more autonomy for all professionals, so that we can compete with the best.
We must ensure that we at last have a world-class education system in the decade ahead, and I commend this statement to the House.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
On Saturday, thousands of young people came out on to the streets to speak out against the unfair decisions of this Secretary of State. On the “Today” programme, he was dismissive of their actions:
“Evan Davis: Will the march, however big it is, change your mind about any aspect of this cuts agenda? Michael Gove: No.”
Given that so many people no longer have any faith in a word he says, perhaps it is entirely to be expected that he is here, just 48 hours later, announcing a humiliating climbdown. I do not think that we can dignify today’s announcement with the word U-turn. He has taken a successful policy that improved participation, attendance and achievement in post-16 education, and turned it into a total shambles.
I will remind the House of the background. Before the election, both the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister made personal promises to young people that the EMA would stay. Even after the election, the schools Minister, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), pledged to keep it. Then, out of nowhere, the Secretary of State cut it by 90%, and today, under pressure, he tries to put a positive gloss on a 60% cut. Whatever he says, that is what it is—a successful scheme praised by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and leading economists cut by two thirds. Young people have seen through this and will not be taken in by this Secretary of State.
The truth is that with his confused decision making, the Secretary of State has already thrown into chaos thousands of young lives. Even today, many will be none the wiser about their futures. I will take three issues. First, on the money, I have a simple question: where is it coming from? How much is coming from elsewhere in the education budget? Will this announcement not cause chaos elsewhere? Is it true that he is cutting the careers service even further to pay for it—a service already in meltdown thanks to the complete failure of Ministers to manage the transition to a new service? If new money is being provided by the Treasury, how much and why was it not announced in last week’s Budget?
Secondly, on the numbers who will benefit, the Secretary of State claims that the poorest 12,000 students will receive more than under the current scheme. What he did not say is that it amounts to 77p a week more. What has he got to say to the other 588,000 young people who stand to lose over £1,000 a year and to whom he gave a personal promise that they would keep this support? On the Opposition day debate, he stood at that Dispatch Box and promised that his new scheme would help with travel costs and equipment, and provide help for young parents, carers, those leaving care and young people with learning disabilities. Can he today assure the House that all of those promises are met by this announcement? What about the estimated 300,000 first-year students in the middle of a two-year course? He knows that a legal opinion obtained by the Labour party showed that these students had a strong case against the Secretary of State. Is it not the case that today’s partial climbdown was only prompted by the threat of legal action and the panic realisation that he was at risk of yet another reverse in the courts?
Thirdly, on how this scheme will work, we welcome the Secretary of State’s climbdown on keeping a national automatic payment system for about 2% of current recipients. Is it not the case, however, that under his proposed scheme more than half a million young people will no longer have any guarantee of the level of support they can expect? Does not that lack of clarity in this new scheme run the same risk of thousands of young people walking away from education altogether? The fact is that his proposals fail to build on the strengths of the current system. Is it not the case that college principals and senior staff will be spending a huge amount of their time administering this fund and will be placed in the invidious position of having to make impossible decisions between equally deserving claims for support? Will there be any national criteria for eligibility and, if not, are we looking at an unfair postcode lottery?
Will the new scheme replicate the weekly conditional payments that have helped to boost attainment and stay-on rates? Five months ago the Secretary of State made a decision that dropped a bombshell on young people in this country, and we are told today that there will now be a further period of consultation—more consultation! Young people are facing a difficult enough future, but still they do not know what financial support they will get. We are five months away from the start of the academic year, yet people working in education do not have the precise details.
This is yet another shambles from a Secretary of State who lurches from one disaster to another: Building Schools for the Future, school sport partnerships, Bookstart and now EMA. The pattern is always the same—a snap decision, no consultation, no evidence to support it and then a grass-roots backlash as his policy unravels before our eyes. It is becoming ever clearer that this is a Secretary of State out of his depth—who has not worked out the difference between being a journalist and being a Minister, and whose shortcomings have been cruelly exposed in office. His transformation is indeed a remarkable one—from the Tory golden boy to the coalition Mr Bean.
But the danger with this Secretary of State is that his incompetence is having a direct effect on the hopes and dreams of thousands of young people. Even after today’s announcement, with universities lining up to charge the full £9,000 in fees and youth unemployment at record levels, thousands of young people will still have to downgrade their ambitions, leave their studies and give up hope of a university education. Is that not a damning indictment of any Secretary of State for Education?
Michael Gove
I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for those questions. I am grateful for his reference to people being out of their depth—I will of course acknowledge his expertise in this area. I am also grateful to him on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills for once more recycling the Mr Bean joke—the copyright on that joke will ensure that the right hon. Gentleman enjoys a successful and happy retirement in years ahead.
The first question that the right hon. Gentleman asked was: where is the money coming from? The answer is that the money for all public spending comes from the taxpayer. It was on his watch that the taxpayer got a spectacularly bad deal from a Government who spent every penny and left this coalition Government with a difficult economic inheritance. He asked whether the money would be allocated by discretionary means. I pointed out in my statement that it absolutely will. He argued that college principals would face an invidious decision, but he must know that it was the Association of Colleges that argued that the new fund should be put in place on discretionary principles. Perhaps he should consult college principals before claiming to speak on their behalf.
The right hon. Gentleman accused the coalition at one point of engaging in no consultation, and of having too much at another. There was no consistency at all in the questions that he asked. There has been a certain consistency in his position in one area, however, and that is his consistent refusal to state what his alternative would be. The truth is that Labour does not have a policy on this issue or any other education issue. We know what the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle thought: he said that we should divert money from the EMA to the poorest. We know what the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) thought: that we should divert money from child benefit to pay for EMA. However, we do not know what the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) thinks, beyond believing that students should have money to go out for drinks with friends.
We do not know how the right hon. Gentleman would pay for his alternative to our proposal, because he has opposed every saving that we have made. We do not know what he thinks people should be studying when they are not going out, because he has opposed every reform to raise standards. He has no policies on education other than blanket opposition. No wonder he did not join the march for an alternative on Saturday—he does not have one.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andy Burnham Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Michael Gove
I shall specifically ask whether an official from Partnerships for Schools can visit the hon. Lady’s constituency, at a time that is convenient to her and to the staff of the school, in order to see what can be done.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
We found out last week that Education Ministers were the worst in Whitehall at answering parliamentary questions, with 496 questions unanswered. Given some of the non-replies we have heard today, they might well have just hit the 500 mark, so let me give the Secretary of State an easy one. We read last week that the Government’s advocate for access to education, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), is negotiating with the Chancellor ahead of the Budget to secure more money for the replacement for education maintenance allowance. Assuming that the Secretary of State has been kept informed of those discussions, would he care to give the House an update on progress?
Michael Gove
We are progressing very well in dealing with the problems that we were left by the previous Government, handling the deficit in our budget and the deficit in the number of students staying on after 16. I am pleased to say that we have already succeeded in securing more money for students after the age of 16, including £150 million more to help the most disadvantaged students who are staying on after 16. Participation is increasing, and we have managed to keep the number of 16 to 18-year-olds not in education, employment or training—NEETs—to an acceptably low level in this time of difficult economic news. We have done all this even though we were bequeathed a drastic fiscal situation by the Government of whom the right hon. Gentleman was a part.
Andy Burnham
After that reply, I make the running total 501. More money for students after the age of 16? I should be interested to know how the Secretary of State would back up that claim. The truth is that he is repeating tired old lines, which were blown apart last week by a letter from nine leading economists to The Guardian, in which they said that
“the EMA…is not a deadweight loss as the government claims…The argument that there is no alternative to scrapping EMA is false.”
With youth unemployment at record levels, with fear rising of a lost generation, will the Secretary of State admit that he was wrong on EMA? Will he perform another of his famous U-turns and keep his party’s promises to young people?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his question, but he should pay attention. It was pointed out at the time of the comprehensive spending review that we were spending more money on post-16 education. It is interesting that he should mention letters to The Guardian, because the one to which he refers was concocted by nine Labour-supporting economists as part of the save the EMA campaign, which is fronted by a Labour researcher, and is nothing more than a party political exercise.
If we are talking about letters to The Guardian, I recently read one from Professor Alison Wolf, who conducted a review of vocational education. She pointed out two things: first, hundreds of thousands of children were betrayed by the Government of whom the right hon. Gentleman was a member, because they were forced to take inadequate vocational qualifications. She also pointed out that the right hon. Gentleman was—
Building Schools for the Future
Andy Burnham Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Unfortunately, under the previous Government, the BSF budget increased from £45 billion to £55 billion, yet only 8% of the school estate that was supposed to be renovated was renovated. We must have a more efficient way of ensuring that school buildings can be repaired, maintained and rebuilt, and that is what we intend to do.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
The High Court has ruled the Secretary of State guilty of an abuse of power, but anyone listening to him for the first time today would not have thought so. There is still not one word of apology. If he does nothing else, will he at least put that right by apologising to the communities that are suffering the devastating effects of his defective decision making?
Fresh doubts have been raised about the Secretary of State’s competence and judgment. To restore confidence, will he now publish all relevant submissions and advice related to that decision? Did he overrule official advice to consult before making those decisions? Will he confirm reports that a leading QC warned him that the councils had a fairly strong case against him? Why, then, did he proceed regardless, and how much public money has been wasted on legal costs? The judge requested a rerun with an “open mind”. The Secretary of State’s self-justifying response on Friday suggests that his mind is firmly made up. To give the six councils confidence of a fair hearing, should he not now remove himself from any further part in the decision?
This is a damning verdict on a Cabinet Minister by a High Court judge. We saw the same on school sport, Bookstart and the education maintenance allowance: snap decisions, no consultation. The Secretary of State is a repeat offender, dragged here yet again. Is he not now in the last chance saloon, with a clear warning to change his ways?
Education Bill
Andy Burnham Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Michael Gove
In due course.
Inequality worsened under Labour and the education system exacerbated it. If we look at the gap between children eligible for free school meals and their more fortunate and privileged counterparts, we can see that as those children moved through the education system and progressed under Labour the gap between rich and poor widened.
Michael Gove
In due course.
At age seven, the gap in reading scores between those children who were eligible for free school meals and those who were not was 16 points. At age 11, the gap was 21 points in English and maths. At age 16, the gap was 28 points at GCSE, and only 30% of children eligible for free school meals got five good GCSEs including English and maths. In 2009, only 4% of children eligible for free school meals even sat a chemistry or physics GCSE, and in 2008 40% of those children did not get even a single C in any GCSE.
At A-level the situation is worse still, with the gap between private schools and state schools doubling under Labour: in 1997 only 12% more privately educated students got three As at A-level than their state school counterparts, but by 2010 that figure was 24%. In 2008, no child in Hackney, Newham, Sandwell, Knowsley or Lambeth got three As at A-level including maths and further maths. Only 53 children eligible for free school meals, from an entire cohort of 75,000, even sat further maths A-level.
