Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

Debate between Andy Slaughter and David Anderson

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I support fair trade, but properly regulated trade. Countries that trade are less likely to end up fighting each other. We would be daft, as the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter) said, to turn our back on a market that includes the biggest consumer society in the world. If we have the opportunity to work those people properly, why would we not do so?

However, experience tells us to be wary. At the heart of the matter is trust, or the lack of it, in the people we deal with, the failure to be able to hold people accountable, and the worry that the power of Government and big business will be used to abuse people, exploit people and get away with things that it should not get away with.

I have personal experience of going to the World Trade Organisation summit in Seattle in 1999 and the one in Qatar in 2001. The 1999 summit was a summit of hope. People from around the world went there with a belief that we would make great strides. The big stride that we were looking for from the labour movement was to build into trade negotiations core labour standards whereby nations that wanted to trade with the rest of the world would not use child labour or slave labour. Unfortunately, those talks fell apart because of the behaviour of some people on the ground and the over-reaction of the Seattle police, which led to the stalling of the conference.

Two years later in Qatar there was no such hope. Two years later, in the aftermath of 9/11, there was only one game in town—George W. Bush wanted to go through Pakistan to Afghanistan to chase al-Qaeda. Nothing else mattered. The Pakistanis, who were crucial to a discussion on core labour standards, did not engage at all with anybody. Because they did not engage, the Americans did not engage. That led to the failure of that round, which has resulted in the stalling of world trade discussions ever since.

We are now 15 years on. The hon. Member for North Dorset described the process as slow and grinding. It is not slow and grinding; it has virtually halted. That is why we are talking today about another way round what went on or did not go on in those discussions. To have any chance of going forward, we need safeguards, as my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) pointed out. We need the right of scrutiny and the people need reassurance. When he was in opposition, the Prime Minister lectured the Labour party time and again about the need for transparency and the benefits of letting the sunshine in. That is what we are talking about here.

It would have been better if, since he became Prime Minister, the right hon. Gentleman had put that policy into practice—for example, by releasing the papers relating to the miners strike and behaviour of people at the Orgreave coke works, and the papers that go back 42 years to the Shrewsbury pickets. Some of those men are now nearly 90 years old and still cannot access the papers held in the Cabinet Office and other Government buildings that would prove they were innocent.

Lectures on transparency do not work; facts do. If there is nothing to hide in the negotiations, give us the scrutiny we need. Give us the scrutiny we demand and deserve. Cut out the secrecy and closed doors, and stop using the confidentiality claim. Shine a light so that people can see what is going on.

Let us be clear. The huge doubt that exists is not engendered solely by organisations such as 38 Degrees or the trade union movement. There is huge doubt in the public mind about the role of these trade negotiations in undermining vital public services.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Anderson]

No. There is not much time.

The truth is that people in this country are sick to death of the way public services have been treated over the past three decades. We have the nationalised train companies of other countries running our train services. We have multinational energy companies fleecing the old and poor in this country who are trying to keep their lights on and their houses warm. We have foreign postal companies undermining the universal service obligation. We have water companies—dealing with the basis of human life—that do not know where the people they provide the service to live. We have a coal industry where 200,000 people lost their jobs and communities were devastated, and we buy in coal from some of the most unstable regimes on earth. And now we worry that the health service will be fragmented before our very eyes.

That is why people do not trust, and are very worried about, these negotiations. That is why they are saying to us, “We are sick to death of seeing privateers feast on the goodies of privatisation. If TTIP is another opportunity for them to do the same, we do not want it.” The Government—and my party, if it wants to get behind this—have to say to the people of this country, “We are going into these negotiations in the proper manner. We will open them up to people in this House and Europe”—MEPs from all parties have said they are concerned about the lack of scrutiny—“We will do it properly. We will come back to the House and the country and say, ‘This agreement is sound. It covers your concerns. It works in these areas, but we will not allow it to work in these other areas.’” If we do not do that, TTIP will not deserve the support of ourselves, the nation or the EU.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Debate between Andy Slaughter and David Anderson

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Slaughter]

The Opposition amendments, which I support, are based on genuine fears about what may occur through a local market in education if this Bill becomes law. I mentioned on Second Reading a flyer that is circulating in a part of my constituency that is already testing the market to see whether an appetite exists for the opening of new schools in the area. I thought that this was already common practice, but The Times Educational Supplement telephoned me yesterday to say that it is the first such example it had heard of. However, I am sure it will not be the last if this Bill is passed, when it will become common practice.