The number of children eligible for free school meals who made it into Oxbridge under Labour fell. In the last but one year for which we have figures, the number was 45; in the last year for which we have figures, it was 40. No wonder the Sutton Trust found that children’s levels of achievement are more closely linked to their parents’ background in England than in any other developed nation. The truth is that, under 13 years of Labour rule, this country became the sick man of Europe in terms of social mobility. Opportunity was capped, aspiration was depressed and, as a result, the life chances of the most vulnerable were failed by the former Ministers who now sit on the Opposition Benches.
Michael Gove
I know that there is a worry throughout the country about libraries, but I see that the hon. Gentleman clearly spent quite a lot of time in the cuttings library of the House given the faithful way in which he read out that handout. It was on the watch of the Government whom he supported that we moved from having the best fiscal position in the G7 to the worst. My right hon. Friend was not in charge of the economy then; the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) was Chief Secretary to the Treasury and borrowing money hand over fist. If the hon. Gentleman shares my anger and rage at how his constituents were let down by a debt and deficit mountain that is holding the next generation back and if he is angry about that intergenerational theft, he knows where to point the finger: at the robbers on the Opposition Front Bench.
Andy Burnham
I am not entirely sure that that was parliamentary language, again, Mr Speaker. I wonder whether you might consider that while I make this intervention.
We know the right hon. Gentleman likes history, but is he not guilty of rewriting it? On the plans that I made as Chief Secretary, his leader called them “tough” at the time, but let me put this point to him, because he has not given us the true picture on social mobility. Is it not the case that, between 2005 and 2007, the number of children on free school meals who went to university increased by 18%, against a 9% increase among the rest of the population?
Michael Gove
The total increase as a proportion of the cohort was actually less than 1%, because it was a remarkably low base. The right hon. Gentleman cites a selective statistic, because he chooses only two years from Labour’s record. It is interesting that he chooses only those two years, because, when we look at the broad spectrum of statistics, we see that he cannot gainsay any of them.
If the right hon. Gentleman wants more statistics, why does he not look at the OECD programme for international student assessment—PISA—statistics? He quoted them yesterday, and they tell us what happened on Labour’s watch to every child’s education. We know that the poorest were worst off, but the other set of statistics that he invoked yesterday demonstrates that, actually, all our children were failed by Labour. We moved from fourth to 14th in the world rankings for science, seventh to 17th in literacy and eighth to 24th in mathematics by 2007.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
It is only weeks since the Government asked the House to pass an education Act using procedures normally reserved for counter-terrorism legislation. Today the Secretary of State is back with an even more audacious request. He is asking Members of the House of Commons to give him more than 50 new powers, and near-total control over almost every aspect of our school system in England. He wants the power to seize land, to close schools, to overrule councils on budgets, to ban teachers from working, to define early-years provision, and to rewrite the curriculum without reference to parents or the public.
The Secretary of State has been known to claim—and he did so again today—that he is continuing Labour’s reforms. Labour Members empowered parents with guarantees, but the Bill does precisely the opposite. It constitutes an unprecedented power grab from pupils, parents, professionals and the public, leaving them without essential safeguards in a free-for-all. As we have heard, the Secretary of State wants to tell children what subjects and facts they must learn, and what kind of schools they must go to. Student and parent choice is being restricted.
During the passage of the Bill, the House will have to reflect very carefully on whether it can ever be healthy for so much power over something as precious as our children’s education to be vested in one person. Given the Secretary of State’s record in office to date, would it not be downright reckless to give him a free hand in such crucial issues? Local authorities will be stripped of their long-standing role of looking after all children in their areas, balancing the wishes of one group against those of another and thereby ensuring that service is shaped by need and not by the loudest voices.
Where does this leave Government promises of localism? I look to the Liberal Democrat Benches. Where does it leave those promises? Absolutely nowhere. By preaching freedom and autonomy—as he so frequently does—only to come up with a highly prescriptive reform of the curriculum, the Secretary of State places himself in serious danger of collapsing under the weight of his own contradictions.
As with the Government’s national health service reforms, the fabric of public services is being ripped up. Power is being taken from people and handed back to the system. The result is a huge void in public accountability at local level. Liberal Democrat councillors can see that; why cannot Members of Parliament see it as well? The Bill reveals an unhealthy obsession with structures, and the mistaken view that structural reform automatically leads to higher standards. It does not. The Bill has little to say about what really matters to parents: high standards in the basics, a rich and balanced curriculum, and quality teaching in every classroom.
There are elements of the Bill that we support, such as the proposals relating to early-years provision and discipline, and I shall say something about those later. However, what we are witnessing from this Secretary of State—and, indeed, from the Secretary of State for Health—is an unseemly rush to reform in which the normal processes of government are simply ditched. There will be no pilots, no evidence and no consultation. No time will be taken to listen to parents and children, consult teachers, and build the broad consensus in the country that should properly underpin any education reform. We will oppose the Bill tonight because it represents too big a gamble with the life chances of our children, and because—as I shall now set out in terms—it takes power from pupils, parents, professionals and the public, leaving them with fewer protections in a less publicly accountable education system.
Let me explain first how the Bill takes power from pupils. It restricts student choice and takes away guarantees at a time when youth unemployment is at a record high. It strips yet more support from young people, adding to the growing risk of a lost generation. This is national apprenticeships week. Debating the abolition of a guarantee of an apprenticeship for all suitably qualified 16 to 19-year-olds seems to me an odd way in which to mark it. It cements the impression that this Secretary of State gives very little thought indeed to the hopes and life chances of the 50% of young people who are unlikely to go to university. That is further strengthened by clause 29, which lifts the requirement on local authorities to ensure young people have access to studying for the diploma. Both the Association of Colleges and the Association of School and College Leaders have expressed concerns that that sends the
“wrong message about the future of vocational education.”
[Interruption.] The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning shakes his head, but that is what they say. Does it not also send the wrong message about student choice in this day and age that young people might not be able to choose the courses that will give them the skills they need?
Mr Graham Stuart
May I gently request that the right hon. Gentleman does not take this line on apprenticeships? I served on the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill Committee. One criticism was that the Bill gave a statutory right to an apprenticeship when one needs a job to get one. The right hon. Gentleman can correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that the current Bill simply recognises that reality, but does not alter the right of a young person who secures a job that needs apprenticeship funding to get that funding from Government. I therefore do not think the right hon. Gentleman is taking the right line on this very important issue.
Andy Burnham
I hear what the Chair of the Select Committee on Education says, but this guarantee was important because it was about bringing forward offers of apprenticeships, particularly from the public sector, so that there are sufficient opportunities for young people who decide that university is not for them. I put it to the hon. Gentleman that we in Parliament have neglected debating the opportunities for those 50% of young people who do not plan to go to university. We owe it to them to do more by debating the quality of the opportunities that we are going to give them so that they can have a foothold in the future and hope of a better life. We endlessly debate higher education, and that is very important, but is it not about time that we gave more thought to young people who want to get a good skill so that they can get on in life? The hon. Gentleman’s Secretary of State has absolutely nothing to say to them.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman is ignoring the 75,000 extra apprenticeships this Government are creating, and the support for university technical colleges, which will provide vocational education to 14 to 19-year-olds, and which are being rolled out throughout the country.
Andy Burnham
I have two points to make in response to that. The Secretary of State is very fond of talking about the Mossbourne academy and quoting its head, Sir Michael Wilshaw, and rightly so as it is an amazing success story, but Sir Michael has pleaded with the Government to give him a
“technical and craft-based curriculum option”
in the curriculum review. The English baccalaureate has nothing to say to heads such as Sir Michael Wilshaw, and the Secretary of State needs to start listening to those views.
The Secretary of State also referred to Hong Kong today. Let me quote what the Under-Secretary for Education of Hong Kong said last week when he was asked about what makes his system so successful. He said the success was down to a curriculum that emphasises 21st century skills, not 1950s languages and not an approach to language study that fails to reflect the modern day. He also said that the success was not about
“asking students to memorise a whole set of facts and be able to regurgitate them in a test.”
The Secretary of State is fond of quoting international examples only to drop them, but he had better read up on what the Hong Kong Minister has said about why his system is successful.
The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning (Mr John Hayes)
I have just been pondering what language we were speaking in the 1950s that we are not speaking now, but, leaving that to one side, the right hon. Gentleman must know that this Government have placed unprecedented emphasis on skills. He must know that I have been a champion of the 50% of young people he mentions whose vocational tastes and talents deserve recognition in the education system. He must know that we published a schools strategy shortly after coming into government, and he must know that we have put enough funding in place to deliver 30,000 more apprenticeships for 16 to 18-year-olds. If he does not know that, he should.
Andy Burnham
On the Minister’s first point, my mum reliably informs me that in 1950s Liverpool the mass was said in Latin, but I can tell him that it is not today. On his second point, he needs to tell the shadow schools Minister in Committee why he is removing the apprenticeships guarantee. What is the reason? If we are convinced that this can be done without restricting opportunities to young people who are not planning to go to university, perhaps we will be satisfied, but he does not fill me with encouragement.
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that Governments do not create apprenticeships, they fund apprenticeships? Employers create apprenticeships and under the previous Labour Government the number of apprenticeships trebled. Does he agree that it is simply laughable that the Secretary of State is trying to position himself as the champion of the working classes, and that we should invite him to Goodison Park to meet some ordinary working people, so that he can learn from them about what these policies will do to ordinary working-class families?
Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend is right that the Government have nothing to say to young people who want to plan to get a good skill so that they can get on in life. He rightly said that employers create apprenticeships, but the Government are a huge employer. When I was Health Secretary we increased the number of apprenticeships from 1,000 to 5,000, but that was not enough in the country’s biggest employer and the third biggest employer in the world. It was the existence of that guarantee that meant that public services had to work hard to increase the number of apprenticeship places they were making available. My worry is that by dropping this commitment the Government are going to throw that progress into reverse. The Government have figures for funding apprenticeships, but I am not certain that they are going to turn into a real increase in the number of apprenticeships, and the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning will need to have some good answers on that point in Committee.
Andy Burnham
I am going to make some progress now.
The Government are re-erecting the Berlin wall between academic qualifications and vocational qualifications, which sends a very poor message about student choice. At every turn, the Secretary of State is making life harder for young people who want to get good skills. Why, we might ask, is he pre-empting his own Wolf review by abandoning the diploma in this Bill?
Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)
Do not our leading competitors, such as Germany, Japan and France, specify study for more core academic qualifications until 16 than Britain does and is it not the case that the number of people studying academic qualifications, such as modern foreign languages, has dropped in this country?
Andy Burnham
I wonder what evidence the hon. Lady has for that statement, because those countries—I cited the Hong Kong Minister—want to give young people skills for the world as it is now, not for the 1950s. How can it make sense to send the message to young people and schools in her constituency that it is better to study a dead language than to study information and communications technology, business studies and all the other things that will help young people to make their way in the world? The Secretary of State said in his speech, “We want to encourage the Googles, the Facebooks and the Microsofts.” I think I quoted him almost perfectly. Why, then, is ICT not in his English baccalaureate? How are we going to have a work force that can give a supply of trained people to those companies and encourage them to come to this country? Has he spoken to employers about his English baccalaureate?
Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)
Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise the massive gap between state education and private education in securing the top jobs in this country? Does he recognise that private schools offer more academic qualifications and that by not enabling state schools to offer those academic qualifications he is essentially relegating state school pupils from those top jobs?
Andy Burnham
I do not accept the hon. Lady’s analysis. I went from a state school to Cambridge and my dad said to me, “It will open every door for you in life. You will just walk into any job you want.” He said that because I took some persuading to go, as I was not convinced that it would be for me. My dad was wrong, because it did not open every door. It is the networks and the conversations around the dinner party table that open the doors to those top jobs. I am talking about the people who can sort out two weeks’ work experience in the holiday period, because that is what gets people through. What further restricts opportunities for young people is the culture of unpaid internships, where young people are expected to come to London to work for free. That is beyond the reach of many working-class young people in this country, who simply cannot afford to work for free for three months in London. That is what ensures that the top jobs remain in the reach of a small social circle, as the BBC creatively and accurately reported last week.
Geraint Davies
My right hon. Friend may be interested to know that the chief executive of German Industry UK gave evidence to the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs on inward investment today. He commented that master plumbers in Germany have the same status as people with many degrees. Apprenticeships are crucial to driving forward the German economy, which is expanding much faster than the zero growth that we have seen under this Government. Does he agree that that is not reflected in the Government’s plans, which will result in economic slowness in comparison with our competitors?
Andy Burnham
I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. The diploma, which the previous Labour Government introduced, was an attempt to bridge the divide between academic qualifications and vocational qualifications, which should remain our aim. We should want all children not to choose one route or another, but to do academic subjects and learn practical skills that will serve them well through life. My worry about this Secretary of State is that he is further entrenching the divide between academic qualifications and vocational qualifications and sending a message to those who wish to pursue a vocational route that they are second best or somehow second class, which is a damaging step to take. As my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) has said, most other countries do not have such a divide, which is why I argue that this Bill takes us back to the past.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman and other Labour Members frequently refer to Sir Richard Lambert and his comments about our growth strategy, and they have quoted him at length. Does he agree with what Sir Richard Lambert said about education in this country and preparing young people for work in an interview in The Guardian in December 2009, when he said that the Labour Government’s record in that respect was “shameful”?
Andy Burnham
I agree that we need to ensure that all young people have absolute rigour in the basics in English and maths.
The Secretary of State began today by discussing a string of statistics, but he did not say how the number of young people leaving school with good GCSEs in English and maths increased considerably under the previous Government, as did the number of young people leaving school with five good GCSEs. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) entered office, some 50% of schools in this country had a record whereby kids were not leaving with five good GCSEs—it was total failure. When we left office, that figure had been massively reduced, which gives the lie to the Secretary of State’s comments at the beginning that we “failed a generation”. That was an outrageous comment, and it is not backed up by the facts.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend might be interested in the words of Dr Christopher Ray writing in the January edition of The Old Mancunian:
“The latest wheeze from Whitehall is the English Baccalaureate, launched with a breathtaking lack of forethought by the Secretary of State for Education…MGS stands proudly at the bottom of these surreal tables—along with such other notable academic failures as St Paul’s, Eton, Winchester and King Edward’s Birmingham.”
Perhaps those are five cases where the Secretary of State can use his power to intervene.
Andy Burnham
As a proud Scouser, I can say that I never read The Old Mancunian. Indeed, I am surprised to find that I agree with something in it, but I do. I have visited schools recently and I have been struck by the anger and, in some cases, despair of head teachers. They have worked night and day with their staff to raise standards in their schools, and along has come a retrospectively applied league table, which has knocked the stuffing out of them. I think it is quite immoral to say to those schools, “You are now at zero: you have 0% five GCSEs under this measure,” when they were not being judged by that measure previously. That applies to all kinds of schools, many of which might ask why the Secretary of State has chosen those five subjects on which to test them. Schools are voting with their feet and young people are choosing to do other things.
Michael Gove
Will the right hon. Gentleman tell me why it is immoral to tell parents in which subjects schools are performing well? Will he also tell me which other European countries do not ask their students to have a suite of academic subjects assessed at the age of 15, 16 or 17?
Andy Burnham
Why did I make that comment? I made it because I believe in student choice and parent choice. I believe that the same subjects will not be right for everyone and I do not believe that an arbitrary selection of subjects that seems to have come from the Secretary of State and his office should be used to judge the performance of every child and school in the country. I do not understand why ICT, religious education and business studies are not in the selection if he wants to create the work force of tomorrow, as he said earlier. Yesterday, he stood at the Dispatch Box and quoted the Henley review of music education in England that he was publishing on that day. We all received a fairly pious lecture about this issue yesterday, but let me quote from the review. Paragraph 3.6 states:
“Music is an important academic subject in the secondary school curriculum. When its constituent parts are next reviewed, I believe that Music should be included as one of the subjects that go to make up the new English Baccalaureate.”
So, experts commissioned by him are telling him that his choices are too narrow and restrictive. [Interruption.] Does he want to comment on that?
Michael Gove
I just wanted an answer to my question about which other European countries do not ask of their 15, 16 or 17-year-old students what level of competency they have achieved in those academic subjects. I would be very interested to know which countries the right hon. Gentleman holds up as an exemplar because they deliberately do not insist on an academic core. Can he answer that?
Andy Burnham
As I said to the Secretary of State yesterday, the programme for international student assessment research says that the systems that give the most autonomy in choice are the most successful. Is the Secretary of State saying that they all replicate his English baccalaureate? I do not think so. They have a better mix of academic and vocational qualifications. [Interruption.] He would not listen to the example I just gave him about an expert whom he—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
That is not a point of order but it is a good point that should be made to the House. I understand that both Front Benchers have a lot to say, but it does prevent Back Benchers from taking part in the debate. The sooner we can get on the better.
Andy Burnham
I have answered the Secretary of State’s question—[Interruption.]—and have I put it to him that an expert whom he commissioned is saying to him, “Keep music as an option in the English baccalaureate,” and answer there was none about what he is going to do with that recommendation. The Secretary of State has not convinced the experts and he is not even convincing his own side. [Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Mr Gove, I am sure that we can restrain ourselves for a little longer.
Andy Burnham
The Secretary of State is not even convincing his own activists. On ConservativeHome today, there was an article by Ed Watkins, a music teacher in south London and the deputy chairman of Dulwich and West Norwood Conservatives. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Conservative Members cheer him, but will they still be cheering in a moment? He wrote:
“The principles lying behind the English Baccalaureate are therefore grounded in a sensible solution to a problem.”—
He is halfway there with that. He continued:
“Those principles have, however, been applied in an arbitrary manner in the selection of subjects. Why History but not R.E.? Why Biblical Hebrew but not Art? Why Geography but not Music?”
It seems that rather than heckling me, the Secretary of State has a little more work to do with his own side.
Andy Burnham
No, I will not.
My point—[Interruption.] My point, if the right hon. Gentleman will listen to it, is that children have a right to a broad and balanced curriculum, and his prescriptive English baccalaureate is taking us away from that. The body that has independently advised Ministers, which was set up by the previous Conservative Government, the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, is being abolished, so what can we expect in the future? We can expect ministerial whim replacing independent expert advice. As the Education Committee pointed out last week, a mix of academic and vocational options is more likely to keep young people engaged and help reduce behaviour problems.
We welcome provisions in the Bill to ensure that every young person has access to independent careers advice, but we fear that this is yet another instance where rhetoric will fail to live up to the reality. Is not the truth that the Secretary of State’s mismanagement of transition arrangements to an all-age careers service and front-loaded cuts to local authority budgets have meant that careers advice is disappearing?
Why does the Bill remove the requirement on the Secretary of State to enforce the new legal participation age of 18? Is it because, with the scrapping of EMA and the other measures that I have described, he knows that full participation until 18 will never be achieved? Alongside the clauses on higher education, no wonder ASCL talks of a Bill with
“serious implications for social mobility”.
In the ways that I have described, the Bill takes power from pupils and, in the words of UNICEF,
“risks narrowing the educational agenda and limiting children’s rights within schools.”
Let me turn to how the Bill takes power from parents. The National Children’s Bureau has called this a Bill which
“chips away at hard-won parental rights”.
It removes their ability to challenge decisions about admissions and exclusions and to make local complaints. The Bill abolishes the local admissions forum. ASCL raises concerns that there
“may now be a void in policing admissions”.
Admissions forums involve local parent representation, governors and heads. They exist to give parents avenues of redress and to help them get a fair deal. As with many provisions in the Bill, their abolition seems at odds with ideas of localism. With no group co-ordinating fair admissions, the NASUWT says that there are real risks of increased inequality, back-door selection and covert discrimination.
We welcome the extension of the schools adjudicator’s powers in relation to academies and individual cases, but we fear that this move is undermined overall by a weakening of the adjudicator’s role and his ability to change admission arrangements. ASCL has said that it is
“essential that parents have a well defined route to deal with their grievances relating to admissions” ,
yet the Bill repeals parents’ power to complain to the local commissioner.
The Secretary of State mentioned Tony Blair and our reforms. They were all about empowering parents, just as in the health service we empowered patients with guarantees. The Bill strips away those powers from parents. That is why we do not support it.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that in addition to the powers being stripped from parents by the Bill, they are also losing the right to legal aid for education cases? Parents without means finding themselves in difficult and challenging situations when fighting for their children will therefore be left without any recourse for help.
Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. It brings me on to the subject of parents whose children have special educational needs or disabilities. Her point is particularly important in respect of such parents. Concerns have been raised about the measures in the Bill disempowering parents in relation to exclusions. The removal of the ability of appeals panels to tell schools to reinstate a pupil who has been expelled has been described by the National Children’s Bureau as
“counter to the principles of natural justice.”
These changes affect the rights of every parent and the life chances of every child, but they have big implications for the most vulnerable.
Parents of children with disabilities and special needs already face a battle to get them a good education. With its changes to admissions and exclusions, which will see schools become judge and jury, the Bill stacks the odds against those children even further. Poor behaviour can arise from a failure to identify or support a child’s special needs, yet in future any exclusions that might result will be much harder to challenge.