Let me give a foretaste of what is to come by indicating what is proposed in Shepherd’s Bush. The flyer, which is being circulated widely, says:

“A New Primary School For Your Child. We are opening a new primary school in your area soon and we are enrolling now!”

It comes from an organisation called ABC Academies, although I believe that that name is not patented and may change. It continues:

“Close to your home, we will provide education for children from five years old. Life skills. reading and writing. mathematics. science. physical education and fun!...Contact us to find out more!”

There were three open days, the last of which, in fact, ended about eight minutes ago in a part of the Shepherd’s Bush road. Parents are being invited to come along and I presume that, if enough turn up, an estate agent will be asked to look for suitable premises in the area. It is not that easy to find somewhere with sufficient play space and equipment in the middle of inner London, but it is a task that we know Toby Young and others have set themselves in that part of the world. At some point, an application will be made to the Secretary of State for some of the £210 million of Building Schools for the Future funding that the schools in my constituency have been deprived of.

Although I agree with the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), it may surprise him to hear that I disagree with his pillorying the people who are putting forward this proposal. I do not particularly pillory them—in fact, I know the people who are doing this in my area. They are local entrepreneurs who run a perfectly respectable, good business that says to schools, “We will use your schools for you. We will market them when they are available—classrooms and halls at evenings and weekends, for example—and we have a number of successful supplementary schools in the area.” I see nothing wrong with that. The firms make a profit, and that benefits the school, the people who use it, and the company. However, as a result of the coalition Government’s proposals, the companies now see that exactly the same principles should apply to the provision of state education in the area. Who can criticise them for that, when that is exactly what is being proposed?

I asked the assistant director of education whether he knew about the practice. He is responsible for all school building programmes and the provision of school buildings; he had never heard of it. I spoke to some of the primary heads in the area; they had never heard of it, and did not know about it, although when I told them about it, they thought that they might pop along to an open day and see what was happening.

There is over-subscription of primary schools in the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, although curiously the local authority was closing primary schools until last year so that it could free up the sites and sell them on to private schools. There may be demand for a primary school in certain parts of the borough, but I ask the Government whether that is the right way to go about things.

For example, one primary school is next to a place where one of the open days is held. It is a popular, successful school, but it is not full in all years because the turnover—the mobility—of population in inner London is such that 25% of the children in a class can leave that class in the course of a school year. That is very difficult. Some 65% of children in that school have English as a second language, and 40% are Muslim. We are talking about one of the most varied, diverse and mobile communities in the country. Planning school provision and school places is incredibly difficult on both a financial and educational level.

What will happen if we throw into the mix the ability, simply on the basis of a business idea, to set up a new school where one feels that one can? A company might attract parents who like the idea, and who are most able, willing, articulate, and responsive to that type of marketing, set up a school, and drain other schools of their pupils and finances, including the capital funding that has already been stopped for existing schools. That is a recipe for utter chaos in the education system. It is gold-rush tactics applied to the education system.

There are groups of parents doing the same as the companies. They have their eye on particular buildings, and say to the local authority, “Could we have that building? Never mind who is in there at the moment. Could you get them out? We’d like the building for our own use.” I am certainly not criticising the parents; they want to do the best for their children. I do not even criticise the organisations concerned. They may be very sound entrepreneurial organisations. I blame the politicians, who, both at local and national level, appear to be abdicating completely all responsibility for the planning of education, and in particular the planning of sustainable, sensible and integrated education.

The education system, particularly in areas such as inner London, is finely balanced. It works. It is highly resourced, thanks to the last Labour Government. It has an incredible number of committed people in it—parents, teachers, children and, indeed, some local politicians. It works very well, particularly at primary level, but often against the odds and against great challenges. This legislation does nothing to assist. All that it does is put a spoke in the wheel, and barriers in the way of continuing that success. Education—particularly primary education—in inner London is not broke. This noxious and pernicious Bill aims to destroy what we have built up over many years, and I urge all Members of the Committee to support the amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I am really depressed by what is happening, particularly in relation to consultation. For years and years, quite rightly, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives attacked the previous Government for not having full consultation with people when measures such as this were going through. But to have a consultation process, or not to have a consultation process, when the people who run our schools—the teachers, the support staff, the people who do school meals and the people who clean the schools—are not even at work but are on holiday, if they can afford to take one, and to say that the head will decide and that when they come back in December they will be told what will happen to them, is clearly out of order. It is almost certainly not legal and I am convinced that there will be challenges.