The changes must also be seen in the context of the diminishing ability of local authority to fund and co-ordinate specialist services that help children facing the biggest challenges. The Education Committee has noted that some pupils could be left
“without access to critical support”.
The autism charity, TreeHouse, fears that councils will no longer be able to plan services for children with complex needs.
That brings us to a central problem with the Government’s rush to reform: the Bill has been brought forward before the long-promised Green Paper on special educational needs. The National Autistic Society has stated:
“The impact of certain aspects of the Education Bill on children with SEN and disabilities… will not be known until the Green Paper has been made public.”
That means that the Government are asking Members to vote on these measures without giving them either answers to the questions posed by TreeHouse or the ability to feel sure that the most vulnerable children in their constituencies will not be adversely affected. That is profoundly wrong. It is an abusive process and an affront to this House, but, much worse, it sends a clear message to the parents who are most affected that their children are an afterthought for the Government.
Michael Gove
I note that the right hon. Gentleman has not answered my previous question about EU nations, but can he perhaps enlighten the House on—
Andy Burnham
I do not have those figures to hand, but special schools closed in my constituency and in my local authority area because we pursued a vision of inclusion within state schools. That was the right thing to do, because some of those young people are now educated alongside other children in their community, and it is human and social progress to teach those young people in that way. The question I put to the Secretary of State, which he did not answer, was this: how can he ask any Member to be sure that the Bill will not harm vulnerable children in their constituencies when we have not seen his proposals on special educational needs? What ability will anyone have to place obligations on academies or free schools to look out for their children? We do not know whether he is creating them as self-sufficient islands that can do whatever they like, so how can we be sure that children with special educational needs will not get second best from the schools system he is creating? He cannot answer that question tonight because we have not seen the Green Paper. It should have been published before the Bill was brought before the House.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
The Secretary of State knows very well that under the Labour Government some special schools closed because they were just not good enough, but special school places were created, and there were more when we left office than when we came into office.
Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend, who knows more about these matters than anyone in the House, has put the Secretary of State straight.
I have one final comment about parents. We support the extension of free early years provision for disadvantaged two-year-olds, but we are deeply concerned that that is undermined by the Government’s failure to protect Sure Start. Furthermore, giving the Secretary of State the power to define early years provision, who gets it and when they get it places question marks over the universal free entitlement for three and four-year olds. I ask him to make it clear that he does not intend to cut such provision or to introduce means-testing, particularly as fears have also been raised by the Bill’s introduction of powers to charge.
Mr Slaughter
One of the Secretary of State’s homilies was on equal chances, but my constituency is one of the most socially and ethnically diverse in the country, and more than half the Sure Start centres are being closed by a Conservative council. The Secretary of State and his Ministers wash their hands of that, but is it not perverse to talk about creating extra provision for two-year-olds when the provision for three and four-year-olds is being cut by 50% in seats such as mine?
Andy Burnham
The Government say that they have given councils enough money, but they have also given them a list of 20 or more things that they have to fund from the same budget as that which pays for Sure Start. How does my local authority, which is getting a cut of some £160 per head from the Government, keep all its support and provision open while other councils in other parts of the country get cuts on nothing like that scale? It is deeply unfair, and it will take away crucial services in constituencies such as my hon. Friend’s and mine.
Bill Esterson
In my right hon. Friend’s opening remarks, he mentioned contradictions and the ability to overrule local authorities when it comes to schools. In Sefton, the 12.9% cut in the early intervention grant means that all the children’s centres are now under review, but the Secretary of State says that he wants all children’s centres and the network to be maintained. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) describes what is happening in his constituency. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, if closures go ahead, they will undermine any good measures in the Bill to boost early years provision? Does he agree also that, if the Secretary of State is prepared to intervene on schools, he should take the same approach and intervene on local authorities when it comes to protecting the network of Sure Start centres?
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.
Andy Burnham
I will not; I am making some progress.
On the abolition of the General Teaching Council for England, ASCL says that
“in this and other matters, we are concerned about the large number of additional powers being granted to the Secretary of State.”
How can the right hon. Gentleman possibly be judge and jury over every case of misconduct? Surely teachers have a right to be judged by their peers, not by politicians in Whitehall. I speak as a former Health Secretary, where we had well developed, independent systems of self-regulation for the medical profession. Surely that model is the right one for teaching.
Perhaps the Secretary of State’s biggest slight on the professional status of teachers is his insistence—
Andy Burnham
I will not.
Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman’s biggest slight on the professional status of teachers is his insistence that free schools must not be held back by the requirement to hire qualified individuals to teach. As my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) said, it makes a mockery of his claims to value teacher training. Either he believes it is important or he does not; he does not have a convincing answer to that question.
The abolition of the School Support Staff Negotiating Body sets back efforts to improve professional standards among support staff, as well as fair pay and work force planning. Support staff are key members of the education team around the child. Unison has said that the Secretary of State is
“ignorant of the reasons for its establishment”.
This impression is given further weight by the fact that the Bill overlooks support staff in introducing anonymity for professionals facing allegations from pupils. The Secretary of State asked whether we would support that measure, and we do, but we agree with the ASCL that it should be
“extended to cover teachers and support staff in colleges and support staff in schools”.
The Secretary of State nods, and I hope that he will give that suggestion serious consideration.
On other provisions relating to behaviour and discipline, we are broadly supportive of a direction of travel that builds on our achievements, although we will seek reassurance in Committee that powers to search pupils are necessary and proportionate. We welcome the proposed changes to make schools find and fund alternative provision for excluded pupils, but we would like that measure to be included in the Bill.
Fourthly and finally, this Bill takes power from the public. Schools should be at the heart of local communities, but the Bill removes communities’ rights—
Andy Burnham
I will not.
This Bill removes communities’ rights to decide what kind of school they have—the Secretary of State is offering a one-size-fits-all model: an academy or nothing— and restricts the information available to them about their schools. It makes strategic, community-wide planning for children and young people more difficult. According to the National Children’s Bureau,
“it fails to promote and indeed protect the strategic relationship that schools must have with their local community.”
We know the Government’s answer to this—that communities can set up their own schools. It is the same with libraries, forests and children’s centres. Communities want control and involvement, but they do not want chaos and cuts to be unleashed on the services they value and then to be told, “It’s okay—you’re free to set up your own.”
Andy Burnham
No, I will not.
Communities need other, more practical avenues of redress. Free schools are approved by the Secretary of State with no requirement for groups setting them up to consult widely with the local population. There is a complete lack of transparency and accountability over funding. We know that the Government have set aside £50 million to pay for new free schools, and we know from reports yesterday that about £25 million has been pledged to just two schools. Earlier, the Secretary of State failed to answer a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) about this. We know that a further 13 have been given promises of funding, but we do not know how much. Named day questions to Ministers simply go unanswered. It is not surprising that many communities believe that existing local schools are being left to fall into disrepair to allow free schools the money to be set up.
Andy Burnham
I have given way to the Secretary of State about three times, so I will give somebody else a chance.
Richard Fuller
It is important that the right hon. Gentleman gets a broader perspective on his two points about free schools. In the instance of the free school that is being set up in Kempston in my constituency, there has been widespread consultation involving parents and local schools, and a debate attended by the Anti Academies Alliance. The chair of the board of the free school has said that there will be full and clear transparency, and he is head of a college of further education in my constituency that is rated outstanding by Ofsted.
Andy Burnham
My point was that that level of consultation should be required. If a free school is set up, it may be good for those immediately planning to go there, but there may be an impact on the stability of provision around it and the viability of other local schools. There is a wider debate to be had in any community.
Andy Burnham
No, I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman again.
It is simply not acceptable that we have not had any figures. Pledges are being made; Ministers are going round the country waving cheque books at people wanting to set up their pet projects. When the Government have cancelled Building Schools for the Future, it is unacceptable that they are not prepared to answer parliamentary questions to tell us how much money has been committed to these new schools. It gives the impression that, shamefully, ideology and not need is driving the allocation of capital to schools.
We support autonomy for head teachers, but the Bill strips back the role of the local authority to an extent that even head teachers are uncomfortable with it. The ASCL has said that it is
“concerned that there may now be too few points of contact between local authorities and schools”.
The removal of the duty to co-operate in the production of a children’s plan and to work with children’s trusts raises concerns over the safeguarding of children and young people. The Laming review highlighted the need for all agencies involved with children, including schools, to have a joined-up approach to ensure that no child slipped through the net. Every Child Matters was an effort to remedy the failure of services to work together. Unison says that the Bill
“drives a wedge between schools and other local services and negates Every Child Matters”.
As I have said, the Bill takes power from the public and local communities.
Michael Gove
If the right hon. Gentleman were in power, would he rescind the academy status that has been acquired by schools and head teachers who want that new-found freedom?
Andy Burnham
That question is not for here and now. We would not close a good school that was well integrated with its local community and played its part in a local partnership to raise standards. I do not have a dogmatic position, as some of the acolytes of the Secretary of State like to say. I do not just want to close all free schools and all academies out of spite. That is not my position. If a school was not well integrated with its local community and was not playing its part to raise the standards of all children in the area, of course that would have to be looked at.
In conclusion, last year’s Liberal Democrat conference passed a motion supporting the role of local authorities in education and opposing an uneven playing field between schools, where some schools get more funding than others. This centralising Bill is the polar opposite of that motion. As I have shown today, it takes powers from pupils, parents, professionals and the public and leaves a huge democratic deficit in every community. Where are the Lib Dem voices now? Why are they not howling down a Bill that strips local councils of any meaningful role? They seem silent and defeated. This is a battle for the soul of state education. I hope for the sake of young people that the Lib Dems rediscover some principle and backbone, and stand up to a Bill that grants one man huge power to foist an elitist view of education on everyone.
The vision is of a 1950s curriculum in a 19th-century school system; a free-for-all where parents have no guarantees, where there is a lack of protection for the most vulnerable children, and where for every winner there is a loser. I respect the undoubted passion for education of the Secretary of State, but his is a vision for some children, not all children. In his rush to reform, he is failing to take people with him; he is losing the confidence of head teachers; he is inflicting an ideological experiment on young people, with no pilot schemes, no consultation and no evidence to support it; he is taking power away from parents; and he is gambling with the life chances of our children. Today, in the interests of a fair education system for all, I ask the House to put the brakes on him.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andy Burnham Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
Can the Secretary of State tell the House on what research or evidence he has based his selection of subjects in the new English baccalaureate?
Michael Gove
Yes. The research and evidence that I undertook was to look at what the highest performing education jurisdictions do. When the OECD published its table on how our country had been doing in education over the past 10 years, I was struck to see that under Labour’s stewardship we had slipped in the international league tables for English, for mathematics and for science. I was also struck by the fact that the numbers of students studying modern foreign languages, history and geography were declining. I was particularly struck by the fact that only last week the Russell group said that these are the subjects which the best universities expect of students if they are to go on and prosper and achieve the level of social mobility that sadly eluded us when the right hon. Gentleman was in government.
Andy Burnham
The Secretary of State mentions the OECD, so let me quote from last year’s PISA—programme for international student assessment—report, which says:
“Most successful school systems grant greater autonomy to individual schools to design curricula and assessment policies”.
That is in direct contradiction to what he has just said. I support the right of every child to take these five GCSEs, but it is a narrow selection, and not right for everybody, and the way in which he has introduced it is restricting student choice right now. Many feel that it is not a fair way to judge all children and all schools, suggesting that some are second best. So is he really saying to young people and employers today that dead languages are more important than business studies, engineering, information and communications technology, music and RE? Will he not listen to the call from the Chair of the Select Committee, made just a few moments ago, to allow a broader and more flexible English baccalaureate?
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry, but these questions are becoming excessively long. I hope that we can have a pithy response, and I am sure we will, from the Secretary of State.
Education Maintenance Allowance
Andy Burnham Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House believes that disadvantaged young people should gain greater access to further and higher education; recognises the valuable role that the education maintenance allowance (EMA) has played in supporting young people from less well-off backgrounds to participate and succeed in education; further recognises how EMA has supported choice for students in post-16 education, allowing them to travel to the best institution for their studies, which is of particular importance in rural areas; further notes that EMA is used by the majority of recipients to fund travel to college, as well as books and equipment, and allows recipients to focus on their studies rather than taking a part-time job; notes that EMA has been retained in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; further notes research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies stating that EMA costs are completely offset by its benefits in raising participation; further notes the inquiry into educational access announced by the Education Select Committee; and calls on the Government to rethink its decision on EMA, retaining practical support to improve access to, interest in and participation in further and higher education.
Over the past decade, we have debated the funding of higher education on many occasions. Today, we rightly focus on an equally, if not more, important prior question: whether hundreds of thousands of young people from less well-off backgrounds are to stay in education long enough to have a realistic dream of going to university.
To know what is at risk, we must look at how far we have come. Twenty-five years ago, the staying-on rate in England was 47%; throughout Merseyside, where I left school in 1986, the figure was even lower; and today it is 82%. Those figures tell an incredible story of human and social progress from the mid-1980s to today. A deep-rooted culture in some communities whereby employment at 16 years old was the norm, not education, has begun to be broken.
Students and families who in the past might well have felt that education was not for the likes of them now see it as a viable route, and in the past 10 years the education maintenance allowance has played an important part in that progress. It has sent out an empowering message of hope—that we can dare to dream, whoever we are and wherever we come from. It was one of the best policies of our Government, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) who brought it in.
Sustaining that progress must be worked at; instead, it is about to be thrown into reverse. In the real world, the debate about tuition fees is already changing views on university, but for the least well-off the full impact becomes clear only when it is set alongside the abolition of EMA. To those young people, it feels as though we have a Government who are stacking the odds against them—a Government who talked about social mobility in their early days but have now launched an all-out attack on the aspirations of those facing the biggest obstacles in life. They see a Government who are kicking away the ladder of opportunity. Today, the House has an opportunity to change that message and to make Ministers change course.
Before we get into the detail, however, I want the House to focus on the 650,000 young people who receive EMA. They have a strong sense that many Members do not have any idea what their lives are like.
The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)
Does the right hon. Gentleman believe that every single one of those 650,000 recipients should receive exactly the same amount of money that they currently receive, or does he believe that there is any scope for saving and better targeting?
Andy Burnham
The right hon. Gentleman used to believe in EMA, because he stood right where I am standing now and told the House that he would keep it—no, that he would build on it. So it is pretty desperate—
Andy Burnham
I shall come to the right hon. Gentleman’s question, but a little more humility might serve him well during the course of this debate.
Those young people feel that Members here—
Andy Burnham
I shall not give way; I am sorry. Those young people feel that Members, and indeed that the right hon. Gentleman, have no real idea of what their lives are like.
Some 80% of recipients come from homes where the household income is less than £20,800 a year, and many live difficult lives. Many are part of larger families and go without the basics during the average week, because they know that anything they take off their parents deprives younger brothers or sisters. Many others are young carers who face some of the toughest circumstances imaginable—like the one whom I met, caring for both parents, at Lambeth college—and try desperately to keep their own hopes alive of a better future while supporting loved ones on meagre resources. Some are young parents who might have missed out on an education and want a second chance, like the young mum from Gateshead who came to our hearing here in Westminster. Some have special needs and disabilities, like Daniel in my constituency, who is on the autistic spectrum. I helped him to find appropriate supported accommodation when he was in his early teenage years, and his grandmother told me at the weekend that EMA had been a vital part of his transition from residential care to mainstream college—vital in helping him to learn the everyday skills of managing his life.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman says that there are 650,000 or so EMA claimants, but he must also know that only about 12% of those people—66,000—say that they would not go into A-level education if they did not have it. EMA costs £564 million. Does he not think there are better and less expensive ways of targeting money on the kids who really need the help? [Interruption.]
Andy Burnham
The hon. Gentleman is talking about 78,000 young lives—those of the people the Government say would not stay in education were there to be no EMA.
Let me come to the heart of the Government’s misunderstanding of this issue. They talk only about participation, but for the others—the Secretary of State does not seem to understand this—EMA provides the chance to fulfil themselves in education because it means that they can devote themselves to their studies.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The right hon. Gentleman is building a very powerful case for the defence and protection of EMA. Will he take this opportunity to congratulate the Scottish National party Government in Scotland on retaining EMA and ensuring that we are fulfilling our pledge to the most vulnerable and poorest students in Scotland?
Andy Burnham
My knowledge of Scottish politics is okay, but I think I am right in telling the hon. Gentleman that it was the Labour Administration who brought in the education maintenance allowance in Scotland, so I warn him off that subject.
I have detailed the lives of some of the young people I have met in recent weeks who are receiving EMA because it is important that the House focus its mind on those young people before we get much further into the debate. I want to clear up one myth at the beginning. EMA is overwhelmingly used to provide the basics to support education—travel, books, equipment and food.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
Is my right hon. Friend aware that Lib Dem-Tory run Warrington borough council recently passed a motion asking the Government to think again on tuition fees and EMA? In their letter to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Liberal leader and the Tory deputy leader said that the removal of EMA would cause real hardship. If the Government’s own allies do not support them, how can they go ahead with this?
Andy Burnham
I am aware of that, as I represent a neighbouring authority area. It shows that some Liberal Democrats at local level have more guts than some of their colleagues in this place, because they are prepared to say what is right and what is wrong and to stand up for the young people in their area who they know will have their dreams shattered if this help is taken away from them.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is entirely possible that an alternative, more targeted approach to providing support for young people might provide a better solution while still meeting the needs of deficit reduction?
Andy Burnham
The Government talk of an alternative scheme, but it is a tenth of the size of EMA, which they have closed to new applicants. They have never made a statement to Parliament or set out any details of that alternative scheme. It has taken Labour Members to bring those Ministers here to account for themselves this afternoon, and that is quite disgraceful. We do not have an alternative to judge EMA against, and EMA is a scheme that works.
Andy Burnham
I will make further progress before giving way.
EMA is one of the few practical policies that has directly supported social mobility and equality of opportunity, so today I will set out a comprehensive case for its retention—the educational case, the social case, the economic case and the democratic case. The Government wanted to close down EMA quietly. They have closed the scheme to new applicants. They have not begun to replace it, as their amendment claims. We have called this debate because EMA has worked and is worth fighting for.
Margot James
Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that the enhanced learner support fund, which is the Government’s proposed replacement for EMA, will help many of the hard cases with which he illustrated the earlier part of his speech? Some 90% of students are telling us that they do not need EMA and will continue with their studies without it. If he does not accept that figure, what would he accept as the dead-weight figure?
Andy Burnham
The hon. Lady has just shown how hopelessly out of touch Government Members are. Is she telling me that nine out of 10 young people in her constituency who get EMA are saying they do not need it? If so, she has been speaking to some very different young people—although I am glad that she has at least been speaking to them, unlike those on her Front Bench. She needs to answer this question. The Government are proposing a scheme that is a tenth—
Andy Burnham
I am about to do that. The Government are proposing a scheme that is a tenth of the size of the previous one, so a fair assumption is that it will help one in 10 of the people who are getting help today. How is that compatible with the full participation in education of all 16 to 18-year-olds, to which the Government amendment refers?
I have never set my face against changes or savings to the EMA scheme. I proposed a change last year—that of giving young people between 16 and 18 the choice of unlimited free travel or EMA. Today I say this to the Secretary of State: I am prepared to discuss changes while keeping the principle of a national weekly payment scheme to support young people in education, but I am not prepared to see a successful scheme, which brings a huge range of social benefits, dismantled and replaced with a residual scheme a fraction of the size. He will have to work very hard to convince us that a scheme a tenth of the size will, in the words of his amendment, improve
“access to, enthusiasm for and participation in further and higher education.”
How can it possibly do that?
Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
I met students at Dudley college, 78% of whom receive EMA. More than 90% of them told me that they would be unable to continue their education if EMA was withdrawn. They are not using it for luxuries but for their books, bus fare and lunch. In particular, those on vocational courses who are studying construction, catering, hairdressing and so on need to buy uniforms and equipment. That is what they are spending it on, and if it is withdrawn they will not be able to continue their education.
Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend represents a constituency with one of the highest take-up rates of EMA in the country, and he is absolutely right. Some of the sneering comments about recipients of EMA show a complete failure to understand what their lives are like and underestimate the determination of those young people to make a success of themselves and to get skills that will stand them in good stead throughout the rest of their lives.
Andy Burnham
I will give way in a moment.
The Government’s answer is, “We are raising the school leaving age to 18.” What kind of answer is that? Do they really think they can simply mandate that young people will have to stay on and then provide no practical support to make it work? Perhaps that is why the Chairman of the Select Committee on Education said yesterday that he thought the removal of EMA would be damaging. The Government have a lot of convincing to do as regards senior voices on their own side of the House.
Andy Burnham
As I said, 80% of people get the £30 higher level. I also said that I am not opposed to talking to the Secretary of State about changes. However, if he is to fulfil his goal of keeping young people in education, he will have to talk about a scheme on a much bigger scale than he is proposing, and he will have to do that today.
Let me set out, first, the educational case for EMA. EMA has had a positive impact on participation in post-16 education: that is accepted by all. The Government’s figures suggest that EMA makes all the difference for 78,000 young people. However, as we enter 2011, the financial outlook for many families is changing for the worse. Calculations about the affordability of staying on will have to be redone when the loss of EMA is set alongside changes to other benefits and wages. New research released yesterday by the University and College Lecturers Union suggested that seven in 10 EMA recipients will drop out of education if EMA is taken away.
Mr Graham Stuart
I regret the removal of EMA and the necessity to remove it, which was caused by an orgy of overspending by the Administration of whom the right hon. Gentleman was a part. A diet of cold, hard decisions now has to be taken by Ministers, and I have some sympathy with them. Choices have to be made, such as between providing nursery education for two-year-olds in the poorest areas or retaining EMA. The right hon. Gentleman accepts that there can be changes to EMA. Is there any reason why a slimmed-down version, such as that proposed by the Government, with constructive input from all sides, cannot deliver for the most needy and minimise the negative impacts?
Andy Burnham
The hon. Gentleman is having it both ways. He started by saying that he regrets the removal of EMA, before going on to make his attack. I will make two points to him. First, he said that EMA was essentially unaffordable. Why then does the Institute for Fiscal Studies say that the costs of EMA are “completely offset” by the wider benefits that it brings? He might want to reflect on that point.
Secondly, why did the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State promise young people that they would keep EMA? More than that, why did the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), stand at the Dispatch Box after the general election and say that EMA would be retained? Why did they do that if it is now such a bad idea? Will he answer that?
Mr Stuart
On that particular point, following our joint interview yesterday, I looked up the Prime Minister’s interview on Cameron Direct. He expressed some concerns and talked about the mixed messages that he had received from students on EMA. He said that the Conservative party had no plans to remove EMA. That is not a matter of pure semantics. There was no promise, and the right hon. Gentleman should not put out an untruth about the Prime Minister on this subject.
Andy Burnham
We will leave those kinds of points to Back Benchers; we do not expect them from the Chair of the Select Committee.
The fundamental point that the Government are missing is that participation is only part—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) does not have to put his hand up—he can just stand up. Participation is only part of the story; EMA helps students to succeed once they arrive at college. It stands to reason that young people do better if they can afford the books or equipment that support the course. As many young people have told me, EMA means that they do not have to take a part-time job, so they can focus all their energy and attention on their studies. College after college reports that EMA improves attendance, helps people to stay the course, reduces the drop-out rate and, in the end, brings a higher rate of achievement.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
The infamous Cameron Direct meeting that has been raised took place in Hammersmith on 6 January last year. Sadly, I was not at the meeting because I was handing out leaflets outside, but this morning I spoke to the person who asked the relevant question. The Prime Minister said:
“We’ve looked at Educational Maintenance Allowances…no we don’t have any plans to get rid of them.”
Where does my right hon. Friend think the Government now stand with their credibility on this issue?
Andy Burnham
I think that it is very difficult. The Government’s access to education adviser, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), and I were at an open meeting last week in the Commons. A young woman from Cornwall said that she had been at a meeting where the Prime Minister had made a personal commitment that he would keep education maintenance allowance. The Government have some very hard questions to ask themselves this week. Now that the voters of Oldham have told them what they think about broken promises, the Government need to reflect on whether they will carry on in such an arrogant and high-handed manner, thinking it fine to say one thing to young people before the election and change the script afterwards. I am afraid that they will lose those young people for the rest of their lives if they do not change course.
Andy Burnham
I will give way to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and then to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley).
Caroline Lucas
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Does he agree that it is entirely unacceptable that the Government still have not done a full equality impact assessment of this policy? If they had, they might be rather less cavalier about the devastating implications of scrapping EMA.
Andy Burnham
The hon. Lady makes a point of such importance that it must be addressed by the Secretary of State. In going about his business, he is wiping away important initiatives that work and are providing real opportunity for young people, with no assessment of the damage that the policies will do and no real understanding of how they might set back social mobility and equality in our country. The Government seem to have dispensed with some of the norms of government that we took seriously, such as equality impact assessments and consultations on the major changes to educational provision. Instead, they promised to keep EMA, and then simply pull the plug when it suits them. It is not good enough.
Joan Walley
I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. Education maintenance allowance was piloted in Stoke-on-Trent and other cities, because we needed to give additional help to students, such as those who have come down from Burslem and Tunstall today to make the point that they need that additional money. Our staying-on rates have improved from 56.3% to 80.5%. Will my right hon. Friend ask the Secretary of State how it can be that people who currently receive EMA will not get that money, when people in the areas of deprivation that we represent need it for their travel costs and everything else? If they do not get it, they will not be in higher education, they will not get jobs, and there will be no solution to youth unemployment.
Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend brings me back to the point that I was making: EMA is not just about participation, as the Government say, but about helping people to make the best of themselves when they are in education and bringing out their full potential. The Government’s one-sided argument about a 90% dead-weight cost fails to acknowledge that it helps young people with one of the biggest challenges in life—to shine academically. It is very hard to put a value on that. It might open doors that would otherwise have remained closed.
Crucially, EMA supports the important principle of student choice for all in post-16 education. It means that the best sixth-form colleges, which are often some distance away, particularly in rural areas, are within the reach of young people. In most places, they do not get help with travel and transport costs, so EMA means that the doors of those fantastic institutions are opened to young people from ordinary working-class backgrounds.
Paul Maynard
It is kind of the right hon. Gentleman to give way, I am sure. I listened carefully to the powerful case studies of people he has met over recent weeks. I am concerned, however, that he might be out of touch with some of his constituents, and that he does not fully understand the needs of those with complex needs. Is he seriously arguing that a capped payment of £30 a week will fully meet the needs of the people he described? In that case, why does he not support a discretionary learner support fund that would allow individual schools to tailor provision to the needs of their students? Why is he so scared of that?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We must have shorter interventions, because many Members want to speak.
Andy Burnham
All I can say is that I do not think the hon. Gentleman was listening. I said that EMA makes life possible, and makes the calculations that young people have to do to stay in education that bit more doable. Is he seriously arguing that taking it from those young people will help them to make a success of their lives and circumstances? I find that hard to believe.
The vast majority of EMA is spent on travel, as a survey for the Association of Colleges confirmed this week. It states that
“94% of Colleges believe that the abolition of the EMA will affect students’ ability to travel to and from College.”
The survey also suggests that some students may be at risk of not being able to follow the college course of their choice due to the cost or availability of transport. That goes to the heart of student choice in education. If students do not have the ability to travel, they cannot get on to the courses that they want to study. The Secretary of State needs to come up with a convincing answer to that.
I want the Secretary of State also to think about the effect of the change on the aspirations of young people who are still in secondary school. I want him to reflect on what a young woman from my constituency told me this week—that her 15-year-old brother had already given up at school because, without EMA, he could not see any way that he would be able to go to Wigan and Leigh college to study the motor engineering course that he had planned to do. Is there not a real risk that taking the lifeline of EMA away from young people will lower the aspirations of children in secondary school? Better participation, attendance, retention and results, supporting choice and keeping hope alive for all kids—surely it all adds up to a compelling educational case for keeping EMA.
Elizabeth Truss
Is not the No. 1 factor in education teacher quality, which the right hon. Gentleman has not mentioned? The UK has one of the worst records of having qualified teachers for low-income pupils. Why did his Government not do anything about that when they were in power?
Andy Burnham
We did plenty of things to improve the quality of teaching, including through Teach First. I spoke about giving all young people the chance to get into the best sixth-form colleges in the country, so that they can access good teaching. Would the hon. Lady care to explain how, under her party’s plans, those young people will carry on being able to benefit from the very best teaching and get the best opportunities in life? I do not think she can do so.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
EMA was being piloted when my right hon. Friend and I joined the House, and it has been a real achievement in the 10 years since. Some 1,700 students at Newcastle-under-Lyme college benefit from it, and it has raised staying-on rates. Where is the fairness in removing that income from those students and their households? Is it not the case that the impact of that will be felt not in the likes of Surrey Heath but in Bermondsey, Sheffield, Leigh, Manchester, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stoke-on-Trent?
Andy Burnham
It will be felt keenly in such places. Combined with the trebling of tuition fees, my worry is that it will have a depressing effect on the aspirations of young people in the former industrial and inner-city communities that we worked so hard to lift during our time in government. That is why today’s debate goes to the heart of why I and many of my hon. Friends came into politics. We care passionately about people’s opportunities in those areas, and we are not prepared to see the ladder kicked away from under young people in the way that the Government propose.
The evidence that I have given on the educational benefits of EMA demolishes the claim that it has no benefit to society beyond persuading 10% of students to stay on. Until recently, I was at a loss to understand how Ministers could make that one-sided argument and use such selective facts to back up their decision, but maybe I have stumbled on the answer. Last week, I came across a parliamentary question answered by the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), asking how many further education and sixth-form colleges the Secretary of State had visited since he was appointed in May. I shall share with the House the revealing answer:
“The Secretary of State has made no such visits since this date.”—[Official Report, 12 January 2011; Vol. 521, c. 342W.]
The Secretary of State was quick to get to his feet a little earlier, and I trust that he will rise again now to correct what surely must have been an inaccurate answer.
Michael Gove
I certainly will. All those who saw me at Farnborough sixth-form college, when I had the privilege of opening the John Guy building, will know of my great commitment to that superb college, at which so many of my students are educated.
Andy Burnham
Either that is a school sixth form or the answer that the Secretary of State’s Department issued was wrong, but it is an appalling state of affairs if he has barely ever managed to take himself along to a sixth-form college to speak to the staff and students who will be affected. [Interruption.] Yes, he has been to one in his own constituency but no one else’s. That is very helpful of him. I might remind him that he is responsible for everyone’s constituents. At a stroke he is axing a £500 million scheme, which will have a profound effect on 650,000 young lives and on the viability of 230 FE colleges and 95 sixth-form colleges, for which he has policy responsibility, without so much as troubling himself to go along and hear at first hand what the decision will mean.
The Secretary of State needs to climb down from his ivory tower once in a while and get out in the real world. How many students has he met who will be directly affected by the changes? Has he met any? I am not sure whether he is nodding, but if he had met some I am absolutely sure that, if nothing else, he would long since have asked his Ministers to stop implying that those high-achieving and talented young people can be described as “dead weight”.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
Through my right hon. Friend, may I issue an invitation to the Secretary of State to come with me to City of Westminster college? Its principal has written to me to say that 1,500 of his students will lose their EMA, which in his experience has transformed attendance and achievement at the college.
Andy Burnham
I will do so, but I cannot answer for the Secretary of State. I have been to sixth-form colleges in London, and that brings me to my case about social mobility. If he visits a sixth-form college while he is in the job, may I suggest that he could do worse than visit the one that my hon. Friend mentions, or indeed Newham sixth-form college, which I visited yesterday? If he does, he might meet the young man who told me about the practical effect of losing EMA. He feels that he will have to lower his ambitions in the universities to which he applies, because he thinks his exam grades will undoubtedly suffer.
Andy Burnham
The Chairman of the Education Committee cements the impression that the Conservatives have not really thought about what it is like to be a young person in the circumstances that I have described. It is hard to put a value on the self-confidence and peace of mind that financial security gives a young person. It creates the conditions for their academic potential to be realised.
The Secretary of State talks frequently about social mobility under the Labour Government, citing the number of young people on free school meals gaining a place at Oxford or Cambridge. Time and again, he has used that figure selectively to paint a misleading picture of Labour’s record, and I wish to set the matter straight.
First, I politely point out to the Secretary of State that Oxbridge is not the be-all and end-all. If he examines the university system as a whole, which my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) has taken the trouble to do, he will see that between 2005 and 2007 the number of young people on free school meals gaining a place at university increased by 18%, double the rate of increase for all young people. Does the Secretary of State recognise those figures and, if so, does he accept that EMA has played an important role in securing that social progress? Does he further accept that the proportion of children on free school meals who stayed on in full-time education at 16 increased from 60% in 2005 to 70% in 2009? That is why more are applying to, and getting into, universities.
Michael Gove
Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us how many children eligible for free school meals made it into Oxford and Cambridge in the last year for which we have figures, and in the year before that, and whether he considers it to be a triumph of social mobility or an indictment of his Government’s record?
Andy Burnham
Is the Secretary of State worried about anything else, or is that it? The figure is 40, which came down from 44. It did go down, but I have just told him that if he looks at all universities, he will see that the rate of increase in successful applications from children on free school meals was double the rate in the rest of the population. Is he not proud of that fact, and why does he talk only about Oxbridge? If his real passion in life is helping young people on free school meals to gain places at Oxford and Cambridge—as mine is, by the way, as somebody who took that route many years ago—can he tell the House how on earth scrapping EMA is more likely to make that happen? Precisely how does he imagine those kids on free school meals will get to Oxford and Cambridge when there is no EMA?
Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman makes his case with his usual passion and makes some important points about empowering student choice. He says that the Government are going too far in reducing the scheme by 90%, but acknowledges that some savings can be made. In these difficult times, what would be a safe reduction in the budget?
Andy Burnham
I said that I am prepared to sit down and talk about making savings as long as we maintain the principle of a national scheme that supports the kids who most need support. I made the same offer on school sports. I will have that discussion, but I am saying to the Secretary of State do not just dismantle the whole scheme and lose all the benefits that come with it. If we had been asked to make a reduction in EMA commensurate with the rest of public spending, we would have struggled to argue against it, but that is not what the Government propose. The hon. Gentleman stood alongside the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State at the last election promising young people that they would keep EMA. They are the ones with the questions to answer.
The truth is that the Secretary of State cannot will the ends without the means. That will not happen. However talented those young people are, they cannot live off thin air. They cannot have a part-time job and walk miles to college and still get straight A’s. I wonder whether he has much idea of what their lives are like. In 2003, he wrote an article in The Times that acquires a new significance in the light of this debate. He wrote that
“anyone put off from attending a good university by fear of that debt doesn’t deserve to be at any university in the first place.”
Those are difficult sentiments for an Education Secretary to be associated with, as are these, which appear in the same article:
“Some people will, apparently, be put off applying to our elite institutions by the prospect of taking on a debt of this size. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is all to the good.”
How genuine is his commitment to those people who want to get in to Oxbridge?
I have worries about the Secretary of State’s elitist instincts, but I read in The Times last week another interesting piece—from Mrs Gove—which contains insights from home that raise further questions about whether he is living in the same world as the rest of us—[Interruption.] He should listen to this. She says:
“Like all angst-ridden working mothers, I live in terror of upsetting my cleaner.”
Angst-ridden mums in Leigh talk of little else. I sympathise with Mrs Gove’s predicament, but I wonder whether the Secretary of State could pass on a bit of advice to all the wives of his Cabinet colleagues who fret about the same curses of modern living. May I respectfully suggest that the best way to stay on the right side of the cleaner might be not to clean the oven oneself, but to press one’s other half not to remove the cleaner’s kids’ EMA?
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
May I press the right hon. Gentleman a little further on exactly what percentage reduction he would make to EMA? He said he is open to reducing it, but by what percentage?
Andy Burnham
I said that I would make a reduction commensurate with the overall reduction in spending. I would be prepared to sit down and say, “Can we make the EMA scheme work for young people at that level?”, but the Government are not proposing that. They are proposing a scheme that is a tenth of the size of the current one. If the Secretary of State is making offers and rethinking, and if he has been ordered into yet another U-turn by the Prime Minister, I am prepared to talk about it, but the onus is on Government Members to tell us the details of what they are offering.
Gavin Barwell
In answer to my previous question, the right hon. Gentleman spoke of preserving a national scheme, but he has made the powerful point that different students face different costs. Does he agree that if a sufficient pot of money is available, decisions are better made by individual schools that know their pupils’ circumstances, rather than through a national standard scheme?
Andy Burnham
My brother is the vice-principal of a sixth-form college, and I have asked him that question. He says that it would be an impossible task for his college to decide between one student and another. Colleges want to help students, but they would have to make those decisions with an inadequate fund that covers only a tenth of the amount that it currently covers. The hon. Gentleman’s suggestion would mean passing on an impossible problem, but I welcome the spirit of his remarks. He will notice that I have deliberately moved a broad motion that invites the support of all hon. Members who want the Government to think again. It sounds as if he is one of them.
Let us not throw out everything about EMA that is a success, and that brings me to the economic case for keeping it. In short, EMA is good not just for the individuals who receive it, but for all of us in building a higher-skilled and more prosperous society, in which the costs of social failure are lower. Yesterday, the chief executive of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers called on the Government to rethink their decision. He said:
“Tough decisions have to be made, but the UK economy will increasingly need skilled engineers and technicians over the next few years. Our long-term economic health depends on making the right decisions now.”
Haroon Chowdry of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that even taking into account a dead-weight cost of 88%, the costs of EMA are “completely offset”. He said:
“The initial outlay of the EMA policy is likely to be more than recouped by the increase in productivity that we expect to result from the 16- and 17-year-olds staying on in education for longer”.
Has the Secretary of State made an economic impact assessment of his policy alongside an equality impact assessment? I have not seen one. Has he assessed how EMA helps to build a skilled work force that benefits us all? If we take that support away, we lose not just those skills—taxpayers must also face the higher costs of social failure as young people drop out of education. Has he made an assessment of that?
On the Government’s own figures, around 78,000 are unlikely to be able to stay in further education without EMA. We cannot know for sure whether all those young people will end up unemployed if they lose EMA, but given today’s figures showing record youth unemployment, it does not look good for them. Will not the Government have to provide support for them in some other form—perhaps a less constructive form—when they have reduced hope for the future?
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
In view of my right hon. Friend’s point about improved qualifications, will he note the figures that East Berkshire college has provided to me? It has a number of students on EMA. I have worked out that its figures on improved retention would mean that 45 or 50 young people in the town that I represent would be unlikely to complete their course if they did not have EMA.
Andy Burnham
My hon. Friend is exactly right—that is borne out by the experience of many colleges around the country. Some of those young people are at risk of ending up in the benefits system. Will not the Secretary of State’s policy lead to an increase in 16 to 17-year-olds seeking to claim jobseeker’s allowance in exceptional circumstances, or certainly to an increase in the numbers claiming JSA at 18? We know that every young person not in education, employment or training costs more than £55,000, according to research for the Audit Commission. The IFS has said that EMA successfully reduced the number of NEETs. Will it not therefore cost more to get rid of EMA?
Those costs will add up on many levels. As Paul Gregg at Bristol university has found, youth unemployment imposes a “wage scar” that can last for decades. He suggests that scrapping EMA fails to take account of other benefits, such as lower crime. That adds to the fears that through a combination of the Government’s policies, they are taking hope away from a whole generation.
I have set out the education case, the social mobility case and the economic case for keeping EMA, so let us now deal with the democratic case. The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State made personal promises to young people to keep EMA. Failing to honour them will do great damage to young people’s trust in Parliament and politics. From this Dispatch Box, the Secretary of State said:
“We are entirely in favour not only of the existence of the EMA but of the provisions in the Bill to secure an extension to it.”—[Official Report, 14 January 2008; Vol. 470, c. 669.]
Weeks before the general election, he said:
“Ed Balls keeps saying we are committed to scrapping the EMA. I have never said this. We won’t.”
On the back of these statements, does the Secretary of State not accept that young people embarking on a two-year course in September 2010 had a reasonable expectation that they would receive EMA support for the duration of their course, and that they could not have expected that the rug might be pulled from under them?
Beyond that, do the Government have a democratic mandate for this change? This time it is not the yellow Tories, but the real Tories who have broken their promises to young people. However, did any of the people who voted Lib Dem in May vote to curtail the life chances of the least well-off in this way? Unsurprisingly, the Government’s amendment shifts the ground on to deficit reduction, but if that is now the Government’s main argument why did the schools Minister, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, say to the House in a holding answer dated 7 June:
“The Government are committed to retaining the education maintenance allowance”?—[Official Report, 14 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 307W.]
What changed after June? Did the full costs of the risky, unwanted reorganisation of the NHS become known, or did the Prime Minister choose his marriage tax break—costed before the election at £550 million, which is almost the same amount as EMA—as a priority above EMA? This confirms the growing impression that this is a shambolic ministerial team that changes its argument and does not know what it is doing.
The House may be forgiven for feeling a certain sense of déjà vu. This is a rushed decision with no warning, no consultation with those most affected, no evidence to support the decision, a growing backlash as the implications sink in, and a desperate rearguard action to justify it with dodgy statistics. If this is starting to sound familiar, it is because we have been here before with, for instance, Building Schools for the Future, school sport partnerships, and Bookstart. The fingerprints of this repeat offender are all over the scene of the crime. My question today to Liberal Democrat Members is this: how much longer are they prepared to carry the can in their constituencies for the disastrous decisions of this Secretary of State?
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
The right hon. Gentleman knows that I respect both his passion and his commitment on this issue, and he also knows that there is concern on both sides of the House about the policy to get rid of EMA without an adequate replacement. I repeat now what I have said privately, however: I will work with him, as I am working with the Secretary of State, to make sure, as far as I can, that the successor scheme achieves the objectives that are expressed in both the Opposition motion and the Government amendment. If together we can do that, then together we will improve the reputation of this House and politics in this country.
Andy Burnham
I respect the right hon. Gentleman’s intentions on this issue, but what he has just said will not be good enough for young people listening to this debate whose lives will be directly affected by the loss of EMA. A vague promise to work with the Secretary of State, with an unspecified amount of money to produce an unspecified result, is not going to do the job for them. The Lib Dems have to decide whether they want to keep the benefits of this successful scheme. Do they want the same numbers of young people in their constituencies to enter further education, or are they prepared to take a risk on this Secretary of State and this Tory-led Government?
Today’s debate provides the House with an opportunity to change the message that this Government are sending out to young people. They feel bewildered and angry that they have been singled out to bear the brunt of deficit reduction, and do not understand why they in particular are to face higher costs than generations before. In Newham, they ask why they are paying with their life chances for the mistakes of others a few miles away in the City of London. In Leigh, they cannot understand why the Government want to turn the clock back to an education system based on social class, with places at university going only to those with money and connections. Today, we can show that we are listening to them. We can make a stand for equality of opportunity in education, and stop these moves towards a more elitist education system. We can call a halt to this all-out attack on the aspirations of those who have least, and keep hope alive for the hundreds of thousands of young people who will be cut adrift if the Government get their way. We can tell all young people that we value them, and stop a Government who are gambling with their life chances. I commend this motion to the House.
Michael Gove
I shall not give way at this stage, because every Labour Member needs to be reminded of the mess that the Labour party landed this country in. I am not going to be put off, deflected or diverted from spelling out these facts. They are the facts that determine every decision that a responsible coalition Government have to take. Seven days after this coalition Government were formed, the International Monetary Fund said that this country had the largest deficit of any G20 country. Why was that? Labour Members say that it was because of the financial crisis, but the truth is that we entered that crisis with the largest structural deficit of any country in the G7. The fault for that debt and deficit lies—
Michael Gove
No, not yet. The fault for that debt and deficit lies with the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues. The OECD said that in 2000, thanks to Conservative policies, the UK had one of the best structural fiscal positions in the world, but by 2007 we had one of the worst in the G7. Why were we in such a weak position? It was because Labour had doubled our debt. In 1997 our national debt was £351 billion, whereas in 2010, by the time the Labour Government had left office, it was £893 billion. You cannot spend money that you do not have. The truth was revealed in a statement secreted in a Treasury desk by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne). In a note to the succeeding Chief Secretary to the Treasury, he said “There’s no money.” Not a single member of the Labour party has yet had the courage to accept that truth, and to atone and apologise for it.
Michael Gove
That article in The Times was actually in favour of the previous Government’s efforts to improve access to university. Unlike many Labour Members, I supported what Tony Blair was doing on university tuition fees; I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman did. But never mind that, because the truth is that no Labour Member has atoned or apologised for the huge economic mess in which we have been landed. This is appropriate, because the motion stands in the name of the right hon. Member for Leigh, and he was the Chief Secretary to the Treasury when the ship was steered towards the rocks, so he cannot point the finger at anyone else—
Michael Gove
Not yet. Between June 2007 and January 2008 Northern Rock collapsed, the international banking crisis began and the global recession started. All of that happened while the right hon. Gentleman was at the Treasury.
Michael Gove
Not yet. That may just be coincidence, but what was deliberate was that instead of getting control of public expenditure—[Interruption.] I know that the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) does not like being reminded of what happened under her Government and on her watch, but as long as I have breath in my body I will remind the people of this country of the devastating mess that the Labour party made of the economy. It is rank hypocrisy—
Michael Gove
No.
When the right hon. Gentleman was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in the first three months—we should remember that the economy was growing at the time—he borrowed an additional £7 billion, and in the next three months he borrowed an additional £21 billion. For every hour that he was Chief Secretary, our debt rose by £5 million—and as I said, the economy was growing at that time. Perhaps he will now take the opportunity to defend his impressive stewardship of this nation’s finances during those seven magical months.
Andy Burnham
I was the Chief Secretary to the Treasury who produced the spending review that was described by the Prime Minister as “tough” in 2007. If the right hon. Gentleman is so clear about all those “facts” that he is setting out for the House, why did he promise in March 2010 to keep the education maintenance allowance?
Michael Gove
Since coming into office, I have had many opportunities to look at the devastating mess that was left to us. I have also had the opportunity to reflect on the number of interviews and books written by those who sat alongside the right hon. Gentleman in government. One is a chap called Darling—do we remember him as Chancellor of the Exchequer? He pointed out that in autumn 2007 we had reached the limits of what should have been spent, but when the right hon. Gentleman was still in the Treasury he was spending and borrowing more.
It is also the case that a gentleman called Blair—Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, the former Member for Sedgefield—said:
“from 2005 onwards, Labour was insufficiently vigorous in limiting or eliminating the structural deficit”.
Mr Blair reflected on what should have been done and said that we should have taken “a new Labour way” out of the crisis. First, he said that we should have kept direct tax rates competitive, which we have done. He thought there should be a gradual rise in VAT and other indirect taxes, which we have brought about, and that we should have pushed further and faster on reform of public services, which we have also done. Why? Because, Mr Blair said, the danger is that
“If governments don’t tackle deficits, the bill is footed by taxpayers, who fear that big deficits now mean big taxes in the future, the prospect of which reduces confidence, investment and purchasing power. This then increases the risk of a prolonged slump”.
And that is precisely what the policies of the deficit deniers on the Opposition side would do—increase the risk of a prolonged slump, with economic policies that make no sense, at a time when we all need to focus on helping the poorest by getting the deficit down.
Nadhim Zahawi
That is exactly right. In fact, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), when he was Prime Minister, hoped to pay for EMA by reducing the debt on the young people of this country.
Transport is an important issue that was raised with me by Martin Penny from Stratford-upon-Avon college and has been aired by Members on both sides of the House. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones) said, it is an issue not only for rural constituencies but for urban areas too. I am pleased that the Secretary of State has made some encouraging remarks about opening up the discretionary fund to allow such colleges as Stratford-upon-Avon college—which are best placed to judge because they are closest to students and their families—to target some of that money on those who most need it.
In the spending review, the Government committed to refocus the support, because all the data show that the £560 million spent on EMA every year was not well targeted. I am pleased that the Secretary of State confirmed in his opening remarks that the Government will target the money on those with special educational needs. I was a governor of a special educational needs school that was shut down by the previous Government and I know how important it would be to those families if the money was targeted in that way.
I ran a research company for 11 years, and I am passionate about evidence-based strategy. The National Foundation for Educational Research report commissioned by the previous Government, which we have heard about today, found that almost 90% of young people who receive EMA would have completed their education or training course if they had not received it. In an interview, the shadow Secretary of State admitted that some of the money went towards students buying drinks and partying. He therefore probably agrees with me that the money is not well targeted. I see him leaning forward, and am happy for him to intervene.
Andy Burnham
I will intervene, because I did not say that, and I would be grateful if the hon. Gentleman corrected the record. I said that young people should be able to play a full part in the life of the college. If that means trips to musical events, the theatre or political events in the evening, they should be supported to play a full part in them. I would be grateful if he was a bit more careful with his language in future.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andy Burnham Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I start by reciprocating on behalf of the Opposition Front-Bench team the good wishes of Government Front Benchers, including the Secretary of State. We are grateful for the gift that he has delivered to us today, although I cannot promise that the good will is going to last for this entire Question Time.
I would like to treat the House to the full quotation referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) a moment ago:
“Ed Balls keeps saying that we are committed to scrapping the EMA. I have never said this. We won’t.”
Will the Secretary of State today apologise to the 600,000 young people who receive EMA and who took him at his word?
Michael Gove
I am grateful for the generous seasonal words offered by the right hon. Gentleman, but when it comes to apologies, it is those of us on the Government Benches who are waiting for an apology from him and from all his colleagues who were in government. When he says that we should spend money on this, that or the next thing, one thing is never acknowledged: his and his colleagues’ responsibility for the dire economic mess in which we were left. As a result of forming the coalition Government, two parties are working together to get us out of the mess that his party left us in. May I suggest that he gives us all a Christmas present: a single act of contrition? He should give us a single word for the economic mess that he created: sorry.
Andy Burnham
When we hear bluster like that, we see a pattern repeating itself. It is school sport all over again: a bad decision with dodgy statistics to justify it. Let us take the Secretary of State’s only argument against EMA head on: the 90% deadweight. On the Government’s own figures, because of EMA 76,000 young people stay on who might otherwise have become NEETs—those not in education, employment or training. Research for the Audit Commission puts the annual cost of a young person not in education, employment or training at £55,000, and 76,000 times £55,000 is more than £4 billion. Do these figures not demolish the Government’s last remaining argument against EMA and show that the IFS is right to say that EMA more than pays for itself?
Michael Gove
I am grateful for that display of mental arithmetic, which means that Carol Vorderman’s place on Countdown can easily be succeeded by the right hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.] It is time to bring it back, if only to provide him with a platform equal to his talents. The truth is that only 12% of young people who are eligible for EMA say that they would not participate without it. We need to ensure that money is better targeted on those who need it most. His Government commissioned the National Foundation for Educational Research to conduct a survey on who was receiving support and who should receive support to stay in learning. That report, commissioned by his Government, pointed out that it would be beneficial better to target financial support at the most vulnerable groups—that was the case made by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard). The right hon. Gentleman’s own Government’s research points out that this money is spent inefficiently. Of course it was spent inefficiently under his rule, but this coalition Government will ensure that the money available for 16 to 18-year-olds is targeted at those who need it most, so that those in the poorest circumstances get more.
Andy Burnham
I have seen enough of the right hon. Gentleman in action to know that weak jokes clearly mean he is in trouble. I think we can now safely give him his end-of-year report card. On Building Schools for the Future, school sports and now the education maintenance allowance he has shown poor attention to detail and a failure to do his homework. On the big decisions, things that people care about, he is cavalier—
Mr Speaker
Order. The right hon. Gentleman will resume his seat. This is Question Time. We must have short questions and short answers, so may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to conclude his question?
Andy Burnham
Let me quote briefly from the Secretary of State’s White Paper. It states:
“No-one is helped when poor performance remains unaddressed.”
Will he make a new year’s resolution today to live by the same exacting standards as he expects schools to apply to their teachers?
Michael Gove
I am afraid that that performance fell below even the right hon. Gentleman’s flawed standards. The truth is that the shadow Education Secretary needs to learn that, instead of simply providing a draft of an op-ed piece as a question, he needs to come up with policies that will convince people that he has learned the lesson of his Government’s defeat. He cannot simply say that the answer to every problem is more money. He cannot simply say, as he said during the leadership election, that he wants
“closer ties to the trade union movement”
at the same time as that trade union movement is calling for an all-out assault against this Government. He cannot consistently move to the left, opportunistically—